the yesterdays of tomorrow, for bluedreaming
Title: the yesterdays of tomorrow
Recipient: bluedreaming
Pairing: Kris/Tao
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Mentions of child abuse, Mentions of suicide
Summary: Time waits for no one, except for Zitao, who waits for time.
Author's notes: So this was a fun journey! This fic went through so many ups and downs and it's actually completely different from what I first started out with. I decided to go with a different route in the end and this is the product of that detour. I hope you enjoy this fic and thank you very much for such beautiful prompts! ^ - ^
Stop.
Rewind.
Play.
It’s only been three months since the accident.
At least, that’s what Zitao reminds himself as he wakes up on dead mornings, pulling back tattered curtains to a sun that doesn’t set. He doesn’t get much sleep. It doesn’t come easy when there’s nothing to dream about. Nightmares haunt him in reality, just as much as they do in his head. They scream at him, dig wounds deep into his body, and drag him back into the hellish reality of life.
The tallies on his walls have grown too much in the past few days. Or is it the past few weeks? It could be the past few seconds. Zitao can’t differentiate them anymore. Seconds are just as long as minutes, just as long as hours, just as long as an eternity.
Eternity fits this prison better.
He doesn’t ask for anything these days. He doesn’t ask because he’s never questioned. The world is his playground, his dining table, his living room. He can frolic in the office of a billionaire going bankrupt and no one would care. No one would care because no one could care. Zitao once called it freedom.
Freedom is a lie and his life is immured in this prison of time.
It’s a life sentence only he can carry out. A life sentence that the world brought onto him when he was just a child. Nights of beatings and verbal assault: you aren’t good enough to live in this world, why aren’t you dead yet, you are the worst son any parent could ask for. They ran tandem with the punches and the kicks, with the tears that ran down his cheek when he would question why?
What was his mistake?
His face sharpened as he grew, eyes heavy with the cold truths of living. There is no happy ending. Some people don’t live to see tomorrow, some don’t even live to see their first day.
Zitao thinks the first few memories built during adolescence are the most important. Slowly, those memories faded away a long time ago, leaving behind only the bruises on his arm, scars that refuse to leave his side. They paint sinister warnings in his reflection. To never step out of line, to keep quiet unless he’s spoken to, to stop breathing.
Even now, Zitao flinches when he sheds his clothes, a body too tired to ever heal.
Time heals wounds. Zitao has all the time in the world. So why won’t his wounds heal? Why do they stick around and remind him of the past? Remind him of times when he thought he was going to die?
Answers don’t come easily. Zitao always asks the birds unmoving outside his window sill. He asks them every question that comes to mind, but like days before, they remain silent, frozen as they prepare to fly away for the winter. It’s his routine, he can’t let it go, no matter how much it reminds him of his fate.
If the gods were kind to him, they’d given him a way to escape this labyrinth of time. But they stay silent, mocking him and his troubles. They send false hope to his bedside, and Zitao always wakes up demoralized, one more unanswered prayer.
Still, he prays, because hope is all he has left.
He pulls out a sweatshirt from his closet, pockets his mp3 player, and sets the timer on his watch. It’s his only anchor to sanity, to believe in the time that once guided him.
He can’t let go just yet.
“Time is eternal,” his friend Yifan would always say. “That’s why the last few seconds of the day always feel like an eternity.” Zitao would laugh away the last few ticks of the hour before the bell rang, signaling the end of the school day.
As the beads of sweat trickle down his forehead, Zitao would give anything for those few seconds back. To feel the world live again. He wants the city to yell, to cry, to whine. He wants to hear people converse about useless things, endlessly as they waited on the buses to arrive, even though they would never arrive on time.
He wants to watch his friends chatter about their crushes, about the girl in the classroom two doors down that makes their heart flutter like butterflies. He wants to laugh as the teacher yelled at them for not paying attention to the lesson. He wants to run away from the adults whenever they tried to get him into trouble.
His life is filled with too many wants.
The park is still the same when he arrives, breathless from his jog. The couple that are locked in a kiss near the fountain are still there. The lady running alongside her dog is still there. The grandpas and grandmas stretching on top of neon mats are still there. The two kids playing tag near the playground are still there.
