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Looking at the three of them is a strange, terrifying picture. They are sitting on He Tian’s floor, and eating the beef stew he has cooked out of barely used ceramic bowls, and there is a set of playing cards and a pair of dice between them.
Jian Yi’s laughter fills the apartment, and Guan Shan can see that He Tian is not a little startled by it each time it happens, because the sound is not something that has probably ever bounced off the empty walls and the glass. Zhengxi bickers with him, so that’s another sound, and the third is of He Tian making sly comments that slip so neatly off his tongue. Guan Shan doesn’t add to it: he’s silent, mostly. He’s trying to piece together the reality of playing card games on He Tian’s polished wooden floor with three people that—
What? he asks himself. Don’t pretend you hate them.
He knows he doesn’t hate them. How could he hate them after what they’ve done for him? The answer, really, is quite easily. Guan Shan knows how easy hate comes to him. He’s in some strange limbo of knowing it would be easy, and knowing it wouldn’t be right, so he stays silent.
‘You cheat,’ Jian Yi says, groaning when He Tian wins for the third time.
Guan Shan would have thought the same, except it’s not surprising that He Tian is that good.
‘Are you good at everything?’ says Zhengxi, putting his cards down too. He rubs a hand across his forehead, and looks tired. Guilt gnaws at Guan Shan’s insides, because he knows Zhengxi didn’t want to face any of it for him—Jian Yi had been the only reason he’d done it.
Guan Shan wonders if Jian Yi is the only reason Zhengxi does anything.
Have you ever kissed anyone?
The question is spinning in his head. He Tian’s answer is burning him. What kind of moment had he looked in on—that he shouldn’t have been a part of? What, he wonders, would He Tian’s answer have been if he wasn’t there? How sincere or honest did he get to be when he wasn’t trying to be something in front of Guan Shan.
He shakes his head a little. He’s assuming too much. He’s assuming that He Tian might be something different—something better—when he isn’t around.
He lets his eyes fall on He Tian. He looks smug at the question Zhengxi has posed, but Guan Shan can see the quiet delight he must be feeling. His cheeks are slightly flushed; the late evening sun is shining bright through the windows, and the air is warm. This, Guan Shan can tell, is one of those memories that He Tian will remember. He’s not sure how he feels that he gets to feel a part of it.
‘Not everything,’ Guan Shan says. ‘You can’t cook.’
‘True,’ says Zhengxi.
‘I can cook,’ says He Tian, protesting. ‘I cut the green onions, or whatever they’re called.’
‘No,’ says Jian Yi, rolling his eyes. He picks up the cards and starts shuffling them again. He’s not good at it, and the cards fall to the floor most of the time. ‘You just know how to use a knife.’
There’s a pause. He Tian’s smile falters, and Guan Shan watches it fall.
‘Are you going to tell us how?’ says Zhengxi. ‘Are you going to tell us what happened?’
It has been hanging between them for the whole day, and in this space—He Tian’s space—it is almost stifling. Guan Shan is surprised that Zhengxi is the one to ask, but there’s no eagerness in his tone. It’s casual. You don’t have to say, it says. But Guan Shan knows that He Tian doesn’t back down. He doesn’t know what it is to yield.
‘What do you want me to tell you?’ says He Tian. His eyes are glittering. ‘What version do you want more? There’ll be fifty around the school tomorrow.’
‘Because you want there to be?’ says Guan Shan, quietly. ‘Because you’ve made that so?’
‘Is that a problem?’ says He Tian. He leans back on his hands. He’s taken off his jacket, and he looks remarkably relaxed considering the day they’ve all had. ‘Do you have an issue with un-truths?’
‘That’s called lying.’
‘Not really,’ says He Tian. He says it like rules don’t apply to him, with an easy confidence, and it almost makes Guan Shan believe him.
He tries to leave when the sky first darkens. Zhengxi is losing badly at a game of cards with He Tian and Jian Yi, and Guan Shan excuses himself to the bathroom. He walks down the hallway, and passes the bathroom, and picks up his shoes silently at the door.
He shouldn’t be leaving like this, he knows. But he can’t bring himself to offer any kind of goodbye.
His hand is on the door handle when he hears someone clearing their throat.
Guan Shan turns, and rests his head on the back of the door. He sighs at Jian Yi.
