Work Text:
Lu Guang feels detached. One step out of his body, lost in Cheng Xiaoshi's smile, his laugh, his beating heart.
This is a normal occurrence for him.
"Lu Guang?"
He can't breathe through the air.
Cheng Xiaoshi's voice is muffled, and Lu Guang feels like he's underwater, his vision blurry.
The wound in his gut - almost fatal, almost Cheng Xiaoshi's - radiates with a phantom pain and he gasps.
He isn't quite awake, isn't quite aware. They were supposed to be leaving the hospital soon. In about a week if they can take him off the pain medication. He was sure Cheng Xiaoshi could have left earlier but he refused to take a step away from Lu Guang's side.
Lu Guang couldn't admit it aloud, the walls he'd put up between himself and his feelings were too tall, but he was so grateful the black haired man had stayed.
Maybe he'd seen the cracks in him before they showed.
Hands on his shoulders coaxing him to sit up.
Maybe he'd seen how he couldn't stand to do anything besides look aimlessly through the old photos on his phone, checking which were unused . Just in case.
"Lu Guang?"
He answered with a broken little noise, one he doesn't think he'd made since that night.
From that noise onwards, Cheng Xiaoshi's voice and touch were constant. Lu Guang felt disgusting. He wouldn't do this if he knew what Lu Guang had done, how he had lied, how he had failed.
He wouldn't do this if he knew how Lu Guang felt.
"Hey man, what's wrong?"
Lu Guang looked over at him, and then down at the bandages wrapped around his midsection, lifting an eyebrow.
Cheng Xiaoshi rolls his eyes, "Not that , smartass," the insult falls flat when the speaker has his head resting on the bed almost in Lu Guang's lap..
"I meant…well. You've been quiet lately."
"Aren't I always?"
"No! I mean yeah, but not with me ! Did I do something wrong?"
And the look on his eyes was so sincere and worried that Lu Guang almost told him, almost spilled his lies into the open between them.
"No."
"Then what?" He pleaded, looking more desperate and more upset over the topic than Lu Guang expected.
And it was the one thing Lu Guang couldn't control himself around. Cheng Xiaoshi's pain, his sadness.
"It's-" he pauses, as Cheng Xiaoshi sits up, "It's not you."
Silence. Cheng Xiaoshi waits but Lu Guang offers nothing else.
He groans, frustrated, and mumbling something that Lu Guang has no prior experience hearing him say - and the fact that this is new territory makes him shiver. He wasn't sure if the shiver was from excitement, happiness, or unshakeable fear but Cheng Xiaoshi shifts his blanket higher so it wraps over his shoulders.
"You know Qiao Ling always praises how mature you are. She wouldn't believe it if she saw how childish you act when it's just us."
Lu Guang can't help but pout. He can't help himself around the force of nature that is Cheng Xiaoshi.
"I'm not childish."
"Right," Cheng Xiaoshi sarcastically agrees as he fixes Lu Guang's pillows.
"I'm not."
He ruffles Lu Guang's hair very much like how one would a child's.
Cheng Xiaoshi sighs, "No one would ever believe me. They'd see how you always nag me and say I'm the childish one."
"You are."
But Cheng Xiaoshi is smiling so Lu Guang lets him continue to fuss over him.
"Will you tell me what's wrong, Lu Guang?"
Lu Guang isn't sure how to answer. They've never had a conversation like this, about this, before.
The way Cheng Xiaoshi stares at him as he waits for an answer isn't patient but it is concerned, attentive, and doesn't leave anywhere for Lu Guang to hide.
Dozens of possible answers run through his head. Tell him it's nothing? Or maybe admit he hates hospitals. Complain about the food. Jumping through the window was also a viable option.
As his eyes drift to the window, Cheng Xiaoshi's impatience wins.
"I think this is a pretty simple question, why do you seem like you're trying to read one of your philosophy books?"
"It's just-"
"If you don't want to answer you can just tell me that."
And it's the fact that Cheng Xiaoshi really would just drop it there that has Lu Guang spilling what he can of the truth before he can stop himself.
"You got hurt."
His eyebrows scrunch up in confusion, "You did too."
Lu Guang lifts a hand to press against his face, "I thought you were- I saw- I didn't think you'd-"
Cheng Xiaoshi's eyes widened in understanding.
"You thought I was dead," he breathes out, “But Lu Guang…”
Lu Guange felt the tremor start in his jaw, “I thought you were dead and I couldn’t-” He pressed a hand over his mouth. He never wanted to burden Cheng Xiaoshi with what he’d done, with how he was.
Lu Guang huffs out a distressed breath as Cheng Xiaoshi pries his hand from his face.
“Stop that, cmon. Let yourself talk for once. You never tell me anything when you should, it’s so annoying.”