Nothing has changed. Everything has stayed the same.
Why? Zitao doesn’t feel the punch when his fist connects with the concrete. His skin breaks open and he bleeds, dripping red onto the derisive grey. He laughs, quietly at first, but it soon grows into an unrestrained howl as he screams in desperation. It chokes him, oxygen burning in his lungs with every inhale. He’s tired of it all.
He wants everything back.
Yifan’s door is never locked, always open for Zitao whenever he wanted to come over after a hard night of studying. The hardwood floor is old, creaks underneath his weight as he enters. He needs to remind Yifan to replace his carpet because it’s starting to stain from the cola bottles he dropped on the floor.
The bottles have grown in number, but the carpet still remains.
Zitao falls back into his routine, refilling Yifan’s refrigerator with a case of cola bottles before taking one for himself. He pops the cap off and hops back onto the couch, gazing towards a screen that remains black. Occasionally, a funny joke or a witty remark will float back into his memories, and he’ll buckle in laughter, waiting for Yifan’s reaction.
Oi, don’t you think we’re a little old to be watching these?
But it never comes, and he clears his throat when he remembers that there are no happy endings. Time will never come back to him.
He knows Yifan is just behind the bedroom door, but he can never bring enough confidence to actually see his face. For him, acknowledging that someone he’s grown up with for so many years is gone with the rest of the world, is accepting that there is no more hope.
There are a few realities he can’t face just yet.
When his timer goes off, Zitao would always throw away his empty bottle in the trashcan. It never makes it, always bouncing off the bottles overflowing from the top, and landing somewhere in the pile of bottles on the floor. He never makes an effort to clean them.
He’ll say his goodbyes at the door for another fun day, and he’ll leave the door cracked, just like Yifan would always tell him to because only Zitao ever visits him.
They are friends after all.
Night comes with the same rays of sunshine as the morning. He only knows it’s night because his body feels tired, yearning for just a bit of rest. His eyes are red, and the cracks on the mirror only laugh at him. They mock him as he undresses until he’s naked. He doesn’t feel embarrassed anymore, he can’t remember how it feels to be ashamed.
He crawls into bed, mattress sagging underneath his body until he’s flat on his back, eye staring straight up at the ceiling.
The only sounds he can hear are the soft notes floating in through his earphones. When he looks back down, the battery on his mp3 is down to a single bar, and he knows it’s only a matter of time before he has to let go of another piece of sanity.
It’s time to rewind.
Zitao closes his eyes and finally, finally, he imagines.
He imagines waking up his neighbors yelling about the rent being overdue, and the children down in the streets making too much of a ruckus. He imagines hearing the annoying chirping of birds as they tapped against his window. He imagines hearing his favorite songs playing on the radio, only for his friends to whine about the quality of music these days.
He imagines walking by the grocer and smiling when the old lady who owns the store compliments him on his youth. He imagines heading down to the river with his classmates and jumping in the water because they have nothing better to do. He imagines climbing up the old water tower and pretending he’s the king of the world.
He imagines knocking on Yifan’s door for once and hearing Yifan greet him with his stupid gummy smile, the one he’s always embarrassed about that Zitao reassures him makes him look charming. He imagines curling up into Yifan’s side as they watched endless cartoons on the ancient box he calls a TV, the one he has to kick sometimes because the signal would go out.
He imagines folding his fingers into Yifan’s, slowly as they realize just how much they actually care for each other. He imagines whispering his feelings into his ear when Yifan says he can’t hear him over the commercials. He imagines tittering as Yifan blushes and confesses his feelings as well, pressing a hand on the back of his neck to pull him in.
He imagines finally pressing his lips against Yifan’s, warm and eternal.
Zitao wakes up crying, hands coming up to try and stop the tears from flowing. He cries through and through, until he feels no more tears can come out. Until the throbbing in his chest finally stops and he’s able to breathe again.
Until he feels like there’s no more reason to cry.
The sun is still high in the sky. The birds are still frozen in his window sill. The wall needs another tally, and his chalk is wearing down to a single stub. He’s going to need more chalk. The days are just getting longer, and his time is going to come to an end.
Until then, he’ll keep living, forever, if time permits him.
