Link Click: Instinct (Part One) [4/5]
Nov. 5th, 2023 01:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jordannamorgan posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
prose_alchemistTitle: Instinct (Part One) [4/5]
Author:jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG for fantasy violence.
Characters: Cheng Xiaoshi, Lu Guang, Xiao Li, original characters.
Setting: Post-season two, after our heroes have had enough time to make a full recovery. (While leaving aside any possible Lu-loop drama for now. My heart can’t take it.)
Summary: Hired to solve a wealthy client’s personal mystery, Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang discover there are even darker powers in the world than they realized… and the damage left in the fallout will not be easily fixed for anyone.
Disclaimer: They belong to Li Haoling, LAN Studio, and Haoliners Animation League. I’m just playing with them.
IV. Consolation
The twenty-four hours that followed were a restless haze for Cheng Xiaoshi.
He went to bed that night without eating, and lay awake for hours, dreading what would await him in nightmares. When he did sleep, that fear made his repose too light and fitful for dreams—or for any proper rest. For that matter, his worse-than-usual tossing and turning must also have kept Lu Guang up most of the night in the bunk above his own, for the eternally-pale young man had even darker shadows under his eyes and an especially sour morning face the next day. Yet he never voiced a complaint, and it was still barely past dawn when they both gave up trying to sleep and moved downstairs.
Lu Guang heated instant noodles and insisted Cheng Xiaoshi eat. While hardly a conventional breakfast, it was practically all the cooking the seer could manage when left to his own devices; and even if Cheng Xiaoshi wasn’t very good at expressing it just then, he did appreciate the sentiment. That was the main reason why he tried to eat at all. Part of him knew his body was hungry after more than fifteen hours without food, but his mind that still seethed with stomach-turning images was resistant to the thought.
After choking down the bland sticky meal, they sprawled in the sunroom in shared silence as the daylight brightened, sometimes managing to doze for a few minutes. Lu Guang finally left the room when it was time to open the studio, but Cheng Xiaoshi could hear him puttering around up front. It would have been comforting if he wasn’t convinced every sound was still sharper and clearer to him than it should be.
…And that was truly the fact that gnawed at his awareness, exacerbating a quietly frantic tremor of unease that ran through his veins all day. The trauma of living out Sang Zhaojun’s transformation, followed by the shock and guilt of the man’s subsequent suicide, would have weighed heavily enough on Cheng Xiaoshi’s heart—but the anxiety rattling around in his brain now was something even more present than those memories. He tried to distract himself from it with mindless games on his phone, but it wouldn’t go away.
Business was thankfully slow, allowing Lu Guang to spend most of the afternoon in his familiar reassuring place at the end of the sofa, book in hand. Even when a few people came in with ordinary photo work, he didn’t fuss at Cheng Xiaoshi to help. …Maybe he thought his partner looking like a stressed-out zombie just then would scare the customers away. In any case, Cheng Xiaoshi did drag himself off the sofa late in the day to cook a simple pot of rice and vegetables, if only as a defense against the threat of more instant noodles. However, making himself eat was still an effort.
When the sky above the skylight was purple with dusk, he put down the fighting game he’d been too unfocused to beat the first level of for three hours, and finally confronted what was really on his mind.
“Lu Guang? …I’d like you to do something for me.”
On any other day, Lu Guang might have reacted to that opening with impatience or indifference; but this time he gave it his full attention, immediately setting aside his book. “What is it?” he asked intently, and from the way his sharp eyes narrowed, Cheng Xiaoshi had a good idea his friend already knew what was coming.
“Please. Just… watch me tonight. After the moon rises.” He hesitated, expecting a poor reaction to the second half of his request. “And if I start acting weird at all… I want you to lock me in the darkroom.”
Lu Guang’s lips thinned in a concerned frown. “Cheng Xiaoshi, I know you went through something horrible during the dive yesterday. But that was Sang Zhaojun’s life—not yours.”
“I know that… but.” Cheng Xiaoshi’s nervous stress finally spilled over, and he faced Lu Guang with a wild brightness in his dark eyes. “I haven’t felt right since I came back from it. My senses seem like they’re all maxed out, and I’m reacting so hard to everything, and—”
“Cheng Xiaoshi.” Lu Guang leaned closer, looking at him sternly. “Listen to me. You’re safe. I promise, you didn’t ‘catch’ lycanthropy just because you were in Sang Zhaojun’s body when he changed.”
