Sweeter Than Dream [FIC] - 1/?

[notturnito]

Title: Sweeter Than Dream

Fandom: Don't Pick Up Boyfriends From the Trash Bin

Rating: T

Pairing(s): Chi Xiaochi/Lou Ying

Warnings: Alternate Universe - Alice in Wonderland Fusion, heavy depersonalization, fantasy

Notes: For #LouChiWeek2019 ; Day Two. title taken from yuki kajiura's everytime you kissed me.

 

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Chi Xiaochi goes to sleep in his hotel bed. Some time after, he wakes up in the Wonderland.

 

Chapter 1 | ?

*

Chi Xiaochi wakes up.

The sky is a pale blue, cloudless. When he tries to sit up, his head buzzing, he sees the green of grass from the corner of his eyes. Instead of some—bed, perhaps? The ceiling of his own house?

What an elaborate prank, Chi Xiaochi thinks. Or, did he sleepwalk his way to this place? Another laughable option. He’s already been dealing with a whole load of stuff, now sleepwalking is going to be added to that too.

Chi Xiaochi gets up and—

Stumbles onto a clearing in a field.

He pauses, and takes a look around. The sky is a pale blue, the grass is green and stretching across the hills—hills? There were hills? Chi Xiaochi pauses at the inconsistency of his memory. A slightly sharp scent enters his nose and—is that lemon?

He blinks and reality distorts. Or not. Perhaps it's only natural that a man appears in front of him, his red suit stark and an ugly discoloration among the peaceful scenery of this field.

The man also blinks when he looks at Chi Xiaochi, his eyes wide like a rabbit’s. Chi Xiaochi does not know these features; doesn’t find them familiar at all.

“Oh,” the man says, his voice melodically sweet. “You are not supposed to be here.”

Now would you look at that. Chi Xiaochi does not ask to be here as well, honestly. “Yet here I am. What a coincidence.”

The man stares at him with wide, curious eyes, before shaking his head.

“No,” he says, the edge of his voice carried into the wind as though fragmented pieces of lullabies. “It’s not coincidence. You want to be here.”

Since when, Chi Xiaochi wants to ask, but he blinks and the man has already turned his back on him, his shoes obscured by the grass.

Chi Xiaochi narrows his eyes and reaches forward—

But he stumbles,

Stumbles—

Stumbles—

His head buzzes, the sun’s light suddenly becoming too bright and too piercing for his eyes.

Chi Xiaochi opens his eyes to the glaring sun overhead, and the face of said man looking down on him.

Looking down?

Chi Xiaochi looks down to his arms—only to find them covered by his suddenly too-long sleeves. He looks down to his legs and finds that his pants are suddenly longer than they are supposed to be.

Something makes a clicking sound, from above. Chi Xiaochi tilts his head up to see the man having an open pocket watch on his hand. He is looking at the time, his expression wracked with stress.

Then he looks at Chi Xiaochi again.

“This is some big, bad luck,” he says, snapping his pocket watch shut, and sighs.

.

The man is taking him to someone.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” he says sympathetically. He fiddles with the golden pocket watch before slipping it inside his vest. “But I know someone who could take you to someone who might be able to help.”

Chi Xiaochi stares. “Can you help me, or not.”

The man smiles, sheepishly. It is the smile of a person who has been loved in his entire lifetime. “I mean—the short answer is yes.”

Chi Xiaochi ignores the hand extended to him, just as he ignores the growing nausea that threatens to spill out of his guts. Spilling, spilling, spilling— Statics. Buzz.

They are suddenly walking together, towards an unknown destination. If this is a dream, Chi Xiaochi thinks, it is a trippy one.

“Where are we?”

The man keeps walking, occasionally checking the fancy pocket watch he keeps now on hand. “Hm,” he scratches the back of his head. “I don’t actually know. We can call it the Space In Between?”

“Why did I suddenly shrink?”

The man shrugs, his movement careless. “Many reasons. Eating, mostly. Eating something you shouldn’t. But in your case; more of an adaptation.”

Lucas would hate this place, Chi Xiaochi thinks. “But adapting for what?” he asks, loudly, too loudly that his voice echoes around them, and stops. Their surroundings have changed. Previously the clearing of a field. And then, they are deep in a forest.

The man does not answer, and keeps walking.

This doesn’t make sense. Chi Xiaochi moves forward, nonetheless.

From in front of him—no, from under the man’s soles, where Chi Xiaochi should hear the crunch of crumpled grass, Chi Xiaochi hears something else instead. Music. Snapped cords of piano. Violin.

He wants to ask how does he do that, but that’s not important. He asks instead, “Where are you taking me to?”

“A territory,” the man answers him easily. “A non-friendly territory, but only for me. It’s alright.” The man pauses. “We’re about to arrive.”

And then, he stays put.

Not too long after, Chi Xiaochi hears it.

“You-” Chi Xiaochi hears, and he blinks, and another man in white suit suddenly appears, so naturally that Chi Xiaochi nearly thinks he has always been there the entire time. Chi Xiaochi knows better now, or so he likes to think.

