Work Text:
whelve —to bury something deep, to hide
meriggiare —to rest at noon, more likely in a shady spot outdoors
The door to his hospital room swung open, but Wu Xie didn’t yet know that he was fucked.
He expected to see Kan Jian, Wang Meng, someone coming to update him on the others while he waited for his lung scans to come back, or to tell him what had happened while he was chasing artifacts and desperate leads and crazy half-miracles around, but instead, standing in the doorway was Li Cu, and oh, Wu Xie was happy to see him. He had made peace with it, the idea that he wasn’t ever going to get to say goodbye—well, maybe he would have. Maybe, in his last moments, with some of the last precious words allotted to him by the universe, maybe he would have picked up the phone and dialed a number he had etched into his heart and tell his beautiful boy the things he wouldn’t have had the courage to say until there were literally no other moments left.
He never had to, though. So instead, he beamed at Li Cu, who was wearing his leather jacket and tall, dark boots, whose hair was mussed from driving with the windows down.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, cheerfully. Everything was wonderful, now. He was alive, they were alive, Li Cu was here.
But Li Cu wasn’t saying anything. He was just standing, just staring. His eyes were dark, unreachable, fixed on Wu Xie with the silent bite of a stranger.
“Li Cu?” Wu Xie asked. “Is everything okay?”
Li Cu held up his phone. “‘We’re going down into the tomb. Will be off the grid for maybe a week. I’ll see you when I get back.’”
“What?” Wu Xie said.
“That’s the last message you sent me,” Li Cu said. “‘I’ll see you when I get back.’”
Wu Xie nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said. “I lost my phone, I couldn’t call you.” He grinned. “Typical, right?”
Li Cu didn’t smile back, face hard under the ridgeline of his eyes. “You were lying.”
“What?”
Li Cu shook the phone, just a little bit. “You weren’t fucking coming back. Were you?”
Wu Xie thought, Shit.
“That’s not—” Wu Xie said, “I—”
Li Cu set his jaw, slipped his shoulders back, and his knees bent just slightly, like he was preparing for a fight. Posturing left over from the Wang compound, something he hadn’t quite been able to kick in the last four years.
“I’m giving you one chance to explain,” he said. “One.”
Wu Xie swallowed, feeling like his lungs were seizing up all over again. “You weren’t supposed to find out.”
That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because Li Cu’s face went murderous.
“‘I wasn’t supposed to find out?’” he said, his voice cold and quiet, and who had taught him that? “You didn’t just forget to tell me. You didn’t just run out of time. You lied.”
Wu Xie sighed a breath from his nose. “I lie, Li Cu. It’s what I do.”
Li Cu’s head pulled back, just a fraction of an inch. “Oh. Right.” He snorted. “That’s fine, then. I should’ve expected it. My fault.”
“What?” Wu Xie said, because this is not how he expected this conversation to go. Well. He never expected this conversation to even happen in the first place. “No, that’s not what—”
“Fine,” Li Cu repeats. “It’s okay. I was the one who made the mistake. Of course. I’m always the one who messes up. At least I’m predictable, right? Otherwise, what use would you have for me?”
“Ya Li,” Wu Xie said, trying to get him back on a level that he understood, at least, trying to figure out what this kid was trying to say to him, “You don’t—”
“Fuck you,” Li Cu said, and he wasn’t shouting, and it made Wu Xie’s heart freeze in his chest. “And fuck me too, I guess. For thinking that you’d be honest with me about something this important.”
Wu Xie scoffed, because really. “This is why I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d overreact.”
Li Cu’s mouth dropped, just slightly, enough to slide a cigarette inside. “You didn’t tell me… because I would overreact.”
“I’m fine, aren’t I?” Wu Xie said, gesturing over his fully-intact, completely-healthy body. “I didn’t lie. I said I’d see you when I got back. Here we are.”
Li Cu blinks at him, his eyes remaining slightly narrowed when he’s done. “And that’s supposed to make it okay?”
Wu Xie shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
Li Cu laughed, then, but it wasn’t his usual sound. This one was a craggy scraping in his throat, like it was painful. “I don’t understand? I don’t understand.” He nodded, pushing his lips together so that they folded like leaves under the tines of a rake. “You’re right. I don’t.”
“So—”
“I don’t fucking understand,” Li Cu said. “I never did, apparently.”
