Chapter Text
The metallic smell of incoming rain filled the alley before rushing footsteps broke its silent stillness. Just as the first few drops of a summer storm started to hit the pavement, so too did a pair of little legs, closely following the longer, slightly gangly silhouette of a teenage boy. Its contours were half hidden by a worn down jean jacket that flapped behind him as he ran, his gait askew. He held tightly onto the little boy's hand, dragging him along until they finally found some place to hide behind a wall at the other end of the alley.
He ducked down, pulling onto the hand until the boy came to rest on his lap. The boy curled up against his chest with the ease of habit, snaking tiny arms under the jacket as he buried his face into the faded shirt of his companion. Together they listened for incoming footsteps, and when they came it was almost a relief, like a peal a thunder breaking through the atmospheric pressure.
He pulled the lapels of his jacket closed around the small body of his friend and covered his exposed ear with a hand as threats and taunts and obscenities briefly echoed through the alley before disappearing into the white rush of rain.
A moment later, all was silent.
With a sigh of relief, he finally let his own back rest against the wall and closed his eyes.
"It's alright, A-Yi," he whispered against his friend's hair. "We're safe for now."
The hands that clutched his sides relaxed, and after a long while, soft breaths joined the muffled groans of the storm. The boy let out another sigh, one that sounded far too heavy for someone of his age, but as he did the little hands tightened their grip on his shirt again, just for a moment, hugging him as tightly as they could before sleep overtook the little boy. Du Cheng relaxed, his frown melting into a smile. He held his friend close and let himself drift off at last.
For now they were safe, yes. Together, they always were.
"Do you really need to go with them?" asked Shen Yi, fingers moving restlessly along the hem of Du Cheng's crisp new leather jacket. He didn’t quite fill it yet, but he had grown, and the gray shadow of a mustache was already darkening his upper lip. Shen Yi didn't like the jacket, didn’t like the boys that had given it to Du Cheng, and above all he didn't like that hard and tired look that always seemed to be on Du Cheng’s face nowadays.
"Yeah," he heard him say. His voice was soft, apologetic, but he was frowning again.
Shen Yi didn’t like that either.
He had grown too, but only as high as Du Cheng’s shoulder. When Du Cheng confirmed his worst suspicions, Shen Yi stepped forward and rested his forehead against the bony angle of his clavicle with a pitiful whine. He wrapped his arms around Du Cheng's ribs and plastered himself to his chest, still young enough to be shameless in his possessiveness.
Du Cheng let out a short indulgent laugh before he sat them both down on a bench, leather covered arms encircling Shen Yi's entire shoulders. Shen Yi was still so light that he fit easily onto his lap, though his legs had long since reached the ground and he had to twist himself into a slightly uncomfortable position to be able to face him.
"It'll be alright, you'll see," he heard him say. His chest vibrated with the words and it was such a familiar sensation that Shen Yi felt himself soothed by it, if only for a moment.
"Your teacher will take care of you from now on."
Shen Yi mumbled his dissent into the folded hood of Du Cheng's sweater. His teacher was kind, if not always nice, but he would never be Du Cheng.
"You're so talented, you will go far," Du Cheng continued. "Don't worry about me and just focus on your paintings."
Raising his head, Shen Yi frowned back at him.
"You're abandoning me to go with them," he accused him.
"It's for the best."
It wasn't the first time that Du Cheng had raised this meaningless argument, and Shen Yi answered the same way that he had before.
"Bullshit."
Du Cheng clucked his tongue at him.
"Language."
"You say it too!"
"It's not the same. Your teacher will want a well-behaved boy in his house. You need to be good for him."
"Don't abandon me there," Shen Yi whined, switching tactics.
He squeezed Du Cheng's waist and laid his head back down onto his shoulder. From so close, he could feel the way that Du Cheng's chest caved in when he sighed. For a moment, he said nothing, merely held Shen Yi. Maybe he was realizing that this was the way things should be, the only way, that they should always stay together like this. That they didn’t need anyone else.
