Work Text:
Feng Xin was not like Mu Qing.
That much should have been obvious. Like fire and water, oranges and apple seeds, white and black. In his more positive moments, Xie Lian would sometimes spout some bullshit about balance. A fine balance, when Feng Xin had his hand around Mu Qing’s throat, and Mu Qing had his hand around Feng Xin’s. Red demon, blue demon, and no love lost between.
Or, that’s how it should have been.
How it would have been, if Mu Qing hadn’t-
If Feng Xin hadn’t…
Feng Xin didn’t quite remember who started it, or how, or why. He remembered being in love, because he was sure from the moment he’d met him that he’d loved Mu Qing. He remembered being pissed off, because he was sure there had rarely been a moment there wasn’t something pricking his patience since the very same day.
He remembered his hand around Mu Qing’s wrist - surprisingly slender, those birdlike bones of his so delicate beneath his silk skin. He remembered the crisp red of autumn, and the tartness of apples on Mu Qing’s lips .
It wasn’t the first time Feng Xin had kissed someone, but it was the first time Feng Xin had kissed Mu Qing, and it was something he’d at times clung to, at times wished he’d forget, at times cherished so forlorn, the memory pulled out to be examined over and over like a complex idiom written on a slowly-aging scroll, wearied and worn by his handling and no more comprehensible for it.
It was the first time he’d kissed Mu Qing, autumn crisp in the air (or perhaps it was just the bitter taste of early apples), and it felt like the relieved hiss of water meeting a burning ember, the satisfaction of a hound finally tracking a scent to its source. He didn’t quite remember what happened after, though. He wasn’t clear on what had led up to it. All he remembered, for certainty, was the crisp taste of apple on their lips.
Feng Xin and Mu Qing were different. It wasn’t a secret.
They were both proud, but as smooth as Feng Xin’s certainty, as unruffled as his manner, Mu Qing had a thorn for each insecurity, and kissing his silk skin would sometimes feel like biting down on glass shards.
Feng Xin didn’t hate it, though he knew perhaps he should.
He’d loved Mu Qing from the start, and maybe they weren’t wrong when they said love turned men to fools. Foolish enough to bloody his hands on those thorns over and again, if that was what it took to see the briar rose he was hiding. (Lips the colour of petals, and just as soft. Tongue sharp with the tart bite of apples picked too early in the season, fingers and toes always startlingly cold; winter’s first touch.)
Peeling silk skin back to find his bones were spun from glass, and it hurt to be kept at bay by his thorns, but it hurt more to hold him close and feel those bones break and splinter beneath the crushing weight of someone seeing him in all his perfect fragility.
Feng Xin had never figured out how to question the people he loved.
Under duress, he’d learned how to doubt. It hadn’t made him happy.
They weren’t the same. They’d never been the same. It was a thorn dug deep beneath his skin, and sometimes it was nauseating how much he despised it. Mostly, though, it was just a reminder that he’d gotten close enough to be hurt.
Mu Qing was every bit as loyal as Feng Xin, but he’d learned long ago that loyalty meant different things to the two of them.
Feng Xin was a dog. Straightforward, reliable, eager to please. Stuck to Xie Lian’s side, always chasing his heels. He could speak when Xie Lian said speak, he could bite when Xie Lian said bite, he could heel when Xie Lian said heel. The day Feng Xin had learned to doubt his master, it had ruined them.
Were he ever to question someone he loved, he thought perhaps the thorn buried deep beneath his skin might fester and turn septic.
He’d rather break his own arm.
Whenever Mu Qing said no, Feng Xin let him say no. Whenever Mu Qing turned away, Feng Xin let him turn away. Whenever Mu Qing left, Feng Xin let him leave.
It didn’t hurt any less, but it wasn’t his place to tell the people he loved what they wanted.
When Xie Lian told him to go, he went.
It didn’t hurt any less to realise he should have stayed.
It didn’t hurt any less to realise that when Mu Qing swore he would leave, he’d been hoping that Feng Xin might care enough to fight for him.
Even a token effort would have been enough.
Mu Qing was not like Feng Xin.
He wasn’t straightforward the way Feng Xin was. Made of sharp edges, he didn’t know how to be blunt. So expectant of deceit, he didn’t know how to be honest. Devotion built on a foundation of pragmatism, he was too clever to follow Feng Xin’s bullheaded examples of loyalty.
Too shy of his own perspective to say he had a plan, and it might just work.
Too nervous of his fragile bones to let anyone see them.
Too scared of his overeager affection to say, when I leave, do you promise you’ll fight for me?
Too frustrated with his desperate heart to say, even a token effort will do.
The day Feng Xin had learned to doubt the people he loved, it had torn them apart. He’d been too scared, then, to question them, and his silence had been a thorn rotting septic deep beneath his skin for eight hundred years.
Lips parted, old scars on old hands already torn bloody, he asked, “If I fight for you, will you stay with me?”
Each word pulled that splinter from where it had been buried deep beneath his skin, and Mu Qing’s quiet breath was the sound of a hot coal being doused in water. Eight hundred years could do little to harden a heart. "Only if it's a fight worth staying for.”
Hands at each other’s throats, at odds in a way only two people as different as the two of them could be, patient fingers pieced glass bones back together.
Mu Qing’s kiss still tasted like apple, crisp and enticing. No longer sharp and sour, his tongue had the sweetness of an autumn equinox, and his chill fingers were warmed in the space between Feng Xin’s.