Work Text:
1) blowing raspberries
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“Give it back!”
“Who’s making me? Your auntie? Your mommy?” The stout little kid snickered.
Jian Yi sniffled into the cold air, sprawled into the woodchips of his elementary school’s playground. December in Chengdu was colder than normal this year, and the cold bit at his nose until a thin trail of snot ran down his lip. Although, this time, Jian Yi’s sniffles were to keep the froggy in his throat at bay.
“Give it back!” Jian Yi croaked, with all the sternness he could muster (which wasn’t much— Jian Yi was considered a “crybaby” at the ill-informed opinions of his peers.) Instead of getting his toy back, the boy in front of him waved Jian Yi’s toy in slow, mocking arcs across the blue backdrop of the sky.
The little red truck was important. A present. For his last choir performance, which his mom couldn’t make it to, but assured him that she saw the recording. It was very important. Jian Yi puffed out his chest. He’d seen enough TV to know that superheroes and grown ups couldn’t give up, and they had to fight for what they believed in.
He gritted his little teeth and staggered to a standing position. Squinted menacingly. He stuck out his tongue.
Stupid face, taking Jian Yi’s toy truck. Stupid face. Stupid-face.
“You’re a stupid face and your pants are falling down,” Jian Yi spat back.
The boy’s face flushed red in indignation, and Jian Yi’s little red truck went flying towards the side of the slide.
Jian Yi watched in horror as the plastic splintered. Big, fat globs of tears streamed down Jian Yi’s face unrestrained, now that there was no reason to hold himself together.
Under the sound of his wailing, he heard quiet snickers come from his assailant. The world seemed to narrow into just that–Jian Yi’s cries and the other boy’s laughter.
The sounds pulled into time for a while longer. Long enough that his breathing became clogged with snot and his cries stopped from the difficulty of sniffling.
It was then that a figure stepped across his blurred vision and he could see the truck-destroyer take a step back. The blood was still rushing through his ears and his unrelenting hiccups drowned out the quiet but visibly heated exchange that happened in front of Jian Yi, and by the time Jian Yi rubbed all the tears out of his eyes, he was met with a face of rage from the boy who had stole his toy. The boy standing between them still had his back to Jian Yi, but he felt like he could recognize him.
Zheng Xi..?
In a flash, faster than Jian Yi could think to startle, Zheng Xi was sprawled on the ground in front of him. The boy Zheng Xi was facing off looked afraid of what he’d done, and after standing for a second in hesitation, he ran in the other direction.
Zheng Xi was now crumpled in a heap at Jian Yi’s feet, faint grumbling coming from where his face was looking away from Jian Yi.
After a moment of deliberation, Jian Yi hesitantly kneeled to join Zheng Xi on the ground.
“Why’d you do that?”
With their eyes at the same level, Jian Yi could follow Zheng Xi’s line of sight to a smear of blood across his right knee.
“I said I’d protect you.”
Zheng Xi was wincing, his face going pale when his pupils appeared to focus. Jian Yi felt his tummy get butterflies from the sight–no one had done that for him before.
Jian Yi also felt queasy seeing the blood, but he was brave, because grown ups were brave, and also because Zheng Xi was brave, so he couldn’t be upstaged.
“I know how to help!” Jian Yi said, in all of his braveness. “Trust me.”
Jian Yi made a move for his injury, but Zheng Xi made an aborted move away from him. Jian Yi glanced up at him.
Zheng Xi looked at him apprehensively, but moved his hands out of the way so Jian Yi could reach over and grab his knee.
Jian Yi gingerly brought his mouth closer to the torn skin, remembering his mom’s soft touch and her balmy lips on all his ouchies.
His lips made contact with Zheng Xi’s knee and he blew a wet, slobbery raspberry.
“Ew, Jian Yi–”
Jian Yi silenced him with another wet prt-t-t of his lips.
Feeling extremely proud of his first aid skills, Jian Yi rose back up and met Zhang Xi’s eyes–which he realized were screwed into a look of mild disgust.
“Jian Yi, I think you gave me cooties.”