"I'm not trying to abandon you," Du Cheng finally said. "But if I go with them, they've promised to leave this street alone. You'll be safe. I just need to know you'll be good with your teacher so he can keep looking after you for me. Can you do that for me?"
For the first time in his very young life, Shen Yi became conscious of the presence of his heart inside the cavity of his chest. It twisted and hurt like a bruise, like he had been punched in the sternum unaware. Tears welled up in his eyes so he shut them tightly to keep the sadness from escaping.
"Don't leave me," he begged, burying his face into the soft cotton of Du Cheng's hoodie. Against his cheek, he could feel the cold clammy leather of the jacket, like a painful reminder of this new skin that Du Cheng was trying to fit into. He jerked his head to push it aside and dug his face into Du Cheng's neck instead.
"Shen Yi…," Du Cheng tried to argue.
"No!"
He sighed again and Shen Yi hated that sound.
There was another silence. Du Cheng bent his head to press a kiss onto Shen Yi's hair, shifting him on his lap so that there wasn't any space at all left between them anymore.
"I won't be really gone gone, you know."
His voice was odd, but Shen Yi couldn't bear to let go to look at him.
"I will… I don't know. I'll try to come back to see you whenever I can. What d'you say?"
This was even worse, Shen Yi thought. A goodbye could be fought off. If Du Cheng found a way to compromise, he would really abandon him for real. This was the way adults did stuff, he had learn, backhanded. Shen Yi remained silent, holding onto him.
"Shen Yi," Du Cheng called.
When no answer came, he made a strange sort of sniffy hiccup that Shen Yi felt shake his whole chest, but said nothing for a long moment after that.
It was Shen Yi who broke the silence, having finally figured out the only solution to their problem. He straightened up to look into Du Cheng's frowny face while keeping a careful hold onto his waist.
"When I grow up, I'm gonna marry you," he announced firmly, "so you can never leave me again."
For the first year after that, Shen Yi nourished his hope like a beloved pet, relying on Du Cheng’s sparse visits to feed it. When he came, during that too short hour once every couple of weeks, it was like nothing had ever separated them. He would reach toward Shen Yi with open arms, standing his ground when Shen Yi collided with him and pressed his face against his heart, and he would smile.
His mustache was growing after some first clumsy attempts at shaving, and his broad shoulders stretched the leather now. But as the weeks passed Shen Yi also watched him grow thinner, his cheeks sink, and his waist remain as small as it had been when Shen Yi had first had to let go of it. More bruises appeared on his skin, a cut at the side of his mouth that had nothing to do with a clumsy razor, his knuckles always raw and bloody or scarred and purple-bruised when he showed up, and when Shen Yi asked about them he always had the same answer to give.
"Don't worry about it."
He would bring Shen Yi closer and kiss the side of his head before asking about his grades or his art or some other inconsequential thing. Shen Yi felt his hope whither a little more with each time. The visits started getting further apart too. After missing one, it seemed to become easier for Du Cheng to miss a second, until one day Shen Yi ended up telling himself that he wouldn't go. He wouldn't leave his room discreetly to meet him, wouldn't wait by the alley for the sound of Du Cheng's footsteps, his young heart beating inside of his chest. He would remain on his bed, eyes closed against the moving clock hands, ears deaf to their relentless ticking.
But he couldn't.
He rushed out at the last minute, running through the streets and never stopping until he slammed at full speed into Du Cheng's embrace. Du Cheng was there, on time, waiting for him, and Shen Yi held him as tightly as he could.
"Hey there," greeted Du Cheng with a surprised laugh, wiggling around for some room to breathe.
Shen Yi looked up at him, still taller and larger than he was, and pretended to ignore the yellow circle around Du Cheng's left eye. He’d found that the more he asked about Du Cheng's life, the worse the visits were, and the more likely it was that Du Cheng would skip the next one. So he sat down beside him, keeping close, and told Du Cheng about his first week of middle school.
Du Cheng's smile didn’t stay long, though, and neither did he.
“No witnesses.”
The taller of the two boys didn't shout but his tone was sharp as a whip crack and Shen Yi could make out the words before he even stepped into the old hangar. He didn’t need to know their full meaning to understand that it was bad, and mean, and dangerous, and in general nothing that Du Cheng should want to be associated with. His short legs hurried on despite the primal sort of fear that the crumbling industrial ruin awoke in him.