If time is truly eternal.
Stop.
Recipient: bluedreaming
Pairing: Kris/Tao
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Mentions of child abuse, Mentions of suicide
Summary: Time waits for no one, except for Zitao, who waits for time.
Author's notes: So this was a fun journey! This fic went through so many ups and downs and it's actually completely different from what I first started out with. I decided to go with a different route in the end and this is the product of that detour. I hope you enjoy this fic and thank you very much for such beautiful prompts! ^ - ^
Stop.
Rewind.
Play.
It’s only been three months since the accident.
At least, that’s what Zitao reminds himself as he wakes up on dead mornings, pulling back tattered curtains to a sun that doesn’t set. He doesn’t get much sleep. It doesn’t come easy when there’s nothing to dream about. Nightmares haunt him in reality, just as much as they do in his head. They scream at him, dig wounds deep into his body, and drag him back into the hellish reality of life.
The tallies on his walls have grown too much in the past few days. Or is it the past few weeks? It could be the past few seconds. Zitao can’t differentiate them anymore. Seconds are just as long as minutes, just as long as hours, just as long as an eternity.
Eternity fits this prison better.
He doesn’t ask for anything these days. He doesn’t ask because he’s never questioned. The world is his playground, his dining table, his living room. He can frolic in the office of a billionaire going bankrupt and no one would care. No one would care because no one could care. Zitao once called it freedom.
Freedom is a lie and his life is immured in this prison of time.
It’s a life sentence only he can carry out. A life sentence that the world brought onto him when he was just a child. Nights of beatings and verbal assault: you aren’t good enough to live in this world, why aren’t you dead yet, you are the worst son any parent could ask for. They ran tandem with the punches and the kicks, with the tears that ran down his cheek when he would question why?
What was his mistake?
His face sharpened as he grew, eyes heavy with the cold truths of living. There is no happy ending. Some people don’t live to see tomorrow, some don’t even live to see their first day.
Zitao thinks the first few memories built during adolescence are the most important. Slowly, those memories faded away a long time ago, leaving behind only the bruises on his arm, scars that refuse to leave his side. They paint sinister warnings in his reflection. To never step out of line, to keep quiet unless he’s spoken to, to stop breathing.
Even now, Zitao flinches when he sheds his clothes, a body too tired to ever heal.
Time heals wounds. Zitao has all the time in the world. So why won’t his wounds heal? Why do they stick around and remind him of the past? Remind him of times when he thought he was going to die?
Answers don’t come easily. Zitao always asks the birds unmoving outside his window sill. He asks them every question that comes to mind, but like days before, they remain silent, frozen as they prepare to fly away for the winter. It’s his routine, he can’t let it go, no matter how much it reminds him of his fate.
If the gods were kind to him, they’d given him a way to escape this labyrinth of time. But they stay silent, mocking him and his troubles. They send false hope to his bedside, and Zitao always wakes up demoralized, one more unanswered prayer.
Still, he prays, because hope is all he has left.
He pulls out a sweatshirt from his closet, pockets his mp3 player, and sets the timer on his watch. It’s his only anchor to sanity, to believe in the time that once guided him.
He can’t let go just yet.
“Time is eternal,” his friend Yifan would always say. “That’s why the last few seconds of the day always feel like an eternity.” Zitao would laugh away the last few ticks of the hour before the bell rang, signaling the end of the school day.
As the beads of sweat trickle down his forehead, Zitao would give anything for those few seconds back. To feel the world live again. He wants the city to yell, to cry, to whine. He wants to hear people converse about useless things, endlessly as they waited on the buses to arrive, even though they would never arrive on time.
He wants to watch his friends chatter about their crushes, about the girl in the classroom two doors down that makes their heart flutter like butterflies. He wants to laugh as the teacher yelled at them for not paying attention to the lesson. He wants to run away from the adults whenever they tried to get him into trouble.
His life is filled with too many wants.
The park is still the same when he arrives, breathless from his jog. The couple that are locked in a kiss near the fountain are still there. The lady running alongside her dog is still there. The grandpas and grandmas stretching on top of neon mats are still there. The two kids playing tag near the playground are still there.
Nothing has changed. Everything has stayed the same.
