Work Text:
In another timeline, Cheng Xiaoshi grows old.
He lets his hair grow out longer in between cuts, and he starts to fill out his clothes a little more in places he didn't before. He plays basketball until his knees stop cooperating and trades in his fashionable shoes for slip-ons with arch support. He starts printing digital at the photo studio because it doubles business with just a fraction of the effort. He gets reading glasses, and on their days off, he and Lu Guang wear them at the same time. Qiao Ling calls him "old man" in his early forties despite being one year older and he waves her off every time.
In that timeline, Lu Guang grows old beside him, and might even go before him. His own father had a heart attack in his early fifties—it only makes sense that genetics would take him too, not that Cheng Xiaoshi would let him waste his health.
They take walks together. Cheng Xiaoshi tells Lu Guang about what movies are coming out and how video games are getting dumber—and Lu Guang listens. Sometimes he even gets a word in edgewise.
But mostly, when they grow old together, Lu Guang doesn't need to talk. He knows they have all the time in the world. It doesn't grow thin and brittle and crumble between his fingers. He doesn't keep the world spinning like plates on sticks, he doesn't have to look over his shoulder.
But that's not his timeline.
In this timeline, Lu Guang knows what fresh blood feels like as it cools, soaking into the fabric of his pants and slowly going dark. He can see the way the gushing turns into a trickle as the pulse slows to a stop. He couldn't describe the smell if he tried, but it's burned into his sinuses and lives behind his eyes in fumes, it sticks to the walls and the furniture like old cigarette smoke, always lingering, always lingering.
In this timeline, Cheng Xiaoshi doesn't grow old, and that knowledge singes Lu Guang’s edges like a hot iron to rice paper.
Sometimes Lu Guang catches himself staring.
He gets stuck on the way Cheng Xiaoshi’s face is still soft, unmarked by the lines that should form at the corners of his eyes from laughing at all of his own stupid jokes. Stares at hands that will never grow weathered, a back that will never stoop, hair that will never go gray.
In that other timeline, they argue all the time about dinner. Cheng Xiaoshi wants hot pot again and Lu Guang sighs, says his stomach can’t handle all that spice anymore. He suggests something milder. They compromise—they always compromise, because they have decades to figure it out.
But here, Lu Guang memorizes every single meal. He quietly notes the way Cheng Xiaoshi hisses when he burns his tongue on soup that’s too hot, how he picks the vegetables out of his fried rice when he’s in a foul mood, how he bites his lip when he steals bites off Lu Guang’s plate when he thinks he isn’t looking. Lu Guang catalogues it all—Cheng Xiaoshi’s nose wrinkles when he tastes something unexpectedly bitter, and hums with satisfaction when he finds something he likes.
These mundane moments are precious when he knows they’re finite.
In a world where they grow old together, Lu Guang complains about Cheng Xiaoshi leaving his socks on the floor, and how he uses up all the hot water in the shower and leaves crumbs on the counter.
The complaints are worn smooth like river stones because they’ve had this damn conversation a thousand times and they’ll have it a thousand more.
But in this timeline Lu Guang picks up the socks without a word. He doesn’t mention the crumbs and he’s grateful for the cold showers because it means Cheng Xiaoshi has been there.
And the worst part of it all—it’s not the blood. It’s not the way Cheng Xiaoshi cries Lu Guang or I’m sorry or please save them or even that broken say something. Nor is it the frantic attempts to rewind from the start, just one more time.
No. The worst part is the dead space between moments, the string between the pearls, when Cheng Xiaoshi laughs at something on his phone, absently hums as he organizes photos, falls asleep on the couch slack jawed. It’s so violently mundane it makes Lu Guang turn inside out. How easy it is to pretend they have forever like this until he remembers they don’t, because that’s not the timeline they were born into.
Sometimes Lu Guang reads when he can’t sleep—which is often these days—and recently he’s been stuck on mythology. Ancient stories across cultures that circle like buzzards around love that defies death.
He comes back to Orpheus—how could he not?—but not the pretty version they teach in school. The real descent. The kind that leaves you changed.
They don’t tell stories about the smell. Death has a particular sweetness to it, cloying and wrong, that coats your throat and makes you gag. They don’t explain that the darkness isn’t just a flat black—it’s the absence of direction, heavy and pressing, like being buried alive. Your own breathing becomes thunderous in your ears and every footfall echoes against itself. The dead don’t rest quietly—they don’t tell you that. They moan and whisper and lie to you. They know your name. Their voices layer slick like oil paint, and sometimes—sometimes, you recognize one of them.
There’s a timeline where he and Cheng Xiaoshi grow old together and he never learns what that sounds like. He doesn’t have to feel his way through corridors of black and bone, following a song only he can hear. He never makes bargains with ugly things that shouldn’t exist or looks into eyes that reflect nothing back.
In that other timeline, when Cheng Xiaoshi dies—and he will, eventually, because he won’t allow Lu Guang to go first—of old age or illness or just time wearing away his edges—Lu Guang mourns him properly. He cries at the funeral and keeps some of his things and visits his grave on his birthday. He lives with the ache instead of against it.
But here, in this timeline, Lu Guang descends. Again and again and again.
They say that Orpheus looked back because he loved too much—he couldn’t trust that Eurydice was really there. But Lu Guang thinks they got it wrong. It’s much more likely that Orpheus looked back because he knew—somewhere deep in his bones, in the parts of him that had touched death—that it wouldn’t work, because some things, once broken, can’t be fixed. Love, no matter how fierce, can’t undo what’s already done.
But still he tries. He walks into that terrible dark, because what else do you do when the alternative is letting go?
In the timeline where Cheng Xiaoshi grows old, his hair goes gray at the temples first, then spreads like ink in water. His laugh lines deepen and his hands grow spotted with age. He complains about his back after long days and Lu Guang massages the knots from his shoulders, pretending to be annoyed when he nods off under his touch.
But that’s not the timeline they were born into.
In this timeline, Cheng Xiaoshi stays twenty-one forever, young and bright and just out of reach. A star that died light-years ago but still shines from here.
Lu Guang knows how the story really ends—not with a reunion, not with happily ever after. Orpheus emerges empty-handed and the world looks forever changed. Washed out like a photograph left too long in the sun. Colors seem muted, food tastes of ash, sound is hollow, stories are told wrong. But still he sings, because it’s the only thing left that makes any sense.
They don’t grow old together. When one of them goes, the other can’t continue on. In this timeline, Lu Guang is Orpheus with his lyre, returning to and emerging from the underworld. He plays the same song over and over, wishing this time it could be enough.