Chapter Text
Shang Qinghua was afraid of many things. Spiders, baby dolls, that one frightening spider/baby doll head monstrosity from Toy Story...the list went on. While he had phobias upon phobias, he had never exactly been afraid of the dark.
That was, before now.
Who wouldn’t be terrified of a pitch dark cave, filled with horror movie-esque drip echoes, and a totally dead cellphone? He had gotten separated from his group hours ago, and in his desperation to find them again, had only gotten trapped deeper in the labyrinthine limestone cave system.
When he had signed up for the geology course at his local community college, he had just been hoping to look at pretty rocks. It had just been an attempt to avoid having to poke around in creepy dead things! He wasn't made to mess around with organs and gross stuff! Just let him look at sparkly gems and lick at those few that were edible. Maybe even let him make rock candy for a project.
But no, no, he had to go and get lost on their one and only field trip. And he had paid for the privilege!
Nothing was worth the terror he was currently experiencing. There were bats, creepy bugs, strange smells, and again, fucking darkness.
The cold was steadily becoming the worst part. He had been dressed to sweat, and his cut offs were no longer keeping his knobby knees warm. What had started as a weak chill had rapidly turned frigid. He was certain that describing the temperatures as being sub-zero (and not just Celsius! Fahrenheit! Kelvin! Absolute zero! Any temperature gauge system ever!) would not be a stretch. He was intimately discovering a brand new meaning for the term "blue balls." Meanwhile, said balls seemed to be torn between receding so far into his body that they'd be warmed by his lungs, or just shriveling up and falling off.
Either way, it wasn't like he had ever gotten much use out of them.
He had wrapped an oversized shirt around his waist in case he needed extra mosquito protection or something to sit his butt flat on during the dig, and was currently debating between wearing it on his torso or trying to pull the sleeves up his scrawny legs as makeshift pants.
If Shang Qinghua wore shirts, would he wear them like this or this?
The cold and wet combined in such a way that it almost felt as if he was breathing in smoke. It didn't help that he'd screamed himself hoarse trying to get someone's attention during the first few hours of being lost. (Well, that was more yelling than anything. If he had at any point screamed, that was between him and the bats whose hearing he had undoubtedly damaged.) He was pretty sure that his nose had only stopped running because the cold had frozen his snot in ugly tracks on his face.
Nice.
He thanked his shitty habit of wearing (possibly more than) day old clothes for providing him with rations. Although the shorts showed far too much leg for subzero temperatures, they were covered in pockets all the way down past mid-thigh. That meant be had tons of goodies stuffed away from when he had pilfered all those snacks from the "relax before midterms!!" table in the student union.
When all of humanity failed the lost Shang Qinghua, at least he knew one person who never failed him--Little Debbie.
On the plus side, once he licked the crumbly icing from inside the wrapper he could Hansel & Gretel his way to not going in circles.
Or he could, if he found some goddamn light.
Speaking of lights.
There sure were a lot dancing in front of his vision right now.
When had he gone horizontal?
One second he was praying to Debbie, and the next he was flat on his freezing back.
Was the head rush he was experiencing a side effect of stress eating his way through 40,000 calories of Hostess in as many milliseconds?
Judging by the pain radiating out from his spine, he had fallen pretty goddamn far during his apparent sugar crash (ha). He was pretty sure something was broken.
At least his dignity was still intact, shirt-trousers or not.
Or so he thought.
Wasn't the cold supposed to feel good on injuries? Keep the swelling down and all that?
Wasn't the cold also supposed to lull you into a peaceful eternal sleep, instead of making you shudder so hard you'll no doubt need extensive dental work should you survive?
Wasn't he alone before..?
Wait.
…………….was he not alone now?
He took in a comically large, wheezing gasp without thinking. Not only did it double the pain in his shattered spine, but it caused all of the shuddering muscles of his torso to seize up with spasms. His throat (freezer) burned from the crystal cold liquid nitrogen air he was breathing.
He was not a science major.
He was not alone.
Whatever it was that was living in the cave system, it was fucking huge. No way was it a bat, bug, or blind cave fish. It had to be well over 6 feet tall, heavy, and getting...close...r…
Shang Qinghua, to his credit, did make a pass at trying not to panic.
It was entirely counterproductive, as the tensing of muscles to clamp his jaw down to keep from crying just started up the excruciating spasms again.
But there had indeed been a split second effort.
His gasp had drawn the attention of something, and the way he twitched against the loose rocks he had landed on continued giving his position away to it.
Iiiiit definitely sounded closer.
It looked angry.
Not that he could see.
But he was pretty sure it sounded angry.
