Work Text:
Half on trained instinct, he recognizes early: Lu Guang is lying about something.
/
Evasive slots into Xiao Li’s head alongside other traits: cold. Strategic. Guarded.
Cheng Xiaoshi parts himself open, raw, to help; Qiao Ling is diplomatically polite and empathetic, hands still-shaking from the washed-off blood when she sits in the hospital room they’ve convened together in. Lu Guang is close-mouthed and untrusting (had said no handed an envelope pertaining an open case, entire body a taut line; hides the photograph the hooded figure offers him until forced to expose it). Scolds Cheng Xiaoshi quick and harsh the way he would a child; draws out guidelines and warnings with practice; doesn’t speak to Xiao Li except stiffly, put in a position where he needs to. Something unidentifiable sitting underneath the control of his exterior. Something dishonest at the forefront.
Lu Guang bleeds into his hospital gown and, with Cheng Xiaoshi in the past of his body, walks into a kidnapping. First impressions take less precedence after.
(In the tunnel, with terror and rage naked on his face— )
/
“Is he much clearer for you?” Xiao Li asks, dry. Looking down the neatly filled out form Lu Guang had handed back about the abduction, cryptically-sparse details capturing broad strokes.
Cheng Xiaoshi, restless in his hospital bed, dutifully filling out his own form in blockier handwriting, laughs. Startled, with fondness to it. He’ll say, half-asleep with the pain medication wearing off when some time has passed, loose-lipped in a more sincere answer, Lu Guang will tell me when I need to know, as if an extension of faith. Patient. A private language running underneath the words, insular and complex and all-at-once simple.
Xiao Li will tamp down on the memory of a different faith betrayed and take it as given.
Later, a similar question towards Qiao Ling— later, gnawing at him. Bluntly impulsive. Deliberating. Lu Guang is hiding something: do you know?
Qiao Ling thinks about it for longer than Cheng Xiaoshi had.
Her expression is different.
( —Memories that don't belong to her sitting in her head, tongue bitten to the quick: Qiao Ling considers her brother dead. )