Wu Xie has been lost, now, which is odd for him. “What are you talking about?”
“Fuck you,” Li Cu said, and then he was turning around, his feet moving in steady, quick steps.
“Li Cu,” Wu Xie called after him, scrambling for his hospital slippers. “Li Cu!”
“Don’t,” Li Cu growled, whirling in the doorway to pin Wu Xie down with his eyes. “Don’t you even try.”
And then he was gone.
One
“Who’re we inviting to the reopening?” Pangzi asks, tossing popcorn into the air and catching it in his mouth. His leg is still casted, but he’s gotten antsy over the past week, so Wu Xie’s trying to distract him by making the guest list for the Wushanju Grand Reopening.
“Everyone!” Wu Xie says, scribbling names down onto his notepad. “Or. Everyone important. Which probably means my family, doesn’t it?”
“Okay,” Pangzi says, “So Wu NaiNai, Ershu, your parents—”
“Not my parents,” Wu Xie says quickly.
“Not your parents,” Pangzi acquiesces. “The kid?”
Wu Xie frowns, because he hasn’t actually talked to Li Cu since that time in the hospital. He’s tried texting him, once, and he hadn’t even been left on Read. Li Cu just hadn’t opened the message at all. “You said to give him space.”
Pangzi rolls his eyes. “Yeah, give him space to cool off. That doesn’t mean completely avoid talking to him until he talks to you first.”
Wu Xie throws his pencil at him, but Pangzi just bats it out of the air.
“I know you’re shit at the emotional stuff, Tianzhen, but you owe it to him to try,” Pangzi says.
Wu Xie groans. “Fine.” He makes a point of picking up his phone and tapping out a message very deliberately.
We’re having a Grand Reopening of Wushsanju next Friday. Come if you can!
“Good,” Pangzi says, and eats more popcorn.
Two
Li Cu doesn’t come to the reopening, which doesn’t particularly strike Wu Xie as strange, because it gets crashed by the other tomb raiding families halfway through and ends in disaster. And then they have to go down into Warehouse 11 again, and with everyone getting poisoned all over the place, Wu Xie is frankly relieved that he doesn’t have to worry about a particularly trouble-prone twenty-two-year-old putting himself in danger every five minutes. He’s got enough to worry about.
(Also, considering that the target is his family and their line of succession, Wu Xie is pretty sure that if Erjing had gotten wind of the fact that Li Cu is practically next in line, he would have stopped at nothing to get at him, too.)
But then it’s over. They cause chaos, stop Erjing from completely destroying the Wu Family, and even shut Warehouse 11 down, which strikes Wu Xie as a rare bonus, especially given how he gets an email from Zhang Rishan a few days later that only says, Well done. And Wu Xie feels that, given how the past year has gone, he deserves to throw a party.
So he does. He invites all of his favorite people—well, he tries to. Liu Sang sends him a very bitchy text that says, I’m not coming to your fucking house (which Wu Xie disregards; Liu Sang will show up eventually), and Li Cu doesn’t reply to the texts or to the emails Wu Xie sends him with the details inside. But maybe Li Cu just doesn’t want to hang out with a bunch of people older than he is (except Xiao Bai. Li Cu would like Xiao Bai) who he doesn’t know, so Wu Xie doesn’t bother him about it. He’ll track him down later, take him to lunch, rib him about his schoolwork and friends and his museum internship until Li Cu smiles at him again.
Three
He knows something’s wrong when his grandmother calls.
“NaiNai,” he greets, casually. “How are you?”
“Xiao Xie,” she says, and her voice is filled with stern disappointment, only giving him a second to wonder, Shit, what did I do now? “Why were you not at the graduation?”
“The what?” Wu Xie asks.
“Wu Xiaomao,” Wu NaiNai says. “He graduated from college last weekend. And you weren’t there, Xiao Xie. It does not speak very highly of you. It was an important occasion.”
Wu Xie’s blood runs cold. “It was… what?”
“He did a good job,” Wu NaiNai continues. “We were very proud. You would have been very proud.”
“I am,” Wu Xie says around the thick, hot mass in his throat. His eyes sting slightly. “Of course I am.”
“You should tell him, then,” Wu NaiNai says, her voice clipped.
Wu Xie nods, even though she can’t see him, because he doesn’t trust his voice not to break. He knew Li Cu was graduating soon, but he hadn’t known when. He thought he had time. He thought Li Cu would call by then.