‘I just thought I’d—’
‘You’d?’
‘—go.’
Jian Yi stares at him. ‘Right.’ He turns, takes a step, and then turns back. ‘You know, I don’t get it,’ he says.
‘Get what?’ Guan Shan says.
‘Why you think—I mean, we’ve all just done this for you. For you. And you want to leave. Sneak out the door before anyone notices.’
Guan Shan has to look away. ‘I don’t like owing people things. Just tell me what you want.’
‘What I—I don’t want anything, Guan Shan.’ He pauses. ‘No, that’s a lie. I want a lot of things. But one of them is for you to get it through your thick skull that people actually care about you.’
He can feel his face twisting. ‘Care?’ he says. ‘This isn’t care.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘This is—you trying to impress Zhengxi and making him think you’re a good, altruistic person. This is He Tian wanting to gain some advantage over me again. It’s really not complex.’
‘If that’s what you actually think this is then… I feel sorry for you.’
There’s a pause. And Guan Shan can feel himself tightening up at the words. I feel sorry for you. And wasn’t that exactly how this whole thing came about? A thin strand of pity that seemed to run through them all? He knew, even in He Tian, that it lingered. He knew, too, that he made it so most of the time, because when you told someone not to pity you, wasn’t that exactly what they were drawn to do?
Whatever he feels like he wants to say, he can’t say it. He Tian is glancing between them as he wanders over.
‘Are you two done gossiping or should I let you sleep out here tonight?’
Jian Yi gives He Tian a grin that is blinding. ‘Guan Shan was trying to escape.’
He Tian, propped up against the wall, arms folded, raises an eyebrow. ‘Was he,’ he says. And turns his gaze on Guan Shan.
It’s habit—instinct—that Guan Shan should lower his eyes. It’s unbearable to try and match that gaze all the time.
‘I should go,’ Guan Shan says.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ says He Tian, flatly.
‘See?’ says Jian Yi.
Guan Shan bites the inside of his cheek. ‘I need to go—’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘He Tian—’
‘Guan Shan.’
There’s a small break of silence, and Guan Shan barely notices when Jian Yi seems to slip away back down the hall. The silence grows, and He Tian fills it, as he fills most things. He makes everything bigger and more immediate than it needs to be. Sometimes he is suffocating.
‘I wanted you to stay,’ says He Tian. ‘Genuinely.’
‘You’re not genuine about anything.’ It slips out before he can catch it, and he waits for the fallout—but it doesn’t come. He Tian is just watching him. Guan Shan is aware—so aware—that he is in his home again. That He Tian is slowly filling up this space with things that he—
Things that he likes. Things that he loves. Isn’t that what people do with their homes?
Guan Shan swallows. His throat is dry and he wishes He Tian would stop looking at him. He can feel his breath on the back of his neck from the train ride, the way he had pressed too close on a sharp corner.
‘Accident,’ he would say, smiling too wide, eyes too dark for it to be anything like an apology. Guan Shan could have moved away if he’d wanted to. He didn’t.
‘I was genuine about something,’ He Tian says now.
‘Putting a fist through She Li’s face?’ says Guan Shan, tightly. He can’t think about anything else, but he knows where this is going. He knows that He Tian, gleefully, is steering this towards the edge of the cliff they have risen up around themselves. Except he is not smiling now. He is not anything now. And that’s worse.
‘Something else,’ says He Tian, coming closer. His voice is low enough that Jian Yi probably won’t hear him if he isn’t listening. Which, probably, he is.
Guan Shan can feel the door frame against his back, the handle pressing against his hip. There’s nowhere to go, and when He Tian stops there are barely inches between them. He can feel the wash of He Tian’s breath: mint and cigarettes; he can see the purpling bruises of sleepless nights under his eyes. He can see the white strip of fabric around his hand out the corner of his eye, and Guan Shan is reminded suddenly, again, of what this is all about.
He is terrified of the thought that He Tian might be scarred because of him; that He Tian could live the rest of his life with a thin white line across his palm that reminds him of Guan Shan. He is terrified that it might mean He Tian will never, now, be able to let him go. He is terrified of the idea that he might not want him to.
‘Something else,’ Guan Shan echoes. He has to lift his chin up to look at him, but his eyes fall somewhere past him. He can’t look him in the eye at the best of times; he can’t look at him when he’s here. When he’s this possible.
