Work Text:
Li Lianhua did think about what if he could stay.
One too many times.
Down the winding road, past the blares and smog of the city, he would finally see a linear, steady path lined with tall trees and nothing else. The trunks would sit idly spaced and their branches webbed just enough with foliage so that he could do without a wide-brimmed hat in day and still see the twinkling stars at night. His hair long without cut, ears kissed by the sun, and cheeks coloured whole would be caressed freely by the passing wind—and by him.
Fang Duobing would be steering the dusted off and repaired bicycle, the one that would at last exchange strenuous to-and-fro routes to the past for the endless on towards the horizon. Li Lianhua would subdue his liberated squeal by the back of his neck stained with the sweet and savoury scents of summer. There would be a soft chuckle reverberating before him, warming into his chest, beckoning him to look up.
There were golden fields of barley around them in all directions.
Two on bicycle were but a dot in nature's simple dance. How they were drawn, strengthened, and welcomed in.
Li Lianhua smiled into slumber.
Once more.
Fang Duobing pursed his lips that trembled at the familiar pale sight, but then they matched, shaping upwards, when this one had shown to be more peaceful than the last. On either side he looked, there were wildflowers where pavement met pasture. He held onto the two hands that wrapped and clung on in sleep at his waist, smaller than they looked but semi-warm now. He let themselves flow with the breeze for a while more before slowing to a rest under coupled trees.
It was only when Li Lianhua felt arms enveloped around him in a sturdy carry that he began to precipitate this was more than a dream. When they sat him down on soft grass bedding, he hummed they were stronger than he had remembered buried deep within his conscious. Even in reverie, he had not been able to seek what he desired, overpowered by tormenting flares and rigid stone roads that blocked from intertwining and running side by side together into the distance. But, Fang Duobing took off his shoes. Only he would do that for him, massaging where they had become swollen again from long, stumbling paths.
Li Lianhua thought he could cry.
His voice cracked before the words he wanted to ask made it ahead. He caught sight of a flurry like the feathers of a bird taking flight. The one who had always touched and smoothed his scars, old and new alike, without knowing, beneath the cover of his clothing brought fluids to his lips.
"Slow down, Xiaohua." Fang Duobing patted his back, one stroke after another, in matching rhythm. It was genially warm.
After multiple sips of water, Li Lianhua registered that it was only from underuse that he could not articulate earlier rather than from depletion. He felt filled, hanging by that invisible hook nonetheless, but more strengthened than however many days it had been since the last treatment he could track. His heart thundered, and it skipped two extra beats. Dropping the water bottle to his lap, he fumbled his sleeves, haphazardly folding them back to see light bruising and dots from the all-too-familiar IV drip—they were new.
Then he knows. He knows.
Fang Duobing had caught the last train.
"You were on your side at the station when I'd arrived,” Fang Duobing voiced quietly, his hands tentative, proper at his sides. “The countryside town had only one large clinic. Limited beds. After they gave you the appropriate fluids for what they could do, I had to take you away."
Xiaobao, I must have scared you.
“Xiaohua, don’t be afraid.”
Li Lianhua looked up from his death grip spiral. He saw for the first time that Fang Duobing seemed to have aged in the shortest possible locket of time. He had sent him off to blossom in full reception of what glorious, respectable life a young master as qualified as him could ever be blessed. And so, he had dutifully left, diverting their paths. But, here Fang Duobing was by his weary feet and at his side, lost and found forevermore. He had grown, but with dark rims under his eyes and crinkled when he smiled. And then it blurred.
His round eyes never could conceal a drop of scorching tears after all.
I wish you were kinder to yourself, but you're Li Lianhua who had run through every route hundreds of times without an exit.
Nor what he had wanted, truly, and had made him happy.
All around were mellow beige-yellows and deep harvest hues in overextended plains that stretched onto the edge of the world. The two of them ebbed and flowed with their waves. Li Lianhua found himself unable to put it to words as difficult as it had been to contradict his heart from pen to paper in a letter.
And so, he had not.
Li Lianhua found that he did not have to either, now or ever. Fang Duobing's hands collected his strayed thoughts and kissed him chastely on the lips, filling in their blank pages. He sniffled when he pulled away, chuckling mutedly in uncharacteristic shyness.
Li Lianhua found that he wanted to hear such a sound from him every day for as long as they could stretch on this sea of gold.
“Xiaohua, are you comfortable?” Fang Duobing softly delivered afterwards, resuming to massage his feet and then his legs and arms until Li Lianhua found himself becoming surprisingly a temperature of all too warm.
When he spoke at last, it was only Xiaobao.
“There’s still something I haven’t seen, yet. I want to see it.” Li Lianhua tasted his words and then again, gently brushing Fang Duobing's lips.
“What is it?”
“The Milky Way against your back. On our bicycle.”
When the summer night came to a close, Fang Duobing would reply with the sunrise over morning crisp pastures. Li Lianhua would muse with the radiance of overhead noon abuzz with horses playing among the hay. They would perhaps follow with humming afternoons counting clouds under the canopy of aligning trees and first-row reservations for the warm blankets of sunset. Until the end, Li Lianhua would feel Fang Duobing with him. And, when he danced among the golden fields of barley with wildflowers woven into his hair, he was loved, and he was free.