This afternoon was the second time in a row that he had sat alone on the dusty ground of the alley, waiting hours for someone who never came, and he had had enough. Dusk was settling over the city when he decided to go in search of Du Cheng. If Du Cheng didn't come, Shen Yi reasoned, he would simply have to go to him.
Except that when he did find Du Cheng there was a knife in his hand.
It didn’t really matter that he was the one holding it and not its intended victim. Shen Yi had no conscious thought beside fear and care and worry before crying out his name.
"A-Cheng!"
The vowel echoed loud and sharp as a blade in the emptiness of the hangar. Du Cheng whirled around, knife in hand, and almost dropped it when he saw Shen Yi standing in the entrance.
The two guys had been quick to turn too, but then they twisted back around toward Du Cheng in a slow, slimy movement that made the hair on Shen Yi's back stand on end. They looked like snakes, the bad ones from cartoons that lied and threatened and bit. What was Du Cheng doing with them?
The tall one smiled a vicious upturned parody of a smile and said again, very slowly, "No witnesses."
Du Cheng dropped the knife then.
"Go away, a-Yi!" he hissed.
Shen Yi stepped toward him.
"Why are you-"
"I said GO AWAY!" he repeated, this time loud enough for the words to punch their shape into Shen Yi's belly.
He meant them, every syllable too, it was clear on his face. His eyes were all black, his face dark with hair growing on his brow and on his lip and falling over his forehead, and he wasn't the Du Cheng that Shen Yi knew anymore. Du Cheng had always pulled him close, always wanted him. This one wanted him to go away. He was trembling with it too, shaking like a rabid dog.
Shen Yi felt tears well up and fill his eyes. He didn’t understand why Du Cheng had changed into this… this person who didn’t like him. What had he done wrong? When had it happened?
"Go," Du Cheng whispered again, his thick brows knitted together. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something else but then closed it tightly and jerked his head toward the exit.
The other boys smiled their awful smiles and the tall one patted Du Cheng's shoulder. For a brief moment, Shen Yi glared at him and thought about biting his stinky hand. The one with the upturned nose started to laugh when Shen Yi turned and ran away.
"Wise choice, kiddo!" he heard him yell in the distance. Shen Yi wiped away the tears that made his vision blurry with a violent swipe of his sleeve and spit out the baddest words that he could think of.
After that, there were no sounds that Shen Yi cared to hear save for the rhythmic scratchy pounding of his sneakers on the pavement. He ignored the too-loud creak of the front door, the tired reproaches of his teacher, but then came the silence of his bedroom, impossible to ignore, the face flushing, tears welling, heart breaking silence of complete loneliness.
He tried to be angry.
He poured the burning sensation twisting his gut into scarlet and vermilion, slapped the thick paint onto canvas, contrasted it with the ice sharp edge of true blue like the empty sky reflecting off a blade. Shen Yi let it all out into the paint, the shameful sickness of abandonment, the unsettling coldness of solitude, but then his teacher praised the painting, called it a beautiful expression of love, and for the first time in his life Shen Yi learned how it felt to hate something that he had made.
His heart stung like he had been stabbed there and the wound was not healing right, hot, throbbing, painful and worrying all at once. He stared at the painting long after his teacher had left the atelier.
Was this really love? No wonder the adults all seemed to hate it. It truly, deeply, and completely sucked, in a way that nothing else in the world seemed to compare to. So many artists that he admired had moaned and cried about it, had devoted entire series to the death and decay of their relationships, but Shen Yi didn't want to understand why, didn't want to empathize with them.
In fact, it couldn't be love.
No way.
This stupid feeling made him want to cry and puke and scream, like his body was trying to get rid of a poison. Love was sweet. Love was sugar safe and pillow soft and smelled like faded cotton and laundry soap. It didn't hurt like this. It didn’t make people want to tear out their hair with worry, or to disappear from the human world. What would be the point? Love was in the way his teacher held his wife's hand when they walked to the market together. It was her proud smile when she presented Xu Siwen with his favorite dish. It was how his teacher smiled as he talked about Monet.