2) tide pools
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Zi Qian swung open the door and stared.
A horrible cry ripped out from within Jian Yi’s lungs. There was a panic filling his chest cavity, and Zheng Xi was so beautiful.
Jian Yi crashed into his lips like a violent wave meeting the rocks, and for a second, the tide was still.
The moon pulled back and Zheng Xi pushed Jian Yi away with a strength Jian Yi had never been on the receiving end of. Jian Yi was going to be sick.
He ran.
3) christmas special
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“Jian Yi… Jian Yi, you’re too handsome…” Jian Yi’s colleague, with her eyes closed, stumbled forward amid the Christmas lights and made grabby hands at Jian Yi.
“Give me a hug, Jian Yi,” she mumbled into where she had smushed her face into his chest.
Jian Yi laughed out, an amused little thing, “Jiejie, you’re too drunk.” He pulled her close nonetheless, in a good-natured embrace. Behind him, he felt Zheng Xi staring, waiting for him to finish his goodbyes.
As Jian Yi herded her to her exasperated group of friends, she continued to babble about how he was perfect, and should therefore be her boyfriend. He couldn’t help the giggles that bubbled up in him as he bid them farewell.
“Zhan Xi, are we ready to go?” He turned back to look at Zheng Xi, and upon his grunt of confirmation, slung his arm over his shoulder and started their journey home.
It wasn’t long after, perhaps ten or so minutes of Jian Yi happily talking, that he realized Zheng Xi wasn’t really replying.
“I had so much fun today,” he looked over at Zheng Xi curiously, “But you don’t seem to be enjoying yourself. Did you not like your gift?”
“I liked it,” replied Zheng Xi noncommittally.
He frowned at first, running through the events of the night. Zheng Xi wasn’t lying, as far as he could tell.
But he also wasn’t happy, and the ever-so slight downturn of his lips clued Jian Yi into his not-so-happiness.
Was it the seaweed soup? Jian Yi now felt a slight prickle of anxiety. It was their first Christmas after Jian Yi returned, and he wanted it to be nice.
Maybe the fried man-tou was soggy?
Did he not like my friends?
His eyes widened a fraction.
Did he not like…?
Slowly but surely, clarity started to blossom in Jian Yi’s head, and the resulting glimmer in his eyes was gleeful and a little bit terrifying. He couldn’t stop the erratic twitch of his fingers, and he gave up on fighting the stretch of his lips.
In one big motion, Jian Yi yanked them away from the path that they were walking on into the snow covered stretch of trees beside the main path. He ignored Zheng Xi’s screeches following his back–he had him tight in his hand, and it didn’t really matter how much Zheng Xi very loudly complained, because he knew that Zheng Xi would never let him go.
Here, the snow reflected on everything, including Zheng Xi’s appalled stare and his ears, flushed an angry red from the cold.
Jian Yi brought his arms to circle around Zheng Xi–it was a bit hard, because his body and Zheng Xi’s were separated by several layers of fabric and puffy coats, and his arms barely met each other at the small of Zheng Xi’s back, but he did his best to squeeze. Sometimes, Zheng Xi could be so cute.
“Is my Zheng Xi jealous?” He sang into the junction of Zheng Xi’s hood and jacket. “I’ll hug you a lot too, don’t be upset anymore.” He rocked them back and forth, listening to the sputtering coming from above him.
“I’m really drunk, you know,” Zheng Xi muttered.
He raised his head to look at him. Zheng Xi usually had the expression of a little tiger cub, solemn and ready to throw himself one hundred percent into whatever Jian Yi needed him for.
The tip of his nose was red. Jian Yi reached his hands up to brush against it, and started to rub like he was starting a fire. Zheng Xi was protesting, but Jian Yi’s head and ears were filling with a dangerous static, getting louder by the second. The same dangerous static that led him to do dangerous things (a panicked smash of lips in front of Zheng Xi’s sister, a refusal to lie even though Zheng Xi was asking him to bare the most tender and embarrassing part of his feelings).