Wu NaiNai says. “I believe you have another call to make.”
“Yes,” Wu Xie says, and hangs up.
He hits Li Cu’s number—four on speed dial—and listens to the phone ring until it goes to voicemail. He doesn’t bother to leave one, just hangs up and calls again. And again. And again.
On his seventh try, on the seventh ring, Li Cu finally answers.
“What?” he says.
Wu Xie’s voice gets stuck in his throat. Li Cu sounds… harsh, and angry. He doesn’t sound like Li Cu.
“You graduated,” he finally manages. “You did it.”
“Yeah,” Li Cu says, his voice flat.
“I didn’t know,” Wu Xie whispers.
“Well,” Li Cu says, “Now you do.”
He hangs up.
Four
He accosts Su Wan outside of Hei Xiazi’s place.
He waits specifically until he knows that Hei-ye is out of town, and Su Wan is housesitting for him, and then he goes and stakes out the place until he sees Su Wan come out of the front gate to pick up the mail, and then he gets him.
For a student of Hei Xiazi’s, Su Wan isn’t very good at detecting when people are sneaking up on him, because when Wu Xie grabs his shoulder, he shrieks and drops the newspaper.
“Oh,” he says once he realizes who it is. “Wu-laoban. Hi.”
“You don’t have to call me that,” Wu Xie says, and then: “Hi.”
“Hei-ye’s out,” Su Wan says.
“I know,” Wu Xie replies. “I came to see you.”
“Oh no,” Su Wan says, his fingers clenching tighter on the stack of mail. “Why?”
“Li Cu won’t pick up his phone,” Wu Xie says, “I was wondering if—”
“No,” Su Wan says, and then winces when he realizes he’s interrupted.
“No?”
“I’m not telling you,” Su Wan says. His eyebrows are still furrowed, but he’s straightened up to his full height. “You… Ya Li is…”
“Is he okay?” Wu Xie demands.
Su Wan scrutinizes him for a moment, then sighs. “I mean. Physically, he’s fine. But… well. You know.”
“No, I don’t, actually,” Wu Xie says, frustrated. “He won’t fucking call me.”
“Of course he won’t,” Su Wan mutters. “You… you really hurt him, okay? I don’t know if you know that, but… it was… he wasn’t good, for a while.”
Wu Xie lets go of Su Wan when he’s pretty sure that he won’t run away or punch him. “I didn’t mean…”
“You never do,” Su Wan says boldly, and then pales. “Uh. I mean.”
Wu Xie shrugs. “I probably deserved that.”
“Oh, you definitely deserved that,” Su Wan says, then smacks himself on the wrist. “Damn it. Sorry. Uh. It’s just.” He sighs, looks around like someone might overhear them. “Ya Li really loves you, okay? I know he wouldn’t say it, but it messed him up, you not trusting him.”
“I trust him,” Wu Xie says. “Obviously, I trust him.”
Su Wan frowns. “Then why didn’t you tell him about the… you know.”
The same reason I didn’t tell anyone, Wu Xie thinks. I didn’t want to hurt him more. I didn’t want to hurt more.
“I don’t know,” he says instead.
“Maybe you should figure that out,” Su Wan says, and disappears back into the house.
Five
“Just go over there,” Pangzi suggests. “You know where he lives.”
“That would be overstepping,” Wu Xie mumbles, biting his lip as he paces the living room.
It’s officially been six months since he’s had a real conversation with Li Cu, and it’s starting to worry him. The last time they went this long without talking, Wu Xie had been stuck in the mountains and Li Cu had been trapped in the Wang Compound.
Pangzi rolls his eyes. “Well, you’re driving me crazy. Figure your shit out, Tianzhen.”
“What if it makes it worse?”
“How could this become any worse?” Pangzi asks, and then softens considerably. “Look. You fucked up. And now it’s time for you to put on your adult pants and go over there and apologize to the kid. No more waiting for him to come to you. He’s obviously not going to do it.”
“But why?”
Pangzi raises an eyebrow at him. “Do you really need me to answer that?”
Wu Xie shakes his head miserably. He knows why Li Cu isn’t going to come to him, and it’s Wu Xie’s fault. He knew about Li Cu’s past, knew how people kept leaving him without warning. Hell, he knows about that firsthand, about how much it fucking sucks. No wonder Li Cu doesn’t want anything to do with Wu Xie anymore. Wu Xie wouldn’t want anything to do with Wu Xie anymore.
