Chapter Text
Luminescent black sludge splatters across porcelain and burrows in until it breaks. Purple miasma foams up in the cracks, wiring shards together—bones strung together with steel, fit to display.
Screaming. Heavy fists. Frothing, hungry darkness consuming a kind smile.
Barking, somewhere. Snarling and tearing, teeth stained black—
Shang Nai startles awake, gasping. He’s… in bed. The room is dark, but it’s a natural darkness. Above, the ceiling fan whirs. A clock ticks somewhere he can’t see.
A nightmare. Just a nightmare.
The body next to him stirs. It’s his—his—? Husband, he remembers, closing his eyes. How could he forget his wonderful husband, Chen Liheng? Must have been some nightmare.
He shushes Liheng with a kiss and crawls out of bed.
He doesn’t turn on the bathroom light; he already knows exactly where the bottle is. His hands tremble, but not enough to impede him as he pops the lid and taps out one pristine little yellow tablet. He takes it with a full glass of water as prescribed, then hops into the shower to wash the cold sweat from his limbs.
Bathing keeps him occupied as the medication works its magic; in the time it takes to shampoo and rinse his hair, the bubbling anxiety is gone. As he soaps himself down, his racing thoughts and worries finally drift away. Soon enough he’s just standing under the spray, head mercifully quiet.
Drying his hair is a quick, practiced affair. He doesn’t spend hours agonizing over the placement of each lock—what need is there to worry, when he’s going back to bed anyway?
Within moments, he’s cuddling back in with his husband, tangling their naked legs together again, shooshing Liheng’s rumbling with a smile.
Morning dawns bright, beautiful, cloudless. Shang Nai wakes Liheng with a kiss on the cheek and a little teasing tug on his hair. While his sweet Liheng showers, Shang Nai dresses, whips up a lovely breakfast, collects the morning newspaper, sets the table. He’s finishing up a little note to go into his husband’s lunch when Liheng finally emerges, fastening green cufflinks onto his suit cuffs.
“Good morning, Dear,” Shang Nai chirps, smiling.
Liheng pauses, but returns his greeting with a little smile of his own. “Good morning, Nai-er.” He presses a kiss to Shang Nai’s cheek on his way past, tilting just slightly so his glasses don’t clip Shang Nai’s ear, as usual.
“Do you want me to do your hair this morning, Li-ge?” Shang Nai asks over breakfast.
Liheng, fingering the ends of his long black ponytail mindlessly, pauses at the endearment. A little pink starts to crawl up his neck—how cute—before he clears his throat and pointedly shifts his attention back to the newspaper. “If you want to,” he eventually agrees.
Shang Nai smiles. His dear husband never says no when Shang Nai asks to braid his hair, but he got into the habit of asking long ago, and routines are easy. Predictable. Nice.
As usual, at 7:30 sharp, he walks Liheng to the front door, ties his tie, smooths down his suit until it’s just right. He stands in the doorway while Liheng starts the car. His hands itch to do something—make some hand signal, maybe? Point at something…? But instead he just waves, smiles, blows a little kiss as Liheng pulls away.
Once Liheng is gone, Nice changes into some working clothes—still meticulously clean, but older, sturdier, more worn. It’s a lovely day to get some gardening done.
First, he takes the morning’s kitchen scraps out to the compost—he can’t stand to let it rot in the house for more than half an hour. It’s a good time to churn the compost anyway, before the morning dew starts to burn off. The dew will keep the fresh scraps moist while the dark, healthy compost from the center of the pile turns them into something useful.
Then, he sets to weeding and watering the garden. Each plant needs a long, deep drink, right at the base. While he waters, he checks on their health.
The andromeda pieris is doing well, now that he’s moved it to live where the blue pine drops its needles. And the gardenia and the jasmine both have enough young blooms to make tea—he’ll have to harvest some later.
Surrounding the magnolia tree and hostas, the creeping phlox is losing its white flowers and leafing out in a dense cascade over the retaining wall. Right on time for the beginning of summer. He’ll trim it up a bit, just to make way for summer growth. Pretty soon, the oak leaf hydrangea in this bed should start to bloom; he can’t wait to see it.