“How can you be so sure?” Cheng Xiaoshi fired back. “What do we even know about what happens physically when I dive? My body disappears from the present—so where does it go? Does it merge somehow with the person I become in the past? And if so, then—”
“Calm down. It’s not like that. You don’t acquire any physical traits of the people whose lives you dive into. But it’s true that their experiences and emotions can’t help influencing your mind for a while—and a strong enough mental effect can affect your body too. It’s called psychosomatic symptoms.” Lu Guang sighed, a somber expression that may well have been guilt passing over his face. “You didn’t just absorb feelings and memories from Sang Zhaojun, but from the thing he turned into as well—and it’s only those lingering impressions your body is responding to. I know it must be wreaking havoc with your hormones and instinctive reactions right now, but as your system balances out and you process the memories, it will get better. You need to believe that, Cheng Xiaoshi.”
“…I want to,” the time traveler murmured. His throat felt dry, and there was a tightness in his chest that made it hard to breathe. “I’m just… so damn scared of what’s gotten inside my head.”
“I know. But those instincts aren’t you.” Lu Guang laid his hand on Cheng Xiaoshi’s shoulder. “Your instincts were the ones that made you raise your hands to clap when I startled you, that first moment you jumped out. You didn’t know you did that, did you? Even then, when you felt confused and threatened, it was your power you reached for—not that beast’s.”
The words gave Cheng Xiaoshi pause. As Lu Guang suspected, what happened just after he tore himself out of Sang Zhaojun’s changed body and returned to the present was a blur to him; but when he tried to think about how that moment felt, he thought he sensed a familiar muscle memory of raised hands held slightly apart, prepared to escape the primal distress and echoes of pain coursing through his nerves. A clap would have taken him nowhere then, as he was neither already inside a photo, nor focused on a specific one he intended to dive into. Still, the point was that he was used to relying on that gesture as his exit from dangerous situations.
It was a comforting thought. If he’d resorted to his human instincts even then, when human was the last thing he felt like, perhaps he could believe Lu Guang was right. Perhaps the dive hadn’t tainted him with anything more than the breakers of that black wave, a secondhand residue of the monster’s animal impulses. That was bad enough, and he knew it would take time to unwrap those threads from his own psyche, but he could deal with it. As long as he could be sure he wouldn’t physically change, and become something that would hurt anyone… then he would be okay.
Eventually, at least.
Slowly he relaxed, slumping back a little on the sofa as he released a deep breath. He was acutely aware of Lu Guang’s eyes lingering on him; but even without returning the gaze, he felt the rare warmth in it, and just a little more calm crept into his frayed heart.
Lu Guang was his perennial observer and guide, after all. He was always watching over his partner—even without Cheng Xiaoshi having to ask.
“I’m going to make some tea. Want anything while I’m up?”
Cheng Xiaoshi couldn’t help smiling faintly at the question Lu Guang asked later, as the seer put down his book and rose from the sofa with a feline stretch. It wasn’t normal for him to be so solicitous, and it would start to feel weird if he kept it up for too long; but just for the moment, the time traveler was grateful for that understated display of care.
“Nah, I’m good.” he stifled a yawn with his hand. “Just getting sleepy, after how rough last night was. Don’t be surprised if you come back and find me dozed off.”
“If you do, I’m leaving you down here and going to bed myself,” Lu Guang muttered bluntly as he went out of the room.
With a brief wider smile at the threat, Cheng Xiaoshi dropped his head back against the sofa cushions, staring up through glass panes at the black night sky. It was funny how his best friend just being trollish as usual could seem like a kindness now, making him feel a pleasant warmth in his insides.
…Perhaps a little too warm, he noticed, becoming aware of a thin sheen of sweat on his skin. He blinked and frowned, ghosting a hand over his chest and down to his stomach, where the heat strangely seemed to be centered.
Drowsy-lidded eyes suddenly opened wide. A sharp gasp escaped him as he remembered this sensation—and then the pain slammed into him, throwing his body into a violent spasm that sent him crumpling to the floor between the sofa and coffee table.
As convulsions wracked his shifting muscles, tearing a choked cry from his lungs, the hands he saw sprouting claws beneath him were not those of a stranger. The body that twisted and heaved and changed was his own, spotlighted within brilliant white moonbeams that poured down on him from the skylight above.
The coup de grace came in the form of that horrible black wave rising within his mind, brimming with every same monstrous urge and instinct that had turned kindly Sang Zhaojun into a murdering beast—and as it swallowed up his very self, his last conscious awareness was of Lu Guang standing frozen in the doorway, eyes filled with shock and mortal terror.
