Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The longer Lin Ling stares at his monitor, the more he’s beginning to hate Nice.

The clock in the corner of his screen reads 2:17 , which means he’s been at this for… about six hours. Combing through stock footage of Nice and his archnemesis Wreck, as well as anything decent he can scrounge up from social media, so he can reframe the messaging of his latest promo piece and finally get it approved. The only break he’s gotten was when he went through a handful of interviews Nice had done with Moon last year – having his goddess burned into his retinas seemed preferable at the time, at least, even if she caused the same amount of damage as her boyfriend.

Ugh .

Lin Ling pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers, knocking his glasses out of place and unable to care about the lines he’s undoubtedly gouging into his forehead. On screen, Nice shoots a finger gun salute to the crowd, which explodes in such a way that Lin Ling is grateful he preemptively muted the volume three videos back. 

Exhausted, Lin Ling blinks his too-dry eyes and the sea of people disappears. It’s quickly replaced with Nice and his gleaming smile as he charms the reporter looking for a quick sound bite on the battle that just took place. Another blink and it’s Nice again, mid-descent with a rescued child in his arms. Another, and Nice walks determinedly towards a rampaging villain, his cape eclipsing nearly the entire bottom half of the shot, blotting out the smoking rubble and the frightened citizens. As though Nice himself is erasing the carnage, overwriting it with pure white salvation.

Or Lin Ling’s been awake for a solid twenty-six hours at this point and he’s beginning to hallucinate.

Still, it’s not a bad angle to explore for the ad. Anyone can be a hero didn’t cut it, and he’s fresh out of ideas otherwise. It fits enough with Nice’s standard image that Lin Ling won’t have trouble pulling shots from the archive, too. Which means (in theory) he should be able to cobble something together in a few hours. Video first, then a quick, bare-bones script and a sound bite from Nice to round it off. Easy enough, if not particularly inspiring . 

He’s not paid to be inspiring, though. He’s paid to push a pre-approved agenda and dress it up in pretty packaging so consumers gladly swallow it whole.

His one shot at branching out nearly cost him his job; he’s not in a position right now to try and push the envelope again.

Lin Ling opens up the dog-shit video-editing software his company insists on using and then the file he’d absently labeled Nice’s Fan Cams . The videos included are equal parts thirst traps and sanctifying behavior from the world’s most perfect superhero. He’ll splice in both for the ad, satisfy as much of Nice’s fan base as he can in a thirty second promotional spot. You’d think a costume like Nice’s wouldn’t lend itself to a lot of sexualization from the public, but people can get… creative. Lin Ling’s always faintly grateful that Nice’s trust value revolves around perfection — if he got bloodied and scuffed up during fights, these ads would be much, much racier. 

(Moon, on the other hand, is lucky to have a reputation as sweet and relatively innocent; dating Nice reduces the public’s desire for any dicey shots of her, too, especially because her fans will dogpile anyone online who demands she invest in a tighter costume or show more skin)

As the software loads, Lin Ling scoots back from his desk for a moment and reaches for his phone, which he’s had facedown on the desk beside him to curtail as many distractions as he could. He swipes through his notifications, dismissing most of them as junk mail or reminders to log in to claim daily rewards in games he never has time to play. Only one non-work related message — his landlord, telling him the leak in his apartment will be fixed by the end of the week. 

What’s a few more days? he thinks, sliding a few more precarious inches down his chair, suddenly feeling every hour he’s spent at work in a way that was not apparent before. I’ve only been trying to get him to do this for the last two months…

He sighs and lets his phone flop onto his chest, his gaze lifting to the monitor again. He probably has another few minutes before the program’s updated and running; he could make a snack run, or finally hit the bathroom, but god he doesn’t even want to move. What he wants is to sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s slept in his chair, at least, even if he promises himself every time it happens that it’ll be the last. He hasn’t managed to stick to that yet, and tonight likely won’t be any different, not if he wants to have a job in the morning. 

Lin Ling squints at his computer. Did he accidentally click one of the videos in his Nice folder? Because that is definitely Nice’s face on the screen, though it’s strangely, uh… transparent? More like a reflection than a—

“The camera really does only get my good side. Trust value’s incredible, isn’t it?”

The voice comes from right over Lin Ling’s shoulder – inches from his ear – and it’s so unexpected that Lin Ling slides the rest of the way off his chair with a frankly embarrassing yelp. 

He flounders for a moment, darting a glance up to see – nothing. There’s no one behind his chair, no one visible in the bright halo of light cast by his monitor. Scrambling to right both his chair and himself, Lin Ling looks from the computer – no reflection – to the rest of the room, which is as empty as it’s been since Lin Qingge left to meet her husband in front of the building at ten. 

His heart’s thudding in his chest as he swings his chair back into place. He squeezes his eyes shut, breathing out shakily. He’s sleep-deprived. He’s been staring non-stop at Nice’s face for literal hours. It was just his dumb, overworked brain playing tricks on him. Superimposing Nice where he doesn’t belong, that’s all. 

“I’m almost done,” he murmurs to himself, dropping back into his chair. “Another few hours, and then I can go…” He groans. “Sleep in the lounge, on the cheap sofa with the mystery stain on both sides of the center cushion, and wake up feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck.” 

