Work Text:
Things change in the winter, on a day when it snows so hard they don’t bother to open the studio. Cheng Xiaoshi dresses in a gray knit sweater and a jacket on top, and he sticks to Lu Guang like glue. Little heed is paid to this at first. It starts with arms around shoulders and a few too many repetitions of Lu Guang’s name. But then there’s the staring, like Cheng Xiaoshi is deep in thought. He doesn’t comment when caught, just stares a little longer and looks away.
As the day goes on, he gets quieter. Maybe this should be worrying. Lu Guang has this nagging, anxious feeling, but he doesn’t know how to act on it. So he stays quiet too, and by bedtime he only hopes things will be back to normal in the morning.
Past midnight, Lu Guang slips into their shared bedroom with wet hair and his clothing sticking to still damp skin. Cheng Xiaoshi is already in bed, scrolling through something on his phone. He looks up when Lu Guang comes in, soft as he gets when tired, and something about him seems predisposed to bad decision making.
“You used up all the hot water,” Lu Guang says, if only to fill the air. Cheng Xiaoshi pillows his head on his arm and hides a yawn in his elbow. There’s the sound of his skin on the sheets. The way the overhead light struggles to brighten the room all the way. Lu Guang closes the curtains and rubs his towel through his hair.
“Blame the landlady,” Cheng Xiaoshi says.
It’s a night like any other. Lu Guang tosses the towel. “I’m going to turn off the light.” Cheng Xiaoshi shuts his phone off, slides it under his pillow. Lu Guang passes by him close enough to touch, and they’re left in darkness.
A hand catches his wrist on his way back. A soft grasp. Lu Guang’s pulse thuds against these fingertips and he finds himself, for once, at a loss. Cheng Xiaoshi is almost always predictable, rash and impulsive and selfless in the same ways, but this is unprecedented. “Yes?” Lu Guang tries.
The silence sits between them, fluttering like the wings of a moth drawn to flame. “I don’t know,” Cheng Xiaoshi admits. “I just thought that maybe I should…” His hand retreats, whispering softly as he slides it back beneath his blankets. “Sorry.”
Lu Guang could go. Could climb up to his bunk and curl himself in his sheets to fall asleep and let this go, never think about it again. He thinks of Cheng Xiaoshi’s unceasing stare. His uncharacteristic, unpredictable silence, and decides that this is not something he can ignore. If only for fear of what it might mean for the timeline. If only because, stubbornly, to the ends of the earth, to his own ruin, Lu Guang loves this man like nothing else.
So he stays standing here within reaching distance long after he’s set free and asks, “Are you worried about something?” Nightmares or old dives or ones that haven’t yet come to pass.
“I don’t know.” Cheng Xiaoshi exhales. “I just want…”
“You want…?”
“Go to bed, Lu Guang,” Cheng Xiaoshi tells him.
“I don’t think I will.” When there’s no response, not protest nor dismissal nor request, he adds, “You’re acting strangely.”
Petulantly, “I’m not.”
“Don’t act childish.”
Out of spite, Cheng Xiaoshi rolls onto his opposite side, turning his back. Lu Guang’s eyes start to adjust to the dark. Moonlight from the window puddles on Cheng Xiaoshi’s sheets. His shoulder, the tips of his dark hair. It makes Lu Guang sigh.
“Scoot over,” he says.
Muffled, “No.”
Lu Guang pulls on the edge of Cheng Xiaoshi’s blanket, letting a cold rush of air in as he lifts it up. Briefly, Cheng Xiaoshi complains, and then he goes silent as Lu Guang starts to climb in. He scoots, giving up as much space as he can in his tiny twin bed. The blanket falls over them both. It smells like lavender detergent and Cheng Xiaoshi’s shampoo, and Lu Guang notes that in this timeline, like every other before it, he is welcomed into this space with no real resistance. He notes that this Cheng Xiaoshi, like every other before him, finds comfort in contact and closeness.
He tucks his forehead against the nape of Cheng Xiaoshi’s neck, tickled by his hair, overcome by an old, weary fondness. Cheng Xiaoshi tenses, just a bit. “What are you doing?” he asks, voice as soft as his hand had been on Lu Guang’s wrist. Unsure in a way he only ever is when Lu Guang crosses these bridges first.