No…!
—And then Cheng Xiaoshi thrashed himself awake, tangled in blankets on the floor beside the bunk bed where he must have tumbled, while the raw tearing sound of that one word he had cried out seemed to hang in the very air.
“Cheng Xiaoshi!”
Lu Guang’s voice reached him. Gasping and sweat-drenched, Cheng Xiaoshi rolled his eyes to the side and saw his partner crouching beside him: visibly alarmed and reaching out halfway, but seeming hesitant to touch.
The reason was obvious. He was wary that Cheng Xiaoshi might again lash out in a feral panic and possibly hurt him, even without meaning to… and that realization felt even worse than the nightmare itself.
“Lu Guang,” Cheng Xiaoshi mumbled through a thickness in his throat, if only to prove that he recognized his friend and guide.
Hazily he remembered how the evening had really unfolded—and how nothing had happened at all. As Lu Guang had assured him, the hour of moonrise came and went with no change in Cheng Xiaoshi, allowing him to slowly begin to relax. Given their prior sleepless night, they agreed to go to bed early; Cheng Xiaoshi was still anxious about nightmares invading his rest, but he was far too exhausted to resist sleep any longer. As he drifted off to the sound of Lu Guang’s soft breathing from the upper bunk above him, he’d only hoped any torments his mind put him through wouldn’t make him disturb his roommate again.
So much for that.
“It’s alright. It was just a nightmare. You’re safe.” Lu Guang’s hand finally came to rest on his shoulder, gripping it firmly in reassurance.
“…I’m sorry.” Cheng Xiaoshi sniffed and scrubbed his eyelids with the heels of his hands before finally darting an apologetic glance up at Lu Guang. “This isn’t working. I’m only keeping you awake too. I’ll go downstairs and sleep on the couch—”
He was reaching for the frame of the bunk to pull himself up from the floor, but Lu Guang’s slim fingers wrapped around his wrist to halt him. “No. I have a different idea.”
Curious in spite of himself, Cheng Xiaoshi waited as Lu Guang stood and crossed the narrow room to the bookshelf. He selected a book, flipped through its pages, and withdrew a small square of glossy paper, which he brought back to where Cheng Xiaoshi sat. His lips were pressed together in an expression of faint but distinct awkwardness as he held it out. “Here.”
Cheng Xiaoshi accepted the photograph and looked down at it; and regardless of all his troubled emotions, he couldn’t help releasing a splutter of surprised amusement.
The instant-film photo was of Lu Guang himself, peacefully asleep in his bunk—and oblivious to the cat nose and whiskers drawn on his face. Cheng Xiaoshi had smugly snapped the picture as a trophy after committing that piece of mischief three weeks earlier. The seer quite justifiably gave him hell about it in the morning, and took the photo away. Now he was rather bemused to learn that Lu Guang had only hidden it instead of destroying it—and he wondered what the choice to keep it actually meant to him.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed to have this back,” he joked feebly, waving the photo between his fingers.
Lu Guang huffed, the way he did whenever he thought Cheng Xiaoshi was being a child. “Just dive into the picture, idiot.”
“Huh? What for?”
“Because I remember how stupidly soundly you were sleeping the next morning, when I woke you up for our little talk about your foolishness,” Lu Guang grumbled. Then his expression softened slightly. “And that picture was taken before the trauma that’s sent your nerves and hormones so out of whack. Maybe it’ll help reset your system if you can get a decent night’s sleep in your past body, without the physical effects of all that stress. Either way, if you do start to have another nightmare…” Narrowed gray eyes shifted away uncomfortably, a faint touch of color gracing his pale cheeks. “We’ll be linked—so you won’t be alone in your head, and I can help you.”
The time traveler gaped at his guide in earnest disbelief. “You’d really be okay with doing that?”
“I guess so. Just this once.” Lu Guang scowled. “Just don’t wake me up in the past too.”
Cheng Xiaoshi felt his first genuine smile in two days beginning to blossom on his face. “Okay then… but I’m making sure to jump out in the morning before your past self yells at me again.”
“Fair enough,” Lu Guang deadpanned, and held out his hand.
Feeling the kind of warmth inside that was definitely nothing to fear, Cheng Xiaoshi first gave back the picture, and then slapped his hand against Lu Guang’s outstretched palm.