Why? Zitao doesn’t feel the punch when his fist connects with the concrete. His skin breaks open and he bleeds, dripping red onto the derisive grey. He laughs, quietly at first, but it soon grows into an unrestrained howl as he screams in desperation. It chokes him, oxygen burning in his lungs with every inhale. He’s tired of it all.
He wants everything back.
Yifan’s door is never locked, always open for Zitao whenever he wanted to come over after a hard night of studying. The hardwood floor is old, creaks underneath his weight as he enters. He needs to remind Yifan to replace his carpet because it’s starting to stain from the cola bottles he dropped on the floor.
The bottles have grown in number, but the carpet still remains.
Zitao falls back into his routine, refilling Yifan’s refrigerator with a case of cola bottles before taking one for himself. He pops the cap off and hops back onto the couch, gazing towards a screen that remains black. Occasionally, a funny joke or a witty remark will float back into his memories, and he’ll buckle in laughter, waiting for Yifan’s reaction.
Oi, don’t you think we’re a little old to be watching these?
But it never comes, and he clears his throat when he remembers that there are no happy endings. Time will never come back to him.
He knows Yifan is just behind the bedroom door, but he can never bring enough confidence to actually see his face. For him, acknowledging that someone he’s grown up with for so many years is gone with the rest of the world, is accepting that there is no more hope.
There are a few realities he can’t face just yet.
When his timer goes off, Zitao would always throw away his empty bottle in the trashcan. It never makes it, always bouncing off the bottles overflowing from the top, and landing somewhere in the pile of bottles on the floor. He never makes an effort to clean them.
He’ll say his goodbyes at the door for another fun day, and he’ll leave the door cracked, just like Yifan would always tell him to because only Zitao ever visits him.
They are friends after all.
Night comes with the same rays of sunshine as the morning. He only knows it’s night because his body feels tired, yearning for just a bit of rest. His eyes are red, and the cracks on the mirror only laugh at him. They mock him as he undresses until he’s naked. He doesn’t feel embarrassed anymore, he can’t remember how it feels to be ashamed.
He crawls into bed, mattress sagging underneath his body until he’s flat on his back, eye staring straight up at the ceiling.
The only sounds he can hear are the soft notes floating in through his earphones. When he looks back down, the battery on his mp3 is down to a single bar, and he knows it’s only a matter of time before he has to let go of another piece of sanity.
It’s time to rewind.
Zitao closes his eyes and finally, finally, he imagines.
He imagines waking up his neighbors yelling about the rent being overdue, and the children down in the streets making too much of a ruckus. He imagines hearing the annoying chirping of birds as they tapped against his window. He imagines hearing his favorite songs playing on the radio, only for his friends to whine about the quality of music these days.
He imagines walking by the grocer and smiling when the old lady who owns the store compliments him on his youth. He imagines heading down to the river with his classmates and jumping in the water because they have nothing better to do. He imagines climbing up the old water tower and pretending he’s the king of the world.
He imagines knocking on Yifan’s door for once and hearing Yifan greet him with his stupid gummy smile, the one he’s always embarrassed about that Zitao reassures him makes him look charming. He imagines curling up into Yifan’s side as they watched endless cartoons on the ancient box he calls a TV, the one he has to kick sometimes because the signal would go out.
He imagines folding his fingers into Yifan’s, slowly as they realize just how much they actually care for each other. He imagines whispering his feelings into his ear when Yifan says he can’t hear him over the commercials. He imagines tittering as Yifan blushes and confesses his feelings as well, pressing a hand on the back of his neck to pull him in.
He imagines finally pressing his lips against Yifan’s, warm and eternal.
Zitao wakes up crying, hands coming up to try and stop the tears from flowing. He cries through and through, until he feels no more tears can come out. Until the throbbing in his chest finally stops and he’s able to breathe again.
Until he feels like there’s no more reason to cry.
The sun is still high in the sky. The birds are still frozen in his window sill. The wall needs another tally, and his chalk is wearing down to a single stub. He’s going to need more chalk. The days are just getting longer, and his time is going to come to an end.
Until then, he’ll keep living, forever, if time permits him.
If time is truly eternal.
Stop.