In every timeline, Cheng Xiaoshi is used to loving with open arms and an open heart. In every timeline, he’s unused to being loved back. In every timeline, though often he fails, Lu Guang tries to fix this.
“You asked me to stay,” he whispers.
“I didn’t,” Cheng Xiaoshi whispers back.
Lu Guang’s mouth finds the bone at the top of his spine, his eyes closing, fingers curling in the back of Cheng Xiaoshi’s shirt. “Not in so many words.”
△
His hands aren’t soft. Cheng Xiaoshi has calluses and rough skin because he forgets to moisturize, but Lu Guang lets him touch anyway.
He’s always gentle. Playing with Lu Guang’s hands, unfolding his fingers and tracing the lines on his palms. He’ll pull them to his mouth and press a kiss to each knuckle, silent as he does this, reverent in a way the first several versions of him never had a chance to be.
It took a long time for Lu Guang to discover this side of him. The one that doesn’t joke or tease so much as he lays love down with his hands and his mouth and his deliberate silence. He kisses the tips of each of Lu Guang’s fingers, curls their hands together and presses them over his beating heart.
His head is in Lu Guang’s lap, cheek squished against his thigh as they sit in the sunroom. Lu Guang has a book that he struggles to read with only one hand. Cheng Xiaoshi occupies himself with painful, soft sentimentality. He’s warm through the fabric of his shirt. Lu Guang has felt him cold and dying.
“One of these days,” he says, twisting to lay on his back, Lu Guang’s hand still pinned to his chest, “we need to play basketball again.”
“It’s too cold to play outside,” Lu Guang tells him, eyes trained to the book he does not read. Fingers tap a pattern on the back of his hand, and then there’s a palm reaching up and cupping the back of his neck, pulling his head down so they look at each other. Cheng Xiaoshi is, as always, a mess. His hair curls this way and that. His eyes are far too soft to belong to someone with the fate he’s been dealt.
Quietly, Lu Guang aches. He’s used to this. One day he’ll learn to live with how it feels.
“When the snow melts,” Cheng Xiaoshi says. “Wear a jacket; you’ll be fine. Or we can find somewhere to go inside.”
“Idiot,” Lu Guang says, because he’s taken to saying it in place of you are to me what the planet is to the moon.
“You just love to pretend you’re boring,” Cheng Xiaoshi says. His fingers slip over Lu Guang’s cheek, tucking hair behind his ear. It tickles. Everything he does leaves lingering sensation. Lu Guang has half a mind to pluck him off. But his smile is too bright, and Lu Guang’s love is long weary and in search of a place to rest.
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Cheng Xiaoshi continues. “We’re at the peak of our youth. Live a little, would you?”
I’m so tired of it without you. “You’re the most childish person I know,” Lu Guang tells him. Translation: you are to me what passage is to time.
“Come on.” Cheng Xiaoshi pinches his cheek. Now, Lu Guang has an excuse to push his hand away. The loss leaves him cold and tired, so, so tired.
“Lu Guang. Guang Guang, A-Guang, Lu—” Lu Guang covers his mouth. Cheng Xiaoshi licks his hand, but Lu Guang has lived far too many lives with him to be phased. He watches Cheng Xiaoshi’s eyebrows furrow, gives him a pointed look. Only seconds pass before Cheng Xiaoshi’s tough look melts into the soft crinkle of a smile. Lu Guang lets him go.
“Basketball,” Cheng Xiaoshi says.
Lu Guang sighs, if only for show. “Fine.”
△
This Cheng Xiaoshi dies, as all of them do. But somehow, the next is just like him. It happens again: the cold night, Lu Guang’s clothes still sticking to him after his shower. He turns off the light, and then Cheng Xiaoshi snags his wrist.
This time, Lu Guang knows the next steps. Cheng Xiaoshi is back to being predictable, though what it is that led them down this new path is unidentifiable. Lu Guang knows that Cheng Xiaoshi is surprised by his own choice. That he’ll be petulant in his embarrassment but eventually let Lu Guang share the bed. That later they’ll become something.
