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“Um- welcome in, Gu-jie, Cao-dage, and- um-”
“Wen Kexing,” he offers, because the poor boy looks so nervous that it’s making Wen Kexing nervous.
“Little goldbean, stop stalling! You said this place was haunted- why are you inviting us in like you live here?”
Wen Kexing looks over the potted plants on the window sill, the slippers he can see inside the shadowed hall, too dark to be natural even in the late hour. He can see Chengling’s backpack resting heavily against the wall.
A-Xiang and her- ugh, boyfriend- are ghost-hunting. They run a moderately successful YouTube channel and recently reached a ‘sub goal’ and as such have promised their viewers that they’ll go ghost-hunting, because Cao Weining is deathly afraid of the supernatural, and people (read: Wen Kexing) think it's funny to see him scared out of his wits.
“Uh- um,” Zhang Chengling says, hiding behind the creaky door as A-Xiang barges in, and Wen Kexing still isn’t sure where the kid fits into their picture.
Zhang Chengling is A-Xiang’s underclassman, technically. He’d just entered high school and according to the kid, A-Xiang had saved him from some older students making fun of him and his dad.
“He- he’s not my dad, technically,” Zhang Chengling had muttered when he was sitting in the principal’s office, alone, when the bullies had their parents and A-Xiang had Wen Kexing. “He’s taking care of me- and he does it really well,” he had said suddenly, spine straightening even as his hands shook. “He’s just- he’s sick. He can’t be out during the day.”
“What is your dad, then? A vampire?” one of the kids sneered, and all it took was for Zhang Chengling to flinch and shrink again before A-Xiang gave the bully another black eye.
So, technically, he’s A-Xiang’s underclassman. Really, though, it’s sort of like she’s his older sister.
As thanks for helping him, he’d offered to help with their ghost hunting.
He’s offered up what is clearly his own home for A-Xiang and her idiot boyfriend to film in and told them it’s haunted, which may or may not be a lie. Wen Kexing was skeptical at first, but after seeing how the sandy darkness at the corners of the small house seemed to cling to its walls, he thinks there might’ve been more truth to the claim than he’d originally given the kid.
They step into the house, which looks about the same on the inside as it did from the outside. Slightly dilapidated furniture and decorations that were popular a decade ago and an unwelcoming air of leave, now.
Wen Kexing smiles slightly and toes off his shoes. The doorway opens into a small foyer, with a hallway to the left, a living room to the right, and a kitchen straight ahead. Little strands of something scuttle over the floorboards between the kitchen and the hallway, disappearing behind the corner.
Zhang Chengling leads them to the living room, where he steps over a floorboard and winces when Cao Weining steps on it. An odd creaking fills the room.
The whole house is dark. Shadows flicker in the corners of his vision, swirling and reaching before pulling back when Wen Kexing turns his head even slightly in its direction.
Zhang Chengling lives in a haunted house, he thinks vaguely.
He thinks about he can’t be out during the day and what is your dad, then? A vampire? and the way the kid had flinched.
A glass of something dark sits on the living room table. It smells sweet, when Wen Kexing drifts over to look at it, abandoning the kids to fuss over equipment.
The table isn’t dusty. There’s a ring of condensation around the glass, dripping onto the table when he lifts it.
In the background, he can hear the kids clamoring over the best spot to film.
A-Xiang complains about the lighting. Zhang Chengling stutters nervously about not disturbing the dust in that corner. A-Xiang says imperiously that it’s the spot with the best ambiance. Cao Weining carefully suggests another corner. A-Xiang huffs and moves the camera.
A dark figure stands in the hallway.
In his peripheral vision, the figure blurs, shadows like charcoal dust waving gently before dissipating.
Not a vampire, Wen Kexing muses. Something warm stirs in his chest, rearing its head for a peek. He sets the glass down.
It’s been a while since he’s found anything interesting.
The figure reforms. It’s further this time like it’s retreating into the hall.
That, Wen Kexing decides, will not do.
“Little idiots, I’m going to find the bathroom,” he announces and doesn’t wait for an answer.
The figure reappears in the doorway at the end of the hall. Wen Kexing follows its dusty trail until he’s standing in the middle of a wall-less room, boundaries eaten away by the encroaching darkness. Fine particulates, dark specks of nothing, cling to his blouse and trousers.
It only takes one second- two- before a black tendril emerges from the darkness, sharpening to a glistening point and shooting for Wen Kexing’s neck
It stops, barely a hair’s width from his Adam's apple.
“What’s wrong?” Wen Kexing says. He lifts a hand to grasp at the tendril, but it collapses into sand, black and glittering, all over his white pants.
This repeats- over, and over, form-sharp-spear-dissolve. It seems like it’ll go on until he leaves, but Wen Kexing tires of this game, swiftly sidestepping an oncoming tendril and bites. He expects it to dissolve just like the others, but it feels- remarkably solid. Firm but giving beneath his teeth.
The sand-shadow-dust makes a strange crunching sound behind him. He releases the tendril, spinning around, only for a man’s voice to spit, low and raspy, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
There’s a man standing in front of him. He’s shorter than Wen Kexing, dark hair spilling wildly over his bare shoulders, pale and angular and too undefined, too hazy to be human, and the loveliest thing Wen Kexing’s ever seen.
He’s holding his wrist with an injured air. There’s a faint ring of splotchy red on one side of it, the only spot of color on his pale form.
“You lunatic. Do you always bite whatever’s attacking you? I’m surprised you haven’t lost your jaw yet,” the beautiful man sneers, ethereal even in his anger, and Wen Kexing smiles, genuinely delighted for the first time in what seems like forever. It courses through his veins, lights up his spine and tingles all the way to his fingertips.
The smile seems to disarm the man. “What the fuck,” he says again.
The shadows are withdrawing from the walls, giving the room definition again. Moonlight streams in from the uncovered window, bathing the man in a silver glow. Light paints the ridge of his cheekbones with a glittering sheen, casts his skeletal form in a glaze of white.
The man glares, anger and indignation striking in ink-dark eyes, and Wen Kexing thinks he falls a little bit in love.