He Tian makes a small sound of agreement. ‘Something, probably, I shouldn’t have done.’
Guan Shan has to look at him now. He can’t—those words—they’re a lure. He knows they’re going to trap him, somehow. But he goes willingly.
‘Is that an apology?’ Guan Shan says. He can hear how dry his throat is. How soft and tentative his words are. He can’t imagine what kind of weakness he must sound like to He Tian, and he hates that it’s something he’s bothered about—that he’s concerned about.
‘It’s something,’ He Tian says.
Guan Shan can’t help it: he rolls his eyes. ‘You’re fucking impossible,’ he says.
Another small sound—less agreeing—but Guan Shan can hear that He Tian knows it. He must hear, too, that Guan Shan doesn’t mean it as an entirely bad thing. He’s not strong enough to mean it like that. He Tian has a hand pressed on the door beside Guan Shan’s head, and Guan Shan can’t say that he’s use to it enough—the unbearable closeness, the nearness of his mouth, the stare—to be unbothered by it.
He turns his head, until he’s staring at the wall, but a turn of his head doesn’t mean that He Tian goes anywhere. It doesn’t mean that he’s suddenly less real.
‘Stay,’ He Tian says.
‘I’m not five,’ Guan Shan mutters. ‘I don’t do sleepovers.’
He Tian ignores that. ‘Stay,’ he says again.
Guan Shan hears the word, and he realises, then, that maybe he’s missing something. He realises it like a train crash. Painful, wrecking, derailing and with a collateral kind of damage. Stay, he is saying. Does he know what he’s saying?
‘You don’t want to ask that,’ says Guan Shan, quiet, eyes down.
There’s a pause between them, and Guan Shan can feel his heart beat thudding in an attempt to fill it.
‘I don’t mean—That wasn’t—Just one night,’ He Tian says. His voice sounds strange. Overwhelmed, almost. ‘One night. They’ll be here. You’re safe from me.’
Guan Shan can’t help the incredulous laugh at this, and he knows that He Tian must see it too: how he’s crowding him in, trapping him against a closed door. The truth is staring at them both in the face: Guan Shan has never been safe from him.
‘One night,’ he says. He can’t bear to promise anything more.
It’s a hot night, and they spend it eating the rest of the beef stew and playing cards again. At one point, Jian Yi pulls his school bag over and gets out a workbook, and He Tian stares at him.
‘Grades matter,’ says Jian Yi.
He Tian looks at Zhengxi, as if in answer, and Zhengxi shrugs.
It’s then that He Tian rises to his feet, and announces that he’s going for a shower, so Guan Shan has to sit and watch Zhengxi and Jian Yi work through their homework together. Except Jian Yi is the one who seems weirdly smart, and Zhengxi takes the answers down silently.
‘Put in some errors,’ says Jian Yi. ‘You always forget.’
Zhengxi rolls his eyes.
Have you ever kissed anyone?
Guan Shan wonders if Zhengxi knows what Jian Yi has been thinking about. He wonders if Jian Yi knows how Zhengxi looks at him when he’s not looking.
When He Tian comes out the shower, he is only wearing a pair of fitted black briefs, and his skin is still running with droplets of water. Guan Shan can’t help the way his eyes catch on He Tian’s thighs, on the taper of his waist, the shift of his shoulder blades as he pulls a t-shirt over his head. His ass as he leans over to pull on a pair of black pyjama bottoms that sit low on his hips. He does it with his back to them, entirely unselfconscious, and wanders back into the kitchen. Guan Shan feels it like he’s watching something he shouldn’t be. He feels like he’s watching He Tian when he’s alone.
He drags his eyes away, and the movement stutters when he realises that Zhengxi is watching him with a dry, serious look. His lips look ready to quirk into a smile, but like the effort would be too much.
‘Yeah,’ says Zhengxi.
‘Shut up,’ says Guan Shan.
Zhengxi shrugs, but he drops his gaze. Jian Yi, pen in his mouth as he flips through a textbook, is oblivious to the exchange.
Guan Shan can’t sleep.
The apartment is warm because Jian Yi can’t sleep with air conditioning, and he makes noises when he sleeps. He Tian has given him and Zhengxi his bed for the night, since Jian Yi managed to win one game against him at cards, so Guan Shan and He Tian have to sleep on pillows and blankets on the floor.