But this Cheng Xiaoshi is not yet used to being loved. Instead of questioning him, Lu Guang just says, “Your hands are cold.”
Cheng Xiaoshi’s fingers slip, just grazing his palm before they make to fall away. Lu Guang catches them. He twists his wrist so their fingers lace, cold against warm. An inhale. “What’re you—”
“Cheng Xiaoshi,” Lu Guang says. “Why did you stop me?” He squeezes Cheng Xiaoshi’s hand—encouragement, reassurance, maybe. As timelines pass, Lu Guang gets better at speaking his language.
“I…” Hesitation. “I guess I wanted you to stay.”
△
They fall into each other like a house of cards in the wind. Real trust from the next Cheng Xiaoshi is hard earned. He’s friendly with everyone, but puts his faith in few. And yet, at some point he wakes up and must decide that Lu Guang is permanent, and then he’s never more than a room or two away.
At first, it’s hands on shoulders and small invasions of personal space, and then it’s a little bit more. Shared body heat on the sofa, hair tickling Lu Guang’s jaw as Cheng Xiaoshi leans into him. That wrist catching incident happens a third time. They share the bed. Later, Cheng Xiaoshi kisses him. Kisses him and kisses him like he needs Lu Guang to breathe, like he’s waited for this in every timeline just like Lu Guang has.
He’s not used to being loved yet, so Lu Guang presses that into him, puts his hands on skin like ink on paper. He isn’t good with words so he tries to show it with his actions. Says I love you with his fingertips. I would turn worlds apart for you with his lips. You are the most beautiful thing in every timeline with his forehead pressed to the nape of a neck.
Cheng Xiaoshi is terribly warm between his arms. He’s soft in most places, though the points of his bones are sharp and his stomach goes firm with muscle when he laughs. Lu Guang loves him warm, hates him cold and bleeding. He’s grown good at crying silently. When pressed, he only says, “Idiot.” Translation: you are to me what the night is to the stars.
They hold each other as they fall asleep.
△
The Cheng Xiaoshi that lives is not one Lu Guang allows himself to love. He pushes him away more often than not, if only out of hope that it will hurt less when he inevitably dies in Lu Guang’s arms. But then he lives, waking up with bedhead and bad breath, smiling on September fourteenth.
Lu Guang waits a week, a month, two. Cheng Xiaoshi does not die. He finds himself afraid more than hopeful, but time continues to pass. Each day like the last, with Cheng Xiaoshi warm and breathing and still unused to being loved. Now, Lu Guang is left with a guilt-like worry, a worry-like guilt. He waits for another night and another hand on his wrist, but none ever comes. Cheng Xiaoshi still lives. Silent, Lu Guang watches.
“We should go out and play basketball before the weather gets too cold,” Cheng Xiaoshi says one day.
“Sure,” Lu Guang replies.
Another day, snow starting to fall: “Come with me for milk tea,” Cheng Xiaoshi suggests.
Lu Guang only blinks. “Sure.”
The thick of winter, the world frozen solid. Cheng Xiaoshi traces patterns into the frost on the window and says, “It’s cold. What if we stayed in instead of opening today?”
Still waiting after all these months, still unsure if he’s real or not, still so tired of the fear, Lu Guang can only say, “Sure.”
△
It’s one day in the spring, warm enough that Lu Guang can no longer stand to wear a jacket but still cool enough that leaving the window open works better than the air conditioning. Lu Guang reads a book in their shared room, listening to the indistinct chatter of Cheng Xiaoshi and Qiao Ling chatting downstairs.
The pollen is giving him allergies. Stuffy nose, itchy eyes, a tickle in the back of his throat. Everything about him feels raw and rubbed red.
He drifts downstairs at some point—for medicine, water, a snack, or something he forgot on the counter—but as he comes down the steps, he hears the sound of his own name and stops, if only briefly.
“Lu Guang just strikes me as a lonely person.” It’s unmistakably Cheng Xiaoshi’s voice, far more contemplative than usual.