—And he promptly almost took a tumble, suddenly finding himself balanced on the ladder to Lu Guang’s bunk while clutching the camera that had taken the photo. As it was, he fumbled it and it slipped from his grasp, falling with a soft plop onto the blankets of his own bunk below. The freshly taken and still-developing instant photo fluttered down beside it.
[Watch what you’re doing!] chided the voice of the present Lu Guang in his head.
[Sorry,] Cheng Xiaoshi thought at him without speaking. He properly steadied himself, and then spared a quick glance at the whisker-adorned face of the Lu Guang from three weeks in his past who slept before him unawares. Smiling gently, he whispered a soft “Thanks” under his breath—and he meant it for both versions of his best friend.
[…Just shut up and go to sleep already,] the present Lu Guang sighed.
Obediently Cheng Xiaoshi eased himself down the ladder. He set aside the camera and photo and flopped onto his bunk, wrapping himself in his blankets like a spring roll. Lu Guang had been right: his own past body that he currently occupied felt so much quieter, and that already seemed to be making a difference to his mind.
[Better?] the present Lu Guang asked him simply.
[Yeah,] he answered, and closed his eyes. [G’night, Lu.]
[Good night, Cheng Xiaoshi.]
For the most part, Cheng Xiaoshi did manage to sleep peacefully in that borrowed night of the past. Only once did a formless, fearful darkness begin to stir in the depths of his mind; but then Lu Guang’s gentle but insistent voice was there to wake him, pulling him out of the dark before he could even remember any solid images or sensations from the nascent nightmare. Afterward, he was still calm enough to drift off again without much difficulty.
…Unfortunately for him, he slept just a little too well, and did not wake until the moment when a very angry past Lu Guang shook him to bleary consciousness to berate him for his prank—still sporting those drawn-on whiskers, which did nothing for Cheng Xiaoshi’s ability to take him seriously. At that point he could only sit sheepishly through the reproach, positively feeling the smug amusement in the present Lu Guang’s silence.
[You didn’t wake me up on purpose, didn’t you?] he groused mentally, tuning out the lecture he’d already received once before.
[Do I look like an alarm clock to you?] the present Lu Guang retorted dryly. [I think I deserved to sleep in for a while, after I already missed out on so much rest the night before last.]
Cheng Xiaoshi had to struggle to keep his indignation out of his face and hidden from the past Lu Guang, who was—or at least so he presumed—oblivious to the argument going on inside his head. …Honestly, the seer was so damn enigmatic that his partner was never quite sure how much he really knew about any given moment in time, past or present… or maybe even future too. Either way, the time traveler didn’t want to make the situation even more awkward by drawing attention to the fact that he wasn’t exactly the Cheng Xiaoshi who belonged in that particular moment.
When the past Lu Guang finally ended his tirade and stalked off to wash the feline embellishments from his face, Cheng Xiaoshi took the chance to escape, swiftly clapping back to the present. Landing in the sunroom where Lu Guang had carried the photo, he immediately drew a breath to complain about having to relive the scolding; but the words died unspoken when he saw his friend’s face, and the weary shadows under his eyes that were no better than they’d been the previous morning.
Then Cheng Xiaoshi wondered just how much of a second night Lu Guang had spent awake, quietly listening across their link for any sound or perhaps feeling of a disturbance in his sleep… and he could only smile in gratitude.
Without a word, Lu Guang held out the photo to him, and he accepted it almost reverently. Having used it once, he could never again dive back to that night and morning; but when he looked at the picture now, the feelings it brought him would be something quite different from the juvenile sense of mischief with which he’d first taken it. He was certain Lu Guang knew that as well, and was returning it to him for that very reason.
Before he could say anything that would probably come out all wrong, he was spared by the ringing of Lu Guang’s phone.
“Hello? …Yes, Captain. Much better now, thanks. …Of course.” Lu Guang glanced at Cheng Xiaoshi, and then at his watch. “Yes, ten o’clock should be fine. We’ll be here.”
The brief call ended, and Cheng Xiaoshi raised an eyebrow. “Captain Xiao?”
“Yes.” Lu Guang regarded him intently, as if prepared to study the smallest nuance of his reaction. “He’ll be coming by in about twenty minutes… to take our statements.” About Sang Zhaojun’s death was the part he didn’t say, but Cheng Xiaoshi heard it loud and clear.
Although he couldn’t disguise a small flinch at the prospect, he nodded. “I’m ready for it.”
“Well, you will be when you get dressed,” Lu Guang observed idly before he buried his nose back in a book—prompting Cheng Xiaoshi to realize he was still wearing only the shorts and T-shirt he slept in.
