#soon... soon veinfei will be added

[falling-star-cygnus]

sometimes i wish i had freckles or vitiligo over my arms- instead of the odd time appearing mole here and there- so i wouldn't get the urge to tear my plain looking skin off

Dead Link : a link that no longer leads to its desired target webpage; this can occur when the domain been terminated, changed, or renamed

heheh... this was originally going to be the chapter where Vein and Xia Fei enter but uh... it decidedly took its own route

a Link Click Noragami AU pt.1 | pt.2 | pt.3 | pt.3.5 In Which, Cheng Xiaoshi Asks Too Many Questions

Lu Guang had really hoped the man was going to stay dead this time. 

Realistically, he knew it was pretty much impossible to kill a god- at least permanently, but dammit. It had only been a month. Last time it had taken him nearly a full year to rear his stupid, braided head again. Why now.

The god glares at his phone, but it’s only when Shi Ái pokes his jaw that he realizes he’s gritting his teeth too.

“That’s a grumpy face..” his regalia ventures cautiously, astoundedly, as he prods at his fair friend’s cheek, “Everything alright?”

It’s enough to somewhat drag Lu Guang into the present. To loosen his hold on threads that had started to fray. 

Shi Ái’s head was in his lap. 

He had been playing some sort of mobile game on Lu Guang’s phone. 

Vein was calling.

Vein was calling. 

The god hits decline.

“Everything’s fine. Don’t answer calls from that number.” 

“I’m not a child,” Shi Ái grumbles, even as he takes the phone back, “Why do we only have one phone anyway?” 

“Because we’re poor.” 

If Shi Ái was displeased by his god’s plain answer, he doesn’t vocalize it. There wasn’t really a point in disagreeing either, because they were- in fact- poor. Lu Guang was pretty, or so his shinki was insistent about, but looks didn’t matter when the majority of their district couldn’t see beyond the Near Shore.

The two just had to get by on offerings, and the occasional meal shared with other gods. Or Qiao Ling, now that she was a regular visitor in their lives. Again.

“Didn’t I have a phone when I was alive?” 

Lu Guang drops a fist onto his forehead. 

“ACK- OKAY, okay, I know! No knowing anything about my life as a human. Sorry.”

The ambient noises of Shi Ái’s game start back up again, providing a distant anchor for the pale haired god to reel in his heavy breaths. His shinki had been getting far too curious about such a thing lately. It was nerve wracking.

There had only been one timeline where Lu Guang had caved and told Shi Ái the truth. The full truth- everything about who he was, who they were, what he’d done. What he had to keep doing. It hadn’t ended well, of course it hadn’t, but..

Much like the cats his two favorite nuisances liked to compare him to, he shakes himself out. Not too much, though- he doesn’t want to dislodge his regalia. So it’s more of a head flick.

“...but why can’t I know?”

His anger spikes.

“I’ve already told you-”

Game quickly forgotten, Shi Ái takes away the comforting weight he’d settled on Lu Guang’s lap. He sits up.

“You told me that it corrupts the soul,” his regalia retorts. 

“It does.” “But what does that mean!?”

“What do you think it means, idiot,” Lu Guang snaps, shutting his novel with a snap, “If you want to become a phantom so bad, then why don’t you-”

The god bites his tongue, and forces himself to breathe. All it would take to ruin this, to shatter this peaceful existence he had carved out for himself and him, was one wrong step. One word he didn’t think through, or hissed in anger, and Cheng Xiaoshi could-

He forces himself to breathe in through his nose, out through his teeth.

“Obviously I don’t,” Shi Ái snaps back, “But it can’t honestly be that bad-”

He keeps rambling on, keeps pushing, and Lu Guang feels his grip on the threads tighten. Feels a burn start on the back of his neck.

“Can’t you tell me just- one thing?”

No. 

“Like- what was my favorite color? Was it different?”

Lime green, yellow, and orange. It wasn’t any different now, not really, but he didn’t like green as much as he liked sunsets and sunrises. 

“Did I have different hobbies?”

No, he still loved photography and shitty phone games. Stop asking. 

“I just don’t see how it’s fair that you get to know everything about me, and I don’t even know if I had parents!”