“What are you trying to say?” Qiao Ling asks. Footsteps on the floorboards. Too heavy to be hers; Lu Guang would know Cheng Xiaoshi’s gait anywhere. He gets up from wherever he’d been sitting and begins to pace
“I don’t know.” A bit of frustration. Embarrassment. Cheng Xiaoshi is too cocky and second guessing himself all at once. The steps creak as Lu Guang sits down, still hidden by the wall but close enough to listen. “Maybe he needs someone.”
Qiao Ling snorts. “You, you mean.”
“I…”
Lu Guang folds his hands around his knees. Exhales a breath that leaves nothing but dust in the void of his chest. This is the last timeline there will ever be, so why is he so tired? Hands on his wrist, lips on the nape of his neck. Memories lost to time. Versions of someone that never existed. Grief for someone who’s right here. Longing for someone waiting to give themselves to you.
“Maybe? Yes. I don’t know,” Cheng Xiaoshi admits. “But you just told me you see it. I’m not… Everyone treats me like I’m oblivious and naive, but I’ve seen the way he looks at me.”
Quiet for a moment. Lu Guang’s heart gives a heavy, aching beat.
“Do you think he loves you, then?” Qiao Ling asks, the teasing gone from her voice, replaced with nothing but sincere consideration.
“Love would be a lot,” Cheng Xiaoshi laughs. “I just said I think he needs someone, and maybe he wants it to be me.”
“What is needing someone, if not love?”
Obsession, Lu Guang thinks, knowing the ways he’s broken.
A loud, boyish laugh. “Why are we getting all philosophical?”
△
“Lu Guang?” this Cheng Xiaoshi asks. This same Cheng Xiaoshi, the one that lives months after he was meant to die. The one Lu Guang broke time for.
He sighs, wondering why this one is so different. “Yes, Cheng Xiaoshi?”
“Are you lonely?” Asked softly, a bit gingerly, like Cheng Xiaoshi worries he’ll press clumsy fingers into a delicate wound.
“I’m not the one that clings like he’s hanging off a cliff,” Lu Guang says. Translation: you are to me what breath is to the living.
“I’m not going to fall for it this time,” Cheng Xiaoshi says. “Insult me all you want, but that isn’t an answer.”
“Idiot,” Lu Guang murmurs. Translation: and yet you’re also the thing that makes me feel like I’m drowning.
A raised eyebrow. “What did I just say?” Stubbornly, Cheng Xiaoshi does not take the bait. This one has always been a little more mature than the rest. Like he’s seen the things they have and lived to remember it. But he hasn’t, and he’ll never hold those memories, the same way he’ll never hold the ones Lu Guang cradles close to his chest.
“I don’t have many friends,” Lu Guang settles for. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“So…” Cheng Xiaoshi’s tongue peeks out to wet his lips. “Yes, then.”
Painfully, frustratingly, achingly, yes. Lu Guang looks at him. “I guess so. But who isn’t, at least a little bit?”
“Nobody,” Cheng Xiaoshi answers. “Sometimes I’m lonely too.”
△
Spring into summer, into too hot sun. Cheng Xiaoshi’s mouth on his, sweet with a smile. An inevitability in every timeline.
I’m not honest with you, Lu Guang thinks as he kisses back, Cheng Xiaoshi’s face in his hands that threaten to shake. You would hate me if you knew. You would find me the worst kind of hypocrite.
“I want to get you flowers,” Cheng Xiaoshi tells him when he pulls away. “I want to make you ha—”
Lu Guang kisses him so he’ll stop talking, so he’ll stop saying things that he means with every fiber of himself. Cheng Xiaoshi, thankfully, does.
△
“I watched you die,” Lu Guang whispers to the sleeping body beside him, black hair sticking out of the covers, a steadily rising and falling side. “Over and over. And in all those timelines, I loved you. But you’re the only one that got to live.”
A soft breath. Briefly, Cheng Xiaoshi stirs. “Mn?” He shifts, squinting, one eye cracking open before it shuts again. “A-Guang?”
“Nothing.” This is the closest to honesty he can get. “I just said that I love you.”