“Just go,” Pangzi presses. “It might take a while for him to forgive you, but you’ve gotta put forth the effort here, Tianzhen. At least let him know that you still want him around.”
Wu Xie sighs. “Okay,” he says, “You’re right.”
“Of course I am,” Pangzi says importantly. “I’m making his favorite for dinner, so drag him back, okay?”
Which is how Wu Xie finds himself outside of Li Cu’s apartment, ringing the buzzer over and over again. He can hear it going off inside, but there isn’t any movement from within. Maybe he should’ve brought Liu Sang.
He jams his thumb on the button for a long, ten-second spurt, when suddenly the door flies open, and Mr. Li is standing there, look sleepy and disheveled.
“What?” he snaps. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Uh,” Wu Xie says, “Is Li Cu home?”
Mr. Li snorts. There’s a half-empty beer hanging from his fingers, and Wu Xie feels a cold snake of fear coil around his stomach. “No.”
“If you hurt him—”
“I didn’t,” Mr. Li mumbles. “You already threatened me within an inch of my life about it.” He takes a drink, waves his hand at Wu Xie. “He’s gone.”
“He’s gone?” Wu Xie asks. “What do you mean, ‘he’s gone?’”
“What it fucking sounds like,” Li Cu’s father grumbles. “He got a job, took off a couple weeks ago. Didn’t say much about it. Honestly thought he was with you.”
“He’s not.”
“Yeah, got that,” Mr. Li says. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be banging around here.”
“Did he say when he’d be back?” Wu Xie asks.
Mr. Li shrugs. “Not in as many words. Said not to worry.”
Well. If Wu Xie wasn’t worried before, he is now.
“Do you have any helpful information?”
“He doesn’t tell me anything,” Mr. Li snorts, and Wu Xie knows how that feels.
“I’ll go find him,” he says, but Mr. Li is already shutting the door, long-since tired of this conversation.
To Ya Li, in his head, he says, I’m coming. Don’t worry.
And One
It takes him the better part of a week to figure out where Li Cu’s gone.
He cashes in as many favors as he’s owed, even ends up owing a few people, but eventually he gets hints of some expedition made of a cobbled-together team of mercenaries and inexperienced tomb raiders. From the look of the roster, Li Cu might have seniority, which doesn’t mean much when you’re twenty-two and working with people years older than you, but with much less experience. Li Cu’s smart, but people aren’t going to listen to him no matter how right he is, and that’s dangerous.
He and Pangzi fly out to the village closest to the supposed excavation site. Xiao-ge meets them there, his face solemn. He’s done his own information gathering and apparently there had been a team that came through a few weeks back, loud and obnoxious and on their way to a mountainside grave that was infamous for caving in every year or so. Not the most hospitable place, but open enough that a green team would be drawn to it, thinking they could succeed at entering where everyone else had failed.
The Iron Triangle follows their tracks, only to find the crumbled mountainside collapsed in on itself, a loose sheaf of rock spilling out like intestines. They poke around the site for a bit, finding odd pieces of equipment, but nothing super concrete, except for a grouping of boot prints and an old campfire pit.
“They went in, didn’t they?” Wu Xie mutters.
Pangzi sighs. “It looks like it.” He flips a stick of dynamite out of his backpack. “Shall we go in after them?”
The rock wall comes down easily with just a few expertly placed explosives, and then they’re flipping on their flashlights, Xiao-ge is taking the lead as usual, and they start to see where things went wrong almost instantly.
There are clear signs of triggered traps; blood streaked on the floor, dropped equipment, a flashlight here, a canteen there. And then, of course, bodies start turning up; people with skewers through their throats and snapped necks and their eyes open and bulging. Wu Xie doesn’t want to, but he turns over every single body, just in case, but none of them are Li Cu. He feels something like hope flutter in his stomach, but pushes it down because it doesn’t mean anything; maybe this isn’t Li Cu’s group. Maybe he was never here at all.
They keep going, further and further down until their path is blocked by another rockslide, only this one doesn’t seem to be caused by anything natural. Xiao-ge examines it, running his fingers through the dust and pressing his hand to the floor, then to the wall of caved stone. He gestures to Pangzi, who crouches down next to him and starts shoving dynamite into the spaces that Xiao-ge directs him to. He ties the fuses together, quick knots made quicker by his teeth and expertise.
