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fan_flashworks2020-09-23 12:37 pm
china_shop) wrote in fan_flashworks2020-09-23 12:37 pm
Entry tags:
Guardian: fanfic: Precious Ordinary Things
Title: Precious Ordinary Things
Fandom: Guardian
Rating: G
Length: 1750 words
Notes: Zhang Shi, Zhao Xinci, Shen Xi, Zhao Yunlan, backstory, body-sharing, domestic life, fate, angst. Much thanks totrobadora for beta.
Summary: Zhang Shi is still settling into Zhao Xinci’s body when they get home.
Zhang Shi is still settling into Zhao Xinci’s body when they get home. Still adjusting to the different rhythm of heart and lungs, the extra few inches of height and the increased vitality. Trying to find his feet without treading on Zhao Xinci’s metaphorical toes.
Home. It’s a block of flats, nothing fancy, but a considerable step up from his last digs. (He tries not to think about that. Haiqin had many faults, wasn’t kind or particularly honourable and, on his bad days, he’d considered Zhang Shi’s presence a curse, but he’d been a child not so long ago, before Zhang Shi knew him. A child full of promise just like everyone else. He’d deserved a better end. Zhang Shi had walked around for days with a bullet hole in his temple, regret and Haiqin’s damaged brain clouding his judgement, making it hard to decide what to do next. Then he’d heard the Haixing cops were coming and arranged himself on the ground before they could discover a walking corpse. He’d been prepared to take whatever opportunity arose, and when Zhao Xinci spoke of maintaining peace, the choice was made. Zhang Shi has seen too many wars, will do whatever he can to avoid another.)
“What are you going to tell your family?” he asks Zhao Xinci as they climb the stairs.
“Nothing.” Zhao Xinci’s stomach is in knots, and he grows more terse and tense with every floor. “You don’t breathe a word either, you hear? If you can make yourself disappear while I’m at home, do that.”
Zhang Shi can’t, but he doesn’t think Zhao Xinci is expecting an answer, just obedience. Something in him baulks at this attitude. They’d agreed to cooperate. This is Zhang Shi’s life now, too. “Just the one kid?”
They’d sounded close on the phone. Zhao Xinci’s smile had been so fond.
“My son.” Zhao Xinci stops in his tracks and glares at his own front door with its lucky red paper adornments. “I’m warning you—if you try to do anything to them, I’m evicting you whatever it costs. I’ll call on the Dixing Regent to send Hei Pao Shi, if I have to.”
It sounds like a threat. Zhang Shi doesn’t say that his teacher knew Hei Pao Shi ten thousand years ago. He doesn’t say anything.
Zhao Xinci takes a breath, forces his body to appear relaxed, and unlocks the apartment door. The place smells of wholesome food, and there’s faltering violin music coming down the hallway. The walls are hung with framed photos—Zhang Shi doesn’t have time to get more than a glimpse of elders, a wedding photo, a holiday snap of two adults and a child—
“I’m home,” Zhao Xinci calls. “What, no one’s here to greet me?”
“Maybe if you’d got home an hour ago,” says a woman’s voice, wryly. Footsteps, and she appears in a doorway, her finger acting as a bookmark in a volume of poetry. “Your dinner’s in the wok.”
Zhang Shi feels Zhao Xinci’s heart quicken at the sight of her, so pretty, with her hair tied back and her sleeves rolled up. That’s when it really hits home—he’s chosen someone with a family this time. (Families complicate things. He hasn’t made this mistake in over two centuries, had grown complacent.)
The three of them go into the tiny kitchen. Zhao Xinci and Zhang Shi get a beer from the fridge and pop the can open, while Shen Xi—that’s her name, Shen Xi—rests a hand low on their back as she squeezes past them. She dogears her page in the book and slides it onto the shelf above the sink, next to a teapot. Then she turns on the burner under the wok with one hand and takes a bowl down from a cupboard with the other, spoons rice from a rice cooker into the bowl, stirs the food in the wok until it sizzles, combines them into a tempting if slightly overdone meal. Through all this, she peppers Zhao Xinci with questions—did they wrap up the case? How was Gao Jingfeng’s blind date? What did Zhao Xinci eat for lunch?
