Title: yesterday’s too close, tomorrow’s too far away
Fandom: Guardian
Rating: Teen
Length: 2,420 words
Notes: Guo Changcheng, pre-Guo Changcheng/Chu Shuzhi, background SID team. Set during ep 11, after the trip to the Hanga mountains. This doesn’t 100% fit the timeline, but I decided not to care. ;-) Also for mergatrude's prompt, "Is that a bloodstain?" Title from song lyrics heard in the movie "Upcoming Summer" (I don't know the song, sorry). Much thanks to teaotter for beta. No warnings.
Tags: Sex toys, Embarrassment, Humor, Sexual awakening
Summary: Changcheng receives a product brochure that leads to a personal epiphany.


It’s nearly eight a.m., and Changcheng is running slightly late. He pulls his bag over his head and quickly checks he has everything he needs—baton, notebook, diary, pens, spare notebook, phone, water bottle, first aid kit, extra sticking plasters, handkerchief. Good. He calls a general farewell to the household and opens the front door, almost not stopping when his aunt emerges from the study down the hall behind him.

“Wait,” she calls. “Changcheng, this is addressed to you. It got mixed up with your uncle’s mail.”

“Oh. Thank you!” Changcheng takes the proffered envelope and stuffs it into his bag, pretending not to see her curious expression. He never gets letters, but maybe he ended up on a mailing list somehow. Anyway, he’ll open it once he gets to work.


*


He is on a mailing list.

The SID has been very quiet since the trip to the Hanga mountains. Chief Zhao spends a lot of time in his office. Wang Zheng is teaching Sang Zan to read. Lin Jing is researching the new Hallow. Everyone else is just loafing around. At his desk, Changcheng checks his email and then remembers the envelope. He takes it out and opens it.

Oh.

As soon as he makes sense of what he’s looking at, his cheeks heat like a furnace. He can feel himself turning bright red. He stuffs the booklet back into the envelope, hides the envelope under his notebook, and looks around furtively. Guiltily.

Chief Zhao had been so cross about the sex doll. Wang Zheng had nearly cried.

Thank goodness, no one’s looking now. Changcheng takes a deep breath and tries to think. It must be—He checks the envelope, but the return address is just a discreet PO Box. Everything about it is discreet. That should have been a clue, shouldn’t it?

But when he’d bought the doll for Wang Zheng, he’d had it delivered directly to the SID. So why was this sent to his home? (Where it had got mixed up with his uncle’s mail! The thought of his uncle opening it by accident is mortifying, a catastrophe so narrowly averted that Changcheng nudges his bag away with his foot in case he accidentally sets off his fear baton.)

A few more moments’ thought provide the answer: the company must have sent it to the billing address, not the delivery address. That makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that Changcheng is sitting at his desk at the SID with a brochure for adult toys burning a hole in his conscience. It feels as if the security alarm should have sounded, or Hong-jie or Deputy Da Qing should have shown up to tease him mercilessly. Or Chu-ge should be standing over him, eyebrows raised, knowing the truth just by looking at him, like he so often does.

Changcheng swallows. But the SID stays quiet. Hong-jie scowls at her screen as she types, Wang Zheng teaches Sang Zan the characters for Guangming Road and Dragon City, and Chu-ge is sprawled back in his chair with his feet up and his eyes closed.

After a few minutes of nothing else happening, Changcheng’s intellectual curiosity starts inflating like a balloon. He whips the brochure back out of its envelope and smuggles it into the middle of his diary. Good. No one will be able to tell, as long as he can keep his blush-reflex under control.

He takes another breath and turns the first page. Oh! Oh, no. He can’t look at this here. “I’m just going to—I need to—”

Gripping his diary, he stumbles to his feet.

“Are your bowels still not recovered from the trip?” asks Deputy Da Qing, sounding more curious than sympathetic. “Humans’ digestive tracts are so delicate.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s it.” Changcheng nods and bolts for the bathroom. He locks himself into a cubicle and sits down, and okay, now he’s safe. He can look at it.

Probably it wouldn’t be shocking for anyone else here. Chief Zhao and Chu-ge have probably seen a thousand brochures like this. Lin Jing might have a collection of his own, along with his comics. Changcheng averts that line of thought before it reaches his female colleagues, but all the same, he needs to catch up.