It’s surprisingly more comfortable than it should be, except that He Tian is lying closer than he should be. He sleeps on his back, an arm above his head in graceful repose, and there’s a strip of flesh between the hem of his t-shirt and waistband that, as well as the slow rise and fall of his chest, Guan Shan can’t stop looking at.
His breathing is even, but he sleeps like, if Guan Shan breathed on him, he would be ready and awake and throwing out biting retorts too easily. Guan Shan keeps himself painfully still.
If he reached an arm out, his fingertips might touch him.
Guan Shan sighs silently and sits up. He runs a hand through his hair, and checks the time on his phone. It’s almost 3 a.m., and he squints at the screen with the stinging feeling of tired eyes that are used to the dark.
It feels strange to be awake, when everyone is asleep, but he can’t trust himself to let go.
He pulls himself to his feet, and pads quietly into the bathroom. As he passes, he sees Jian Yi curled small on the bed. Zhengxi lies beside him, turned on his side, so Jian Yi is pressed close up against his chest. His hand, for some unfathomable reason, is holding Zhengxi’s ear.
Guan Shan squints again as he flicks the bathroom light on further down the hall, a quiet glow leaking out into the hallway, but it’s not enough to disturb the others. The city lights beyond the glass wall are relentless.
He washes his hands with soap that smells of grapefruit, and glances around the bathroom. There is a toothbrush and toothpaste, and the open shower has a bottle of mint-green body wash, gritty facewash, and some fancy brand of shampoo.
Guan Shan’s eyes catch on the cupboard beneath the sink. There are three unpackaged toothbrushes, a pot of unopened gel, bottles of expensive-looking shampoo and conditioner, and a box of—
Guan Shan stares.
Mindlessly, he reaches out, and turns the box of over in his hand.
Who? he thinks. Who has He Tian let in for him to have these here? It feels, suddenly, very adult. It feels beyond Guan Shan. He was used to violence; used to dirty money and swinging fists. He wasn’t used to this. But he remembered the kiss that was not a kiss, and remembered that He Tian must be used to it already.
Is there anything you’re not good at? Zhengxi had asked, and Guan Shan knows the answer to that now: He Tian doesn’t know what gentle is.
‘I haven’t used any of them.’
Guan Shan nearly drops it at the sound of his voice. He Tian is leaning in the doorway of the bathroom. He’s not looking at the box; instead he’s looking at Guan Shan’s face, a smile curling around his lips.
‘Sorry, I—’ Guan Shan breaks off. He puts the box back on the cupboard shelf with an awkward shove, and shuts the door of it too hard. He can’t look at He Tian, but it means that all he can look at is his own reflection, staring back at him, flushed and wide-eyed in embarrassment. ‘I didn’t mean to…’
‘Go through my things?’
Guan Shan flinches. ‘I didn’t—’
He Tian shrugs. ‘There’s nothing much in this place that I wouldn’t want anyone to see,’ he says. ‘I’m just teasing.’
‘Then stop it,’ says Guan Shan.
‘Stop what?’
Teasing me, is what he wants to say, but instead he says, ‘Stop… making me feel like this.’
He Tian takes a step forward, now inside. Before, the doorframe separated them, made them feel like they were two entities that weren’t going to touch, belonging to two separate spheres and divided by some invisible barrier. He Tian’s not making that promise now.
‘How do I make you feel?’ he says. The door closes softly behind him.
Guan Shan’s heart skitters. This is a risk. The whole thing is like walking on wire between skyscrapers. Guan Shan expects his feet would be bloody, and he’s too high up to live if someone tried to catch him. Probably, He Tian wouldn’t try to catch him.
‘You know,’ Guan Shan says.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I do.’
‘Do you hate me?’
Guan Shan glances at him, and he’s not sure he’s prepared for the look that He Tian is wearing. There’s a line between his eyes. Lips suggesting at a smile that can’t quite make it. It’s the look he had worn the other day when Guan Shan stared at him with tears running down his cheeks and a hoarse throat, and it’s the closest thing to vulnerable he thinks He Tian might allow himself to get. Because it’s always about control with him—it’s all about choosing what to let people see. There is nothing, really, that is stripped back and raw with him.