It’s almost enough to make him thunk face-down onto the desk. He’s employed, yes, which means he won’t starve or be evicted, and he’s grateful… but what is he even doing with his life? 

Existential crisis later. Finish the promo pitch and then you can find a good Moon compilation video and relax.

When Lin Ling sets his hands on the keyboard, the editing software has updated at last. He opens up a few of the videos he’s going to clip from, splitting his screen so he can view the work-in-progress ad alongside them. The video of Nice walking towards a villain is first – it sets the tone of the promo, Nice as a force of nature unto himself, blinding and pristine and extraordinary . Because heroes aren’t ordinary people, like Lin Ling. They’re something more, something beyond his comprehension, apparently. He’ll get it right this time and then, hopefully, he’ll get a request for another Moon ad for an easy win.

“Good choice. The cape lifts up for a moment at 1:02 – gives you an excellent shot of my ass.”

Lin Ling upends the chair this time.

He lays there on the ground, arms and legs splayed at awkward angles, one heel tucked around the still-spinning wheel of his chair, and stares up at the unmistakable face of Nice, 15th ranked hero, as he leans down to scrutinize the video playing on Lin Ling’s computer.

“Hm.” Nice – it couldn’t be anyone else, not in that costume, not with that hair, not with those eyes – extends a hand and points at the monitor as on-screen-Nice knocks a brightly-colored blur completely out of frame with one punch. “Not very elegant of me. My former ballet teacher would cry over my footwork. But it got the job done, and that’s all anyone cared about.”

Lin Ling, meanwhile, might be dying. He’s definitely on the verge of some sort of panic… episode. Less than an attack, more than his base-level anxiety. His throat tightens, his pulse races, he has the inexplicable urge to claw through his rib cage with his bare hands— 

No, never mind, full-blown panic attack it is. 

He must make a sound, or twitch, or something , because Nice cocks his head slightly, side-eyeing him. 

“I’d offer to help you up, but honestly it wouldn’t do you any good at this point.” 

“Ni—” Lin Ling’s throat clicks on a dry swallow. He clamors into an upright position, knocks his head on the underside of the desk, swears, and then decides he’s embarrassed himself to the point that saving any amount of face is a lost cause. He props an arm on his chair (currently lying sideways next to him) and tries again. “Nice! Uh, sir! What are you— or, why are you— you’ve never come here in person before, we just send the files to your manager and she okays them or… wait, did something happen to Miss J? Did something happen here ?”

He casts a frantic look around the room, as though in his work-induced stupor he’s somehow missed a villain crashing through the wall or materializing from the shadows. But it’s still just him and the too-bright glow of his computer. And now Nice, for reasons Lin Ling cannot even begin to fathom.

Nice hums and straightens, turning to face Lin Ling. 

Oh. Nice looks—

“Well, it’s not wrong to say something happened here. Not a villain or anything,” Nice says, slowly, like he’s considering the weight of each word as it leaves his tongue. He sounds remarkably calm for someone with blood streaked across the entire right half of his body. “I stepped off the roof, and…” 

Nice trails off with a sweeping gesture towards his person.

“You… you can fly,” Lin Ling points out, because his brain is buffering and it’s the only thing of note he can pry out of his mouth right now. 

Nice smiles, small and satisfied. “Yes. I can.”

Oh. Oh, god, that’s… 

“You need help,” Lin Ling says, abruptly launching himself to his feet, catching a hand on his desk before he trips and lands right back on his ass. He kicks the chair aside in his haste to move towards Nice, hands fluttering indecisively in front of him. “We should go to a hospital, or, uh, does the Hero Tower have medical facilities? It probably does, right, you heroes all live there. So maybe there, and I’ll call Miss J on the way—”

Nice is still smiling, and it only grows more unsettling as the seconds tick by. There’s no urgency in his expression, nothing to suggest he has any desire to get help whatsoever. He doesn’t even look like he’s in pain, despite the blood splattered everywhere. If anything he seems… resigned. Which makes no sense at all given the absurdity of the situation.

“Is this what it takes to make people panic?” Nice asks, curious, musing. He flips his right hand over and examines his palm — bloody as the rest of him, scraped more than a little raw like he’d slid it across pavement, or concrete. “It never fit the image, you know, so I didn’t get the chance to see anyone’s reaction to me looking like this. Interesting.” He shrugs and props his hand on his hip, heedless of the ripped skin he’s no doubt agitating. “Oh, well, too late now.”

Lin Ling blinks. His mouth opens, but there’s nothing to say, nothing he can ask. He takes in the torn portions of Nice’s suit, the crimson-stained skin beneath it. All that white, sullied by dirt and blood and Nice’s own conviction. 

“You can do me a favor,” Nice says, smiling, “pick up your chair, and straighten up your desk while you’re at it. Keyboard, mouse, that cup of pens that apparently only exists for you to chew on — throw those out, actually, that’s disgusting. I can’t do it myself and it’s making my skin crawl.” He sighs, rolls his eyes. “You’d think being dead would at least mean the OCD isn’t a factor, but I guess the only real perk is not being alive.” 