Stop… 

“Did we know each other?”

…Asking..

“Did I travel?”

..Questions… 

“What was my name-”

“SHI ÁI!”

Cheng Xiaoshi stops talking.

His mouth clicks shut- taken aback by the outburst of his soft-spoken god. It rattles the windows of their little shrine, pulls everything into a state of realism that burns. The dynamics of god and regalia, which so loosely existed between them, are firmly reestablished. 

Lu Guang heaves, and throws himself off the couch- away from his shell shocked shinki. The walls feel too close, too different and too similar to everything he doesn’t want to think about. Timelines overlap before his eyes, splatters of rot and red and death-

“Sorry-” he wheezes, taking a staggered step towards the door, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.”

“Lu Guang…”

Strong arms wrap around his waist as his knees buckle, gently lowering the god to the floor as his chest spasms. Everything is so bright. 

Vaguely, he can feel himself being moved around- adjusted until a large hand cups the back of his head and smushes his face into a familiar shoulder. It makes everything somehow so much worse, and yet- he doesn’t quite want to move. His neck burns.

“Hey- Lu Guang.” Shi Ái jostles him a little, and a thread of his worry unfurls in the god’s chest, “You have to breathe.”

The shinki’s hand drifts to the back of Lu Guang’s neck, before abruptly ripping away with a hiss of pain. 

“Argh… what the hell? Did I-?”

Rough wood rushes up to meet Lu Guang’s palms as his regalia pulls away, and the god is left alone in their shrine. If being cradled in Shi Ái’s shoulder had made everything worse, then the silence that wrapped around his limbs was torture. The wood grains flip between warm brown and rust- solid and transparent. 

Pure and dotted with warm amber eyes.

Did I fail again…? 

Cool water gently trickles down his nape. It’s jarring enough to knock Lu Guang back into a mental space where he can hear-

“Ohh my gosh, oh my god,” Shi Ái whisper shrieks, “It’s not going away..”

What….? 

Lu Guang reaches up a shaky hand to the back of his neck, but it’s quickly caught by Shi Ái’s damp fingers.

“Don’t- Don’t touch it!” 

“Did you-”

“I’m sorry!” he sobs, his voice distraught to match the tight bundle of fire in the god’s chest, “I didn’t know- Well, I did know- but I wasn’t thinking- and now..”

Ah. He sort of understands the situation now. He’s not even mad about it, really, it was bound to happen eventually. No matter how pure a soul was, it was still human.

“Shi Ái-”

Water hits his neck again, in more sparse droplets. 

“Shi Ái-”

“I’m so sorry, I swear I didn’t mean to blight you! I was just- and you- Lu Guang..”

The god can feel the bite of it start to fade away, satisfied under the confession of sins. It still hurt, and probably would for a while yet, but it couldn’t be worse than that one god from Japan. Seriously, what do you have to do to be known from so far away? What does your regalia have to do? 

Lu Guang shakes his head again to get himself back on track.

Shi Ái is still babbling apologies. 

“SHI ÁI!” he’s much quieter this time around, but the result is the same, “It’s gone. Is your hand okay?”

“My.. hand? It’s fine. …went away when I went to get the water..”

 And then suddenly he’s angry again: “Worry about yourself for once!”

Lu Guang scrubs his shinki’s leftover tears away, maybe more aggressively than he needed to as Shi Ái flails back. But he thinks it’s fair, considering.

“I am. It’ll transfer if I use you, you know.” a lie, a blatant lie. He didn’t care if all his skin turned to shades of purple and red, he’d endure the burn for lifetimes if it meant keeping this soul close. 

“Ah-!? Wait, really!?”

The elephant in the room suddenly rears its head, immediately straining the air around the two. The god looks down at his clean hands and tries to ignore the blood staining them.

“I… know you want to know more. But-”

“I get it,” Shi Ái interrupts, sounding tired in all the wrong ways and frustrated as tucks his head into Lu Guang’s hair- as he rubs over his god's nape to be sure that the blight is really gone, “You wouldn’t react like that if it wasn’t... a serious outcome.”

And damn does that makes his ears burn with embarrassment.