Work Text:
“These are your own words
your way of noticing
and saying plainly
of not turning away
from hurt
you have offered them
to me I am only
giving them back
if only I could show you
how very useless
they are not.”
CRAIG ARNOLD.
✣
It’s strange how sometimes, people become so vulnerable that they begin to think that life could slip away from them at any moment. A split second they’re fine, the next they’re bedridden. One instant he’s all smiles and jokes, the next he’s grimacing and with a fever pushing him down. Down and down, with a hard back despite the softness of the mattress, to feel his skin painful and bruised at every little touch, to be cold when it’s the middle of summer, to see only darkness when it’s still day; a little white, one he’s always been used to, one who more than once he tried to touch with his fingers, one into whom more than once he buried his face where he pretended to be too sleepy to realize what he was doing. A white that now seems so blinding that it forces Cheng Xiaoshi to close his eyes.
“Lu Guang,” to come out of his lips as if it were the most difficult thing he had ever said in all his years of life. A name that weighs on his tongue, leaving behind tingling sensations as soon as it’s released into air, embraced by vowels. “I feel like shit.”
Lu Guang, to wet a cloth of freezing rose water, to wring it out, to spread it on a boiling forehead, to press it to skin when Cheng Xiaoshi shivers. Another hand grazing his cheeks and neck with its fingers.
“You’re cold,” says Cheng Xiaoshi, a small pout forming on his lips, eyes too heavy to take Lu Guang in entirely within them. He doesn’t seem worried at all, but rather amused, the shadow of a smile that Cheng Xiaoshi would recognize anywhere, too visible for his eyes, invisible for others.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Lu Guang says, thumb leaving a mark on his skin, where it collects a small drop of water as it slides down his temple.
“If you’re this caring when I’m like this, I should get sick more often,” Cheng Xiaoshi grumbles, a small yawn escaping his lips.
“Who will take care of you if I don’t?”
“Qiao Ling, of course.”
Lu Guang tilts his head to the side, fingers intent on pushing the hair away from his forehead, lingering longer at the root—it’s nice, this. This being having his attention. This being Lu Guang having eyes only for him. This being sick and bedridden, even if it’s only in moments like these that one can wish for more and hide it all behind being unwell.
“Of course, after giving you a lecture because no one but you gets sick in the middle of summer.”
“I’m not the only one! It’s very normal to get sick in the summer. Don’t underestimate the sun,” Cheng Xiaoshi protests, his voice coming out higher and hoarse than it should.
“Sure,” Lu Guang grants, hands performing the same ritual as before with the cloth. More shivers run down his body as it is placed on his forehead once more. “Try to get some sleep.”
And Cheng Xiaoshi nods, or at least tries to. Takes the gray of his best friend’s eyes in his own.
“Lu Guang,” he wets his lips, tries to clear his throat, and a couple of seconds later, “thanks.”
Lu Guang is silent, for a while. The ticking of the clock is the only sound that breaks the calm. Cheng Xiaoshi in a duel with exhaustion, his bones too weak to raise a hand and grab the wrist of the boy before him.
Lu Guang, one more time. “Sleep.”
And because he’s sick and can allow himself to be vulnerable, because he’s sick and can be selfish at least for a couple of days, because he’s sick and his heart is too swollen not to press against his ribs, he asks. “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”
“No,” comes a second later, in a voice so soothing it makes him close his eyes. A lullaby forcing him to sleep. “No, I’m not. I’ll be right here.”
✣
He’ll be right there. He’s always been right there, keeping an eye on him, lending him a hand whenever he needs one, without asking, just wanting. He’s always been there, one step away from Cheng Xiaoshi even though the distance between them may seem like it would be light years away. Always one step away from making imagination a little more real, and his heart no longer knows if it works for the simple duty of living or for the desire to spend another couple of beats more in the company of another one who is perhaps a little more stable.