How can Guan Shan tell him that this is what he wants to see from him? How can he put into words that he wants to see He Tian loose and untempered and unveiled because of him? He has thought, too many times, of how he might do it. He hates that he has thought about it.
‘No,’ he says eventually. It’s little more than a whisper. ‘How could I hate you?’
‘Quite easily,’ comes the reply.
Guan Shan is coming to learn that the thing about He Tian is that he usually says things because they’re true. He says things that are true, as well, but that most people don’t ever want to hear. This is true—it would be easy. Guan Shan is not sure if he wants to hear it.
‘You treat me like shit,’ Guan Shan tells him.
He catches the movement out the corner of his eye: He Tian rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. It’s startlingly human, because it’s unconscious. Or maybe he wants Guan Shan just to think it. It’s impossible to understand any truth in him.
‘I know,’ He Tian says. ‘It’s how—how I am.’
‘That doesn’t make it better.’
‘I know that too.’
Do you?
He doesn’t ask it. It’s doesn’t need to be said. Nothing, apparently, needs to be said. He goes still as He Tian moves in closer, until he’s standing behind him, warm, and looking in the mirror isn’t going to hide any part of him now.
He Tian puts a hand on Guan Shan’s hip. It’s not bruising, or tight. It’s just there. It’s like, almost, because it doesn’t hurt it doesn’t exist. Guan Shan hadn’t thought he could feel anything from He Tian more than something that doesn’t really need to be felt.
‘Tell me to fuck off,’ He Tian murmurs. ‘Tell me I’ll regret trying again.’
Guan Shan wants to. He wants to. He says, ‘No.’
He stills more, as He Tian leans in, feels warm breath, a dark head bowed in the mirror, and He Tian’s lips are on his neck.
Guan Shan closes his eyes. He does nothing as they press into his skin, not hard, not leaving their mark. He Tian hasn’t touched him all day—hasn’t done anything to him. He kept his hands in his pockets, kept a distance between them that Guan Shan was unbearably conscious of and couldn’t accept that he might have wanted. But now he can feel a swipe of He Tian’s tongue across his pulse, and he trembles under it.
The hand doesn’t move. Still and innocuous, grounding, even though he could move it somewhere else if wanted, and Guan Shan thinks he might let him. He can hear his breathing, hard and hot. The mirror is starting to steam from his breath, and the image of them is blurring, a dark head and pale, shivering skin.
It means he doesn’t get to see when He Tian presses forward, so Guan Shan’s hips fit against the edge of the bathroom sink, He Tian covering the length of him at his back, and it means he doesn’t get to watch as He Tian’s fingers reach up beneath Guan Shan’s jaw, and turn him until his lips are there and ready to meet his.
‘Please,’ He Tian says—breathes. Guan Shan knows that if he opened his eyes the look would be burning. He says nothing, and it’s the closest thing to yes that He Tian is going to get.
The kiss is everything it could have been. Long, and deep, and lighting Guan Shan up from the inside. He feels himself turn around, arms falling around He Tian’s neck, the front of him pressing up against him with a quiet gasp. It’s too much, and he can’t stop.
He Tian’s hands fall to the tops of his thighs, and suddenly he’s being lifted, settled on the lip of the sink, and it’s uncomfortable, but it means that his knees can fall apart, and open, and He Tian can fit himself between them as Guan Shan’s shoulders hit the mirror, faucet digging into his lower back.
Their mouths, the whole time, don’t part, and soon it’s open-mouthed and it doesn’t feel like it did last time, and Guan Shan can only marvel at the difference. He Tian could do something like that, he knew, but he didn’t think that He Tian would be capable of giving him this.
He Tian presses in—impossibly close, every part of them touching, is there anywhere else to go?—and Guan Shan groans. He flushes, immediately, at the sound. It wasn’t something he meant to make, or that he thought he could. He Tian does it again.
Kissing becomes a fast, immediate thing that Guan Shan can only ride like a freight train that isn’t going to stop. He knows that if he tries he’ll be ruined. It becomes something else, too, and Guan Shan can’t ignore the way he has his legs wrapped around He Tian’s waist, the way he is shifting with every breath with an urgency that, when it reaches him, shudders through him like lightning.