“…Yeah, I’ll get on that.”
© 2023 Jordanna Morgan
Author:
jordannamorganArchive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG for fantasy violence.
Characters: Cheng Xiaoshi, Lu Guang, Xiao Li, original characters.
Setting: Post-season two, after our heroes have had enough time to make a full recovery. (While leaving aside any possible Lu-loop drama for now. My heart can’t take it.)
Summary: Hired to solve a wealthy client’s personal mystery, Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang discover there are even darker powers in the world than they realized… and the damage left in the fallout will not be easily fixed for anyone.
Disclaimer: They belong to Li Haoling, LAN Studio, and Haoliners Animation League. I’m just playing with them.
IV. Consolation
The twenty-four hours that followed were a restless haze for Cheng Xiaoshi.
He went to bed that night without eating, and lay awake for hours, dreading what would await him in nightmares. When he did sleep, that fear made his repose too light and fitful for dreams—or for any proper rest. For that matter, his worse-than-usual tossing and turning must also have kept Lu Guang up most of the night in the bunk above his own, for the eternally-pale young man had even darker shadows under his eyes and an especially sour morning face the next day. Yet he never voiced a complaint, and it was still barely past dawn when they both gave up trying to sleep and moved downstairs.
Lu Guang heated instant noodles and insisted Cheng Xiaoshi eat. While hardly a conventional breakfast, it was practically all the cooking the seer could manage when left to his own devices; and even if Cheng Xiaoshi wasn’t very good at expressing it just then, he did appreciate the sentiment. That was the main reason why he tried to eat at all. Part of him knew his body was hungry after more than fifteen hours without food, but his mind that still seethed with stomach-turning images was resistant to the thought.
After choking down the bland sticky meal, they sprawled in the sunroom in shared silence as the daylight brightened, sometimes managing to doze for a few minutes. Lu Guang finally left the room when it was time to open the studio, but Cheng Xiaoshi could hear him puttering around up front. It would have been comforting if he wasn’t convinced every sound was still sharper and clearer to him than it should be.
…And that was truly the fact that gnawed at his awareness, exacerbating a quietly frantic tremor of unease that ran through his veins all day. The trauma of living out Sang Zhaojun’s transformation, followed by the shock and guilt of the man’s subsequent suicide, would have weighed heavily enough on Cheng Xiaoshi’s heart—but the anxiety rattling around in his brain now was something even more present than those memories. He tried to distract himself from it with mindless games on his phone, but it wouldn’t go away.
Business was thankfully slow, allowing Lu Guang to spend most of the afternoon in his familiar reassuring place at the end of the sofa, book in hand. Even when a few people came in with ordinary photo work, he didn’t fuss at Cheng Xiaoshi to help. …Maybe he thought his partner looking like a stressed-out zombie just then would scare the customers away. In any case, Cheng Xiaoshi did drag himself off the sofa late in the day to cook a simple pot of rice and vegetables, if only as a defense against the threat of more instant noodles. However, making himself eat was still an effort.
When the sky above the skylight was purple with dusk, he put down the fighting game he’d been too unfocused to beat the first level of for three hours, and finally confronted what was really on his mind.
“Lu Guang? …I’d like you to do something for me.”
On any other day, Lu Guang might have reacted to that opening with impatience or indifference; but this time he gave it his full attention, immediately setting aside his book. “What is it?” he asked intently, and from the way his sharp eyes narrowed, Cheng Xiaoshi had a good idea his friend already knew what was coming.
“Please. Just… watch me tonight. After the moon rises.” He hesitated, expecting a poor reaction to the second half of his request. “And if I start acting weird at all… I want you to lock me in the darkroom.”
Lu Guang’s lips thinned in a concerned frown. “Cheng Xiaoshi, I know you went through something horrible during the dive yesterday. But that was Sang Zhaojun’s life—not yours.”
“I know that… but.” Cheng Xiaoshi’s nervous stress finally spilled over, and he faced Lu Guang with a wild brightness in his dark eyes. “I haven’t felt right since I came back from it. My senses seem like they’re all maxed out, and I’m reacting so hard to everything, and—”
“Cheng Xiaoshi.” Lu Guang leaned closer, looking at him sternly. “Listen to me. You’re safe. I promise, you didn’t ‘catch’ lycanthropy just because you were in Sang Zhaojun’s body when he changed.”