He’s always been there, a few inches away, bringing warmth to a place that had so much of it that it remained cold. To trace curves and lines and imaginary circles on a skin that has had little touch in recent decades. To make Cheng Xiaoshi something gelatinous, soft, unable to hide the feelings he carries inside but at the same time too scared to let them fly, to force them to remain imprisoned in a cell that he has as a rib cage.
It’s not just Lu Guang’s sweetness but rather the time he dedicates to him, the attention, a thousand words in the form of silences that are not at all embarrassing, the way his eyes seem to say more than his lips can. The fact that in the moments when he is weak, Lu Guang’s always there to share everything he has. A feeling without consequences, the comfort of knowing that it is real, palpable, not at all abstract but easy to hold in the palm of a hand. The person he always wanted, there. Cheng Xiaoshi, and a bruise to prove it.
✣
“Do you think I’m pretty?” Cheng Xiaoshi asks when Lu Guang picks at the first ring, phone pressed against his ear.
He’s silent for a few seconds. And then. “Where does this come from?”
“Just answer my question. I’m sick, remember?”
“I don’t know,” Lu Guang says. “You're average.”
“Average? That’s just so cruel!”
“Why do you even care?” He mutters— mutters —a slight rustling sound reaches his ears.
“Of course I want to know what you think about me. Why wouldn’t I?”
“You’re—” Lu Guang stops, thinks, and a moment later. “I think you’re fine.”
“What?” It slips out of his lips before he can stop it.
“You’re fine. You’re not ugly, if that’s what you’re asking,” Lu Guang says.
“My, thank you. You’re not ugly too.” Cheng Xiaoshi pouts.
“You’re pretty,” comes out a few moments later, so distant that Cheng Xiaoshi swears he imagined it if it weren’t for another silence that follows. The kind of silence that makes him want to disappear when he says something too much. The kind of silence that colors his cheeks every time Lu Guang comes up with something new, harmless, but capable of turning his heart to dust. The kind of silence that now, perhaps, makes Lu Guang a little bit flustered and not Cheng Xiaoshi.
So he does what he always does. And with more teeth than smiles, he asks. “Come again?”
And. “I’m not repeating it.”
A chuckle leaves his lips, his cheeks hurt. “I knew it.”
“So insufferable.”
“Hey, Lu Guang.” He considers. Then gives in. “I don’t think you’re fine. Or pretty.”
“Okay.”
And because it’s Cheng Xiaoshi that it is about and he always goes the extra mile. “You’re just— beautiful.”
Another silence. Something falling to the ground. A small fuck to escape from Lu Guang’s lips. A second later he hangs up. The next one he sends him a text.
I’ll be home soon. Thank you. You are too. I’m not going to text it, I won’t give you any more blackmailing material.
✣
And if colds were not fun when he was a little younger, now they are, to say the least, not lonely at all.