He can feel, only hazily, when He Tian pulls himself away. He leaves his hands on Guan Shan’s waist, and Guan Shan blinks at him, dazed.
He Tian is staring at him. ‘Did you—?’
‘I think so,’ says Guan Shan. He can’t believe it. He’s not sure he wants to. What a mess. ‘I’m… a predictable teenage boy,’ he says.
He Tian snorts. His lips are red and ruined, and Guan Shan remembers distantly that, only moments ago, he had had his hands in He Tian’s hair. It had been softer than he thought it would be. He glances down.
He says, awkwardly, ‘Do you want to…’
He Tian quirks a brow. ‘Are you offering?’
‘Fuck off.’
The smile that splits across his face is outrageous. He has no right to look like that. ‘There it is,’ he says. But he steps back, and suddenly the distance between them is glaring. He arranges himself a little, but it’s not like Guan Shan can’t see it. He swallows.
He Tian is looking at him like he knows exactly what he’s thinking, and Guan Shan expects that he probably does.
‘You can shower,’ says He Tian. ‘I’ll get you some clothes.’
‘Your clothes?’
‘Of course,’ says He Tian. ‘I’ll have to chase my fantasies where I can.’
‘Fantasies,’ says Guan Shan, because he’s thinking about what they have just done.
He Tian seems to realise it too. ‘Well,’ he says. And then shakes his head. Like he can’t quite believe… ‘Shower,’ he says again, and then leaves.
Guan Shan is left sitting on the counter of the bathroom sink, and he can feel that his underwear is wet as he slides of and lets his feet hit the tiled flooring with a wince. He can’t bring himself to look in the mirror now. He can’t believe what he has just done—what he’s allowed himself to do.
He bites his lip, and it feels full, and sore, and he likes it.
The thought is an obvious one: Fuck.
The clothes that He Tian gives him are black, which doesn’t surprise him. There are a pair of loose cotton bottoms that he has to roll up at the ankles and over at the waist, and a t-shirt that fits surprisingly well.
‘Did you wear this when you were five?’ Guan Shan says, pulling on the hem as he leaves the bathroom, steamed from the hot water, fan whirring quietly.
He Tian is leaning against the counter in the kitchen, and his eyes are dark. ‘Three, actually,’ he says. He keeps his voice quiet and low enough that it sends a shudder across Guan Shan. ‘I was almost your height when I was five.’
‘Shut up,’ says Guan Shan. The air doesn’t feel like it’s ready to take joking now. Not when joking has never, really, been the kind of thing they indulged in. It feels even less appropriate now.
Guan Shan touches the back of his neck; it’s unconscious, and he knows that it’s exactly what He Tian had done not so long ago. He’s less convinced that it was intentional now. He’s less convinced that any of it had been intentional.
‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep,’ Guan Shan admits.
‘No,’ He Tian says, carefully. And then, ‘Follow me.’
He takes Guan Shan onto the roof.
Before that, they’re walking through the empty corridor outside the apartment, strip lights quiet and buzzing, and throwing Guan Shan off any sense of time he might have had. The elevator is the same, and it fills Guan Shan’s head with a thick silence that almost hurts with the pressure.
He’s too quiet.
The thought hits him as they get out on the top floor, and as he follows He Tian down to the end of another identical corridor. He takes the metal bar off a door beneath a glowing fire exit sign, laying it on the floor with a quiet clang, and he leads the way up a small set of metal stairs.
Then, suddenly, they’re on top of the city.
‘Oh,’ says Guan Shan, walking out, wandering around the flat space. He doesn’t think he’s ever been this high before, and for a moment he thinks he can see everything. He has the strange, thrilling moment of knowing that in the warm midnight darkness, no one can really see him. Here, he can see the streetlamps and the advertising screens and the bright car headlights and the lamps in people’s living rooms, curtains undrawn.
Guan Shan stares as He Tian walks close to the edge, barely a footstep away, and he can’t help that he feels his throat close a little. It would be too easy. He wants to pull him back—away.
He knows He Tian wouldn’t; he’d fight tooth and nail with everything he had. But the sight of him, a night summer breeze brushing his hair, disturbing the fabric of his clothing, is enough to make Guan Shan’s heart skip. He is entirely something else. He wonders how many nights He Tian has come up here, sat on his own, smoked his way slowly through a pack of cigarettes.