“What are you doing here?!” the man in the white suit nearly yells out, before realizing something, then clamps down on his voice with a stony expression.

He looks older than the man in the red suit, maturity and charisma fitting him to his suit better. When Chi Xiaochi looks, their features are similar, very similar. Brothers, perhaps.

“You are not supposed to be here.”

“Ge,” the man in red suit greets. Ah, Chi Xiaochi thinks. His guess is right.

The man in white suit looks as though he is nearly angered to death. “Ge, ge. Being your ge must be the worst fortune in my entire lifetimes.”

The man in red suit smiles at him, a little sweetly, sadly, exasperatedly.

Something itches at Chi Xiaochi’s heart. He takes a step back and inadvertently smells cologne, sharp and also itching his nose. He sneezes.

Both of the men jump, before turning to him.

Chi Xiaochi stares back, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

The man in white suit stares at him, mouth opening and closing. He is nearly shaking when he turns to the man in red suit. “Cheng Yuan, you… you…!”

The man in red suit—Cheng Yuan—scrambles forward in hurry to cover his brother’s mouth. “No, ge!” he cries out, shaking his head. “That’s no longer my name. The Queen has owned it now.”

Chi Xiaochi has just realized that the man’s suit is not actually red; in closer look, it reveals itself to be white, but it is splashed with red paint on the surface.

The man in white suit glares at his brother. “Your Queen; not mine. As if that pig brains could be called a queen, anyway.”

Cheng Yuan, or No-Longer Cheng Yuan, fidgets as he lowers his head down.

His brother spares him a seemingly indifferent glance, yet staying on Cheng Yuan’s face for a rather long time, before he turns to face Chi Xiaochi. An interesting look, this one has. Chi Xiaochi has seen that look on Lucas when his Tony-laoshi no longer knows how to manage him.

“You really aren’t supposed to be here,” the man in white suit says to Chi Xiaochi. “And this is why my rock-for-brains brother has brought you to me.”

Shoving away attention from No-Longer Cheng Yuan’s murmured apology, Chi Xiaochi tilts his head. “It seems you’ve known me, and what I could do.” Even before I know it myself, is left unsaid.

The man in white suit scoffs, and from there Chi Xiaochi knows he’s seen through the bluff. He only raises an eyebrow and opens his mouth—perhaps to ask something.

But then the whole world seems to still.

The animals—there are animals?—in the forest fall into a muted, uneasy quietness. Chi Xiaochi’s ears begin to ring by the loudness of the silence.

He sees the man’s mouth move, his voice blending in with the ringing. The cologne that had itched his nose earlier returns, perfuming Chi Xiaochi’s lungs until its sharpness will never leave again.

Do you even know who you are? — he asks.

And then the world moves, returns, as though a stilted marionette recovering from itself. The birds continue to chirp. The forest hums back to live.

“Of course,” Chi Xiaochi hears himself say. “My name is—”

Statics. Buzz.

He can’t answer that.

He opens his mouth and closes it again. But still, his name will not come to him. There is only emptiness where a memory and a name should be.

... how?

The man in white suit nods. “Good. You will learn from that; by not giving your name to anyone else. Not even to us. Not even to my Queen.”

That's not—

He cannot do that.

Panic sears through his chest, numbing, as though a thousand fire ants starting to crawl up to his throat, and he absolutely cannot do that. “I need you to give it back to me,” he says, or manages to force it out. Without that name, someone will never recognize him. Without that name, Lou-ge cannot come back to him. “You have to give it back to me.”

The man in white suit clicks his tongue, though his expression softens slightly. “You will remember it later, don’t worry.”

But what if, he thinks, and his heart aches from reality.

The man in white suit sees the expression in his face and adds, more softly. “Give yourself a nickname for now, but really. You will get it back later. That’s as good as I can give you.”

He nods, finally, after a long while.

“Good,” the man in white suit gently says.

His brother suddenly breaks the silence. “Ge,” he says, snapping shut his pocket watch again. His face is grim. “You need to get him to Hatter now. Only he can get him out of here.”

The man in white suit clicks his tongue again, his expression turning serious, cold. “I know, I know. But I’m not going to be the one taking him to Hatter.”

Cheng Yuan nods. “Hurry.”

One blink and—gone.

The man in red suit is already gone.

The man in white suit watches the place where his brother used to be, his expression unreadable. Then he turns to him.

“Do you already know what to call yourself?” he asks.

He has to think for a while, but then he remembers. A kind voice. Gentle yet calloused hands. Someone that once was kind to him calling him, Xiao—

Chi nods, affirming. “Yep.” He doesn't know where the name comes from, only likes how simple it sounds to the ear.

The man in white suit eyes him with appreciation. “You’re smart. It would be good to have you working for us. But then again, Hatter will have my head for it.” He clicks his tongue, cocking his head to motion at Chi. “Let’s go.”

Chi blinks, and again, reality grows tenuous. His feet no longer landing on the same land.

I could get used to this, he thinks.

.

.

.