Without moving his fingers off Zheng Xi’s face, he leaned in until he could see the peach fuzz along Zheng Xi’s cheeks stand up from the cold. He trailed his eyes down to Zheng Xi’s lips. Underneath his touch, or maybe his scrutinizing gaze, Zheng Xi tensed up to the point Jian Yi could feel it even with most of his body not in contact with him.
The static was so loud.
Jian Yi let himself fall to his impulses, forehead bumping into Zheng Xi’s and hands falling from his face to his neck. Zheng Xi was frozen underneath him.
The kiss was so feather-light, Jian Yi hardly felt skin come in contact with his lips. If Zheng Xi had his eyes closed (he didn’t), Jian Yi was sure it would’ve been mistaken for a small snowflake, landing and melting. He’d left it at the far corner of Zheng Xi’s mouth, where soy sauce had kept pooling less than an hour ago. In the restaurant, Jian Yi had made a show of wiping it off with his palm and licking it, and was met with hollers and laughs around the table. This–a haphazardly placed peck, too close to Zheng Xi's actual lips–was really what he wanted to do.
The electricity and radio murmurs left Jian Yi in a rush, and he let his head fall back into the crook of Zheng Xi’s shoulder.
“I really want to kiss you.”
“Like hell I’d kiss you, fuck off,” Zheng Xi replied, sounding muffled because Jian Yi was buried so deep into the other man’s coat.
He thought he felt Zheng Xi’s skin get a degree warmer from where his hands still hung around his neck.
4) limbo
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Two years. Seven hundred and thirty days. Seventeen thousand five hundred twenty hours.
Three hours. Three hours since Jian Yi had come back. Three hours since he touched the old wood of Zheng Xi’s doorframe. Three hours since he let his head drop with a dull thud onto Zheng Xi’s collarbone, too afraid of his expression. Three hours since snot and tears had started streaming from his face.
Two hours since he was dragged inside by Zheng Xi. Two hours since he had risked a glance up, fearing what he might see–and at the same time, not really caring. The part that hurt the most, that risked the most, was hoping in the first place. The fallout was just that–fallout, consequences. Jian Yi had quickly learned that even the smallest actions turned out to have big consequences.
And so, Jian Yi had hidden away his face until the clock struck one hour.
One hour since he entered limbo. One hour until he stirred when he felt a gust of wind brush past him. One hour since he felt Zheng Xi carry him like a ghost, a fragile thing about to vanish, into his room. On his stomach, on a bed that didn’t belong to him. One hour since limbo.
Jian Yi didn’t really sleep anymore, and was horribly aware of it. Couldn’t sleep, learned not to. Limbo meant he could react to threats quicker, more efficiently (threats like the crickets, or the whistle of the leaves, or the sound of a brush of fingers onto a trigger). Jian Yi had learned to limbo, to be in limbo, to be limbo.
On the cusp of the two years, Jian Yi thought of He Tian sometimes. In a sick sort of way, envied him. Anyone who passed by him felt a sort of dangerous aura around him, despite his allure and charm. In the earliest days of their youth together, the three of them saw the darkness He Tian sometimes bore to the world. Jian Yi would have preferred a darkness over this. Jian Yi had ran far past darkness, too far down the seesaw, and he had no one to sit on the other end.
Jian Yi was a blistering bright wall of white. No darkness. Clean white walls and clinical floors. Jian Yi was a supernova that had once been darkness but gathered so much of itself it burst. Jian Yi was limbo.
Jian Yi felt the limbo in the hesitance of Zheng Xi’s fingers at the hem of his shirt. He felt himself float closer to the side of limbo Zheng Xi existed on–the plane of coherency, awakeness, as Zheng Xi decided to push his shirt up to his shoulders.
In the inaction and complete void of movement afterwards, Jian Yi found himself sinking away from the surface, closer to an awkward approximation of rest.
Until he felt a full body shiver go through him, and realized only half a second later that a pinky was brushing over the scars on his back.
White scars, imposter tissue healed over in a uniform parallel stretch.
Dark scars–newer scars.
Raised scars. Knife fights. Training, as it was referred to.