Zhao Xinci answers her easily, gets chopsticks from the little basket behind the sink, adds a generous extra splash of soy sauce to the meal, to Shen Xi’s laughing disapproval. She shoos him ahead of her to the dining nook, where she moves more books and some papers aside and places the bowl on the table, and he sits down at the table to eat.
The first mouthful brings tears to Zhang Shi’s eyes. He hasn’t eaten food so quintessentially domestic in several lifetimes (other people’s lifetimes, that is). Zhao Xinci picks up his beer to hide the reaction. Zhang Shi can feel his frown.
Shen Xi isn’t paying attention. She disappears into the kitchen and there’s scraping and the sound of running water—cleaning the wok? Then she stands in the hallway and calls, “Yunlan, your father’s home.”
There’s no reply and no interruption in the violin practice emanating from the deeper reaches of the flat.
Shen Xi raises her voice. “Zhao Yunlan!”
Zhang Shi drops the beer. Oh no.
He’s barely aware of the glug of liquid spreading across the dining-room floor, or Shen Xi’s exclamation. All he can think is oh no. It has to be a coincidence, doesn’t it? In all the world, in all of time, it has to be.
But that name, and the other man’s earlier mention of a special police unit to deal with Dixingren... It had barely registered in the moment. Can ten thousand years have passed already? Zhang Shi’s been living with hermits and opportunists lately, has become one himself by association, focused on managing his daily affairs and staying out of reach of the authorities. It’s been so long since he thought about his teacher, the great Lord Ma Gui. Most of his memories have faded with time, but the duty Ma Gui charged him with is as crystal clear as ever. They’d been in the civic chamber, a cave where the allied forces had once planned and strategized. A winter storm was raging outside, spurring Ma Gui to ask Zhang Shi to move their chairs to the fireside and send for hot food. Zhang Shi still remembers gratitude at the chance to warm his chilled feet. Ma Gui had gazed into the flames, his grey hair falling forward, and finally he’d sighed. “Zhang Shi, with your power, you will live long after I’m gone. I have an important task to entrust to you. Ten thousand years from now, you must find a man, Zhao Yunlan, the Lord of the Guardians. He’s a time traveller. When he was here, during the war, he was called Kunlun.” “General Kunlun?” Ma Gui had smiled tiredly and nodded. “When you find him, tell him what I couldn’t about the Hallows. He has to know the price of lighting the Lantern before he makes that choice.” “Yes, teacher. Of course.”
It had seemed such a small thing, then, to pass on a message.
Now Zhang Shi goes cold, feels Zhao Xinci’s confused and irritated response. “What is it?”
Nothing. Zhang Shi can’t explain. Even if he wasn’t charged with guarding the timeline, he couldn’t. How can you tell a man—especially a man whose trust you have to earn—that his son will sacrifice himself, enduring endless torment for the sake of the entire world, or that you learned this from a long-dead general and teacher who all but saw it happen? It beggars belief. Even if the Hallows were widely known in Haixing, it would be absurd. He (or Zhao Xinci, or perhaps both of them together) gets a cloth from the cleaning cupboard, wets it in the sink and crouches to clean up the spilled beer, trying to gather himself, to quiet his emotions so Zhao Xinci can pretend for a time that everything is ordinary and right.
“Dad, what are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” says Zhao Xinci without looking. Zhang Shi looks over his shoulder and sees the mischievous smile of a ten-year-old boy.
He’d never thought that when he finally met Zhao Yunlan, the hero would be a child.
“This time you’re the mucky pup,” says the boy, the term clearly a running joke. He comes closer. “Here, let me help.”
