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The cell is colder than he’d have expected, if anyone had asked him a few days ago. He’s not used to feeling this cold in the city, but the monsoons have just arrived, and the basement is far enough underground to be damp and dank. Big’s half-naked, too; the last few shreds of his shirt fell away a few hours ago, lost in one of the whippings they keep doling out to try and break him.
It hasn’t worked yet. They’re determined, whoever they are, but Big is determined, too, and loyal in ways they don’t yet have words for. He’s tucked himself away, hidden himself inside his own mind, drawing his consciousness up out of his body so that when they come for him with their whips and their fists, their knives and bats, it almost feels like it’s happening to someone else. The last time, the time that carried away the tattered remains of his shirt, Big had felt like he was floating above his body, looking down at it and feeling next to nothing as it took its beating. A captain on the shore, watching his ship weather a particularly violent storm from afar.
Footsteps outside the door to his cell herald the arrival of his captors again, and Big struggles briefly against the ropes binding his wrists, in case they’ve miraculously come unravelled in the few moments since he last tested them. But the ropes hold fast, as stubborn as Big himself, as does the hook upon which his bound wrists have been hung, leaving him dangling in the middle of the room like a carcass in an abattoir.
It’s taking longer than usual for the door to open; normally there’s only a few seconds between the sound of footsteps and arrival of whoever is there to hurt him. But today, there are a lot more people, and they seem to be scuffling around outside the door instead of coming in. And then, an explosion of sound — shouting, screams, gunshots, the unmistakable cacophony of bodies fighting that’s as familiar to Big as the sound of his own breathing.
A final gunshot and the door bursts inwards.
Four or five men stream in, thick-soled boots stomping over the splinters of the ruined door. For half a second, Big thinks they might be there to rescue him, but then he sees Kinn among them, and Pete, and he realises he must be hallucinating.
Big is sad, or maybe disappointed, when the person who appears in front of him looks like Chan. He’d been doing so well, pushing down on his pain, ignoring the ache in his shoulders. He’d even managed to avoid thinking about the far worse pain of having been left here so long, long enough that it had become clear there would be no attempt to rescue him. But now his brain is mocking him, showing him the one person he wants to see the most, as a lie.
(“You know nobody is coming for you, right?” one of his kidnappers had said, mocking him. He’d even sounded like he pitied Big, as if that would break him faster. As if Big’s loyalty was so cheap it hinged on reciprocity alone.)
But now he can see Chan’s face, features set in a mask of concern, mouth moving as if he’s saying something. He can hear it, too, soft words meant to soothe and comfort him. If Big hadn’t already known he was hallucinating, that would’ve been a giveaway. Chan is never soft with him. With anyone, really, but especially with him.
“I know you’re not real,” Big tells Chan the Illusion. “You’re just my brain going wrong. It’s probably oxygen deprivation, unless they drugged me. But I don’t think they drugged me, I don’t remember them giving me anything.”
“And that makes me not real?”
“You’re a hallucination. Or maybe a ghost, but I hope not, because that would mean you’re dead. Although it would explain why you haven’t rescued me yet.”
“Ok,” Fake Chan says, apparently unbothered by the speed with which Big had worked out his non-existence. “I’m going to get you down now, and then we can go back to the compound to get you checked out.”
“Nice try, hallucination,” Big tells him. He must be smiling; there’s a pain in his lip that feels like a half-healed cut that’s split itself open again. He does remember being backhanded across the face by someone with a ring, early in his capture when he’d still held hope for a timely rescue. “I’d like to see a figment untie my — oh!”
Big’s legs give way beneath him as possibly-not-a-figment-Chan slices through the ropes at his wrists. His arms drop, sending a huge bolt of pain coursing through his shoulders, and his unprepared knees fold like an origami swan. He would have fallen to the ground, braining his head on the concrete floor, if Chan’s arm hadn’t snaked his way around Big’s waist, taking his weight just in time.
“Nice reflexes for a ghost,” Big tells him. “Sir.”
Chan looks at him, brow still drawn tight as though he’s angry at Big. For a second, it seems as though he might say something, and then he sighs and scoops Big up into his arms as though he weighs nothing at all, and carries him out of the cell.
Maybe, Big thinks, as Chan holds him tight against his chest with hands that are gripping just a shade too tightly, maybe there’s a chance he is real, after all.