And now he’s bringing him up here. Guan Shan feels like he’s being given something that is too fragile; he won’t be able to give it the tenderness that maybe it needs.
He sets his thoughts aside as He Tian sits down, long legs stretched out in front of him, weight on his hands. His feet are barely inches from the edge. Guan Shan goes to him, mindlessly, and sits down next to him, legs crossed, spine curved.
‘We probably shouldn’t be here,’ says Guan Shan.
‘You know better than to say something like that.’
It’s true—he does. He’s not sure what else to say. ‘You’re not smoking,’ he settles on.
He Tian glances at him. Is that the best you can do? his look says. ‘No,’ he says at last. ‘I’m trying to kick out bad habits.’
‘New Year’s resolutions?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Do you know how difficult you are to talk to?’
He Tian presses a smile between his lips, but he can’t hide it well. ‘It’s just you,’ he says. ‘I can’t—it’s not like talking with other people.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because half the time I’m saying something that fucks everything up, and the other half I’m trying to figure out what you’re thinking so I know the right thing to say. And I never know what you’re thinking. So…’ So I never know what’s right.
‘I’m not that difficult to figure out,’ Guan Shan says. ‘You make that pretty clear most of the time.’
‘I do?’
‘You know what makes me do things for people.’ The money. The fear. He Tian’s smile. His eyes. Guan Shan looks out across the city, and draws his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them.
‘I know that you’re human,’ He Tian corrects. ‘I’d buckle under the same things.’
‘No, you wouldn’t.’
‘You think too much of me.’
‘Or too little.’
He Tian huffs a laugh. ‘Yeah. Or that.’
A moment of quiet lulls. This high, the city is eerily soft. They can’t hear car engines or doors slamming. They can’t hear music that might be playing. They’re trapped above it, and it’s a freeing thing to know that somewhere in this city there is that kind of escape. Guan Shan’s mind is reeling at the thought that it would be He Tian who could show him this.
‘Look up,’ says He Tian, and Guan Shan glances at him before he does.
The sky, above him, is dark, but Guan Shan knows it could be darker. A city like this leaches the colour from it. Except… Guan Shan tilts his head. Squints.
‘Stars,’ he says, dumbstruck.
‘I’ve never been anywhere else in the city that I can see them except for here.’
Guan Shan says, staring upwards, ‘I haven’t seen them for about ten years.’
‘I would point out some constellations but I don’t know shit about astronomy.’
Guan Shan’s lips quirk. ‘You can’t see much here anyway.’
They’re small, and faint, and nothing like what Guan Shan knows is really looking back down on them, but it’s enough. The concept of it, that He Tian has given him this, makes his breath catch.
Beautiful, he thinks, but then he hears the quiet echo of a silence after a word has been spoken, and knows that he’s said it aloud.
He Tian makes a quiet sound, and Guan Shan closes his eyes. He knows, when he opens them, what he will see, and he’s right.
He Tian is looking at him.
‘Don’t,’ says Guan Shan. ‘Let’s not pretend.’
‘I didn’t realise I was.’
Guan Shan lets out a sigh, and he unwinds himself so he can lean back, head against the concrete, and all he can see is the sky. He Tian, after a while, does the same.
‘Thank you,’ Guan Shan says. He’s staring, but he knows when the darkness becomes something else, and that his eyes have closed. ‘For this.’
‘Sure,’ says He Tian, quiet with sleep. The air is warm, and even though it’s nothing close to comfortable, Guan Shan feels like he might be able to drift off here too.
‘Thank you,’ Guan Shan says again. ‘For today.’
The pause is longer. ‘I won’t let him hurt you,’ He Tian says.
‘He hurt you.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ He Tian says.
Guan Shan wants to tell him that it does matter. He wants to ask what happened. But he knows he’s not getting more of an answer than He Tian is willing to give, and after a while he can hear the deep, slow breathing of He Tian in sleep.
He’s quietly awed that He Tian would be willing to shut himself off like this around him, face relaxed, limbs loose. Guan Shan moves himself closer, until he can feel the warmth of He Tian’s body beside him. He looks at the dim stars, and thinks about He Tian lying here at night and looking up, thinking about the kind of person that might make him, and in the end, drifting off to sleep, he’s not so surprised at all.