Zheng Xi’s up-and-down movements along the expanse of his back dragged him to and from the edge of consciousness. He touched Jian Yi gingerly, as if his skin were brittle. If Jian Yi were a weaker man, perhaps he would have dreamt his ministrations came under a different situation–under a ginkgo tree, on a sunny day. There’d be no anguish on his behalf, and the love in Zheng Xi’s touches weren’t mixed with uglier, rawer emotions.
Zheng Xi’s hand came to rest at the nape of Jian Yi’s neck. Jian Yi wondered if Zheng Xi could tell he wasn’t all the way gone. If Zheng Xi could tell his mind was running laps while his body was making an attempt at slumber.
In a move he knew he’d later blame on the haze of fatigue, Jian Yi laced his fingers through Zheng Xi’s. He moved their interlocked hands closer to his face, until his breath ghosted against the back of Zheng Xi’s hand. He was stiff in Jian Yi’s palm.
Jian Yi moved his head in a movement so small it was barely perceptible (if not for the intense laser stare he knew Zheng Xi was fixing him with) to inch closer to the other boy. He brought his lips to graze against the back of Zheng Xi’s knuckles. It was winter, and his skin was chapped.
Three minutes since his mind went quiet. Three minutes since he fell asleep holding Zheng Xi’s slack hand.
Three minutes since Jian Yi left limbo.
5) commute
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“Zhan Zheng Xi, don’t boot me out,” Jian Yi whimpered.
“Jian Yi, you have to go–” Zheng Xi pulled one of Jian Yi’s dirty socks out of his dress shoes. He contemplated for a second–only for second, and without much deliberation, tossed it to where Jian Yi’s voice was coming from.
Jianyi groaned out, sliding down the kitchen island. The two of them had got home late last night, and so they hadn’t had time to clear the dishes, which led in turn to the present moment— the moment where Jian Yi was pouting at Zheng Xi’s back and his hair was getting progressively closer to a plate of chili oil.
“I can’t be late, Jian Yi,” he glanced impatiently around the apartment if he was searching for something, “It’s my first week with this job.”
Jian Yi smiled dopily, his face squishing against the cool granite counter. From his sideways angle, Zheng Xi’s gelled hair and dress shirt were even more attractive.
He’s kind of hot as a salaryman…
Zheng Xi’s head whipped around. “What was that?”
Jian Yi’s back seemed to straighten out of its own accord, moving so fast Jian Yi felt several cracks and pops resound up his spine to his skull. He grimaced.
“Actually, Jian Yi, you need to leave sooner than me. Your class is in thirty minutes and your commute is forty,” Zheng Xi said with a furrowed brow as he caught sight of the clock.
“You are kicking me out,” Jian Yi mumbled glumly. He began to slouchily move off the kitchen bar stool and towards his coat.
“When are you going to move in with me,” Jian Yi whined. “What part of ‘taking care of me’ do you not understand?’”
“Jian Yi, we’re signing a lease tomorrow.”
At the end of his sentence, Jian Yi could feel Zheng Xi leveling his back with an unimpressed stare before he even turned around. Jian Yi grabbed the hair tie he was looking for and turned to face Zheng Xi.
As soon as Jian Yi met his gaze, Zheng Xi perked up at something above Jian Yi’s shoulder. Jian Yi craned his neck to spot the brown laptop bag on the couch next to him, and grabbed it with a languid sweep of his arm.
“My classes are too fucking early,” Jian Yi grumbled and dragged his feet in the general direction of the door. Zheng Xi hummed in acknowledgment.
“The professor sucks anyway. He’s so old fashioned and he keeps telling me to cut my hair.” His trudging and unsocked feet squeaked against the hardwood. Zheng Xi let out another hum.
“I thought the class was going to be an easy elective credit.” He reached the kitchen island, and discarded the chili oil as he continued to talk. Zheng Xi hummed yet again while he grabbed his laptop bag.
“No! I’m already on my second paper!” Jian Yi exclaimed, swinging his backpack on. His hand was on the doorknob when he was met with silence.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Jian Yi turned around inquisitively. He locked eyes with Zheng Xi’s expectant look, hands still rifling through his laptop bag.