“How can you be so sure?” Cheng Xiaoshi fired back. “What do we even know about what happens physically when I dive? My body disappears from the present—so where does it go? Does it merge somehow with the person I become in the past? And if so, then—”
“Calm down. It’s not like that. You don’t acquire any physical traits of the people whose lives you dive into. But it’s true that their experiences and emotions can’t help influencing your mind for a while—and a strong enough mental effect can affect your body too. It’s called psychosomatic symptoms.” Lu Guang sighed, a somber expression that may well have been guilt passing over his face. “You didn’t just absorb feelings and memories from Sang Zhaojun, but from the thing he turned into as well—and it’s only those lingering impressions your body is responding to. I know it must be wreaking havoc with your hormones and instinctive reactions right now, but as your system balances out and you process the memories, it will get better. You need to believe that, Cheng Xiaoshi.”
“…I want to,” the time traveler murmured. His throat felt dry, and there was a tightness in his chest that made it hard to breathe. “I’m just… so damn scared of what’s gotten inside my head.”
“I know. But those instincts aren’t you.” Lu Guang laid his hand on Cheng Xiaoshi’s shoulder. “Your instincts were the ones that made you raise your hands to clap when I startled you, that first moment you jumped out. You didn’t know you did that, did you? Even then, when you felt confused and threatened, it was your power you reached for—not that beast’s.”
The words gave Cheng Xiaoshi pause. As Lu Guang suspected, what happened just after he tore himself out of Sang Zhaojun’s changed body and returned to the present was a blur to him; but when he tried to think about how that moment felt, he thought he sensed a familiar muscle memory of raised hands held slightly apart, prepared to escape the primal distress and echoes of pain coursing through his nerves. A clap would have taken him nowhere then, as he was neither already inside a photo, nor focused on a specific one he intended to dive into. Still, the point was that he was used to relying on that gesture as his exit from dangerous situations.
It was a comforting thought. If he’d resorted to his human instincts even then, when human was the last thing he felt like, perhaps he could believe Lu Guang was right. Perhaps the dive hadn’t tainted him with anything more than the breakers of that black wave, a secondhand residue of the monster’s animal impulses. That was bad enough, and he knew it would take time to unwrap those threads from his own psyche, but he could deal with it. As long as he could be sure he wouldn’t physically change, and become something that would hurt anyone… then he would be okay.
Eventually, at least.
Slowly he relaxed, slumping back a little on the sofa as he released a deep breath. He was acutely aware of Lu Guang’s eyes lingering on him; but even without returning the gaze, he felt the rare warmth in it, and just a little more calm crept into his frayed heart.
Lu Guang was his perennial observer and guide, after all. He was always watching over his partner—even without Cheng Xiaoshi having to ask.
“I’m going to make some tea. Want anything while I’m up?”
Cheng Xiaoshi couldn’t help smiling faintly at the question Lu Guang asked later, as the seer put down his book and rose from the sofa with a feline stretch. It wasn’t normal for him to be so solicitous, and it would start to feel weird if he kept it up for too long; but just for the moment, the time traveler was grateful for that understated display of care.
“Nah, I’m good.” he stifled a yawn with his hand. “Just getting sleepy, after how rough last night was. Don’t be surprised if you come back and find me dozed off.”
“If you do, I’m leaving you down here and going to bed myself,” Lu Guang muttered bluntly as he went out of the room.
With a brief wider smile at the threat, Cheng Xiaoshi dropped his head back against the sofa cushions, staring up through glass panes at the black night sky. It was funny how his best friend just being trollish as usual could seem like a kindness now, making him feel a pleasant warmth in his insides.
…Perhaps a little too warm, he noticed, becoming aware of a thin sheen of sweat on his skin. He blinked and frowned, ghosting a hand over his chest and down to his stomach, where the heat strangely seemed to be centered.
Drowsy-lidded eyes suddenly opened wide. A sharp gasp escaped him as he remembered this sensation—and then the pain slammed into him, throwing his body into a violent spasm that sent him crumpling to the floor between the sofa and coffee table.
As convulsions wracked his shifting muscles, tearing a choked cry from his lungs, the hands he saw sprouting claws beneath him were not those of a stranger. The body that twisted and heaved and changed was his own, spotlighted within brilliant white moonbeams that poured down on him from the skylight above.
The coup de grace came in the form of that horrible black wave rising within his mind, brimming with every same monstrous urge and instinct that had turned kindly Sang Zhaojun into a murdering beast—and as it swallowed up his very self, his last conscious awareness was of Lu Guang standing frozen in the doorway, eyes filled with shock and mortal terror.
No…!