This feeling wasn't love.
It was... something else. Something terrible.
Still, whatever it had been, Shen Yi knew that it had changed him.
He skimmed through the rest of middle school and the start of high school, too smart for his own good but clever enough to keep his head down for a while. But then he started to stay out later and later, to hang out in increasingly bad places, telling himself that it had nothing to do with Du Cheng, that he never looked for his square shouldered shape among the random bonfire-backlit gangs, that it didn’t matter at all if he never saw Du Cheng again. He swallowed his own heart like a sour apple.
All over the city, art appeared in forgotten alleyways, on the rooftops, down under the highways, bold splashes of acid greens and blood-bright reds, large swathes of deep blue and bruise purple spreading the misery of his soul over every damned wall.
Summer came again, and found Shen Yi choking himself on the chemical fumes of his spray cans, pushing back his long hair with stained fingers. Sweat ran down his skinny back in rivulets under his oversized shirt. In the sweltering heat of summer he could feel his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth so when a random guy he was hanging out with offered him a swig of his beer, he accepted, and took a puff of the smelly handrolled joint that followed. As a show of gratitude, he added the man's broken nosed profile to the mural he was spraying.
Shen Yi drank in the people waltzing through his life without ever truly connecting with them, seeing the geometrical shapes of fat and muscle and bone but forgetting more and more that there were living, breathing human beings inside, forgetting that he himself lived in this desperate thirsting body.
There was something somewhere that he couldn't see, something that kept evading his mind whenever he faced a blank canvas. He lost himself in crowds in search of that one face. At dawn, when he fell asleep, there was a star on the horizon that twinkled, and it reminded him of its expression. And sometimes, when the sea was pitch back he could see a pair of eyes superimposed on the waves, irises as deep and dark as ink, as liquid and as bottomless.
He could never quite remember them when he woke.
The city lights seemed to ebb and flow like a tide over the horizon. There was life there, near but so far as to be unreachable. In Shen Yi's mind was a glass pane with the world on one side and him on the other. No matter how much he pressed his nose to it the divide remained and he fell back time and again into the liminal subspace of Beijiang society where he belonged, with the drunkards and homeless and addicts.
With people like him.
There was no them anymore, if he was being honest. They all had stories like his, one stupid thing snowballing until everything good in their life had turned to ruin and wreck, and they'd washed ashore like the rest.
It didn't matter that he wasn't even of age yet. He only used substances when he needed to, he told himself, but the threshold of abuse was always just underfoot, calling to him like a cliff edge, and alcohol was free game. He drank anything that was offered to him for whatever price was asked, waking up far too often in strange beds, on strange floors, dazed and dizzy, with only piecemeal memories of the preceding hours, though that last part might have been a mercy.
It was hard for him to make sense of time anyway. When the mood was right or very, very wrong, he could vaguely remember his childhood, a warm embrace, the glowing sense of safety, but digging any deeper only hurt in a way that made his heart feel like it would finally stop for good.
One day found him crawling out of a den at what seemed like near sunset, climbing over rotten industrial rubble and trying his best to keep the contents of his stomach inside of his body, and the light hit the alleyway in a particular way that wasn't just deja vu. Suddenly he was back there, back then, and rain was on the way, a thick smell of ozone in the air. Someone was there with him, someone dear, someone that was peace and family and home, who was telling him to run, and so he ran, a decade too late to trust in the command.
He ran on shaky legs, still too small and skinny, stumbling over gravel and rusted metal, scraping an elbow on the wall as he turned a corner, and ran straight into something large and meaty. The shock sent him careening backwards and for a blissful second he was too startled to feel anything, but very soon reality caught up to him and he barely had time to turn to his side before his entire body heaved. The obstacle was talking to him but he couldn’t hear anything distinct, only that the voice changed from concerned to accusing before he was done, and then cold steel was closing around his wrists as he was dragged to his feet. He probably lost consciousness in the car as he often did, and wasn’t about to complain.