They descended into a comical silence as Jian Yi blinked slowly at him and wracked his brain. He had his pencil, his notebook, and headphones.
A slight frown marred his face. No, he shouldn’t be missing anything.
Seconds ensued of pure silence, Jian Yi staring at Zheng Xi dumbly. Then, the confusion and awkward feeling of the teacher suddenly calling on him dissipated as a horrible, terrible, hilarious idea crossed his head. His eyes curled into little half-moons with the deviousness of his mischief.
Sorry, Xixi!
In a great leap, with airtime that should not have been feasible in their three feet of distance, Jian Yi jumped into the center of Zheng Xi’s chest. Zheng Xi caught Jian Yi with the practiced air of one who had done the same action a million times prior, with one hand holding up his legs and another one on his back. The laptop bag had been discarded on the floor in a heap, forgotten for a short lapse of time.
“Jian Yi, what are you—“ Zheng Xi cut himself off, sputtering. Jian Yi had stuck his tongue in his ear.
“That’s fucking gross—“
He responded by opening his mouth and leaving a giant sloppy kiss on Zheng Xi’s hairline.
“You’re gonna get hair gel in your mouth, stop—“
Jian Yi broke away, grinning ear to ear.
“Zhan Xixi, if you wanted a goodbye kiss, you could’ve just asked!” Jian Yi cooed, nuzzling Zheng Xi’s ear.
“I was going to say,” he smacked the back of Jian Yi’s head, “that you left your textbook in my bag. It’s heavy as shit.”
Jian Yi blinked once. Twice.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, dipshit.”
Jian Yi felt sheepish for only a fraction of a second before he dissolved into giggles along Zheng Xi’s shoulders.
Zheng Xi carded his hands through Jian Yi’s scalp with affection charged in his fingertips. He could feel a warm numbing sensation everywhere the pads of Zheng Xi’s fingers touched.
“C’mon, you’re gonna be late. You have a train to catch.”
+1) pad thai vs. chow fun (k.o!)
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Jian Yi whined, whined, and whined incessantly from where he was perched onto the back of the sofa. If Zheng Xi had not spent nearly (over) half his life listening to these cries and subsequently honing himself to the different whines of Jian Yi, he might have mistaken Jian Yi’s pitchy voice for the whine he let out when he was hungry, or when he was attention-starved, or when he was grumpy.
Zheng Xi had spent nearly (over) half his life listening to Jian Yi’s cries. He knew exactly what this particular whine was, and he petulantly fired back with a merciless smash of the controller, that Jian Yi’s whimpers had fallen on deaf ears.
K.O!
“Xixi…!” Jian Yi cried out from above him. His legs, which had been bracketing Zheng Xi’s shoulders and holding himself precariously on the stiff sofa backing, tightened around Zheng Xi’s neck as he made an impressive and rather acrobatic maneuver.
Jian Yi’s back hit Zheng Xi’s lap with a whump, with his ratty t-shirt briefly billowing around him like a puffy cloud. His knees were still by Zheng Xi’s ears, but now his ankles were crossed and pulling down Zheng Xi’s neck as a result. Zheng Xi could feel Jian Yi’s socked toes trying to edge closer to his ear-hole.
“Xi…Zheng Ge…” Jian Yi had picked up a new skill for making his eyes grow watery and glassy on command. For a long while after Jian Yi had miraculously and terribly rematerialized himself into Zheng Xi’s life, the only times Zheng Xi had seen him cry were fiery, self-implosive (the day he fell back into Zheng Xi’s arms, in Zheng Xi’s doorframe) or cold and reflexive (eyes drifting open at night, unseeing, impassive, too far away). Now, seeing him force his lips into a needlessly dramatic pout and batting his wet eyelashes made the back of Zheng Xi’s eyes flood with something heady and hot. A bit like warm beer.
Zheng Xi looked at him for a second. One, two, three. Four–no, on the fourth blink, Zheng Xi and Jian Yi were in unison. Zheng Xi broke into a shit-eating grin.
