Work Text:
>>> silly monkey: hey man, you holding up alright? I know it’s been a few weeks since the welfare home was shut down and the director was arrested, but still, being reminded of what must be such a raw childhood wound can’t be easy. Let me know if you ever need to talk
Bai Liu read the message from his friend, Mu Sicheng, silently as he took the train home from work, though he left him on seen because replying took too much of his limited monthly data. Despite the contact name he had the other man saved under, Mu Sicheng was one of his most trusted friends, and a person he wouldn’t trade for the world. Just as Bai Liu had been there for the other man when his boyfriend had died in a sudden campus bus accident a while back, leaving him saddled with taking care of said boyfriend’s kid sister alone, Mu Sicheng was now offering to be there for Bai Liu in the midst of the inevitable chaos as he went public with the story of him and his boyfriend’s childhood abuse.
Getting to where he and Xie Ta (said boyfriend) was now hadn’t been easy. Bai Liu had had to save up money for months engaging in acts he’d rather not dwell on now to even start to think about leaving, and at the end, it still wasn’t enough, because the night Xie Ta had almost died because of his actions, the night he’d never forget because it had been the very night that caused his aversion to water - he knew they had to leave, or this welfare home would quite literally kill them. So he packed up his stuff, and Xie Ta’s as well, and they fled that very night.
Surviving on the streets hadn’t been easy, but Bai Liu was smart and crafty, and he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty if it would ensure the survival of him and those he cared about. He clawed his way up, and Xie Ta helped as well, even if Bai Liu originally wanted to do everything himself out of guilt for not being able to do anything while Xie Ta suffered before. Eventually, they turned eighteen, and Bai Liu managed to find a (legal) job that would accept high school dropout. From there, he’d worked his ass off until he and Xie Ta could afford their first apartment, a run-down place in a subsidized area, but a place nonetheless.
For years, it had only been them, and that’s all Bai Liu thought it would ever be. However, when he was 20, he would meet this cop after accidentally helping the man catch a criminal, a cop who would turn out to have been another victim of the welfare home that tortured Xie Ta when they were kids. Together with Lu Yizhan, who, of course, was the cop, Xie Ta and Bai Liu would work to gather evidence over the years, eventually bringing everything to the press and helping free the children of the welfare home when Bai Liu was 25, who were currently being held in other foster homes as they were placed with families looking to adopt them. When he was 23, the son of his boss’ boss would pull strings to help Bai Liu attain a higher-paying job, which would help him and Xie Ta afford to move into a nice home.
When he was 24, he would meet Mu Sicheng and his boyfriend through an online video game… a year later, Mu Sicheng would call him crying at midnight, sobbing over how he’d lost both his first friend, a girl he’d known in high school, and his first love, a man by the name of Liu Huai, in the span of only a few years. That was also the first time he’d heard of Liu Jiayi, a young girl with a profound dislike for men who reminded him, surprisingly, of himself.
But that was then. A few months had passed away since then, and Liu Jiayi had warmed up at least slightly to Mu Sicheng being her new guardian, and Lu Yizhan and his wife, Fang Dian, as her new ‘parents’ - they had adopted her on paper to prevent her from being sent back to live with her uncle, as Mu Sicheng had no legal right to take care of her as just her brother’s boyfriend. Therapy, which Bai Liu was also going to, had likely helped with that as well, though.
Oh, this is my stop, Bai Liu suddenly realized, the slowing of the train as it stopped at his station shaking him out of his thoughts of the past.
Getting off the train, he headed in the direction of his and Xie Ta’s new home, making a temporary stop to pick up some groceries as they were running low at home.
When he entered the house, however, Xie Ta wasn’t in the living room as usual, waiting to greet Bai Liu when he arrived home every Friday because Xie Ta’s job finished early that day. Setting off on a search throughout the house after setting his bags down, Bai Liu would eventually find his silly boyfriend fast asleep in their bed, broom somehow still in chis hand from the cleaning he had done earlier, judging from the appearance of the house.
Kissing Xie Ta on the forehead, Bai Liu smiled as he removed the broom from his hand gently and went off to the kitchen to prepare dinner, a task he always did - Xie Ta, with all his other charming traits, could unfortunately not cook for the life of him. Two hours later, and their meal was done, and Bai Liu was preparing to wash the dishes as he served up a plate for him and Xie Ta - he would fetch his partner afterwards - when he suddenly felt two pairs of arms wrap around his back, and relaxed into the hold as a head that would always be taller than him buried itself into Bai Liu’s neck.
“Hey, Liu,” Xie Ta whispered, and Bai Liu let out a content sigh. “I’m glad to see you again. Work was so boring today.”
Xie Ta didn’t exactly add the words ‘without you’ to his sentence, but Bai Liu got the gist regardless. Similarly, Xie Ta never heard the words ‘I missed you too’ come from Bai Liu’s mouth, but he could still tell he had from the way he abandoned the dishes to turn around and hug Xie Ta back just as tightly, or the way he curled up against him as they slept together in bed that night, acting as the little spoon, which was a rare sight for Bai Liu, given how the man hated feeling ‘little’ in the slightest way.
Not that Bai Liu’s height ever affected the way Xie Ta saw him. Sure, the other man may have been smaller then him, but the space Bai Liu took up in Xie Ta’s heart made him seem ten foot tall.