And then, of course, are the white roses. Some of the blooms need deadheading and there are a few dead leaves to remove. He spots no aphids, which is good. If the weatherman is to be believed, he’ll need to keep an eye out for mildew for the next week or so.
Once the plants are watered, he moves on to raking. The mulch tends to shift after deep watering. Carefully, he tidies up any messy edges, spreads the mulch back over areas where the water flooded it out. Finally, he gets around to pruning and trimming.
He’s trimming a dead branch off one of the azaleas when he spots it. There, in the corner, is a vine he doesn’t recognize. Somehow, it’s already shoulder-height, grown thick and woody at the stem, with large, serrated, almond-shaped leaves.
Strange. He didn’t plant that. How has he managed to overlook such a large weed all spring long? He’ll need to ask Liheng to get back there and cut it down, later.
He finishes up all the trimming and grooming, then takes a step back to just… look. The garden is a sea of green foliage and white flowers, healthy and teeming with life. The product of years of hard work and dedication. It’s perfect.
A warm, early-summer breeze rustles the trees, ruffles his hair. He can’t help but smile and tilt his head up—feeling a bit like a pleased cat, basking in the sun.
After a few more moments of indulging in the view, he packs away his gardening tools and heads inside to wash up.
Shang Nai breezes through the rest of the morning chores, humming thoughtlessly while he dusts, sweeps, vacuums, folds laundry. He makes himself a quick lunch, sets the table for dinner ahead of time, starts to work on Liheng’s favorite hand-pulled noodles.
Soon enough he’s wrapping the noodle dough for its second rest. He sets a timer for three hours and starts prepping for the sauce and protein: chopping mushrooms and scallions, deleaving and chopping celery, washing chilies, dicing ginger and garlic, popping open canned lychees and separating the fruits from the juice, cubing up a few cuts of pork. All the prepped ingredients go into separate tupperwares, which he sets in the fridge to wait with a little self-satisfied sigh. He cleans the used dishes and utensils and sets them to dry, then scrubs down his workspace.
…Now what?
He mentally goes over his daily to-do list. Gardening, done; dusting and floor maintenance, done; laundry, done. The kitchen is deep-cleaned, down to the appliances and the inside of the oven. The table is set, dinner is started.
He could… wash the windows? Clean the bathroom?
Within forty five minutes, those tasks are complete too. Still two more hours before he needs to return to cooking.
What else?
Maybe he could… He could call a friend! It’s been a while since he talked to Wreck, everything’s been so busy—
He’s got the phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear, twirling the cord idly between two fingers, halfway through dialing before he pauses. Who… who was he trying to call?
He thinks back. Retraces that train of thought. He could call a friend—it’s been a while since he talked to… talked to… to—
Huh.
He really can’t remember.
Something is wrong.
Chen Liheng awakens to that thought, but is distracted by a kiss and a bit of fondling from his clever wife. Wife? What wife? I don’t have a—
Ah. Wait. He must be disoriented from sleep. Of course he has a wife. His sweet Nai-er flounces off to make breakfast, and Liheng goes to shower.
His lovely spouse already set out a suit for him to wear today, and he’s buttoning up his dress shirt when another odd little thought occurs to him:
Why don’t I have more green in my wardrobe?
A strange idea, to be sure. What kind of self-respecting attorney shows up to the office in green, of all things? Even so, somehow, he feels like there should at least be—a green coat, a green bath robe, something. To satisfy that strange, insistent little voice in the back of his head demanding he stick to his “brand”, he settles for green cufflinks.
Shang Nai fixes his hair into a braided bun, as usual, though today Liheng feels… oddly aware of the motions—the brush of his fingers, the tugs and twists. It somehow feels novel, new.
They eat breakfast together, chit-chat about the news. Just before it’s time to go, Shang Nai walks him to the door.
“Have a safe trip,” Nai-er murmurs, diligently tying Liheng’s tie. Liheng has to suppress a shiver when cool, soft fingertips graze his neck, cup his jaw.
Shang Nai leans forward for a kiss. How can Liheng refuse him?
His lovely wife presses his briefcase and lunch into his hands, and before he knows it, he’s sliding behind the wheel of his automobile.
For a moment, he sits there and has the wildest thought of the morning—I don’t know how to drive. But wouldn’t that be silly? How couldn’t he know how to drive? It’s not as if there’s a train nearby that he could take to work. Rolling his eyes at himself, he pulls away.
