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He couldn't remember anymore how long he'd been in that horrendous hell of white, sterile walls and bedsheets.
They brought him food three times per day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner- meager meals that barely kept his stomach from rumbling. Never enough to be truly filling.
At first, he tried keeping track. After four days, they'd caught on and made their schedules more unpredictable until he couldn't tell anymore how much time passed. Sometimes, there couldn't be more than two hours between meals. Sometimes, it felt as though a day passed.
At first, he'd banged on the door until his hand was bloody and screamed himself hoarse, yelling profanities and curses and threats. He just wanted to go home, but they wouldn't let him leave the room.
At first, he fought whenever they brought him food and held him down to take samples of his blood and swabbed the inside of his mouth. Once, he bit someone. He'd gotten hit for his efforts and stopped fighting for... one? two? days.
It was only after he'd gone from cursing them to begging that they finally showed their true faces.
They pretended to feel sympathy, told him he was sick. They claimed that they were helping him. They told him he couldn't leave until they understood what was wrong with him better. They told him not to take the IV out, despite him kicking and thrashing.
He did take the IV out. It took no time at all for them to barge back in and repeat the process.
After the third time, they sedated him before stabbing him with the needle.
When he came to, he was in a straitjacket. The hand with the IV just barely free enough for them to access it easily and for him to be unable to do anything about it.
He refused to eat, after that.
He wasn't sick, he refused to believe that. He felt fine, up until he'd been locked in here. He couldn't even remember why, how and when he'd been- but it was fine. He was fine. He'd get out soon.
Despite hunger leaving him feel sick, he refused to eat. Meal times were a fight. Sometimes, he bit them and other times he managed to headbutt them. Eventually, he grew too weak to fight back properly and could do little more than try to refuse- in the end, they simply sedated him after all.
Less of a struggle, someone had muttered, why not do this from the start?
The drugs kept him in a semi-conscious state, much to his regret. Still in testing, he'd overheard someone say. He desperately wished his senses were shut off, alas it was more like being locked into his own head.
He couldn't speak nor move beyond his eyes, but he could still hear and see and feel.
Desperately, he wished he couldn't feel.
They strapped him to a rolling table. That was the first time he was brought out of the room. Soon enough, he wished he'd been left there to rot.
He said nothing as they stripped him down - he couldn't, after all - and while their hands were steady and professional, it proved no comfort.
During it all, he tried to ignore the hands burning into his skin and imagined himself far, far away from it all. Imagined Cheng Xiaoshi's smile and gentle hands instead, holding him tightly in the warmest embrace he could remember.
In his imagination, they were resting under the shade of a tree like they had before Cheng Xiaoshi's big race, cuddled close together and enjoying the warm breeze, not even a cloud in the sky. It was like nothing else in the world mattered but them.
A bright orange folder laid on their laps, and he knew his own name was on the front. With a smile, he pointed out all the corrections to Cheng Xiaoshi's car, quietly explaining what he'd decided to change.
Xia Fei was all too aware that the brunet's attention wasn't on the draft, but on him. When he glanced up, with the sun sinking towards the horizon and a flock of white doves taking to the sky behind Cheng Xiaoshi, the brunet looked like an angel. Like this, he couldn't help but think: I want to kiss him.
Only to abruptly be ripped from his day-dreaming when cold water was dumped over his head, leaving him spluttering and coughing. His whole body trembled, eyes dropping to the white tiles as the soap bubbles were swept away by the water.
It wasn't like there was anything else he could do.
The illusion of Cheng Xiaoshi vanished, and he wished he could too: Let me fly away with you, far far away from here.
He felt tired, despite having done nothing but be forced to endure being washed like captive animal. His stomach turned unpleasantly and he wanted to do nothing more than curl up and cry. He felt dirtier than before the shower, somehow.
Rather than back into the sterile, blank room they brought him to yet another unfamiliar place. With his face towards the ceiling, he could only try to see what they were doing from the corner of his eyes.
He'd thought he'd felt ill before, but that nothing compared to the terror he felt when he saw syringes, scalpels and other instruments being laid out neatly on a tray.
There were voices around him, but in his panic, he didn't pay attention. He didn't even notice when his fingers finally managed to twitch- however, someone else certainly did.
His IV was hooked up to something, he could feel the tug in form of a sting in the back of his hand as they moved the tube. As brief as his fingers twitched, they stilled. He never even realized that he'd briefly regained some control of his body.
A tear slid down his cheek, only to be wiped away. Someone held his head still, and faintly he couldn't help but think it ridiculous when he couldn't move anyway. Another person appeared in his field of vision, a scalpel in hand, their face covered with a medical mask.
If he could've screamed, he would have.
The only thing he remembered happening next was agony.
Between pain and delirium, he thought he felt warm hands tugging him forward. Through the haze, he saw a gentle, reassuring smile and gold-brown eyes.
Part of him was horrified, worried about the brunet being in such a horrible place despite the quiet reassurances he told him. Each and every word calming his nerves ever so slowly, despite him being unable to comprehend a single thing.
Only one thing ran through his mind: We'll be together, out there as a team again.
