Work Text:
New York City, 1969.
Three thousand years later, the moon looks no different from when he was born.
Cheng Xiaoshi sits alone on the roof of a skyscraper and the night sky calls for him. At this height, it feels as if he can reach the stars, as if he were among the myriad of stories flickering in the last hours of the day. He knows them all by name, every light up above, and they know his, familiar with the undying vagabond.
His feet dangle over the edge of the roof and the concrete is slippery. He could fall very easily, melting into the noise down below in the streets. The city feels alive, bright billboards and colourful chatter humming along the lanes as people overfill the gaps between apartments and cities. Something crackles beside him, the radio he stole speaking its first words as he listens absentmindedly.
“You’ll fall.” A voice creeps behind him, so familiar he doesn’t startle.
“Lu Guang,” He smiles and his chest sinks.
Blue eyes greet him, clear and steady. Lu Guang is patient, hovering close enough so that Cheng Xiaoshi can feel the air buzz but distant enough that he doesn’t lose himself completely. He almost doesn’t hear the other speak, “What year is it?”
“1969,” A pair of shoulders bump into his own, “We finally made it to the moon.”
He gestures to the radio, playing over and over again the same speech. A disembodied, American accent. Reaching out to people across the cities, the oceans, the world. Reaching all of them from the moon, waking them up from disbelief to a dream come true. He doesn’t quite believe it himself. A man on the moon, shooting up into the sky in a metal box and then leaving behind footprints and a flag.
“Come away from the edge.” Cheng Xiaoshi hears the nervous waver in the other’s voice and laughs at him.
“I won’t die,” His lip curls into a nasty grin and he leans forward with his arms between his legs. A single heave of the wind could push him off, “You know this. If I decided to jump, I still wouldn’t die.”
The other frowns but doesn’t argue. It would hurt, Cheng Xiaoshi knows this from experience. He was in Molokai, Hawaii. Home to the highest sea cliffs and he had climbed to the top. He remembers the cuts on his hands from the rocky path, the way his head thundered with adrenaline and how his legs ached with exhaustion. There he was greeted by air so faint that he became light-headed and a deep blue ocean, cool and welcoming. He was so high up and his knees had given out so he fell. Tumbling down the side of the cliff, ribs shattering as he sank to the bottom and lungs overflowing.
But he didn’t drown.
A hand crawls into his palm, fingers intertwining with his own and Lu Guang refuses to meet his eyes. A shame, Cheng Xiaoshi thinks wistfully as he draws circles in the back of the other’s hand. The sun is long gone, leaving behind nothing but quiet snow falling onto the streets of New York but the neon billboards and flickering streetlights paint colours on the snow. Shadows dancing in moving crowds and evening breeze, people running away from the city to go home.
Home, he whispers on his tongue and his eyes dart to the boy beside him. Lu Guang seems fascinated with the dragon breath leaving his lips, hot air in his lungs rising to be greeted by cold weather. His cheeks are pale and his noise red, a makeshift halo flickering on his white hair from the vivid lights of the city.
“When did you last see me?” Cheng Xiaoshi murmurs and looks away.
“1991.” Lu Guang’s voice washes over him, “In Russia. You were drunk and poor.”
He grins, fiddling with the radio. “When am I not?”
“I’d hope not now,” The other stares him down with a look and Cheng Xiaoshi’s head spins. He laughs.
“Sorry to disapoint,” He says as he watches soft lips fall into a frown. Dazedly, he thinks he wants to kiss them.
~
China, 1600 BCE.
He was in the village river, the shallow water reaching his ankles. His eyes carefully chasing after a fish, silver scales reflecting off the sun. Steady motions he reminds himself, quiet and cautious enough for the water not to break into ripples. Cheng Xiaoshi ignores how the pebbles in the river floor dig into his barefeet painfully as he waits. His back hurts and the sun is hot against his skin when-
There’s a splash as he falls forward, the fish swimming right out of his grasp. He lands on his knees and he groans. Dripping as he struggles to get back up, he hears laughter, quiet and silver. He looks up to see a boy with white hair sitting on the side of the riverbed and he freezes.
“Gege,” His voice is cool and his eyes are an unnatural blue, “You told me you could hunt.”
His first thought is yaoguai. A trickster spirit, a demon. White hair belonged to those close to death like the elders in the village. But this boy was young, maybe as old as Cheng Xiaoshi or maybe younger. Not only that but the stranger wore clothes he’s never seen before, sticking out of the scenery as if he didn’t belonged there.
“I’ve never told you I could.” We’ve never spoken before, he wants to say instead. His eyes never leave the stranger and he doesn’t move out of the river.
Blue eyes narrow, “You’ll get cold.”