Everyone keeps treating him like a kid, and he’s not. He’s old enough to have a job and a driver’s licence (if he wanted to learn to drive). Old enough to get married, technically. He should know about things.

He opens his diary to the brochure and turns a few pages. Mostly it’s vibrators and—and dildoes in a perplexing variety of colours. The top of the page has a red banner than says, “For her pleasure.” Changcheng swallows and makes himself look at them properly before he continues on.

The smooth, colourful ones are just strange, but there are a couple shaped like—like real body parts that make Changcheng bite his lip. What do they feel like? Do they feel real?

He shakes himself and drags his eyes away, turning the page. There are six more double-page spreads of increasingly elaborate and esoteric devices before the banner changes to “For his pleasure,” and Changcheng’s palms tingle. His hands feel numb and sweaty. His eyeballs go dry, and he has to blink hard before he can focus on the options for men.

They’re a lot like some of the things for women, actually, except that they’re meant for—a different place.

Changcheng’s different place is still tender from a week of upset stomach, but still, he can’t help wondering, his gaze flitting between the various shapes and colours, how it would feel under normal circumstances—to have something there. His gut tightens. His butt feels tingly and strange. Maybe it wants a plug.

Maybe one that glows in the dark.

Changcheng leaves that thought hanging in the air, turns a few more pages, skimming past the sex dolls, and comes to a page that makes his whole body shiver—heart, lungs, liver, the works. It’s not even the gear itself, which is mostly black—like Chu-ge’s clothes. It’s the illustrative photo, remarkably tasteful and—there’s that word again—discreet, considering. A handsome man with visible stomach muscles is spread out on a rumpled white sheet. He’s blindfolded and smirking, tied down with his limbs spread. Each of the straps and bindings is linked by a pale blue line to an inset picture and product details. Each of the inset photos is outlined in pale blue, too. It's like an exploded diagram of something technical, like a car engine or the anatomy of a plant. But that’s not what has Changcheng’s body seizing like he’s been zapped with his own baton.

His vision blurs, and the blue lines shimmer and hum.

He slams his diary closed, trapping the brochure and clutching it to his chest, trying to calm himself. His body is—it’s thrumming. He’s a bit turned on, which feels good and wrong at the same time. Something is happening, and it’s not just about butt plugs (though it might partly be).

He tries to swallow, wishing desperately that he’d brought his water bottle with him to the bathroom.

A creeping suspicion crawls up his spine, tangled in discomfort and weird excitement. He’s never paid any attention to girls, not like that. He’s masturbated now and then, but never really thought about—about sex. Especially not about himself doing it. With someone else.

Because he’s been making wrong assumptions.

It’s not that he wants to be tied up or held down. (Well, maybe held down?) No, it’s the idea of Chu-ge’s strings against his skin. Because they’re Chu-ge’s—alive and electric, but safe.

He screws his eyes shut. Maybe he can make this go away again, deal with it in a year or two, once he’s—once he’s ready. But in the dark behind his eyelids, his brain shows him Chu-ge winding blue strings around those strong hands. That tiny quirk of lips and the way his eyes soften on the rare occasions Changcheng’s done something right. Chu-ge’s strong, casual body when he’s at ease, and his alert, decisive moves when he’s fighting.

Changcheng goes hot all over. Oh no. He shouldn’t be thinking like this about his mentor, should he? Isn’t there a rule, when you work with someone? And Chu-ge is completely out of reach—too brave and sure of himself, too knowledgeable, too capable, too careless of what people think. Too cool. Changcheng might as well wish for a hero to jump out of a movie screen and ravish him.

It’s ridiculous to think someone like Chu-ge would ever want to be with someone like Changcheng. That Changcheng could ever satisfy him physically.

And Chu-ge would never.

But—but imagine if he would.

“Xiao Guo?”

Changcheng jumps and nearly drops his diary. Which would have been disastrous! It could have fallen onto the floor and out under the door, and if it had, the brochure would have slid out, too. He’d never have heard the end of it. He grips his diary tighter and squeaks, “Yes?”

At least it isn’t Chu-ge out there saying his name. It’s the Deputy Chief.

“Xiao Guo, are you all right?” Deputy Chief asks, casually. “If your stomach is upset again, make sure you drink plenty of fluids.”

“I’m—I’m all right,” says Changcheng as firmly as he can, and listens in relief as the Deputy Chief’s footsteps recede out of the bathroom.

