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jing yuan’s hand held yanqing’s tightly. it hurt.
it felt like he was scared to let go.
how ridiculous. the general of the luofu, scared? heresy. you could have said that you were moving to the herta space station and joining the ipc, and i’d have thought it a more believable statement, xiǎoniǎo.
the walk was quiet. he felt dizzy again.
“why didn’t you tell me?"
"tell you...?"
"that you felt sick, yanqing."
yanqing stiffens, frowning. "because i didn't until i got the shot. i was fine before that." he moved his free hand to rub gently at the back of his neck as inconspicuous as he possibly could be, resisting the urge to wince at the gentle throbbing of his head.
"you need to take better care of yourself, yanqing. i can't have you pass out. that isn’t healthy."
yanqing bites his tongue hard, resisting the urge to point out that he was well aware it wasn't healthy, and that he did not enjoy passing out miserably any more than jing yuan enjoyed easing him back to lucidity.
the rest of jing yuan's lecture is drowned out by the subtle uppering in volume of yanqing's headphones. besides, he's heard the whole spiel about how he needs to eat more, which devolves into lecturing about his food habits to his habits in general to jing yuan basically critiquing yanqing's very existence. it made him sick.
he's heard it before.
he's tired of hearing it.
yanqing is tired.
yanqing turns on a more upbeat song and tries not to cry.
a gentle sting coats his eyes anyway and he slips his hand and phone back into his pocket.
his hand hurts, a searing pain shooting up it—heightened by jing yuan’s grip.
“yanqing.”
“mm.”
“you didn’t listen to my question.” the sky is a pretty shade of coral today.
more of a orange sunset, but i digress.
“what was it?” he doesn’t even try to make his voice sound like anything—he’s been in the hospital half the day. he’s tired.
don’t be rude , tingyun chastises in the back of his mind.
he looks up and catches jing yuan’s gaze. it has an edge to it. yanqing feels the slightest bit bad—not much, but it’s there, and his stomach turns at the emotion. he glances away, swallowing the tightness in his chest to no avail.
his hand hurts.
“i said, what do you want for dinner?”
yanqing bristles at the question. he can’t even say he doesn’t know, cause he’ll get lectured again. he doesn’t know. honestly, what’s he supposed to do about that? he shrugs, then hums.
whatever he answers, jing yuan will probably tease him—tingyun too, but her words feel more affectionate. untainted, like an unopened clam, gleaming with a pearl inside. jing yuan is a shattered clam, its pearl long stolen. yanqing doesn’t remember the last pearl he saw that wasn’t tingyun’s.
yanqing feels like punching a wall. or that delicate little crystal yellow flower on that bush over there.
punching the wall would probably hurt more. he decides it is the better option.
“um… what can i get?”
“we could get something from the interastral restaurant. with the rice and chicken you like.” jing yuan replies smoothly. yanqing feels as though he’s being given an exit from the conversation, but if he exits wrong, he’ll get forced back into the room.
he nods. “that’s fine.” he tries to pull his lips into what he hopes is an easy smile, looking away to press his ring finger against the corner of his eye. he pulls it down across his cheek, flicking the eye crust off the inside of his nail.
yanqing slips through the door inside their house, not noticing how close they got to it until they were there. he supposes that he should pay more attention to his surroundings.
“stay here, don’t open the door for anyone, i’ll go get the food.” jing yuan says, about to close the door, before pausing. “unless yukong comes by, she said she was going to drop something off—a book, i believe? for you. if she comes, make sure to thank her, or invite her inside, tell her i’m not home.” he waits for yanqing to nod before shutting the door behind him.
yanqing notes the lack of affectionate goodbye. and the lack of affectionate nickname. and the lack of affection, period. for a moment, he wishes jing yuan would call him xiǎoniǎo again, or make a joke about him being as flighty as a mouse.
he hurries up the stairs, flicking the light to his room on and locking the door, rolling onto it and sighing. he takes his headphones out, slipping them into their case and setting his phone aside. yanqing hesitates for a moment before turning up the volume, setting sushang’s study playlist on. loud enough to be heard, but not enough to make his head ache.
he grabs the collar of his clothes, unclipping the accessories and setting them onto his desk, lining them up. yanqing pulls his clothes off, hanging them up one by one. he then rummages through his closet, pulling out a sweatshirt—the inside is fuzzy, grey. he pulls it over his head, rolling back onto his bed.
after a few minutes of staring up at the ceiling blankly, notes slipping in and out of his ears, yanqing sits up. he carefully toes the drawer beneath the bed open, leaning over the edge of the bed. he pulls out a lump of knitted string and stuffing, closing the drawer and lying back down on the bed. he holds it above his head, like the lion in that movie he watched once, staring at it.
beady black eyes stare back. he lets go.
tingyun’s elephant plushie falls flat on his face. he pushes it off, rubbing his nose. the tinkle of laughter bubbles up from somewhere in the room, not his throat. yanqing frowns at tingyun, who’s draped over the chair at his desk.