“We’re eating salty-fish fried rice and beef chow fun tonight!” Zheng Xi crowed triumphantly at Jian Yi. Jian Yi only slid his head further down where it rested on Zheng Xi’s lap. Gone were the tears, but the pout deepened until Zheng Xi saw wrinkles.
“Don’t make that face, you’ll get wrinkles,” Zheng Xi said, while he absentmindedly thumbed at the creases in Jian Yi’s scrunched up chin.
“I want Thai food.”
Zheng Xi snorted.
“Yeah, well, I warned you–I've been undefeated at this game ever since it came out.”
Jian Yi flailed and gasped out, “What about Zi Qian?”
“My own sister doesn’t count. She’s got us both beat by yards,” Zheng Xi scoffed.
There was a pause, a lull in their conversation while Jian Yi took the time to ponder this fact of nature. Amidst the silence, Zheng Xi drank in Jian Yi’s furrowed brow. Where Jian Yi was livewire, Zheng Xi was all stone. Where Zheng Xi was all curled fists and the puffed out chest of a protector, Jian Yi was a pile of oncoming limbs. Where Jian Yi sometimes fell into a darkness, an otherness, a night within the night, Zheng Xi was a patient river to wash some of it away.
Jian Yi had seemed to reach an epiphany (about Zi Qian, no less) and was itching to impart it upon Zheng Xi. Zheng Xi had come to a quiet epiphany too. The time and age had mellowed them–JianYiandZhengXi, ZhengXiandJianYi–out, but had left Zheng Xi with a vague hunger and fear that he could never have enough of Jian Yi. That he would either eat him or weld him to himself so he could never leave again. His fingers twitched to start the melting and the fire where Jian Yi’s hipbones met his own body.
“Xixi, would you love me if I was a stinky old man–mmph!”
Zheng Xi thought for a fleeting moment with his tongue pressed against Jian Yi’s lips, that if he wanted to ask stupid questions, he would get stupid answers. Then, Jian Yi opened his mouth and Zheng Xi’s thoughts mostly dissipated.
The swipe of his tongue along the sharpness of Jian Yi’s canines made something that felt like a shot of Everclear pool in his stomach, and the soft gasps that echoed in the quieted room made the blood rush down past his stomach. The press of tongue to tongue, mouth to mouth, shifting bodies and positions lit petrol in his veins. Muttered and muffled sounds that melded together, unclear whom the source had been, rushed like a good salve into Zheng Xi’s head and bounced along his cranium. Jian Yi had groaned into Zheng Xi’s mouth and pressed himself from where he was pushed into the couch up into Zheng Xi’s abs. It was then that Zheng Xi broke away, sucking in air desperately. It was over in a minute, a short lifetime.
In a horribly impulsive fashion that Zheng Xi only seemed to favor when it came to Jian Yi, he had tried to sate the ever consuming hunger for Jian Yi by trying to eat him, as he had thought to himself earlier. Eating him looked and felt a whole lot like kissing the daylights out of him, and in an equally horrible fashion, it had kind of worked. Zheng Xi felt a wanton sort of satiation settle at the bottom of his stomach. He risked a glance at Jian Yi, still out of breath beneath him. His pupils were blown wide, his lips swollen, red, and shiny. And he was staring. Zheng Xi felt the blood rush all the way down.
“Xi, you could have just said you were into old stinky men-”
Immediately a fist slammed down on Jian Yi’s head until he was forced into silence, and the dark gaze that looked at Jian Yi like he wanted to consume him whole was now just mostly dark out of vaguely murderous intentions.
A hand found its way into stroking Jian Yi’s soft, soft hair anyway and he hoped the soft smile he sent was enough to answer the silent question that hung in the air.
What happens to us now?
One hand was fiddling with the dial screen on his phone, and the other migrated from Jian Yi’s hair to his jaw. He left a chaste kiss there, stroking his lip afterward.
Zheng Xi and Jian Yi. Best friends. Forevers. Jian Yi and Zheng Xi.
“Hello, Taste of Thai? Yeah, Red Curry with extra spice, and Pad Thai mild.”