They crouch a little ways down the corridor and set off the dynamite. It isn’t one of the big, flashy explosions that Pangzi likes, just a rumble and then the pile collapsing into dust and pebbles, revealing an opening at the top just big enough for Wu Xie and Xiao-ge to squeeze through. Pangzi tries, but he doesn’t quite get his shoulders through before he gives up, cursing.
“I’ll wait here,” he says, frowning, and passes a few rolls of explosives over to Wu Xie. “Try to dig this out a little more.”
Wu Xie squeezes his hand before he and Xiao-ge gingerly make their way down the stone corridor.
This one is… different. While the last part of the cave was dry and dust-filled, this one is slick and wet, liquid dripping down from the walls and a strange, metallic smell in the air. Xiao-ge reaches out and touches one of the rocks, his fingers a wet and shining red in the light of Wu Xie’s flashlight.
“Is that…?”
Xiao-ge nods, and wipes his fingers on his arm guards before he slowly draws his blade.
They only make it a few more steps before Wu Xie ends up kicking something, the object bouncing away down the corridor, metal pinging off of the stone. He jogs to catch up with it, picking the small, round piece off of the ground. He turns it over, and almost chokes.
It’s Li Cu’s compass, the one that Wu Xie gave him for his twenty-first birthday. It’s waterproof and fireproof and zombie-proof, as far as he knows, so it’s still intact. It has the coordinates for Wushanju engraved on the back.
So you always know where to go, Wu Xie had said when he gave it to him, and Li Cu had looked at him with wide, wonderful eyes, his smile tremulous and tight.
He holds the compass in his palm, wipes the blood off of it, and watches the little needle spin around until it finds its north.
“Shit,” he says. “Xiao-ge—”
Xiao-ge doesn’t give him a chance to finish before he’s running down the corridor, feet splashing blood up onto his pants, and Wu Xie’s stumbling after him, clutching the compass tightly in his fist, unwilling to relinquish his grip in case he lets that go too.
And then, just as suddenly, Xiao-ge stops in his tracks, leaving Wu Xie to almost run into his back. He pokes his head over his shoulder to see what Xiao-ge is staring at, shining his flashlight toward the ground.
It’s a tripwire, but it doesn’t belong there. It’s new, still shiny in the light, and decidedly free of blood, which, considering the state of the rest of the place, is surprising. It also means that it’s recent, a trap made by someone who had been there not too long ago… or someone who still is.
Wu Xie and Xiao-ge exchange a look, and then, very slowly, Xiao-ge reaches out and pulls the wire.
As they expected, it doesn’t set off a trap. Instead, there’s a rustling a little further down the corridor, and, as Wu Xie shines his flashlight forward, it glints off of moving metal.
Xiao-ge is there in three quick steps, his blade flashing as he intercepts whatever threat this is, but almost immediately he’s dropping his sword down and gesturing Wu Xie over.
Wu Xie jogs the distance, pointing his flashlight ahead of him, and the beam reaches the curl of rock before he does, so that when he’s finally there, all he can see is Li Cu, his eyes bright and imploring as he clutches his knife next to his chest, knees all pulled up, pressing himself as far as he can into the rock wall, but when he sees Wu Xie, his blood-smeared face crumples.
“Li Cu,” Wu Xie breathes. “Li Cu.”
“Wu Xie,” Li Cu answers, voice croaky with disuse, “Please take me back.”
Wu Xie’s heart breaks all over again.
He passes his backpack off to Xiao-ge, who takes it without a word, and kneels down to gather Li Cu into his arms, the kid clutching at his jacket as strongly as his weak fingers will allow.
They get out of the cave, get back to civilization, get Li Cu help. He’s not injured badly, just malnourished and extremely dehydrated after being stuck alone in a cave for a week. It turns out that his party had run into a dragon-like creature that had torn them to shreds, painting the cave in blood. Li Cu had managed to survive by coating himself in gore and hiding himself in a pocket in the wall, but the creature caved in the tunnel, so he had been trapped. He’d set up the tripwire as a last-ditch attempt for a warning if the creature came back, and holed himself away.