Not that he could hear anything over the chants of "oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck me fuck me FUCK THIS fuck fuck fuck fuck fUCK" careening around his mind like an animate screaming monster truck full of 30-50 feral clowns driving across bubble wrap, tin foil, legos, and those weird wheezy latex chicken toys before flying over a cliff.
Suffice to say, there was a lot of internal honking.
The cave creature was only a few meters away now.
Maybe...maybe it was something cute.
Like a polar bear!
There were polar bears in subterranean caves in China, right?
It's not like they had much ice at the poles to live on!
Maybe the government paid to relocate them so they could cross-breed them with pandas and save both species! Polar bamboo bears! They'd be adorable, just rolling around, munching on bamboo, snuggling in ice, being the strongest omnivorous species around….
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
...omnivorous.
"OHHHHH, PLEASE TAKE AFTER YOUR PANDA SIDE, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. I PROMISE I'M NOT TASTY. I WAS GUTLOADED ON SODIUM, I'D BE TERRIBLE FOR YOUR HEART."
"--terrible for your heart--"
"--terrible for your heart--"
"--terrible for your heart--"
"Terrible...for m..y...heart..?"
Shang Qinghua froze (not a time for jokes, Huahua), trying to remember if hypothermia could give you a delirium that changed words you heard in echoes.
Humanities was a little closer of a field to the student's wheelhouse.
A question.
At what age do you know what the world feels like?
How old must you be before you've felt every sensation there is to feel?
Shang Qinghua was 26 years old and still discovering new sensations.
This new sensation was just strange enough that it kept it just shy of being pants-shittingly terrifying.
For now.
The closest thing he could liken it to would be the wet, gaping maw of a giant beast breathing stank breath across your face while you waited for it to hurry up and kill you via either savaging your fleshy bits or drowning you with its thick, slimy saliva.
Instead of being hot and wet, it was cold and dry.
Instead of smelling of rotting flesh, blood, and stank butt, it smelled like the taste of the ice his parents' freezer door made when he was a kid. It even gave the impression of that worrisome yet satisfying crunch where you risked your dental work by ignoring your parents and deliberately biting through it.
So really, it wasn't very much at all like that monster maw.
But somehow, the description fit. Maybe every single significant factor was different, but the feeling was the same. Oppressive. Terrifying. Thrilling, in a very primal way. Anticipation making you wish that it would just hurry up and do it already.
Whatever it was that it was thinking about doing.
"T-they've a-a-a-a-all s-s-said I-I'm v-v-v-VE...r-r-ry… s-s-salt--" Shang Qinghua wondered what kind of dentures he'd get once he shattered his by stuttering through the cold and fear. Maybe his grandma had an extra set?
"Enough." The voice was deep, rough, and less than an inch from his face. It spoke as if it held divine authority, and was all the more intimidating because of its closeness.
"-yyy--EEP!" the end of the sentence signaled finally reaching a mental save point, and he cut himself off with a squeak.
He could feel his lips splitting in real time as the presence loomed even closer.
His own mother probably hadn't held him this close when he was a baby, and here this mutant polar panda hybrid had yet to stop drawing nearer to his face.
"Are you incapable of simple speech?"
The voice sounded judgy.
Was a science experiment in any position to be judgy?
It was definitely being judgy.
"C-c- cold, s-sc- scared…"
"Hn."
That crumbly noise made the air around them vibrate. It made the student realize that the beast was basically hovering its entire body over him, like it was, like they were, as if they were h-having--
Warmth burst across his frozen cheeks, renewing their ache. Monster mortification might be the price for keeping his cheeks from falling off, he feared.
A soft blue glow from just above his eye level blinded him in the darkness of the cave.
It took a few minutes for his head to stop spinning, but his eyes continued playing shadowy tricks on him.
A man sat above him, an intricate glowing mark on his forehead illuminating his noble features. A long, sharp nose, unnervingly beautiful blue-white eyes, dark brows, pointed ears , high cheekbones, a strong jaw, cascades of long hair, provocatively perfect lips, all coming together to form a vision of unparalleled beauty that made his frail heart flutter and flail. His mind had to be playing tricks on him. Of course it would take dying alone and undiscovered in a cave to get his brain to cooperate and come up with a good character! His pretty face could only be a fictitious figment of the fragmented, feeble, freezing, mind and imagination of a frigid fool.
After all, what fantasy world did he fall into where a man that beautiful existed? And...would… straddle… his….. virgin……….body…………………...
"Oh, good God."
"Yes, Mortal?"
" OH. GOD."
"Speak your request."
"Y-y-you...you...y-y-y-y-you…"
"...in what way would you have me?"
"W-wait, I, w-w-w...wh….w...I-I-I, d-d-d--w….wh…….."
Shang Qinghua finally surrendered to the cold, falling unconscious.