Cheng Xiaoshi feels a bit like he’s been scolded by his older sister, bowing his head down as he slowly steps out. Neither of them say a word, the yaoguai content with the silence and himself terrified of saying the wrong words. Maybe this is the part he gets eaten, tragically doomed to die young.
“You’re quiet today,” The stranger says idly, “Why were you hunting?”
“To eat.” He fidgets nervously. He’s heard that some gods are angered when their favoured animals are hunted, blasting down waves of monsoons and cursing plague onto those hunters.
The yaoguai blinks, seemingly taken by surprise at such a simple answer. “Eat? I haven’t seen you eat-”
Blue eyes stare at him with such horror that Cheng Xiaoshi feels as if the earth below will swallow him whole.
“How old are you?” The other whispers, eyes wide, as he shrugs. (At this point of humanity, no one had realised you could count time by the passing suns and shifting moons.) “This is the first time we’ve met- first time you’ve met me.”
“Yes.” He says curtly. What else is he supposed to say? The yaoguai purses his lips and his chest rises and falls in a panic flurried. His brows furrow in a way which feels devastatingly human and Cheng Xiaoshi has to ask, “Are you a yaoguai?”
“What?” The stranger laughs slightly, shoulders tightening, “No, no, I’m human. At least, more human than you.”
“Than me?” His voice trails off and he looks at his hands, bare and rough. “What do you mean?”
The other looks at him carefully, searching for something that doesn’t exist yet and sighs. “Put it bluntly, you’re immortal.”
“What?” He echoes weakly and the world becomes dizzy, “You’re lying-”
“It doesn’t matter if you believe me right now,” The wind blows but Cheng Xiaoshi doesn’t feel it, “You will later.”
He speaks with a certainty that scares Cheng Xiaoshi, clear and steady, a silver blade sinking into meat. Blue eyes stare at him and he wants them to stop looking.
“Are you,” he whispers, the words slowly coming to him, “Are you like me then?”
“No, and yes.” He hears absentmindedly, “I come back to you whenever you need me.”
“From where? Where are you from?” He presses and silence greets him. Blue eyes look away in what seems like guilt and Cheng Xiaoshi sinks. Silence stretches on for what could be hours and when he finally looks up to the sky again, the sun begins to set.
“Lu Guang.” The stranger offers, a small peace offering to the storm tormenting him now, “That’s my name.”
“Cheng Xiaoshi.”
Lu Guang smiles sadly and stands up from beside him, “I know.”
“You’re leaving.” He accuses as the other rises.
“I am.”
“Why can’t you stay?” He hisses, digging his fingers into his skin.
Again Lu Guang doesn’t say anything and instead, focuses on the horizon. The shadows grow longer and the wind says its final goodbyes.
By the time the sun dips below the mountain, Cheng Xiaoshi is alone.
~
England, 1599.
The curtains open and the actress welcomes her stage. Applause roars from the crowd, starting as a polite trickle to a thunderous cheers.
“Romeo and Juliet?” Lu Guang asks, “I didn’t know you liked threatre.”
“It’s alright,” The immortal answers easily, “I’m surprised you know it.”
“By name and plot,” The other hums, “I have no idea what they’re saying. Just bits and parts.”
It makes sense for the time traveller not to understand what’s been spoken on stage. The other has visited him many times before all over the world, somehow understanding Cheng Xiaoshi himself perfectly but not a word from anyone else.
“He’s going to kill himself now,” He narrates as the male actor falls to his knees, tragedy bleeding into his voice, “What an idiot.”
“They say this is the greatest love story to exist.” Lu Guang watches them, amused, “Oh, there she goes.”
“Is that so?” The immortal murmurs, joining their hands together. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
~
Pearl Harbour, 1941.
“Another war,” Lu Guang says beside him. Cheng Xiaoshi doesn’t spare him a second look and watches President Roosevolt give a speech on the tiny television he owns. He can’t go out in the streets to see it live, not when his skin makes him look like the enemy.
“This won’t be the last one,” He guesses and the other’s silence is enough, “How many will die?”
Lu Guang plays with an old camera which Cheng Xiaoshi got through second hand and tight favours. He’s had a fascination with them as the years go by, the cameras and the photos they make. The photos, monochrome faces which last longer than life- frozen in one, perfect, happy memory which he wishes he could hold onto for longer.
“Too many.” The time traveller beside him says softly. Cheng Xiaoshi closes his eyes and falls back onto the sofa. He thinks about the children down the road, the kind grandfathers in the barbers and the houses they built for generations to come. All of it, either dead or gone. All of it, leaving him behind to deal with the holes they leave in the world, the widening gaps in his own gaping heart.