“No!” barks Zhao Xinci, unnamed fear spiking through him. “Get back!”
The boy jerks away as if he’s been shoved, stumbles into the far wall.
“I mean, I’m not feeling myself,” adds Zhao Xinci, hastily. “If I have a cold, I don’t want you to catch it.” But it’s too late to placate the boy. His eyes are wide with shock and hurt. He runs up the hall and slams the door.
“Zhao Xinci?”
Zhang Shi starts. He’s forgotten about Shen Xi. She’s staring down at him, her hands on her hips. If Zhang Shi had a choice, he’d tell her everything, reveal himself now, but Zhao Xinci has made his conditions perfectly clear.
Mixed with the smell of spilled beer, the previously wholesome aroma of food is nauseating now.
“I’m sorry,” Zhao Xinci says, getting to his feet to speak to her, the sodden cloth in his hands. “I’m not feeling myself.”
Her frown shifts into concern. “Do you need medicine? Rest? You’ve hardly touched your meal.”
“I’ll be all right.” But it’s automatic, and Zhang Shi can feel the uncertainty Zhao Xinci is hiding. The fear that this simple reassurance is a lie. Everything has changed for him. Nothing is how it should be. Zhang Shi’s presence is a burden, a curse, opening a terrible chasm between Zhao Xinci and his family. He must protect them—but at what cost?
Zhang Shi pities his position, understands his anger and, if things were different, might have tried to find another host, someone without a family, someone lonely. He might have left Zhao Xinci in peace—though moving between living bodies is difficult and dangerous. But the child is Zhao Yunlan. Ma Gui sent him here. It must be fate.
Shen Xi takes the cloth from his hand, and Zhao Xinci flinches away from her. “Sit down,” she says, firmly. “Eat.”
But she doesn’t touch him again that evening, and Zhao Xinci doesn’t reach for her either. Zhang Shi’s heart hurts. A precious ordinary beautiful thing is breaking before his eyes. But it’s fate, it must be.
He stays.
END
Fandom: Guardian
Rating: G
Length: 1750 words
Notes: Zhang Shi, Zhao Xinci, Shen Xi, Zhao Yunlan, backstory, body-sharing, domestic life, fate, angst. Much thanks to
trobadora for beta. Summary: Zhang Shi is still settling into Zhao Xinci’s body when they get home.
Zhang Shi is still settling into Zhao Xinci’s body when they get home. Still adjusting to the different rhythm of heart and lungs, the extra few inches of height and the increased vitality. Trying to find his feet without treading on Zhao Xinci’s metaphorical toes.
Home. It’s a block of flats, nothing fancy, but a considerable step up from his last digs. (He tries not to think about that. Haiqin had many faults, wasn’t kind or particularly honourable and, on his bad days, he’d considered Zhang Shi’s presence a curse, but he’d been a child not so long ago, before Zhang Shi knew him. A child full of promise just like everyone else. He’d deserved a better end. Zhang Shi had walked around for days with a bullet hole in his temple, regret and Haiqin’s damaged brain clouding his judgement, making it hard to decide what to do next. Then he’d heard the Haixing cops were coming and arranged himself on the ground before they could discover a walking corpse. He’d been prepared to take whatever opportunity arose, and when Zhao Xinci spoke of maintaining peace, the choice was made. Zhang Shi has seen too many wars, will do whatever he can to avoid another.)
“What are you going to tell your family?” he asks Zhao Xinci as they climb the stairs.
“Nothing.” Zhao Xinci’s stomach is in knots, and he grows more terse and tense with every floor. “You don’t breathe a word either, you hear? If you can make yourself disappear while I’m at home, do that.”
Zhang Shi can’t, but he doesn’t think Zhao Xinci is expecting an answer, just obedience. Something in him baulks at this attitude. They’d agreed to cooperate. This is Zhang Shi’s life now, too. “Just the one kid?”
They’d sounded close on the phone. Zhao Xinci’s smile had been so fond.