***
The daylight is dazzling after the dark basement, uncomfortable despite the grey clouds blocking the sun. Chan squints against the unwelcome brightness and clutches Big closer, aware that in this moment with his hands occupied and vision compromised, he is uniquely vulnerable.
“If I put you down, can you walk?” Chan asks Big, who looks up at him with a beatific smile on his face at odds with his injuries; he’s sporting a cut lip that’s still bleeding, bruises on his cheeks, and one eye wine-red and swollen shut. “Never mind.”
Chan carries him to the van, ignoring the trembling of his limbs, and the way Big’s hands, normally strong and capable, can barely hold on to him. He lets Chan get him settled in the passenger seat, wincing but not complaining. He shakes his head when Chan asks how much it hurts, as if that’s a yes or no question.
It’s not until Chan tries to move away, to fasten his seatbelt and close the door, that Big finally stirs. Reaching for Chan with a hand that is clumsier than usual, he finally lands on the straps of Chan’s holster, clinging on and pulling him in until their faces are painfully, unbearably close.
“I didn’t — I didn’t tell them anything. I promise. Not one word.”
”I know,” Chan says, surprised. “I didn’t doubt you, Big, not for a second.”
He sees some of the tension slough off Big, hears the exhalation of breath as he lets go of the worry that’s been plaguing him. He doesn’t let go of Chan, though, nor does Chan move away.
“Are you real?” Big asks. His voice is hoarse; he’ll have been screaming, Chan thinks. It makes him hard to understand; he’d been babbling and nearly incomprehensible in the cell, but out here it’s easier to make out what he’s saying.
“I am,” Chan tells him. He covers Big’s hand with his own, squeezing lightly. “Don’t I feel real?”
Big shakes his head, fingers curling around Chan’s holster until his knuckles go pale. “Nothing feels real right now. Prove it to me.”
“And how should I do that?” Chan asks carefully.
“Kiss me.”
It’s unexpected, but not unwelcome, or it wouldn’t be if he thought Big wanted what he was asking for, wanted the same as Chan. Either way, Chan should back away now, perhaps. Uncurl Big’s fingers, peel them away from his holster and release himself, maybe go and find a medic. He should pretend, for both their sakes, that he didn’t hear what Big said. It was only two words, after all, easy enough for them to have fallen into the space between them and slipped away on the wind.
But what harm could one quick kiss do, if it set Big’s mind at ease?
Big gasps when their lips meet; Chan pulls away, mindful of the cut on his lip, but Big whines and tugs at him close again, kissing him before he can say a word. Chan tries to keep the kiss soft, gentle, doesn’t cradle Big’s face for fear of pressing against a bruise, but Big doesn’t care about that. Or maybe he just wants something stronger to be written over the horrors he’s endured for the last few days. He uses the little strength he has left to arch up towards Chan, mouth opening like a flower blooming after rain.
As Chan kisses him back, fierce and urgent, he realises that the harm he should have been worried about was to himself. He’s denied himself this kiss for years; it was weak to give in now, just because Big had asked so suddenly. It’s weaker still not to end the kiss now he knows what it will cost him, but he’s not strong enough to resist those soft lips and pretty noises, nor the eager, urgent hand creeping up the back of his neck to grasp at his hair.
“You are real,” Big says, when their breath runs out and Chan has to reluctantly pull back or risk suffocation. “You’re real, and you came for me.”
“I am. I did.” Chan wonders how much of himself he can give away in one day. “I’m sorry it took so long to find you.”
“I’m sorry I thought you were a hallucination.”
“Don’t apologise for that, I’m just glad you don’t still think I’m fake.” Chan does start to unhook his hand now; he’s got one more kiss than he’d ever dreamed, and now he really does have to end this.
“Wait,” Big says, holding out his hand, leaving it up to Chan to take it or walk away. “What if I forget what’s real again?”
“Huh. Well, I guess in that case, I’d have to remind you again.”
“Would you?” Big asks, as open and vulnerable as Chan has ever seen him.
It takes Chan a second to understand that there’s a question underneath Big’s words — or perhaps on top of them, a second meaning being carried with them, so he can choose to acknowledge them or not, choose to accept them or not.
One day soon, when Big’s wounds have healed Chan will try and explain to him how scared he was, that they wouldn’t find Big, or that they would find him but they’d be too late. That by the time they found him he’d be injured beyond repair, or worse. He’ll try and hand him an understanding of what it would mean to Chan to lose him, or fail him in any way.
“As many times as you need, I’ll be here.”