Cheng Xiaoshi before Lu Guang was not miserable but there is a difference between having someone by your side most of the time, and remaining enveloped in a deathly silence and the embrace of melancholy. Cheng Xiaoshi before Lu Guang struggled to stand even though his body begged him to lie down. His bones ached every minute he was forced to trudge between the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. He never had enough strength in his hands to be able to prepare his own food. The taste awful, his tongue was also sick to guess the right amount of salt. His throat too closed and every time he swallowed the medicine his eyes stung. Lying on one side made his bones hurt. The bath too cold, the water too icy, too lazy to turn on the hot one, too tired to make the same journey, sometimes he remained slumped on the floor, in the corridor, with his back pressed against the wall and his legs drawn up to his chest, until he felt strong enough to reach the bed once again. Too many stairs to climb, too many to descend. Qiao Ling caught him on the second day, running hot but freezing, too restless to rest, with sleepy eyes and a blanket pulled tightly around his shoulders, his face, to stifle those shivers of cold even though every inch of his skin was screaming fire. She was the only one who cared for him and at the same time the only one he tried to push away when he was weakest, not because he didn’t want her company but because he didn’t want her to see him in that state. Too vulnerable, too fragile, a glass butterfly take flight and meets its fate an instant later, grains of light being released on the ground, a rainbow of pain and suffering
But Cheng Xiaoshi after Lu Guang was not lonely at all. He promised difference and that’s what he gave him. If he wakes up cold, Lu Guang wraps him in a second blanket, the one he takes out on the winter nights, his favorite and warmest. If Cheng Xiaoshi has muscle pain, he gives him a little massage where he is sore. If Cheng Xiaoshi wakes up with a fever, within ten minutes he has medicine ready and a hot porridge waiting for him. If Cheng Xiaoshi needs to vomit, Lu Guang accompanies him to the bathroom and keeps him company. One hand on his shoulder and the other playing with his hair, a light shh to leave his lips every time Cheng Xiaoshi grunts, shivers, small tears clinging to his eyes from the effort. If Cheng Xiaoshi needs anything, Lu Guang is always there to give it to him. Qiao Ling to keep them company the next day, bringing board games, DVD movies, photo albums because she knows how much Cheng Xiaoshi loves to live memories and immortalize them even without necessarily entering into them.
The red cough syrup reminds him of his mother, all those moments when as a child he wished he was sick just to taste its strawberry flavor and spend nights with his face pressed against the curve of her neck. A smile against her skin every time she told him stories to put him to sleep. The sweetness of her hands made him feel more at home than he ever had.
Years later, Lu Guang is making his fingers something solid and Cheng Xiaoshi can’t help but grab them as if his life depends on them.
“You okay?” Lu Guang always asks him, his other hand free to touch his cheek, Cheng Xiaoshi too sick, too eager, too fragile not to grab that one too and gather it to his lips.
Lu Guang blinks, his eyes slightly wide, flinching a little when his fingers press against Cheng Xiaoshi’s mouth. The latter can feel it, the way he tenses up, only to relax a couple of seconds later and not react to the way Cheng Xiaoshi seems to be looking at him. As if he were all he needed. As if he were his universe. As if he would do anything for him. His eyes soften whenever Lu Guang is in them.
“Yeah,” voice hoarse, Cheng Xiaoshi clears his throat slightly. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
And if he presses Lu Guang’s hands even more to his face, if he makes the warmth of those hands something precious, if he leaves an almost imperceptible kiss on them, it’s because he’s tired and his heart is running a marathon, and if he’s ever asked he can always pretend not to know. For all the times he’s printed his lips on them and walked away unscathed. For all the times Lu Guang seems to get a little closer every time his fingers find a home on his face. For all the times he dreamed of kissing something else, something soft, something roseate, something too distant and yet too close. Something he’s wanted for too long. Something he still wants. Something he can’t forget.
✣
Contrary to popular belief—which is, contrary to what Qiao Ling likes to think, say, and remind him—Cheng Xiaoshi did not fell for Lu Guang at first sight but at first pass, toss, camera shot, dish and he’d been nursing it the way you do a flower, giving it enough water, leaving it in the sun as much as necessary, engaging in conversations with it as much as necessary, giving it a name, a life, an affection. He’d been nursing it the way you do a favorite food, leaving it for last because just one bite can turn his entire existence upside down, without haste, with all the calm and time he has at hand. That is, not exactly at first sight but from the first moment his heart got used to him.
It takes time to take in someone new, yet it didn’t take long for Lu Guang to make him something old and new and familiar, nothing foreign, something special. To remind him that if the world takes something from him it always ends up giving him something else, that no matter how hard someone tries to remain alone, they always end up having another soul next to them with the same need. Or that as much as he himself may wish to have all the people he has loved next to him, in one way or another everything moves forward and people are made to be changeable.
It’s so easy to be alone among billions of people, and so difficult to hold someone’s hand with the intention of not letting them leave. How many fingers have touched his. How many faces his eyes have caressed. How many words his ears have kept. Yet everything Lu Guang gave him remains eternal.