He says it so casually, so cavalier — like what can you do? — that Lin Ling briefly wonders if he’s insane for having such a strong reaction to Nice’s apparent death.

Oh, god. Dead. Nice is dead. 

Lin Ling stares at Nice. Nice smiles back, hollow eyed and no less smug for it. 

He’s dead and he’s haunting… my office building? 

“The chair,” Nice reminds him, gesturing helpfully at where it’s still knocked over on the ground. 

Lin Ling rights the chair only so he can promptly collapse onto it, burying his head in his hands. 

“And the desk,” Nice says, his voice floating over Lin Ling’s shoulder once again. 

“Please give me a minute,” Lin Ling says, muffled against his hands, barely audible. Nice hums nonetheless, and Lin Ling gets his minute. Exactly one minute. 

“The desk,” Nice says.

“This can’t be happening,” Lin Ling mutters, strained. “You can’t be dead. You’re Nice . You’re perfect .”

“Mm. It is, I am, and I was . Now I’m not. Nice or perfect.” Something cold brushes along the back of Lin Ling’s neck, a frigid rush of air that raises gooseflesh in its wake. “ The desk. ”

Lin Ling straightens out his desk. It’s the only thing he’s capable of fixing right now.

Chapter Text

Lin Ling wakes up with a crick in his neck and the gnawing certainty that he’s going to be jobless within the hour.

His first instinct is to bolt upright on the couch, his hands nearly slipping out from underneath him as he fights to get to his knees and survey the lounge. He nearly crushes his glasses in the process, forgetting for a moment he’s not still wearing them. They clatter to the ground instead, brushed aside by his hand. 

The light slanting in from the singular window is soft and pink-tinged, barely bright enough to chase away the shadows. The fridge hums faintly, the coffee-machine burbles as its automatic timer kicks on. On the wall above the pantry, the clock – glass face cracked from that one Christmas party incident they’ve all sworn never to bring up again — reads 6:03 . 

He’s only been asleep for forty-one minutes, god help him.

Raking his hands through his sleep-mussed hair, Lin Ling just – lets himself breathe. Slowly, in and out, trying to hit counts of four-six-eight, like in the videos he uses as substitutes for therapy sessions. It does nothing for the pounding at his temples or the sandpaper texture of his throat, but it eases the tightness in his chest enough to think a little more clearly. 

It takes three tries to find his phone (buried between the couch cushions and not in his pocket like it should be). The angle is all wrong for Face ID so he awkwardly thumbs in his passcode, then swipes to find his email. 

And there - one email sent from this morning, forty-three minutes ago. A new promo for Nice along with a decidedly sparse explanation for his choices. 

I finished it? 

The memory is hazy at first, fractured into jagged pieces — it’s sensations more than it is images, feelings more than it is thoughts. His general, low-grade anxiety, mounting as the night wore on; prickling skin along the back of his neck; a dull ache from hitting the ground twice in the span of fifteen minutes. 

Nice, in all his heroic glory, bared and bloody and dead mere inches from where Lin Ling sat. 

They’d… talked, he thinks. Maybe. Forty-one minutes doesn’t seem like an appropriate amount of sleep for dreaming, so the conversation he recalls has to have actually happened last night. 

“Aren’t you in the middle of something?” Nice asked, tilting his head meaningfully at the computer while Lin Ling obediently chucked his chewed pen caps into the trash. 

Lin Ling was moving on auto-pilot by then. The shock to his system was too great to overcome with his current level of cognitive function, and his body resorted to following orders rather than ceasing to operate altogether. 

He paused at Nice’s comment, blinking, and followed his gaze to the computer. The videos were there, still, and the editing software, the document he’d pulled up to start writing a makeshift script. 

The neurons abruptly started firing again. 

“I’m going to end up on the streets,” Lin Ling said, despairing. 

Nice watched in silence as Lin Ling shot back to his desk and frantically dragged windows around, trying to piece together the whatever idea he’d had before Nice’s ghost showed up and fried his brain. 

Nice’s ghost . Nice’s ghost . 

Lin Ling’s hands stilled over the keyboard. His head wrenched around, wide eyes locking onto Nice, who seemed more interested in the promo than anything else. Nice looked — real. Tangible, like Lin Ling could reach out and grab his arm. Nothing like the ghost stories he’d grown up on. 

Well, aside from the blood splatters. But even then he just looked… human. Alive. 

“Maybe I’m asleep,” Lin Ling said out loud, “I fell asleep in the middle of work and this is, this is a stress dream. Nice looking over my shoulder is, um, metaphorical for all his promos needing to be perfect, and the rest of it…” 

The blood. The injuries. The matter of Nice stepping off a building and choosing not to fly. 

“That’s probably related to me,” Lin Ling finished, shoulders slumping. When his manager had threatened to fire him, Lin Ling had— he wasn’t proud of it, but he’d thought about going up to the roof with an armful of his things and just… being done. With everything. 