“My son.” Zhao Xinci stops in his tracks and glares at his own front door with its lucky red paper adornments. “I’m warning you—if you try to do anything to them, I’m evicting you whatever it costs. I’ll call on the Dixing Regent to send Hei Pao Shi, if I have to.”
It sounds like a threat. Zhang Shi doesn’t say that his teacher knew Hei Pao Shi ten thousand years ago. He doesn’t say anything.
Zhao Xinci takes a breath, forces his body to appear relaxed, and unlocks the apartment door. The place smells of wholesome food, and there’s faltering violin music coming down the hallway. The walls are hung with framed photos—Zhang Shi doesn’t have time to get more than a glimpse of elders, a wedding photo, a holiday snap of two adults and a child—
“I’m home,” Zhao Xinci calls. “What, no one’s here to greet me?”
“Maybe if you’d got home an hour ago,” says a woman’s voice, wryly. Footsteps, and she appears in a doorway, her finger acting as a bookmark in a volume of poetry. “Your dinner’s in the wok.”
Zhang Shi feels Zhao Xinci’s heart quicken at the sight of her, so pretty, with her hair tied back and her sleeves rolled up. That’s when it really hits home—he’s chosen someone with a family this time. (Families complicate things. He hasn’t made this mistake in over two centuries, had grown complacent.)
The three of them go into the tiny kitchen. Zhao Xinci and Zhang Shi get a beer from the fridge and pop the can open, while Shen Xi—that’s her name, Shen Xi—rests a hand low on their back as she squeezes past them. She dogears her page in the book and slides it onto the shelf above the sink, next to a teapot. Then she turns on the burner under the wok with one hand and takes a bowl down from a cupboard with the other, spoons rice from a rice cooker into the bowl, stirs the food in the wok until it sizzles, combines them into a tempting if slightly overdone meal. Through all this, she peppers Zhao Xinci with questions—did they wrap up the case? How was Gao Jingfeng’s blind date? What did Zhao Xinci eat for lunch?
Zhao Xinci answers her easily, gets chopsticks from the little basket behind the sink, adds a generous extra splash of soy sauce to the meal, to Shen Xi’s laughing disapproval. She shoos him ahead of her to the dining nook, where she moves more books and some papers aside and places the bowl on the table, and he sits down at the table to eat.
The first mouthful brings tears to Zhang Shi’s eyes. He hasn’t eaten food so quintessentially domestic in several lifetimes (other people’s lifetimes, that is). Zhao Xinci picks up his beer to hide the reaction. Zhang Shi can feel his frown.
Shen Xi isn’t paying attention. She disappears into the kitchen and there’s scraping and the sound of running water—cleaning the wok? Then she stands in the hallway and calls, “Yunlan, your father’s home.”
There’s no reply and no interruption in the violin practice emanating from the deeper reaches of the flat.
Shen Xi raises her voice. “Zhao Yunlan!”
Zhang Shi drops the beer. Oh no.
He’s barely aware of the glug of liquid spreading across the dining-room floor, or Shen Xi’s exclamation. All he can think is oh no. It has to be a coincidence, doesn’t it? In all the world, in all of time, it has to be.
But that name, and the other man’s earlier mention of a special police unit to deal with Dixingren... It had barely registered in the moment. Can ten thousand years have passed already? Zhang Shi’s been living with hermits and opportunists lately, has become one himself by association, focused on managing his daily affairs and staying out of reach of the authorities. It’s been so long since he thought about his teacher, the great Lord Ma Gui. Most of his memories have faded with time, but the duty Ma Gui charged him with is as crystal clear as ever. They’d been in the civic chamber, a cave where the allied forces had once planned and strategized. A winter storm was raging outside, spurring Ma Gui to ask Zhang Shi to move their chairs to the fireside and send for hot food. Zhang Shi still remembers gratitude at the chance to warm his chilled feet. Ma Gui had gazed into the flames, his grey hair falling forward, and finally he’d sighed. “Zhang Shi, with your power, you will live long after I’m gone. I have an important task to entrust to you. Ten thousand years from now, you must find a man, Zhao Yunlan, the Lord of the Guardians. He’s a time traveller. When he was here, during the war, he was called Kunlun.” “General Kunlun?” Ma Gui had smiled tiredly and nodded. “When you find him, tell him what I couldn’t about the Hallows. He has to know the price of lighting the Lantern before he makes that choice.” “Yes, teacher. Of course.”