—And then Cheng Xiaoshi thrashed himself awake, tangled in blankets on the floor beside the bunk bed where he must have tumbled, while the raw tearing sound of that one word he had cried out seemed to hang in the very air.
“Cheng Xiaoshi!”
Lu Guang’s voice reached him. Gasping and sweat-drenched, Cheng Xiaoshi rolled his eyes to the side and saw his partner crouching beside him: visibly alarmed and reaching out halfway, but seeming hesitant to touch.
The reason was obvious. He was wary that Cheng Xiaoshi might again lash out in a feral panic and possibly hurt him, even without meaning to… and that realization felt even worse than the nightmare itself.
“Lu Guang,” Cheng Xiaoshi mumbled through a thickness in his throat, if only to prove that he recognized his friend and guide.
Hazily he remembered how the evening had really unfolded—and how nothing had happened at all. As Lu Guang had assured him, the hour of moonrise came and went with no change in Cheng Xiaoshi, allowing him to slowly begin to relax. Given their prior sleepless night, they agreed to go to bed early; Cheng Xiaoshi was still anxious about nightmares invading his rest, but he was far too exhausted to resist sleep any longer. As he drifted off to the sound of Lu Guang’s soft breathing from the upper bunk above him, he’d only hoped any torments his mind put him through wouldn’t make him disturb his roommate again.
So much for that.
“It’s alright. It was just a nightmare. You’re safe.” Lu Guang’s hand finally came to rest on his shoulder, gripping it firmly in reassurance.
“…I’m sorry.” Cheng Xiaoshi sniffed and scrubbed his eyelids with the heels of his hands before finally darting an apologetic glance up at Lu Guang. “This isn’t working. I’m only keeping you awake too. I’ll go downstairs and sleep on the couch—”
He was reaching for the frame of the bunk to pull himself up from the floor, but Lu Guang’s slim fingers wrapped around his wrist to halt him. “No. I have a different idea.”
Curious in spite of himself, Cheng Xiaoshi waited as Lu Guang stood and crossed the narrow room to the bookshelf. He selected a book, flipped through its pages, and withdrew a small square of glossy paper, which he brought back to where Cheng Xiaoshi sat. His lips were pressed together in an expression of faint but distinct awkwardness as he held it out. “Here.”
Cheng Xiaoshi accepted the photograph and looked down at it; and regardless of all his troubled emotions, he couldn’t help releasing a splutter of surprised amusement.
The instant-film photo was of Lu Guang himself, peacefully asleep in his bunk—and oblivious to the cat nose and whiskers drawn on his face. Cheng Xiaoshi had smugly snapped the picture as a trophy after committing that piece of mischief three weeks earlier. The seer quite justifiably gave him hell about it in the morning, and took the photo away. Now he was rather bemused to learn that Lu Guang had only hidden it instead of destroying it—and he wondered what the choice to keep it actually meant to him.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed to have this back,” he joked feebly, waving the photo between his fingers.
Lu Guang huffed, the way he did whenever he thought Cheng Xiaoshi was being a child. “Just dive into the picture, idiot.”
“Huh? What for?”
“Because I remember how stupidly soundly you were sleeping the next morning, when I woke you up for our little talk about your foolishness,” Lu Guang grumbled. Then his expression softened slightly. “And that picture was taken before the trauma that’s sent your nerves and hormones so out of whack. Maybe it’ll help reset your system if you can get a decent night’s sleep in your past body, without the physical effects of all that stress. Either way, if you do start to have another nightmare…” Narrowed gray eyes shifted away uncomfortably, a faint touch of color gracing his pale cheeks. “We’ll be linked—so you won’t be alone in your head, and I can help you.”
The time traveler gaped at his guide in earnest disbelief. “You’d really be okay with doing that?”
“I guess so. Just this once.” Lu Guang scowled. “Just don’t wake me up in the past too.”
Cheng Xiaoshi felt his first genuine smile in two days beginning to blossom on his face. “Okay then… but I’m making sure to jump out in the morning before your past self yells at me again.”
“Fair enough,” Lu Guang deadpanned, and held out his hand.
Feeling the kind of warmth inside that was definitely nothing to fear, Cheng Xiaoshi first gave back the picture, and then slapped his hand against Lu Guang’s outstretched palm.
—And he promptly almost took a tumble, suddenly finding himself balanced on the ladder to Lu Guang’s bunk while clutching the camera that had taken the photo. As it was, he fumbled it and it slipped from his grasp, falling with a soft plop onto the blankets of his own bunk below. The freshly taken and still-developing instant photo fluttered down beside it.