“I can see why you’d go the denial route,” Nice said, “but if possible let’s skip that stage and get to bargaining. You did clean up eventually, so this one is free.” He pointed at one of the videos queued up — Nice saving a child mid-air. “More of this, less ass shots. Juan’s been trying to market me to a younger crowd lately. Something about spending too much time blocking horny fans on social media.” 

“So it’s not a dream?” 

Nice met Lin Ling’s gaze, his eyes flitting across Lin Ling’s face. The tears clinging to his lashes, the way he’d gone a sickly white — almost a match for Nice’s uniform. 

He smiled again. Less satisfied, but not even remotely remorseful. “More like I finally woke up. Good view from the roof, by the way,” he added, turning back to the monitor. “Except for the ads everywhere. Marketing agency, I get it, but it’s too on the nose for me.”

Somewhere in between ignoring the existential crisis that manifested in (and refused to leave) his personal space and passing out on the couch, Lin Ling finished the promo. He remembers, like, almost none of that, which under any other circumstances would freak him out but really he’s just… 

He might be in the middle of a nervous breakdown, is the thing. And that should probably take precedence. 

“C’mon, Lin Ling, get it together.” He slaps his cheeks a few times, trying to get his racing thoughts to settle. His heart’s beating with sickly urgency in his chest. He’s definitely sweating to a concerning degree. Nothing about this situation is normal, no matter what’s actually going on.  “Even if it wasn’t a dream, it could’ve been… a hallucination. Why would Nice be haunting my office building of all places?”

“Good view from the roof, by the way.” 

Lin Ling freezes. The roof. Nice said he stepped off the…

He’s on his feet before the thought’s vanished, ignoring the tempting smell of brewing coffee and the alarms blaring in his head. 

Barely anyone is in this early, which Lin Ling knows from too many previous nights spent on that horrible couch. There’s a security guard at the front desk in the lobby, a few maintenance people who make the rounds before the halls start getting overcrowded, and a handful of workers looking to finish projects they’d left to stew overnight. He passes by none of them on his way to the main stairwell, and he’s still alone as he makes the climb to the highest floor. 

The door would normally pose a challenge — no one’s meant to have unfettered access to the roof for reasons not unrelated to why Lin Ling’s here — but the lock has been broken for weeks now. Lin Ling should have told maintenance about it when he found out; instead he’d taken to having his lunch breaks up here, enjoying what little fresh air he can get during his work day. 

It’s not quite warm enough to be up here without a jacket, but Lin Ling hadn’t thought to grab his from his desk and he’s not going back now, not yet. He rubs briskly at his arms as he approaches the edge of the roof, for the friction-heat and the firm grip that reminds him he’s here, he’s fine, there’s no threat that warrants the sweat prickling at his temples or the rapid beat of his pulse. 

He doesn’t dare look down at first. He looks around instead, turning in a slow circle to take in the perimeter of the roof. 

A good view. What’s good about any of this? It’s the city, and Nice must see this all the time when he’s flying…

When he’s turned a hundred and eighty degrees — back to facing the entrance to the roof — it hits him. 

“He did comment on his own ass while I was editing,” Lin Ling murmurs to himself, a wry, shaky smile tugging at his mouth. Directly in front of him, positioned above the door to the stairwell, is the gigantic billboard that constantly runs the latest ad campaign from his company. Right now, it’s displaying Nice — part of a series of him, Moon, and several other Treeman heroes offering reassurances to the public. 

Lin Ling squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, bracing himself, and then turns around to peer over the edge of the roof. 

Okay, he… doesn’t actually open his eyes immediately. He doesn’t know what he’s hoping for. A body? An empty alleyway? If there is a body, what is he supposed to do about it? Call the police, maybe, or Treeman. Let them know their perfect hero killer himself for reasons Lin Ling can’t even begin to guess at. 

If there isn’t a body… well. Then he’s got different, but no less unsettling problems. Namely that he’s presumably worked himself into some sort of psychosis, if that’s even possible, to the point that he’s hallucinating the ghost of one of China’s most beloved heroes. 

He hadn’t had the wherewithal to check social media or any news outlets last night, to confirm if something actually happened to Nice. He thinks, if it’s true, if Nice is really dead, that he would’ve already gotten an emergency email from the higher ups regarding the PR nightmare that would entail. 

Unless—

No, Lin Ling thinks, shaking his head, no way, they wouldn’t do that. Nice is a person , not a defective product. That’s… 

That’s what you do with scandals, though. Deflect, deny, cover it up. Water it down. Drown it out with other, bigger news stories. If Nice is dead, if he killed himself , then… Treeman would sit on that, for as long as possible. Release it only when they have a, a solution, as though there is a solution to one of your top heroes committing suicide out of the blue. 

Lin Ling opens his eyes. 

He gets vertigo nearly instantly and takes a reflexive step back as his vision wavers, tilts. His stomach threatens to flip, but he swallows down the rising nausea and steps back up to the edge of the roof. Below him, the city’s just waking up; cars flash by on the nearby street, though almost no one is braving the sidewalks, and the alley is… empty.

There’s no body, at least. Certainly not one dressed as flashily as Nice. Lin Ling scans from one end to the other, just to be sure, just— because being wrong about this would feel wrong, in ways Lin Ling isn’t comfortable examining at this point. There’s nothing resembling a corpse, though, no matter where he looks. 