Attached to his bones like flesh, coursing through his veins like the sweetest of bodies of blood. An infinite ocean of promises, a clear sky of memories, past, present and future to have them both as if they were two entities incapable of staying away from each other. Twisted around the same thread. Limbs to look for others. By the time Cheng Xiaoshi realizes what is coming, it has already arrived. His gaze searches for a clearer, more certain one. A name always present on the tip of his tongue. Fingers tingling in anticipation, a flower sprouting inside his chest. Lu Guang, Lu Guang, Lu Guang, a chant, a little prayer, his chest open, hands coming out of his it, to take and take and take. Lu Guang, smiling at him as if he were the only one deserving of it. Lu Guang, making every photograph he took a picture to hang on the walls of their little sanctuary. Lu Guang, to prepare food for him even when he is not hungry. Lu Guang, taking him by the elbow and wrist because if the palm of his hands comes into contact with his, Cheng Xiaoshi fears that he will never be able to let go of him—for a moment, one too long, another too short.
“I know you’re sick, but you still have to eat something,” Lu Guang insists, a bowl of wonton soup in his hand. The smell is so inviting that Cheng Xiaoshi’s stomach almost gives him away.
“Then feed me.”
“You’re old enough to do it yourself,” Lu Guang sighs.
“But I’m sick,” Cheng Xiaoshi repeats, fingers pressing against Lu Guang’s left knee. “Please?”
Lu Guang frowns, sighs again. He looks from the bowl to Cheng Xiaoshi, and Cheng Xiaoshi stops himself from biting the inside of his cheek, his heart skipping a beat. A moment later, Lu Guang raises the spoon toward him.
Cheng Xiaoshi’s throat holds out, but his heart’s the one bleeding. The dumpling is hot against his tongue when he leans over to take the spoon in his mouth. Lu Guang still looking at him, it’s harder than he thought it would be.
“Is it good?” Lu Guang asks, curious; his voice like two warm arms holding him.
“Yeah,” Cheng Xiaoshi says, swallowing too quickly, coughing a moment later. A hand rests against his back, hot despite the fabric separating two skins from touching.
“Eat slowly,” Lu Guang says. “Do you want some water?”
He doesn’t get some water, doesn’t need it, not when his throat is a barren desert and Lu Guang the only oasis he needs. He eats, slowly, as he’s told; eats all of it and more and can’t help but wish for a hand to hold his. For a mouth to ask, do you need anything else? For his own to answer, can I just have you instead?
✣
Me [02:54 AM]
do you think that
he likes me too or am i just
feeding my misapprehensions
Qiao Ling [03:00 AM]
do you have a death wish or what?
do you know what time is it?
also, that’s a big word coming from your tiny brain
Me [03:01 AM]
my brain’s not tiny!!!!!
did i wake you up
Qiao Ling [03:03 AM]
no, but you should be sleeping
i don’t think you should be asking me, btw
ask him
Me [03:04 AM]
uh??? why??
Qiao Ling [03:05 AM]
what do you mean why
that’s what normal people do
Me [03:05 AM]
but i can’t
what if he thinks im gross
what if he rejects me
i don’t think i can do rejections
Qiao Ling [03:07 AM]
you sure are obtuse sometimes
why do you think he’s going to reject you
after all the things you did, nonetheless
Me [03:07 AM]
…
Qiao Ling [03:07 AM]
…
Me [03:08 AM]
what things
Read 03:09 AM
Me [03:11 AM]
DON’T LEAVE ME ON READ
WHAT THINGS
Read 03:15 AM
Me [03:23 AM]
QIAO LING?????