It had seemed such a small thing, then, to pass on a message.
Now Zhang Shi goes cold, feels Zhao Xinci’s confused and irritated response. “What is it?”
Nothing. Zhang Shi can’t explain. Even if he wasn’t charged with guarding the timeline, he couldn’t. How can you tell a man—especially a man whose trust you have to earn—that his son will sacrifice himself, enduring endless torment for the sake of the entire world, or that you learned this from a long-dead general and teacher who all but saw it happen? It beggars belief. Even if the Hallows were widely known in Haixing, it would be absurd. He (or Zhao Xinci, or perhaps both of them together) gets a cloth from the cleaning cupboard, wets it in the sink and crouches to clean up the spilled beer, trying to gather himself, to quiet his emotions so Zhao Xinci can pretend for a time that everything is ordinary and right.
“Dad, what are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” says Zhao Xinci without looking. Zhang Shi looks over his shoulder and sees the mischievous smile of a ten-year-old boy.
He’d never thought that when he finally met Zhao Yunlan, the hero would be a child.
“This time you’re the mucky pup,” says the boy, the term clearly a running joke. He comes closer. “Here, let me help.”
“No!” barks Zhao Xinci, unnamed fear spiking through him. “Get back!”
The boy jerks away as if he’s been shoved, stumbles into the far wall.
“I mean, I’m not feeling myself,” adds Zhao Xinci, hastily. “If I have a cold, I don’t want you to catch it.” But it’s too late to placate the boy. His eyes are wide with shock and hurt. He runs up the hall and slams the door.
“Zhao Xinci?”
Zhang Shi starts. He’s forgotten about Shen Xi. She’s staring down at him, her hands on her hips. If Zhang Shi had a choice, he’d tell her everything, reveal himself now, but Zhao Xinci has made his conditions perfectly clear.
Mixed with the smell of spilled beer, the previously wholesome aroma of food is nauseating now.
“I’m sorry,” Zhao Xinci says, getting to his feet to speak to her, the sodden cloth in his hands. “I’m not feeling myself.”
Her frown shifts into concern. “Do you need medicine? Rest? You’ve hardly touched your meal.”
“I’ll be all right.” But it’s automatic, and Zhang Shi can feel the uncertainty Zhao Xinci is hiding. The fear that this simple reassurance is a lie. Everything has changed for him. Nothing is how it should be. Zhang Shi’s presence is a burden, a curse, opening a terrible chasm between Zhao Xinci and his family. He must protect them—but at what cost?
Zhang Shi pities his position, understands his anger and, if things were different, might have tried to find another host, someone without a family, someone lonely. He might have left Zhao Xinci in peace—though moving between living bodies is difficult and dangerous. But the child is Zhao Yunlan. Ma Gui sent him here. It must be fate.
Shen Xi takes the cloth from his hand, and Zhao Xinci flinches away from her. “Sit down,” she says, firmly. “Eat.”
But she doesn’t touch him again that evening, and Zhao Xinci doesn’t reach for her either. Zhang Shi’s heart hurts. A precious ordinary beautiful thing is breaking before his eyes. But it’s fate, it must be.
He stays.
END
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A precious ordinary beautiful thing is breaking before his eyes. But it’s fate, it must be.
He stays.
So angsty and so good. I love it. :)
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Thank youuu! <3
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Thanks! <3
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