There was a quiet beep from just under his chin. He hardly noticed it, paid it no mind.
His mind was filled with the images of them together- of their first time winning together. Of Cheng Xiaoshi's sweet smile and bright laugh, the way he'd gone up onto the stage for his trophy only after Xia Fei let himself be dragged along.
They were almost outside, nearing the door. Another beep, louder. Then another until the noise filled his ears. Cheng Xiaoshi turned back to him, eyes wide and lips moving. Xia Fei couldn't make out a single word.
That was when agony filled him from head to toe, originating from around his throat. His body feeling as though it was burning, his muscles spasming. Xia Fei couldn't fight back the scream clawing itself up his throat. His knees buckled when the pain stopped and he all but collapsed to the floor.
Cheng Xiaoshi backed away, hand outstretched but never daring to get close enough to touch. Tears ran down the blond's face, dripping from his chin and down onto his lap. When he lifted his head to look at his boyfriend, a bang filled the air.
Soon enough, the white tiles and his pants were soaked in red.
His field of vision seemed off, that was the first thing he noticed upon waking up. Quiet sobs escaped him, his breath coming out shaky.
The straitjacket was gone, that was what he noticed next. His fingers twitched weakly, one hand laying just in front of his face. Despite the drugs seeming to have worn off, he could hardly move.
Slowly, he touched his face and flinched when his fingers came into contact with something. He closed his eye on the opposite side and fought down a whimper. He hardly dared to touch it again, though he deemed it an eye patch.
Truthfully, Xia Fei didn't want to know what was beneath it... or what was left beneath it. A tear escaped his uncovered eye, and he swallowed hard. The motion made him painfully aware of the metal around his throat, and he carefully pressed his fingers against it.
Smooth, with a small bump on the side that felt more like plastic than metal. A collar, maybe?
He froze, memories flooding his mind. Of golden eyes, an insistent beeping, of pain and-
Xia Fei bit down on his fist, choking down a sob. "Nnno" he croaked out, voice wavering. But the vision refused to leave his mind. He could see the blood all too clearly in his mind. "Nno... no... no... nononono-"
He'd promised, hadn't he? That they'd both get out alive?
His knees buckled when he got up, but the door wasn't far. He fell against it, sliding to the floor. He didn't care.
His fist thudded against the door weakly, the sound barely audible to even him, his uncovered eye burning as tears slid down his cheek. "Give him back..." he whispered, and his frail frame shoulders trembled.
His hand stung, the IV a hindrance that he tore out with some trouble. He couldn't have cared less about the blood dripping onto his sleeve and the floor.
Another hit connected with the door, then another. "Give him back-" he repeated, his voice rising. Another hit, accompanied by a croaked "Give him back" escaping him.
A fourth hit, then a fifth. He hit the door over and over, begging and pleading. Broken sobs escaping him. He didn't care how his hand was starting to bruise. He didn't stop. Not even when the skin of his knuckles split.
"GIVE HIM BACK TO ME!" he all but shrieked, voice outright shattering. "Give him back to me..." he whimpered, slowly sliding the rest of the way to the floor. Curling in on himself, trembling like a leaf in a storm.
By the time one of the people of the facility finally seemed to have noticed his tantrum, he was staring at the wall. Gaze vacant and dull.
His hand was patched up, his bloodied clothes changed. The IV replaced. They put him into a new straitjacket, but it hardly mattered.
After all, the fight had left him.
Slowly, his eye slipped shut.
An alarm blared long before the door opened with a loud creak. Xia Fei's eye slid open, though his gaze remained as empty as it had for a long, long time now. Even as familiar brown hair and bright, golden eyes appeared in his field of vision.
There was blood on his cheek, which was new. Usually, there was no blood until far into the hallway. The alarm still rang through the air, loud enough to cause a headache. That was more familiar.
"Oh, Fei..." whispered a voice he hadn't heard in so long, though the words didn't quite register in his mind. Hands slipped beneath a body that had become frail and weak long ago, though he hardly felt it.
"It'll be okay, love" Cheng Xiaoshi whispered, his lips ghosting across Xia Fei's temple as if mimicking the gentlest of kisses in his imagination.
That was all it was, no? His imagination. His mind trying to conjure falsehoods to comfort him. He'd stopped indulging in his fantasies of freedom after the sixth time. Yet his brain kept trying to give him false hope again and again.
And false it was, always.
After all, Cheng Xiaoshi was long dead and Xia Fei was never going to be truly free.
So he simply stared at the ceiling, ignorant of the bodies littering the hallway and the heavy smell of blood tainting the air.
Soon enough, Cheng Xiaoshi would die again or turn out to be another scientist his brain had pretended to be his late boyfriend and he'd wake up in his cell or an operating room again like he always did.
A tear slid down his cheek when the hushed reassurances continued, and he hated how his mind actually comprehended them. He wondered, briefly, if he'd completely lost his sanity now.
Then again, who would stay sane in such a place for long?
He wished the real Cheng Xiaoshi had taken him far, far away.
But at the end of the day, that was just a dream, wasn't it?