“I thought you were dead,” and Lu Guang is ashamed to hear his voice crack. He never wants to be on pain medication again.
Because it had to be that. After everything he’d done, why would he break here and now? They were fine and safe.
Cheng Xiaoshi presses his hand down into the bed, holding it.
“When I came out of that dive with Emma, I didn’t know what to do. I felt like throwing up, I’d watched someone jump, and then suddenly I was back home. It feels like crap when I’m dragged out of a photo, I barely know where I am or how to move without being sick.”
Lu Guang squeezes his hand and Cheng Xiaoshi smiles.
“You…you were laying there on the couch and there was so much blood. I didn’t know what to do. You were dying right in front of me and I couldn’t do anything.”
“You saved me. You saved Qiao Ling too.”
“And then the cops told me you were dead.”
Lu Guang remembered a miscommunication being mentioned in the hotel room, but he was so relieved to see Cheng Xiaoshi, he didn’t bother asking much about it.
“The cops told me you were dead and it felt like everything was over. It felt like everything I’d done up to that point had no worth, because you weren’t there anymore.”
Lu Guang’s throat was dry. He had felt like that. It was exactly how he’d felt when Cheng Xiaoshi died in front of him, for him, every single time. But Cheng Xiaoshi couldn’t feel that. Lu Guang wanted to protect him from that. But he’d failed.
Cheng Xiaoshi kept talking as though he wasn’t tearing Lu Guang apart piece by piece.
“I almost went back. As far back as I could to see if I could do anything to stop you from leaving me. But then I remembered what you always told me…let it be..so I decided not to, at least for the moment. Thankfully you were alive. But I don’t know how long I would have lasted.”
“I’m alright.”
“I’m okay too, Lu Guang.”
Lu Guang keeps taking deep breaths, trying to calm down, but he can’t quite get a handle on it, even with Cheng Xiaoshi at his side.
He knows he’s squeezing his hand too hard, but he doesn’t know what to do about it, or what to do about the mass of feelings stuck in his heart.
“In the end I did all the talking again . Why are you like this, Guang Guang? Can’t you spare a thought for me?”
The look Lu Guang gives him is acidic.
“Wow. So mean. Even after I bared my heart, he doesn't have anything to say."
And Lu Guang knows Cheng Xiaoshi can see he's panicking. He's trying to help, and he thinks that talking about it will help.
"If anything really happened to you," he pauses, unsure how to phrase such a thing after refusing to acknowledge it for so long, "I wouldn't be okay. I'm okay because you're here."
Cheng Xiaoshi was right. Admitting such a little thing did help.
It felt like he confessed something massive. And it seemed like Cheng Xiaoshi thought so too because he was crying. The only other times he'd seen him cry were when something devastating had happened.
"Sorry."
"Why are you apologizing idiot?"
"I hate you, you don't say anything and then you say that . What's wrong with you."
Lu Guang thinks about blood on his shirt and on his hands and the feeling of Cheng Xiaoshi going cold in his arms.
He thinks about telling what he'd done in the wrong way.
He thinks about missing so many moments to save him. All the times he was too late and then he'd have to start everything all over again. And he thinks about how this was almost one of those times.
He shrugs as Cheng Xiaoshi crowds close, practically crawling onto his bed, but settling for resting his head in Lu Guang's lap.
He does this often, ever since the nurses let him drop the guardrail while he was awake.
Lu Guang thought he was just being his usual physically affectionate self, and that was calming to him, but maybe there was more to it than that.
He lets himself drop his hand atop his hair.
"I hate you."
"Keep it up and I might believe you," and he tries not to hear the tremor still present in his voice. There have been moments he's been hated.
"Don't leave me."
And Lu Guang wants to echo the sentiment so badly that his heart hurts.
"I won't. I'll always be here, by your side."
Cheng Xiaoshi looks up, his eyes big and childish and vulnerable, an old fear showing through, "Really?"
"I promise."
He sees Cheng Xiaoshi visibly swallow. He knows that Lu Guang doesn't break promises. What he doesn't know is how long Lu Guang has kept this one.
"Lu Guang," he starts, quietly, "If anything ever happens to me," Lu Guang shakes his head reflexively, he won't let it, never again, but Cheng Xiaoshi grabs his hand, bringing him back to the present, "You have to live your life and be happy , okay? You have to move forward. I'll haunt you if you don't. Promise?"
Lu Guang didn't answer, he merely pulled Cheng Xiaoshi up and into a hug. He hadn't hugged him like this in so long, he hadn't deserved it.
But Lu Guang knew then that Cheng Xiaoshi didn't understand.
He couldn't live.
Lu Guang couldn't be happy without him. There was nothing after his death.
And he was a man who kept his promises.
He wouldn't make one he couldn't keep.