“don’t laugh at me.”
she just smiles at him, knowingly. she seems to see right through him, and it honestly is quite bothersome. tingyun never used to act like this, only after the trailblazer showed up. yanqing supposes it is imbibtor lunae and the stellaron hunter’s fault that she is acting so odd. they did the same thing with the general, and suddenly everyone’s oh-so friendly towards them. yukong, even, chastises him whenever he goes on a rant about how much he dislikes the two.
though, tingyun’s change wasn’t as bad. she’s always around, so that’s nice, even though her presence knocks a pit into his stomach, one that tightens his throat, yanqing guesses. whenever he goes on a rant, tingyun just smiles at him sadly and moves to ruffle his hair, but always decides against it.
qingni is like tingyun in that regard, where she’s seemingly hesitant to treat him as a child but not as an adult either. yanqing likes qingni, her general demeanor and all. its oddly comforting. sometimes he’ll have dinner with her and yukong, and he’ll stab a piece of rice while frowning at the empty seat at the table. four chairs shift into a spaced out three.
yanqing shoves his face into a pillow and lets out a keening noise—not quite a scream.
tingyun snickers.
the general thinks of you as somewhat burdensome—you do know this, right?
“i’m well aware of how the general thinks of me.” his voice is muffled.
he’s lonely, i believe. he sees you as … a respite from that.
“no he doesn’t.”
a child, perhaps? his child? though, considering you think yourself as a sword, i don’t think you’ll take my advice.
“diviner fu says you’re not real and that whatever you say is just what i actually think.”
do you think she’s telling the truth?
no comment.
you should tell the general about me, eventually, at least.
“that’s weird. i have no place in his grief.” yanqing looks up at her and wrinkles his nose, leaning on his arms. tingyun shrugs and slips off his chair, tiptoeing out of the room.
yanqing sighs, and the doorbell rings.
he follows tingyun out of his room, going down the stairs carefully. he rounds the corner once he reaches the first floor, walking over to the front door and peeking through the window to see who it is. a flash of blue is in his peripheral vision, but he can’t make out who exactly it is, though a notion wanders in the back of his mind.
yukong, obviously. open the door.
“shh.” following her declaration, yanqing unlocks the door and opens it just a sliver—yukong it is. he opens it all the way and unlocks the screen door as well, watching yukong step to the side to avoid getting hit by it.
“hi, miss yukong.” he puts on a dazzling smile, only the slightest bit forced. tingyun steps outside of the door and circles yukong, flicking one of her earrings. it doesn’t move.
“good evening, lieutenant. how’re you doing?”
yanqing nods, leaning against the door frame subtly.
“well. uh, the general isn’t home, if that’s who you were looking for.”
yukong smiles at him and shakes her head, pulling a small box from the bag she carried on her side. tingyun leaned beneath her, looking at the bottom of the box. she looks back up at yanqing and makes a flipping motion, one that yanqing doesn’t really understand. “no, no, i got you a gift for your birthday. terribly sorry that it was late, i was just a bit busy. i hope jing yuan helped you celebrate though. how was it?” she hands him the box, and he notices that is, in fact, a book, and not a box. he glances at the title. it’s that shitty novel that tingyun tried to get him hooked on.
the front cover even bears her product sticker on it. she cackles at this discovery, going back inside and leaning against the other side of the doorway. yanqing breaks out into a smile, hugging the book close to his chest.
“thank you, miss yukong. uh, my birthday was fine.”
he didn’t actually celebrate his birthday this year. it was last monday and the general was so busy with the express crew that it flew by him, though yanqing didn’t particularly mind. he ended up getting invited on a walk in fyxestroll garden with yunli, and that was just about enough for him. she’s given him a gift—an engraved sword—and smiled at him sweetly when he left to buy himself a gift, at her insistence.
yanqing’s 14 now. he has better things to do than celebrate his birthday—better things to do with his time. an adult wouldn’t waste their time on such frivolities.
he can faintly hear children laughing and yelling in the distance, a noise that sounds more akin to a soundboard than genuine, from real people.
yanqing doesn’t need to celebrate his birthday, but he wants to.
he wants to be a kid.
he doesn’t want to be an adult anymore.
“well, do tell the general i said hello. i’ll be goi—”
“miss yukong?”
she looks a bit surprised to be interrupted, and the lump in the back of his throat seems to subside for a few moments as she looks at him intently.