Wu Xie spends days sitting next to him, unwilling to let Li Cu out of his sight for even a minute, because the last time he had done that, he’d fucked it up so badly. Please take me back, Li Cu had said, like it was his fault, like Wu Xie had pushed him away because he didn’t want him anymore, didn’t love him anymore. He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, because this might have been the biggest mistake of his life, and he’s made a lot of them.
Slowly, Li Cu gets better. He’s too thin now, something that Wu Xie can tell is not just from the cave, and that wrings him taut with guilt all over again. He’s quieter, too, unwilling to speak nearly as freely as Wu Xie remembers. He keeps gazing at Wu Xie in an almost-surprise, like he’s sure that he’s going to blink and Wu Xie will be gone again.
Which is not going to happen. Wu Xie is staying. He’ll stay forever, if he has to.
But they still haven’t talked. Not yet. Not more than cursory sentences, questions and answers, at least until the doctors deem Li Cu well enough to take a trip outside.
He’s quiet on the way, hands folded in his lap as Wu Xie pushes him into the tiny hospital courtyard in a wheelchair, stopping underneath a tree with branches that stretch out over them like an awning, giving them a nice space in the shade. There’s a bench there, too, so he can sit down next to Li Cu and not make him feel like Wu Xie is overpowering him by standing.
They sit together for a moment. Wu Xie feels like he can sense Li Cu’s anxiety vibrating out of him in waves, matching his own.
“I’m sorry,” they say at the same time.
Li Cu winces. “Sorry,” he says again.
“You can go first,” Wu Xie offers quietly, and Li Cu exhales shakily.
“Okay,” he says, and then goes quiet. Wu Xie’s just about to speak again when he says, “I missed you.”
Well. That’s not exactly what Wu Xie was expecting. “I—”
“It was my fault,” Li Cu says, “I know. I’m the one who wasn’t talking to you. So don’t feel bad, I guess. If I had wanted, I could have… I just. I missed you. I’m sorry.”
“First of all,” Wu Xie says, “Stop apologizing. I’m the one who should be apologizing to you, Li Cu.”
Li Cu shakes his head firmly, looking down at his lap. “I was being stubborn,” he says, his tone slightly robotic, like it’s a speech he’s been practicing. “You had your reasons for not telling me. I overreacted.”
“Stop,” Wu Xie says, “Fuck, kid. Li Cu. You’re… I should have gone first.” He sighs, then says the next thing quickly, before Li Cu can interrupt. “I was wrong.”
“You—” Li Cu blinks. “What?”
“I was wrong,” Wu Xie tells him firmly. “I should have told you. I shouldn’t have kept something so big from you, and you had every right to be mad at me. You have every right to be mad at me.”
Li Cu frowns. He looks confused, so Wu Xie continues.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” he says, “Except Xiao-ge, because he was my last hope. If anyone knew anything it would be him. But I didn’t tell anyone else. Not you. Not my parents. Not Pangzi.”
“You didn’t tell Pangzi?” Li Cu blurts, like it’s unfathomable, which Wu Xie supposes it is.
“I didn’t tell Pangzi,” he confirms. “I wouldn’t have told anyone, if I’d had my way. I would have gone off and… and died, and no one would know until it had already happened.”
“Why?” Li Cu asks quietly. “You weren’t… weren’t you scared?”
Wu Xie laughs, shakily. “I was terrified. It was the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. I was dying and I was scared and I was alone. It was my choice, but I was alone.”
“Yeah,” Li Cu murmurs, “I might know what that feels like now.”
Oh. Wu Xie looks at Li Cu, who is wringing his hands together, and he takes them from him, squeezing his own fingers around Li Cu’s smaller ones, thought they’re not that small, not anymore. He’s grown-up, now.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to hurt any more than I already was. And saying goodbye to you… saying goodbye to you would have hurt so much, Ya Li.” Li Cu’s gazing at him now, his eyes glassy and red. “It was selfish of me. And I’m so, so sorry that you didn’t know… that you didn’t know.”
Li Cu blinks, and there are tears on his cheeks, spilling over his lower lashes. He gasps a little, almost choking, and then he’s burying his face into Wu Xie’s shoulder.
“I was scared,” he’s saying, “I was scared too, Wu Xie. God. I was fucking scared.”
“I know,” Wu Xie murmurs. He wraps his arms around his boy, smoothing his hair down, keeping him safe in the shade of the tree. “But I’m here now. You don’t have to be.”