Work Text:
Today, there is a fish.
The little hut creaks like a ghostly beggar wailing for alms and Fan Xiao’s bric-a-brac tower sways with it, freezing saltwater lapping hungrily at his toes. He’s lit his second-to-last match to see exactly what he expects, the dingy interior of the hut, the debris floating across the top of the invading ocean, and the splay of black hair faintly visible under the surface, strands spreading apart like seaweed on the shore.
Everything in its place—except for the fish.
It lays on one heaving, silver-scaled side atop a child’s paddleboard, which is bumping up against the tower to heaven his mother built to try and save him. The paddleboard has a smiling yellow emoji on it, obscured by a dying fish.
It is trying so hard to live. Starved of oxygen, it is still flopping and gasping and trying. He feels certain that it could save itself, that the board isn’t so wide, that the water isn’t too far, but he watches until the match burns down and the flame burns his fingers and he shakes the charred stick into the water with a soundless splash and in all that time, it’s barely moved at all.
It wants to live but it won't. He wants to die but he keeps living. This is the way of the world.
What would You Shulang do?
He lights the last match and scoots as far forward as he dares. The water, full of strange flickering shapes, seems to rise up to meet him, malignant, offering. Come to us, little Xiao. Slip beneath our waves and dream no more.
The tower shudders under him. A bit of something holding it up falls away, splashes into the water and he stills, a tide of bile rising in his throat.
The fish is still on the board, lethargic but flopping, trying to live.
He extends a foot, two trembling toes and pushes the side of the board, tips it over and the fish slides into the water with a barely audible plop.
And there, it's done, Fan Xiao the great fish rescuer, friend of all living things, practically a Buddha in his own right. Perhaps that's some weight of karma lifted from his shoulders and he'll need all the help he can get, because as he squirms his minuscule weight backwards, a chair holding up an angled table shifts under him, the tower collapses and he falls.
As always, the water rises to meet him.
"Fan Xiao!" Shulang wakes him or he wakes himself, gasping and flopping, desperate to breathe as he's dragged down, his eyes still open to see the corpse he falls past—
He clutches for an arm, a buoy, a savior. "…There was a fish," he whispers. "There was a fish this time."
"What?" Shulang says and he recoils from the question, expecting mockery or pity, but there is only confusion in those soulful brown eyes. "A fish??"
"…I think I saved it and died doing so. Stupid. I bet someone went on to catch and eat it later." He fumbles for a cigarette, then can't bring himself to light the match.
Shulang does it for him, cupping his hand around the flame to light his cigarette, to light his path. "I have no idea. If it was so stupid, why did you save it?"
Fan Xiao stares up at him, drags death into his lungs and exhales dry air, then says, "You tell me, my Bodhisattva. Maybe I'm trying to lighten my karmic load. Maybe I'm trying to be more like you."
"You've got a ways to go," Shulang says, having no idea how true that is, how much farther from heaven Fan Xiao falls every day. "Besides, I wouldn't die for a fish."
What would you die to save, Fan Xiao doesn't ask, eyes on the ceiling as he re-accustoms his lungs to air.
"You always drown in that dream anyway, though," Shulang takes his cigarette, inhales his ash, poisons himself beautifully in his company. "So why not save a fish, I guess."
It's such a logically made point that he has to laugh at it, then snatches the cigarette back and puts it, dangerously lit, to rest on the ashtray so he can roll atop Shulang. "Let me climb you all the way to heaven," he breathes.
"It's too late for this," his lover whines, but he accepts the first kiss with an open mouth and a willing, even whorish, tongue.
Fan Xiao lays with a man, lets the light singe his fingertips and feels the tower shudder beneath him in preparation for his final fall.
It's all right. When he sinks under the water this time, he won't drown alone.