“…have you ever heard of—of…” yanqing raps his fingers against the book’s cover. “of people seeing things that, um, aren’t there?”
yukong raises an eyebrow, and the sun’s last rays paint the porch in glowing gold. “well, yes, i have. they’re called visual hallucinations. how come?”
yanqing looks around. “can you come inside? i don’t—i don’t want anyone overhearing.”
yukong gives him a look, one he can’t really decipher but he doesn’t particularly care to, instead moving back to let her walk in. tingyun is nowhere to be seen.
yanqing locks the door behind him, listening to the click as yukong makes her way inside, present in their home enough to know her way around. he follows her, and she seats herself at the dining room table, waiting for him to sit down as well. yanqing sidles into a chair across from her, crosslegged, putting the book down onto the table. the same golden light paints lines across the room, and he rests his fingers in the rosey luster.
“so, hallucinations. what exactly did you want to ask about them?”
“how do you make them go away? permanently?”
“…do you have hallucinations?” yukong gives him that look again, and the lump rises back up in his throat, but then he thinks about how kind she’s being, that she isn’t overbearingly interrogating him, but letting him speak his mind, and he couldn’t be more grateful that her just being there made tingyun go away for a bit. he feels compelled to tell her everything, so he does.
“…i see tingyun. everywhere. she—she just won’t leave me alone . she’s there when i go shopping, but she never buys anything, which makes no sense because she’s always arguing for a good deal, and she’s there when i’m training and i can’t focus when she’s there, and she’s always there when i’m out with april and it makes me feel… bad , cause i’m not really paying attention to her. i—i want her gone. is that weird? i wasn’t all that awfully close with her—but it’s not like i disliked her, but i cannot stand her being here.” his breath hitches between words, and he looks down at his fingers, twiddling them together.
yukong sighs. yanqing wonders if his trust was misplaced, for just a second.
then, she cups his face in her hands and wipes tears away that he didn’t even know he was crying. yanqing sniffs at the look she gives him, and he finally pins it down as sadness, and bursts into tears.
he’s sure he looks like a wreck right now—he never was a pretty crier, but that notion seems to be forgotten as yukong gets out of her chair, moving closer to him to wrap him in a hug. yanqing leans his head into the crook of her neck and sobs, arms wrapping around her and nails digging into her back.
muffled sobs rip from his throat, everything he wants to say spilling out.
voicing his wants seems to lift something off his shoulders, a weight he didn’t know was there.
“it’s okay… it’s okay.” yukong runs her hand through his hair, carefully unpinning the jade jewelry that holds up his ponytail. “you can miss her, that’s okay.”
a puzzle piece seems to click into place.
yanqing misses tingyun, and thats okay.
the grass is green, the sky is blue, and yanqing misses tingyun.
within yukong’s kind hold, yanqing slowly comes down from his sobbing fit, and he just leans against her, suddenly exhausted.
he feels kind of hungry, but the general will be coming home with food in a bit anyways.
fuck. the general’s coming home in a bit.
yanqing pushes himself out of yukong’s embrace, wiping at his eyes. she looks at him, confused, and adjusts her clothing.
“shit, shit, shit, the general’s coming home in a bit—he can’t—i can’t tell him—” he tries to stand up and his vision blurs out into black and he falls. yukong helps him sit up again, grabbing that stupid energy drink tingyun gave him a giant bulk pack of and pouring it into his mouth. yanqing chokes it down, burying his face in his hands.
“feel better?”
“mm.”
“well, in my opinion, i think you can tell jing yuan. if anything, you should tell him. i won’t sugarcoat it, but if you’re seeing… her all the time, that’s not normal.” she wrinkles her nose when yanqing looks up at her blearily. “okay, it isn’t healthy . mind my wording. have you told anyone else about this?”
yanqing leans against the back of the chair, moving to sit cross legged again. he wipes under his eyes, rubbing them gently. “i told yunli. and, technically, diviner fu.”
“yunli? and what do you mean, technically?”
“uh, she’s from the zhuming. i’m sort of friends with her.” yanqing chewed on his lip gently, pressing his palm against his eyelid. “and i didn’t tell diviner fu that it was about me, i just asked her what, hypothetically, seeing things meant, and she told me that it was the subconscious trying to tell the individual something.”
“don’t do that.” yukong grabbed his hand and pulled it away. “well, what did yunli say?”
“she said i should go talk to diviner fu, cause she’s good with head stuff so she might be able to help, and to ask my… to ask the general about it.”
“and you did half of one thing she told you.”
yanqing shrugs.
“well… i don’t think you can’t not tell him. almost all treatments for hallucinations are drug-based, and you can’t have those unless jing yuan allows you to.”
“…i can’t tell him.”
“you don’t have to right now, if it helps? if i remember correctly, adequate sleep helps in reducing them.”
“ion sleep all that much.”
“so fix that. that’s one thing you can do.”
“i don’t want to keep seeing her.”
yukong hugs him again. “i know. it’s okay. now, if you don’t want to tell him, go wash your face. your eyes are all red.”
yanqing smiles at her, and for once, there’s not an ounce of fakeness in the curve of his lips. he gets up and rushes up the stairs, hearing the general come inside and talk to yukong in hushed voices, and he trusts she isn’t spilling his secret.