[Watch what you’re doing!] chided the voice of the present Lu Guang in his head.
[Sorry,] Cheng Xiaoshi thought at him without speaking. He properly steadied himself, and then spared a quick glance at the whisker-adorned face of the Lu Guang from three weeks in his past who slept before him unawares. Smiling gently, he whispered a soft “Thanks” under his breath—and he meant it for both versions of his best friend.
[…Just shut up and go to sleep already,] the present Lu Guang sighed.
Obediently Cheng Xiaoshi eased himself down the ladder. He set aside the camera and photo and flopped onto his bunk, wrapping himself in his blankets like a spring roll. Lu Guang had been right: his own past body that he currently occupied felt so much quieter, and that already seemed to be making a difference to his mind.
[Better?] the present Lu Guang asked him simply.
[Yeah,] he answered, and closed his eyes. [G’night, Lu.]
[Good night, Cheng Xiaoshi.]
For the most part, Cheng Xiaoshi did manage to sleep peacefully in that borrowed night of the past. Only once did a formless, fearful darkness begin to stir in the depths of his mind; but then Lu Guang’s gentle but insistent voice was there to wake him, pulling him out of the dark before he could even remember any solid images or sensations from the nascent nightmare. Afterward, he was still calm enough to drift off again without much difficulty.
…Unfortunately for him, he slept just a little too well, and did not wake until the moment when a very angry past Lu Guang shook him to bleary consciousness to berate him for his prank—still sporting those drawn-on whiskers, which did nothing for Cheng Xiaoshi’s ability to take him seriously. At that point he could only sit sheepishly through the reproach, positively feeling the smug amusement in the present Lu Guang’s silence.
[You didn’t wake me up on purpose, didn’t you?] he groused mentally, tuning out the lecture he’d already received once before.
[Do I look like an alarm clock to you?] the present Lu Guang retorted dryly. [I think I deserved to sleep in for a while, after I already missed out on so much rest the night before last.]
Cheng Xiaoshi had to struggle to keep his indignation out of his face and hidden from the past Lu Guang, who was—or at least so he presumed—oblivious to the argument going on inside his head. …Honestly, the seer was so damn enigmatic that his partner was never quite sure how much he really knew about any given moment in time, past or present… or maybe even future too. Either way, the time traveler didn’t want to make the situation even more awkward by drawing attention to the fact that he wasn’t exactly the Cheng Xiaoshi who belonged in that particular moment.
When the past Lu Guang finally ended his tirade and stalked off to wash the feline embellishments from his face, Cheng Xiaoshi took the chance to escape, swiftly clapping back to the present. Landing in the sunroom where Lu Guang had carried the photo, he immediately drew a breath to complain about having to relive the scolding; but the words died unspoken when he saw his friend’s face, and the weary shadows under his eyes that were no better than they’d been the previous morning.
Then Cheng Xiaoshi wondered just how much of a second night Lu Guang had spent awake, quietly listening across their link for any sound or perhaps feeling of a disturbance in his sleep… and he could only smile in gratitude.
Without a word, Lu Guang held out the photo to him, and he accepted it almost reverently. Having used it once, he could never again dive back to that night and morning; but when he looked at the picture now, the feelings it brought him would be something quite different from the juvenile sense of mischief with which he’d first taken it. He was certain Lu Guang knew that as well, and was returning it to him for that very reason.
Before he could say anything that would probably come out all wrong, he was spared by the ringing of Lu Guang’s phone.
“Hello? …Yes, Captain. Much better now, thanks. …Of course.” Lu Guang glanced at Cheng Xiaoshi, and then at his watch. “Yes, ten o’clock should be fine. We’ll be here.”
The brief call ended, and Cheng Xiaoshi raised an eyebrow. “Captain Xiao?”
“Yes.” Lu Guang regarded him intently, as if prepared to study the smallest nuance of his reaction. “He’ll be coming by in about twenty minutes… to take our statements.” About Sang Zhaojun’s death was the part he didn’t say, but Cheng Xiaoshi heard it loud and clear.
Although he couldn’t disguise a small flinch at the prospect, he nodded. “I’m ready for it.”
“Well, you will be when you get dressed,” Lu Guang observed idly before he buried his nose back in a book—prompting Cheng Xiaoshi to realize he was still wearing only the shorts and T-shirt he slept in.
“…Yeah, I’ll get on that.”
© 2023 Jordanna Morgan