He didn’t wake up on cold hard ground as he expected but on a somewhat dusty mattress in harshly lit room, stifling and full of noise. People were yelling but not at him, so he turned around and closed his eyes tightly, hoping to fall back into the dream he had been having. It had been so close, that feeling, that he could have almost touched it. Home was just there, if only he could remember it.
“On your feet, kid, I know you’re awake.”
Shen Yi grumbled in response, but didn’t turn.
“Come on, I know you didn’t hit that thick head of yours, I saw you fall. Hungover’s gonna feel better after some food. Then you can talk to me about those pals of yours.”
Finally facing the officer - only a high-ranking cop could master that kind of condescending friendliness - Shen Yi blinked at him until he resolved into a steady image. He sat up, then slowly stood up, bracing himself against the bars of the cell until his stomach had stopped sloshing around so uncomfortably.
Two hours later he was still sitting at the man’s desk, and though his stomach was pleasantly full for once he was fucking tired and the bastard kept going around in fucking circles and all Shen Yi wanted was to lay his head onto the desk and go back to sleep. His hands were shaking so he stuffed them into his hoodie pockets, but there was no hiding the scrunch of his face when the guy started again on the same question.
“I don’t know who they are, I told you.”
“Well there has to be something more you can tell me about them. I saw your blood work, kiddo, and you have one hell of a cocktail in you, there’s no way guys like them would give all of that to you for free. So what is it, prostitution ring, do you watch out for them, bring packages around for them, what?”
“I don’t knooww,” drawled Shen Yi, falling forward until his hair hid his face from the neon light. “I just paint stuff.”
The officer scoffed.
“Yeah, so you said. I never knew art was such a lucrative career. But-”
Before he could finish the sentence, a commotion came from the door and a group of cops came in with struggling convicts in handcuffs, flapping around between them like fish in a bucket.
“We got them!” yelled one of the younger cops.
At this the officer got up, having seemingly forgotten Shen Yi. He was useless now that the gang had been caught, so maybe he would get out easy in the end.
He should have known not to tempt fate. Just as the thought hit, the guy being dragged by his handcuffs looked up and his eyes met Shen Yi’s through the curtain of hair, hate passing through them like a steel blade, and Shen Yi knew that there would be no point protesting his innocence. The cops might let him go, but Zhen would not.
Fuck everything, he thought with feeling, finally letting his head rest upon the desk top. Deep set survival instinct made him keep his head turned toward the entrance, but he allowed himself to close his eyes for a second. For now he was in the sweet spot at the center of the tornado. His body went limp as he relaxed and he could actually feel his heart rate dropping.
The officer’s voice returned. With one eye open, Shen Yi saw him congratulate the young cop, patting his shoulder, and the guy beamed like a fucking dog. Ugh. Shen Yi told himself that such good sentiment might be enough to make him puke again. Look at this sucker, all regulation haircut and straight back. If he had a tail it would be wagging. The guy turned and Shen Yi opened a second eye, letting his hair fall to the side. Of course he was good looking and freshly shaven. Shen Yi would have bet he was the kind of guy who smelled like soap all the time.
The officer gestured toward him and the guy spared Shen Yi a glance, barely grazing the filthy hoodie and pathetic stature, but for one short second their eyes met and Shen Yi froze entirely. It was like the bottom part of the world had dropped down from underneath his feet, like his stomach had suddenly turned into a black hole and was consuming him from the inside out. Shen Yi knew those eyes, he knew them like he knew his own soul. They had been the night cradling him through all those years, the deep pool where he had hidden his heart away.
Unaware, he had moved, and the chair suddenly escaped from under him. He barely avoided slamming his face on the desk and braced himself, looking down and away from-
What was his name again?
He knew it, he knew that he knew it, but it was - ugh! still so infuriatingly out of reach. It was him, Shen Yi was certain of that. There was no mistaking this. It would be like missing the sun out of the sky.
“Good job, Du Cheng,” called out the officer as he returned to the desk.
Shen Yi was still facing the ground, head between his braced forearms, and he breathed out a sigh from deep within his chest.
Du Cheng.
It was him.