Lu Guang’s attention is now on the screen, drawn to history in the making. Famous words being one of the triggers among many to spill blood that didn’t deserve to be spilt.
When will you leave me? He wants to ask blue eyes, When will there be no one left but me?
~
Greece, 600 BCE.
The sun is setting under the pantheon and Cheng Xiaoshi has reached the point where he doesn’t believe in gods. He doesn’t believe in a sky with watchful eyes everywhere, great beings entitled to his final judgement.
He’s spent so long looking for something, someone, that he got lost trying to find it. If the gods were kind, if they were real- they wouldn’t have let him live aimlessly for so long.
“Happy birthday,” He says when the shadows move and another heartbeat joins him up above this cliff that won’t exist in the next hundred years.
“It’s not my birthday,” Silver melts against him and whispers in his ear, “Are you drunk again?”
Cheng Xiaoshi grins lopsided, leaning closer as he delightedly watches Lu Guang turn pink. “Good wine, good company.”
“That’s a quote for the historians.” The other murmurs and he laughs even though it’s not funny. He feels light and giddy, as if he’s about to float up above the clouds and reach someplace where the sky never has.
“Take a sip,” He slurrs his words and sways against the wind. Lu Guang frowns, pushing the goblet away.
“Take care of yourself.” Blue eyes soften and Cheng Xiaoshi wants to drown in them. He wonders if the other would let him try.
“No one lasts long enough to worry.”
He hears a scoff, “And me?”
“What about you?” His fingers trace Lu Guang’s lips mindlessly and he smirks at the way the time traveller’s breath hitches. It’s been centuries now, empires rising and falling as fast as the ocean changes tides. He’s learnt by now that there are constants: the sun, the moon and Lu Guang. And through all these centuries he’s wondered how it would feel to kiss his last anchor away.
“I’ll be by your side, won’t I?”
Maybe it’s the wine, maybe it’s Lu Guang. Maybe it’s the daze of the sunset or some wretched god meddling where they shouldn’t. But the immortal finds his hands in the other’s hair and back, pulling him closer till their lips met. Blue eyes flutter close and let Cheng Xiaoshi take the lead and this, this feels like coming home. There’s this hum under his skin, crying out for him not to let go, not to lose this.
“Happy birthday,” He says again, lungs gasping for air desperately when all he really needs is to kiss the time traveller again. To be grounded, anchored by someone who’s seen every different sun with him.
“It’s not my birthday,” Lu Guang sounds disgruntled but he looks lovely. Face flushed and lips red. The pink and yellow hues from the sunset meld together and make him look irresistable, another memory which Cheng Xiaoshi doesn’t want to forget.
“I’ve missed too many already,” He murmurs before kissing him again and letting the other’s heartbeat become his own.
~
China, 2021.
He sees Lu Guang on the subway. He’s standing across the carriage, too busy reading some book to be aware of what’s happening around him.
Lu Guang didn’t appear randomly beside him, resigned to be pulled out of his daily life to entertain Cheng Xiaoshi. He didn’t appear in an era where his clothes were foreign and language was gibberish. He didn’t even appear out of nowhere. Cheng Xiaoshi had watched him board the train like the other ten passengers and suddenly he can’t breathe all that well.
Because this time Lu Guang didn’t find him wandering lost at the mercy of time. He found Lu Guang, in his own present.
He can’t speak, his lungs constricted and twisted by some sudden force. It would be so easy to call out the other’s name, it’s a name he’s had centuries to learn. To sing again and again against flushed lips. But he’s stuck, in this crowded corner of the carriage so close to his first anchor but he can’t take a single step.
The train comes to a stop. The doors open on the end where the immortal is pressed against and Lu Guang looks up to leave when-
“Cheng Xiaoshi,” The world spins, “You’re here”
He finds his voice, meek and shy. “Hello.”
Blue eyes laugh at him and they’re brighter than he’s ever seen them. Lu Guang takes his hand, dragging him out the carriage so fast that he stumbles and then-
Then he takes Cheng Xiaoshi home.
~
Two years later, he’s no longer immortal.
He realises when he wakes up at three in the morning, Lu Guang fast asleep beside him. He hears the ticking clock, his own heartbeat and then the other’s. There’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary but there’s this feeling, one he only feels when he’s with Lu Guang, one he only feels when he looks at the moon. That feeling were you feeling like every second and minute is burning, slow like a candle or a flash of light. That feeling were you’ve waited so long for something and now you finally have it.
Two years later, Lu Guang can’t go back in time and Cheng Xiaoshi is alive.
Sorry for the wait, the universe seems to say as he slips back under the covers, But you found him at last.