Maybe he should’ve checked from the ground, instead. He’d go now, now that he has a general idea of where to look, but he’s starting to get lightheaded, and more than that he needs to watch the promo he apparently sent earlier to ensure he didn’t just inadvertently hand in a resignation letter. 

Besides, Nice…hasn’t shown up since Lin Ling startled awake on the couch. No body, no Nice in the daylight — it really might’ve been the lack of sleep getting to him last night. It seems more likely than Mr. Perfect suddenly deciding to end it all from the roof of Lin Ling’s office building, anyway. 

Lin Ling breathes in, breathes out a shaky exhale, and — shit, he looks down again, he can’t help it, he has to be sure . 

“ Shit ,” Lin Ling says, staring down at the spot, fifteen stories down, where a suspiciously dark stain spreads out from beneath a dumpster that Lin Ling knows wasn’t there yesterday. He takes his lunches up here and he has a stupidly good eye for details; tired as he is, he knows he’s right. A rushed clean-up job, but a clean-up nonetheless.

Shit, shit, shit.

He stumbles back a few steps, impulsively reaching for his phone. His hand stops just shy of where it rests in his pocket. What’s he going to do, call the police? Post about it on social media? He could still be wrong, and even if he’s right, Treeman won’t take it lying down. Not if they’re actually willing to hide the body of a national fucking hero.

“Lin Ling.”

He’s only half-surprised at the voice this time; his shoulders hitch, and his phone nearly goes sailing off the roof, but he doesn’t whirl around or make an embarrassing noise. He tracks it from the corner of his eye as Nice approaches, taking his own peek at the ground below. Nice’s expression — clean-cut and pure white as ever from this angle — doesn’t change much, even though Lin Ling’s pretty sure he’s staring at the exact same spot Lin Ling is. Nice’s brows go up a little, maybe, and his nose scrunches up a fraction, and that’s it.

“...the view’s not that great from up here,” Lin Ling says, because he has to say something, doesn’t he? 

“Mm, I think the person who can’t fly should keep his opinions on the scenery to himself,” Nice replies, shooting Lin Ling a smirk. Lin Ling belatedly realizes he’s been hovering this whole time, the bastard. Whether it’s a quirk of being a ghost or a habit, it’s still annoying as hell. “I know what I’m talking about.”

Lin Ling waits a beat, and when Nice doesn’t move to leave — or, well, fly off? — he hesitantly says, “I, uh, I’ve got… work. Maybe. I might be getting fired in about an hour when my boss gets in. Are you…?”

Nice blinks, then looks at Lin Ling. “I can’t leave,” he says, which has Lin Ling’s breath hitching in his throat. “Tried while you were losing your shit and I can’t get past the windows, or any of the exits. And it looks like you might be the only one who can see me,” he adds, his smile widening at the look of horror that dawns on Lin Ling’s face. “Perks of thinking about me so much, I imagine.”

“That’s for work ,” Lin Ling groans, “oh my god.”

“Speaking of that — chop, chop, kid, or else you really will be fired and I’ll be stuck without any entertainment.”

Lin Ling hates that he’s right. “I’m going to the hospital after work. I’m going to get a… whatever they do. A psychological evaluation. And then I’m going to sue this company for driving me insane.”

Nice hums as he follows Lin Ling towards the stairwell. “Looking the way you do, they probably won’t need to do any evaluation, they’ll just commit you on the spot.”

“Oh my god .”

Chapter Text

It turns out Lin Ling is the only one who can see Nice. 

He spends a frankly inordinate amount of time confirming this, from the moment he staggers back down to his department’s floor (on the verge of something, mental breakdown adjacent) through the first three hours of his workday. 

In the lounge, while Lin Ling’s nursing the remnants of his fourth cup of coffee, Nice floats around the room, curious and also visibly disgusted by most everything he looks at for too long. A handful of people drop in for their own early-morning fix — they grab their coffees, shove their lunches into the fridge, side-eye Lin Ling’s disheveled I-pulled-an-all-nighter-and-death-would-be-merciful state, before nodding at Lin Ling in goodbye and going about the rest of their day. 

Exactly none of them react to the fifteenth-ranked hero just — there, hovering, in the room with them. Lin Ling stares, unrepentant, more than ready to blame it on lack of sleep and a rising sense of delirium if anyone calls him out on it.  He watches their expression, their eyes, the position of their bodies as people make conversation around them. 

Nice idly remarks that the underside of the fridge is absolutely a breeding ground for roaches (evidently and insanely blaming Lin Ling for this health code violation), and no one so much as raises a brow or tilts their head in his direction. No indication they’ve heard a word he’s said, or seen him peering over their shoulders just to turn his nose up at the lack of cream and sugar in someone’s coffee. 

Okay, Lin Ling thinks, white-knuckling his mug, leeching what little warmth he can from his long-cold coffee, maybe I am losing it. Stress does that to a person, and I’ve been working unpaid overtime for months now. This could all be an elaborate hallucination cooked up by my overheated brain. 