Read 03:25 AM
✣
About all the things he did: someone—Cheng Xiaoshi—would think it’s a list of all the worst things he could have done to Lu Guang, when in reality it’s all about the times Cheng Xiaoshi bared his heart only for Lu Guang to see, which are too many to count because both Qiao Ling and Lu Guang have an eye for the small things rather than the big ones. Cheng Xiaoshi is a walking danger when it comes to affection, ready to give it to anyone who needs it without considering what it is he needs first. Or perhaps, most likely, it’s simply the fact that his heart is not meant to be locked away but to be shared. A piece of it to anyone who enters the walls of his being, people to come out with more than half and leave nothing but the shadow of their presence. Cheng Xiaoshi to reconstruct the missing pieces, Lu Guang to create more without even realizing it, Qiao Ling to seal them.
About all the things he did, and they are nothing but the reasons why he’s loved. For all the photographs he took and hid in the pages of the books Lu Guang reads. For all the coffees he makes in the morning without being asked to. For the smiles, for the words, for all the peeled oranges and every segment a declaration. For his recklessness, his worry, the ease with which he seems to hypnotize people and when he is the first to be fascinated by it. For the simplicity with which he makes a small day something worth living. For the sun that he covers every time it’s too blinding. For all the streetlights he turns on. For all the lights he turns off. For the way he makes the world small and not too big and scary. For the way he makes Lu Guang feel complete without being aware of it. For loving, and giving, rarely taking.
About all the things he did, and it’s simply him existing.
✣
“I broke your favorite mug,” Cheng Xiaoshi begins, “I threw the pieces in the garbage before you noticed. It’s not true that it was lost.”
Lu Guang freezes, blinks once, twice. He turns off the vacuum cleaner and turns to him. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
Lu Guang shrugs. “It was just a mug. I have a new favorite, now.”
“I also finished your chocolate pudding. The one you don’t share with anyone.” Cheng Xiaoshi insists, knees pressed tightly to his chest.
“It’s just a pudding.”
“And your cactus. I forgot to water it for a month and a half. I killed it.”
Lu Guang frowns slightly, leans the vacuum cleaner against the wall and approaches him. “Why are you telling me these things now?”
Cheng Xiaoshi stutters, then decides he can’t wait another moment longer. He needs his heart free. He needs something else. He needs— “Because— do you still like me?”
Lu Guang nods, the white of his hair even brighter against the sunlight. A masterpiece of light. Another of shadows along his face. “Of course I do.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Cheng Xiaoshi shakes his head, his fingers intertwined.
“Then explain.”
“Lu Guang,” it’s now or never. “Have you ever thought about kissing me? I did.”
And Lu Guang blinks again. He remains still for another time, on the couch, both hands pulling the blanket tighter around Cheng Xiaoshi’s body. Both hands tense like violin bows. “Is this a new way of saying you’re a narcissist?”
“Kissing you.” Cheng Xiaoshi clarifies. “I have thought about kissing you. And doing more than just kissing.”
He dropped it. The bomb. All his heart. Something he can’t take back anymore because even if he traveled through time Lu Guang wouldn’t let him and himself forget.
“Cheng Xiaoshi—”
He cuts him off before Lu Guang can say anything else. He doesn’t take his hands this time. Not when his are shaking. Not when his entire being is in turmoil. Not when black waters surround him. “I always think about kissing you. I always think about you. Right now, I’m also thinking about kissing you.”
Lu Guang’s silent, for a while. Then he lowers his arms and Cheng Xiaoshi has never felt so cold in the middle of summer. “You’re sick—”
“So what?” It comes out broken. He’s not going to cry. He’s not going to allow himself something like that. He’s not going to—
“So, I don’t want to get your cold.” And a moment later, in a soft whisper. “You can kiss me when you get better.”
Lu Guang doesn’t do soft. Lu Guang doesn’t whisper. He’s always caring, yes, but this—this is him turning his entire existence upside down. Something Cheng Xiaoshi’s going to learn to nurse, too. Like a flower. Like a favorite dish. Like his first love.
Like his first.
✣
About all the things he did, and kissing Lu Guang’s the one to shape him the most—twisting like a sunflower at the touch of his skin.