From the corner of his eye, he catches sight of Nai-er blowing him another kiss.
By the time he makes it to the office, he’s long gotten his flush under control and shifted his focus to his current caseload.
He’s representing one of the trade unions pro-bono soon, so after directing his paralegals to look into other relevant cases and rulings, he spends most of the time between client meetings brushing up on the current situation surrounding the strikes. He combs over the written statements the union sent him. He takes notes for potential assault charges against union busters and defenses for union members. He reads through the union’s first draft of demands. It’s interesting work, but not very different from the usual.
A few times, one of his paralegals comes in to tell him something or another; but as soon as he turns back to his work, whatever it was that she said slips out of his mind. Probably something about a case, or reminding him of the time. He doesn’t think much about it.
Still, as he locks up and heads home an hour after his staff left for the night, he can’t help but think the day passed as fast as lightning.
And that analogy sparks blue in his brain.
Deja-vu strikes; self-loathing bubbles up, familiar but unknowable. Something is wrong. Just as quickly as the feeling comes on, it passes, but… he makes note of it, just in case.
He comes home to his beautiful house and his beautiful wife waiting at the door, with that perfect lovely smile and those perfect sparkling eyes. And for an instant the impulse to punch that vapid, doll-eyed look off of Nice’s face curls his fist, and then—and then it’s just his lovely wife again, his Nai-er, gazing up at him through pale eyelashes.
Liheng’s stomach drops. What the hell? He’s never raised so much as a hand to Shang Nai, never even dreamed of it. And who in the world is “Nice”?
“What’s wrong?” Concern pulls Nai-er’s lovely features into a frown.
Liheng shakes those ridiculous thoughts away. “Nothing, nothing. Now, how was your day?”
Shang Nai recounts his garden escapades as they cross the living room. Though gardening isn’t Liheng’s forte, he gets a strange sense of deja-vu listening to him talk about healthy soil parameters for acid-loving plants. It feels like something he already knows, though this is the first time Shang Nai has dived into this topic with him.
Shang Nai pauses at the dining room entry. “And for dinner, I’ve made—“
“—Pork noodles with lychee sauce?” Liheng interrupts, catching sight of the table. Nai-er pouts at him; he winces apologetically. “Sorry, baobei. That was rude of me. I’m just surprised.”
“Good-surprised, I hope. There’s also lychee custard in the fridge,” Shang Nai huffs, looking halfway between smug pride and uncertainty.
Shang Nai should never be uncertain; not around Liheng. “Good-surprised,” he affirms. “You spoil me.”
Nai-er smiles, eyes glinting with triumph, all pretty. “Only the best for my Li-ge.”
Has he always called me that? Somehow, though Shang Nai called him the same way just this morning, he still feels embarrassed—even after so long together, he’s not used to being ‘Li-ge’.
“Still. I know how long this takes to make. You’ve worked hard.” On impulse, like he’s done it a thousand times, Liheng wraps an arm around Nai-er’s waist and presses a kiss to the soft white waves over his temple.
At least Shang Nai isn’t any better, when it comes to feeling embarrassed at affectionate displays. He still flushes to his ears when Liheng kisses him.
Dinner is decadent.
Before Liheng knows it, the dishes are put away, the house is locked, the lights are out for the night, and he’s meeting Shang Nai in the doorway to the bedroom.
Shang Nai’s lips are on his jaw, hands guiding his to a plush rump. What a sweet little minx, his wife—but no, wait a moment, this is—fine. More than fine—this is right. Shang Nai is his spouse, willing and wanting under his hands; of course it’s right.
Liheng seizes the opportunity to slip a leg between Nai-er’s. Grasps his hips, grinds him down.
God, the sound Nai-er makes. He could launch a thousand ships with that voice.
Soon enough, he’s unwrapping his pretty wife in bed. His Nai-er—flushed and glassy-eyed—wraps long, muscular legs around his waist. Clever fingers grasp and pull his hair out of its braided bun; plush lips mumble nonsense into his ear. Liheng bites down on the junction between his wife’s slim neck and broad shoulder; Shang Nai whines, teary and needy.
No more illogical, intrusive thoughts. Neither of them needs to think about anything else for the rest of the night.