The fact that his potential insanity is somehow more comforting than the reality of Nice haunting him says a lot about the kind of life he’s been living lately. Even more so about his emotional and physical well-being. 

Nice (or the facsimile of Nice inspired by far too many promotional videos), meanwhile, is humming his satisfaction over the new layout of Lin Ling’s desk. New pens, which he snatched from the receptionist’s area; keyboard and mousepad aligned just so; no miscellaneous junk cluttering up his drawers or his workspace. He had Lin Ling dust despite the fact that they have cleaning crews come in bi-weekly. 

Setting his mug down with slightly more force than necessary, Lin Ling clicks into a random folder to further the illusion he’s actually working and says under his breath, “What are you going to do when I leave for the night?”

“Oh, that’s an option? I assumed you lived here, subsisting on low-grade coffee and stolen lunches from the fridge.”

Given Lin Ling’s sleep-deprived, vaguely homeless appearance, he can’t even fault him for the jab. “Shut up,” he says anyway, dragging video files from one folder to another, and then back again. “You know what I mean. If I’m the only one who can see you—“

“A theory you confirmed,” Nice interjects, amused, “multiple times, with no regard for how any of your coworkers were judging you.”

Nice has no tangible form; he can’t interact with anything or anyone, as far as Lin Ling’s observed. It still feels like he’s standing right against Lin Ling’s back, chin hooked over his shoulder to look at the nonsensical busywork Lin Ling’s doing on the off chance someone decides to check in with him. The air around him is notably cooler by at least a few degrees; he’d swear his breath fogs out of him except that would actually be insane and Lin Ling is trying to keep from rattling right out of his fucking bones. 

Nice has presence. He shouldn’t, but he does. Only with Lin Ling, though — maybe it is because of all those ad campaigns he did for Nice, maybe this is… connected to Trust or something abstract like that. 

“I was saying, because I’m the only one who can see you, aren’t you going to be—“

Lin Ling bites his tongue on the question. What is he planning to ask, really? Is Nice going to be lonely? Is he going to be alright without Lin Ling there as a target for his snark and morbid amusements? 

Does he want to know? Does he want that burden?

Whatever he wants, Nice decides things for him: “Hmm, I suppose I’ll wander around here. See the sights. Count the water marks on the ceiling or the grains of rice people neglected to sweep into the trash.”

“Are you a jiangshi now?” Lin Ling glances over his shoulder as subtly as he can manage, raising a brow at the serene smile Nice is wearing. 

“Close enough,” Nice replies, shrugging. Utterly blasé, to the point Lin Ling can’t tell if he’s joking. “I don’t think I’ll be harvesting your life force, at least, not that you’d make much of a meal.” His smile slants into something smirk-like, beautiful, withering. “ Corporate slave. ”

As though being dead is so much better. As though something in his perfect fucking life didn’t drive Nice to walk himself off a building. 

Perfect life. 

The thoughts jogs Lin Ling’s memory — Nice, the perfect hero. Perfect life, perfect smile, perfect girlfriend. 

“Oh, my god. Moon .”

He pushes off from his desk and spins around to face Nice, who’s looking at him oddly. Brows furrowed, head tilted in silent question, lips pursed. Lin Ling’s heart is racing now, that staticky feeling starting in the tips of his fingers. 

“Moon?” Nice repeats, in the manner of someone testing out a foreign word they’ve only ever seen written before. There’s no urgency in his tone, no panic twisting his features. He looks almost annoyed, if anything; as though he can’t fathom why Lin Ling would bring up his girlfriend and would rather skip past this interaction altogether. 

Lin Ling stares at him, baffled. “Yeah, Moon. The woman you’ve been dating for the last three years? Who you once described as your soulmate? Don’t you think she should… know? About you?”

The discontent is wiped from Nice’s face in an instant, replaced with an almost-smile, a barely-there curve and the slightest suggestion of dimples in his cheeks. “Treeman will tell her,” he says, “or they won’t. Either way I imagine she’ll figure things out when she tries to teleport anywhere.”

What. 

“What,” Lin Ling says aloud, because he can’t just let that go, no matter how nonchalant Nice appears about the bomb he’s just detonated in the middle of their conversation. 

Nice’s eyes flicker between Lin Ling and the contents of his desk — not, Lin Ling realizes, judging his organizational skills for once, but taking in the array of fan merchandise Lin Ling hasn’t spared a thought for since last night. The bootleg coffee mug bearing his favorite shot of Moon, mid-jump through a portal. The charms dangling from his phone, which sits idly by his unmoving mouse. A limited-edition pen with Moon’s signature stamped across it that Lin Ling only ever uses to sign very important documents, lest it run out of ink or fade from his sweaty grip. 

The urge to spread himself as wide as possible to cut off Nice’s view of Lin Ling’s guilty pleasures hits him dead-center in the chest. It takes more willpower than he’d like to admit to ignore the incessant demand to hide hide hide, but he clenches his fingers in the fabric of his jeans and squares his shoulders, staying put. 

Nice does smile at that, sharp, biting, and says, “So you do both of our promotional materials, I take it?”

“When two people are joined at the hip, it’s more economical to handle them as a package deal.”