He’s alone again. He needs to get a grip on himself (not like that!) and calm down. He needs to go back to normal.

But it won’t ever be the same normal as before. How can it be? Unexpectedly, accidentally, he’s learned something about himself, and his body is still reacting in new ways. It feels hopeful and curious.

He opens the brochure one more time, back to the middle pages: “For his pleasure.” All the colours and shapes spread out before his eyes.

Changcheng bites his lip, gathers his courage, and makes a deal with himself: if he makes it through today without anyone finding out, and without disgracing himself, then he will order a butt plug, just to try it out.

But only if he can make it through today. He closes his diary and makes sure the brochure is wedged firmly inside, takes three deep, slow breaths, and opens the cubicle door. So far, so good. He can do this.

He wipes his sweaty hands on his trousers and goes back into the main room of the SID.

Chu-ge opens his eyes as Changcheng approaches. It’s a casual glance, but then he double-takes and looks closer, and Changcheng nearly bolts for the door. No. Chu-ge can’t possibly know what’s been going through his mind for the last ten minutes. He can’t. He’s not a mind reader.

But Chu-ge is frowning. “Xiao Guo,” he says, sharply.

“Uh, yes?” Changcheng doesn’t go to him. He heads to his own desk instead, puts his diary deep into his bag and arranges his spare notebook and first aid kit on top. Then he turns around. Chu-ge is still watching him, his gaze fixed around waist-level, making Changcheng blush. He’s not still turned on, is he? He’s afraid to check. “Wh-what is it?”

Chu-ge is frowning. “Is that a bloodstain?”

“What? No!” Changcheng wipes his forehead on his sleeve and looks down, twisting to see what Chu-ge means. There, high on his thigh, are three faint red parallel stripes. What? Have his inappropriate desires branded him somehow? Is it part of the SID’s security system? No, that’s ridiculous. That can’t be it. Breathe!

Changcheng looks at his own fingers, cherry-coloured at the fingertips. He remembers the brochure and his own sweaty hands. Then he understands, and his stomach stops threatening to exit his rear. “Oh, no. No, that’s just red ink.”

“Hm.” Chu-ge loses interest quickly now he knows it’s not an injury. He closes his eyes again. Of course.

Changcheng slinks into his desk chair and consciously refrains from touching anything else, or looking at Chu-ge, or thinking about blue strings. He’s made it through the hardest part. Just eight more hours to go.

Eight hours!

With his clean left hand, he extracts his handkerchief from the depths of his bag and carefully wipes the rest of the ink from his fingers. He scrubs at the smudges on his trousers to no avail. But focusing on that minor problem is calming. No one suspects anything. And besides, Changcheng isn’t a kid. It’s okay for him to have private information and to keep it private—it’s no one’s business but his own.

And it’s kind of exciting, to know this secret thing about himself. To have this awareness.

“Why are you smiling?” Hong-jie pauses as she passes his desk.

Changcheng widens his eyes innocently. “I—uh, I was just thinking about what to have for lunch.”

She snorts. “It’s only nine o’clock. Why are you thinking about lunch already?”

“Did someone say lunch?” Deputy Chief appears out of nowhere. “Are you sure you didn’t mean popcorn?”

Wang Zheng’s head comes up. “Ooh, Sang Zan has never had popcorn.”

And the SID momentum gathers and rolls around Changcheng, snowballing towards a midmorning snack break. Changcheng follows along, glad to be out of the limelight. To be among friends. As long as he doesn’t look at Chu-ge, it’s like nothing’s changed at all.

Fifteen minutes later, they’re all standing around munching. Zhu Hong mocks Da Qing for being greedy, and he assumes a dignified air even though his cupped hands are brimming over and he has to bend down to eat the popcorn with his mouth.

And then Chu-ge says something sarcastic about Lin Jing’s scientific prowess, and everyone giggles, and Changcheng can look at him again. Miraculously, his cheeks don’t burn. It only feels a little bit strange. His new self-knowledge is full in his chest, but it doesn’t really change anything on the outside.

He’s definitely going to make it safely through the day, and then he’ll order a butt plug and start his own very private scientific experiment to see if that kind of thing really is what he wants. And in the meantime, even though the rest of the team are unquestionably adults, most of them are giggling like children. Maybe all grown-ups are a mix of the two.

In that case, Changcheng fits in here even better than he’d realised.



END