He had known for sure that it was him, there was not even a potential possible molecule of doubt anymore. It was him, it was Du Chen, and Du Cheng was his, he knew him, he was a fundamental building block of his universe and Shen Yi would have known him anywhere.
His Du Cheng.
He didn’t hear a single word of what the officer told him after that, repeating the name inside of his mind like a mantra. He would never forget it again. Melting away from the world he sunk into the memories, the name like a lifeline. Du Cheng. Du Cheng. Du Cheng, on and on like waves lapping at the shore. When next he resurfaced, he found himself tracing a pair of eyes on the concrete.
Shit hovered for a while longer before hitting the fan, though Shen Yi didn’t pay much attention. He didn’t return to the den for his things but managed to grab a sketchbook and smuggle it out of an art shop under his hoodie before the security guard could catch up with him, and he spent the next days filling it with Du Cheng.
He only had what few coal-tipped pencils he kept stashed in his pockets on hand but he tried every variation he could think of, aged up, bearded, blond, Du Cheng with glasses, middle-aged officer Du Cheng, long-haired or side-lit.
He fell asleep at some point but woke up with more ideas, ignoring the crick in his neck and the pain in his back from sleeping curled around the sketchbook in the corner of a derelict boat hangar. He drew Du Cheng's full body, and then just that little line at the corner of his left eye. He drew the line of his shoulders, standing proud like he had in the station that day, but didn’t draw the officer behind him.
In all of the pages, Du Cheng was alone, not with him but not with them either. Du Cheng was the sole focus, all the facets of his face a hoard for Shen Yi’s eyes only.
Greedily, he drew on, forgetting the hours.
Shen Yi drew his eyes, again and again, happy eyes, sad eyes, dark and beautiful eyes.
The only thing he didn’t draw was the Du Cheng that lived in his memory, that child in the jean jacket, held back by that same survival instinct that reminded him of the pain of remembering. He didn’t draw him as a teenager either, because he couldn’t bring himself to imagine him then. Du Cheng had wanted him out of his life, and Shen Yi had forgotten him, eventually. Those years didn’t exist, and he couldn’t put them to paper.
But now that he remembered, what would happen?
Before Shen Yi could think of an answer to that question, the door to the hangar creaked open and Zhen walked in. Shen Yi only had time to drop the sketchbook into the oily waters beneath him before he was taken away.
Du Cheng had become the new axis around which his world revolved. When Shen Yi stepped back from the mural, he thought: this is the officer that congratulated Du Cheng.
When he saw him again, Shen Yi understood what that thought meant, and then wished he didn’t.
The paint can was ice cold in his hand. Superimposed over it was the sense memory of Du Cheng’s warm, trembling grip, holding Shen Yi’s fingers as he begged him to remember.
He hadn’t noticed the name on the suspect file, hadn’t recognized his face. All he had known of Shen Yi was his involvement in the death of his mentor, his guilt, his failure. Du Cheng had been on the other side of the table, closer than he had been in a whole decade, and yet he had never been further out of reach, not even when he had been wrapped in a shroud of amnesia.
Shen Yi’s heart hadn’t stopped hurting since. The hope he hadn’t known was growing in him had been crushed back into the dust, and yet through Du Cheng’s cries and anger, he had looked at him and thought, I have never loved you more.
God, he wanted a drink.
Instead, he grabbed the can more tightly and raised it.
His art had caused Du Cheng so much pain and yet, he couldn’t keep it inside anymore. There was something deep inside of his chest that was filling up to overflow, and needed to be spilled over the walls of the city. He had found the place when he first went into hiding after Zhen released him, and it wasn’t easy access, but the wall faced the entire city.
This was where he would be enshrined.
Shen Yi had climbed up with a backpack full of spray cans, traded for way more than their worth, stolen, borrowed, taken, and spent a night and a day, not sleeping or drinking, not existing as anything other than a medium for what wanted to come out.
When the tears returned, he wiped them away with the sleeve of his hoodie and painted on, telling himself that he would destroy it once the mural was finished. It didn’t matter. He had to bring him to life first.
His Du Cheng, the one that lived inside of his heart.