The acerbic quip gets a laugh out of Nice. “I guess it is. But I don’t see any Nice charms… did you opt for the underwear line instead?”

Reflexively crossing his legs, and then consciously crossing his arms over his chest, Lin Ling spins back to his monitor and resumes bullshitting for whatever audience might exist beyond Nice. It’s not the most strategic move — he can feel the heat climbing down his nape and under the neck of his shirt, which means Nice has an excellent view of Lin Ling’s mounting embarrassment. 

He’s lucky most everyone else took their lunch break already — sleep deprivation can only explain so much, and he thinks blatantly talking to himself in the middle of the office would earn him more than a few raised eyebrows. 

“Are you going to answer the question or not?” Lin Ling demands, side-eying Nice as he leans in to no doubt critique Lin Ling’s artistic merit again. 

Nice hums, noncommittal. “Answer mine first?”

Lin Ling’s going to punch a ghost. If his hand passes right through him, so be it; he thinks the look of surprise on Nice’s face will be satisfying enough to take the sting out of whiffing that badly. 

“I have a…” 

Lin Ling sighs. Nice has already seen the Moon shrine (so dubbed by Lin Ling’s snotty coworkers), there’s no point in hiding anything else. He reaches down to the lowest drawer on the left hand side and tugs it open. It’s mostly miscellaneous junk — office supply odds and ends, stress balls that never work as advertised for him, a few USBs filled with rejected campaigns Lin Ling liked too much to abandon. 

But buried under all of that is a mini-calendar, neat and pristine and clearly unopened, that he slaps down on the desk. 

“I won this in an office raffle,” Lin Ling says, leaving out the part where he was trying to win an autographed poster of Moon. He flips open to a random month, says, “It’s the only piece of merch I own with your face on it. Not everyone is obsessed with you, Mr. Perfect ,” and then immediately wishes he could bite off his tongue, choke on it, and die right then and there. 

Because the random month turns out to be December, which features a very shiny-looking Nice in a red Santa coat and pants and nothing else. The coat sits open over his bare chest, the pants are unbuttoned and revealing a sliver of black briefs, and Nice has the most come hither look Lin Ling has ever seen on another human being that wasn’t a porn star. Smiling coyly at the camera, one hand trailing down between his pecs, the other resting on a pile of presents which Nice is leaning on for some godforsaken reason. 

Someone in our team greenlit this? Treeman greenlit this? 

“Not just my face, is it,” Nice comments, which prompts Lin Ling to slam the calendar closed and sweep it unceremoniously back into the drawer. He kicks it shut for good measure, curses because that fucking hurts, then decides he’s had enough and drops his forehead onto the desk. “No need to be shy, I’ve always had my fair share of male admirers.”

“ I like Moon, oh my god!” 

“I gathered that,” Nice says, and Lin Ling knows he’s grinning without even having to lift his head. This is what he’s been reduced to — comic relief for a dead man haunting his office building. Somewhere, at some seemingly inconsequential point, Lin Ling’s life left the relative safety of its tracks, and he can’t even begin to piece together an idea on how to set things to right. 

Moon. Fuck, he still hasn’t told me about Moon. 

“I answered your question,” Lin Ling mutters, turning his head against the desk to glare at Nice. “Now would you answer mine? What is going on with you and Moon? What’s wrong with her powers?”

The line of Nice’s mouth goes flat. He shifts until it almost looks like he’s leaning back against Lin Ling’s desk, ankles crossed; he’s hovering again, though, just shy of actually touching anything. He’d go through, wouldn’t he? It’s probably something he figured out while Lin Ling was passed out in the lounge. 

“We’re not really dating,” Nice says, staring out over the rows of empty desks directly across from him. 

It’s more of a revelation than it should be. Lin Ling has helped to manufacture Nice and Moon’s image since the moment he took on the Treeman contract over a year ago. The way they met made headlines, and for weeks people speculated online about their relationship status. It would’ve looked like a slam dunk to Treeman’s PR team to sign Moon and co-opt the story that they fell in love at first sight. 

That he hasn’t seen it until now is — more than just embarrassing, actually. There’s a word for it scraping against the walls of his throat, clambering, desperate. He swallows it down and lets it die a quiet death in the pit of his stomach. 

“She’s still known you for this long,” Lin Ling points out. There’s no satisfaction in it anymore. He’s stating facts, nothing more. “Wouldn’t she care?”

Nice wrinkle his nose. “Who knows. She’s probably more concerned about her powers. Because everyone wanted her at my side, things… warped. To make that a reality. She hasn’t been able to teleport more than ten feet away from me in months. It’s why we scaled back on fighting as a pair.”

Lin Ling opens his mouth — to say what, he doesn’t know, just something, anything to unravel the silence suddenly crushing against his chest — but the sound of a door opening draws his attention, and he glances away from Nice to see a gaggle of his co-workers returning from lunch. They spread out across the office, a handful of people settling into their desks around Lin Ling. He returns their shallow greetings and drops his gaze to his computer, belatedly shaking his mouse to bring it back to life. 

He doesn’t get a chance to pester Nice for more information that afternoon. 

