Chapter Text
“I love you”, Cheng Xiaoshi says as if it’s written in the universe, as if he’s accepted it.
What
They were sitting at the island in their kitchen when Cheng Xiaoshi dropped the bomb. It only shook the bowl as his chopsticks fell out of his hands and Lu Guang’s whole knowledge on the timelines.
“What,” he croaks eloquently. Cheng Xiaoshi smiles, even huffs a laugh, like it’s funny.
“I’m in love with you,” he restates, and he folds his arms on the table and rests his head on it. His hair falls gently over his face, making him look just so soft. Cheng Xiaoshi looks up at Lu Guang with the same look in his eyes he always had in every single timeline.
It stabs Lu Guang in his gut and everywhere else.
“No, you don’t,” he replies back like it’s a fact. Lu Guang lives, Cheng Xiaoshi dies, Cheng Xiaoshi isn’t in love with him.
You can’t.
Cheng Xiaoshi frowns and straightens up, and Lu Guang feels a deep dissatisfaction at the fact that he caused that.
“How do you know what I feel?” the black-haired asks, his tone confused and a bit upset.
“Because…” the white-haired trails off, realizing he should’ve kept his mouth shut.
Because in every single timeline, every single time I go back, you have never loved me like I do. I would have known, if you loved me, because I know what people in love look like. And you’re looking at me like how you’ve always looked at me. Nothing has changed, and there is nothing I can do to change how you truly feel about me. You can’t love me, you never have and you never will. If you love me like you say you do, then that means you’ve always loved me, and I can’t handle that.
“Because what, Lu Guang? Don’t leave a man hanging here!”, Cheng Xiaoshi jokes, but Lu Guang knows Cheng Xiaoshi more than anything else so he notices the tense muscles in his hands and the very slight but very noticeable (to Lu Guang only, of course) furrow in his brow.
“Because you don’t.” Lu Guang said simply, then got up to go to their room and think of all the possible changes he made in this timeline. Surely Lu Guang getting boba with full sugar instead of half sugar couldn’t have caused this?
Lu Guang leaves his dish in the sink on the way out. Cheng Xiaoshi doesn’t look at him at all, doesn’t even look up. He looks deep in thought. Lu Guang, trying to shove down his disappointment (because he shouldn’t feel disappointed), walks up the stairs to his bed.
They don’t bring it up again, not until the day before everything went wrong. The night before Cheng Xiaoshi’s death anniversary.
Everything was going smoothly, and there were no changes to the timeline except the nodes he needed to change and Cheng Xiaoshi’s confession. Their relationship didn’t falter after the failed confession, the only changes were Cheng Xiaoshi’s gentler behavior. He didn’t know how to take that, so he tried not to worry about it as their trip to Bridon was coming up.
(That’s a lie, he thought about it every waking moment. It consumed him, the proclamation and the behavior, so much so that he got even less sleep. Even when he was asleep, he dreamed of a pile of blood and chants of ‘I love you’s.
He thinks this will destroy him irrevocably, til he’s on the floor, trying to pick up every piece of himself torn down by Cheng Xiaoshi. Everything: every road, every line, every sunlight, every piece of dust and speck of light always led to Cheng Xiaoshi.)
He knows he shouldn’t justify what he’s about to do, not when Cheng Xiaoshi’s sleeping so peacefully, not when he doesn’t know that tomorrow will be his death and Lu Guang will have to start all over again. But he wants it, he wants it so badly that no line of reasoning could ever hold him back. This love’s already consumed him, the black hole that is Cheng Xiaoshi sucking him in and stretching him thinner and thinner til he knows nothing but Cheng Xiaoshi.
So he does it, he does the thing that he’s never done in the hundreds of other timelines, never even thought of doing it (he’s imagined, though, if there is a slim chance he would ever get to kiss him). Lu Guang kisses him, a soft peck on even softer lips that belong none other than to Cheng Xiaoshi.
He’s never been so happy and so regretful in his whole life.
I’m sorry, he thinks grimly, hovering ever-so-slightly above Cheng Xiaoshi’s face, for my selfishness. He brushes his nose against Cheng Xiaoshi’s cheeks and kisses his high cheekbones.
One more, he pleads to himself. He knows he’s being greedy, knows he is greedy, but everything he does is out of pure greed. Lu Guang gives one last kiss on Cheng Xiaoshi’s forehead. It’s a lasting one, with the thought that this will be the last one I’ll ever give hammered into his brain trying to draw it out. He stares at Cheng Xiaoshi, at his curly hair falling perfectly over his long eyelashes and lips drawn out in a pout and sighs.
I wonder if I’ll ever see you alive and happy again.
Lu Guang leaves Cheng Xiaoshi’s side and climbs up the ladder. The silence of the room is heavy on his back as the true impact of what he did settles with it. He lays down on his bed and wishes this will be the last time he’ll go back in time, and the first time he’ll see Cheng Xiaoshi after September 13th.
Lu Guang knows his wish will not come true.