Not having an outlet for his churning thoughts means Lin Ling spends the rest of his shift obsessively going over the few details he’s gotten out of Nice. Moon, the fake relationship, the fact that Nice doesn’t seem even remotely hung up on the idea of anyone missing him—

Suffice it to say, he’s not all that productive. He’s lucky he won’t be getting the revisions back on his ad campaign (for Nice, god) until tomorrow at the earliest, because he sure as shit wouldn’t be able to concentrate on a project that big and that important. 

Throughout the rest of the day, while Lin Ling muddles through meaningless busywork and occasionally answers questions from his colleagues, Nice is there. Sometimes quiet, observing things, hovering and generally making it that much more difficult for Lin Ling to act like he’s not aware of his presence. He critiques whatever Lin Ling is (kind of) working on and seems to delight in the fact that Lin Ling can’t respond without looking like a freak. 

Other times, though, Nice drifts away for five, ten, fifteen minutes, and comes back with random gossip about who’s sleeping with who, or the person not-so-discreetly watching porn on their phone, or so-and-so’s son is dealing drugs at his high school, isn’t that just awful? 

Being unseen and unheard by everyone but Lin Ling has to have its perks, he supposes, although he really wishes Nice wouldn’t tell him everything in graphic detail. 

The clock on his computer reads 9:57 by the time the last person leaves for the night — Lin Qingge again, offering Lin Ling a tired goodbye as she heads out to meet her husband. The moment the door clicks shut behind her, Lin Ling rolls his chair back and softly, but steadily bangs his head against the backrest. 

Nice, predictably, moves to look down at him, raising a questioning brow but not yet saying anything. 

Lin Ling doesn’t bother waiting him out. “I still have work.”

“Because you did virtually nothing all day?”

“Yeah, actually,” Lin Ling agrees blithely, grateful for the excuse, “that’s exactly why. So I’m just gonna end up crashing in the lounge again. Please don’t suddenly start pulling any Paranormal Activity stuff, I really need to catch up on my sleep.”

“If I could move things with the power of my mind do you think I’d nag you to straighten your shirt collar?”

Curiously reaching up to the neck of his shirt, Lin Ling realizes it is off-center and too bunched up to one side; he tweaks it back into place and smooths out the fabric. “Yes. I do.”

Nice rolls his eyes. “I’d just do it myself. That way I could also brush the energy bar crumbs out of your pants pocket.”

“What the hell,” Lin Ling mutters, upon finding that Nice is also right about the state of his pants. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“I was distracted by that woman in HR and her torrid affair with the idol trainee.”

“That can’t be real, how do you even know he’s trying to be an idol?”

“Because two lovely young women in Accounting found him on FOMO and it’s the only thing he ever posts about. Seems like a no-no for that industry, in my opinion, but I guess any exposure is good exposure when you’re just starting out.”

“Idols don’t manage their own accounts,” Lin Ling points out, deciding he really should attempt to get some of his work down now. He has a billboard design for Moon that needs to be finalized by the end of the week and he hasn’t even gone through the visuals yet. “You don’t. Didn’t, ” he adds, wincing. 

There’s no immediate reply, and Lin Ling — more than slightly mortified over his inability to keep his foot out of his mouth — focuses on getting the editing software up and running. Any excuse not to look at Nice’s face, to see what impact his careless words may or may not have had. 

He manages to narrow it down to three shots of Moon — none of them with Nice by her side, even if that means he’s more likely to get shit from his boss when he presents this — and grabs the sketchbook he keeps in his top drawer to outline the basic design he has in mind. Simpler to do it digitally, probably, but he’s fond of traditional mediums still, even when he rarely gets to make use of them for anything complex these days. 

It’s past eleven when Nice speaks again: “There is someone who would… care. About my death.”

The scratch of Lin Ling’s pencil slows but doesn’t stop. He gets the feeling giving too much of his attention to Nice now would be counterproductive; like when you’re trying to get a cat to approach you and you have to act as though you’re utterly uninterested in it, so it wanders over on its own terms. 

“I don’t think Treeman will tell him, at least not right away. Not until they’ve got a handle on the situation. And even then he’s more likely to find out on the news than from my management team.”

Lin Ling hums a quiet, encouraging note — listening, but not interjecting. 

He hears Nice sigh, and then there’s a wash of cold air against Lin Ling’s side as Nice moves to float directly beside him. 

“Wreck,” he says, and Lin Ling’s pencil goes right through the sketchbook paper in a long, disastrous slash. “Yes, that Wreck. My nemesis. Friend first, though nobody seems to remember that these days.”

Lin Ling blinks. Okay. Okay, that’s… something he can work with, at least. Nice will have Wreck’s number, they can figure out how best to break the news to him. Lin Ling can puzzle over the reality of their hero-villain relationship on his own time, or maybe never. His head hurts enough from everything else he’s learned from Nice today; he thinks he should slam the lid on Pandora’s Box while he still can. 

“Oh,” Nice says, like he’s just remembered something, “he’s also my fuck-buddy. So this might be awkward.”

The sketchbook goes clattering to the ground, along with Lin Ling’s pencils and that pesky lid he couldn’t quite fit into place. 

“He’s your what? ”