Chapter Text
The thing about having a thing for your best friend’s best friend is how abso-fucking-lutely inconvenient it is.
Feng Xin thinks it’s unfair: between His Royal Highness Xie Lian, the very face of virtue and courtesy and grace himself, and Mu Qing, who Feng Xin is pretty sure has maimed a man with his left thumb, why did he have to choose the wrong person? Although choosing implies choice, and Feng Xin’s Mu Qing-themed emotional fluctuations was an arrow shot in complete darkness that busted right through the bullseye.
One day he had pulled the car door open for His Highness and Mu Qing had stumbled out instead, shielding his eyes from the glowing dash of sunlight. He had blinked, looked at Feng Xin with a measure of stunned surprise he’s never looked at Feng Xin before, mouth quirked into the half-smile he gets when Xie Lian sometimes told a lame joke. A concession of softness. And that was it, Feng Xin’s blood rushed somewhere it shouldn’t when it came to Mu Qing; he was never the same again.
“Are you daydreaming?” cuts right through him. His Highness’ door slips shut and Feng Xin rights himself, recross his arms so he looks every bit the bodyguard he’s supposed to. “Did you hit yourself in the head?” Mu Qing steps out of the room, moleskine tucked under his arm, and Feng Xin resists the childish urge to snatch it away.
“So what if I am?” Feng Xin snaps right back instinctively. “You gonna write me up in your little book?”
“Shameless,” Mu Qing mutters under his breath, sharp gaze already falling away, already distracted. Feng Xin has half a mind to step up and ram him back against the same door he just exited, but he didn’t think Xie Lian would appreciate the noise.
He settles for grabbing Mu Qing by the shoulder and jerking him back, hard. There’s a ringing silence – Mu Qing’s eyes widen and shock registers, a sharp intake of breath, and Feng Xin, who’s been trained in bodily combat drops his hand like he’s been scalded. When the silence persists, he says, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you get hurt just from that?”, hoping to hear the sharp sound of Mu Qing’s condescension.
All he gets is a quieter exhale; it takes a moment for Feng Xin to realise that he has his fists clenched, like he’s trying to bodily stop himself from brawling with Feng Xin. His lips move and Feng Xin thinks, finally, but all he does is purse them tighter and walk away.
Feng Xin, with a commendable amount of restraint, resists from yelling coward after his retreating back.
—
It happens five more times, not that Feng Xin is keeping count at all. After the first incident, Mu Qing takes care to walk a step behind Feng Xin, as if trying to keep their distances far enough that he’s out of Feng Xin’s immediate punching area. One time, just to see what would happen, Feng Xin snipes a, “Afraid you’re gonna get hit?”
“Afraid you’re going break your hand,” Mu Qing snaps back just as quickly. He doesn’t realise how much he’s missed it until his watch beeps loudly, telling him that his heart rate was too high to be safe and has he considered taking deep breaths? Mu Qing’s eyebrow raises. “Do you wanna hit me that badly?”
“Is it time for stupid questions?” Feng Xin grouses, jabbing at buttons on his watch to stop it from vibrating so goddamn much. What the fuck was the point of having a watch that could read your texts but was one shocking incident away from betraying you completely? “Fuck you, fuck this thing–”
Mu Qing scoffs. In an instant, his fingers wrap around Feng Xin’s wrist lightly. They’re cold, Feng Xin registers dimly, having been struck shut by the idea of Mu Qing fucking touching him what the fucking fuck is going the fuck on. He twists a dial, then taps the screen, and all too soon, his hands are off Feng Xin’s wrists and his surely malfunctioning pulse rate.
“And this is why we don’t give caveman technology,” Mu Qing sniffs, then dodges Feng Xin before he can even spit his get the fuck back here in full. Feng Xin suspects, when people refer to masochists, they’re referring to him.
The second and third times had happened so quickly that Feng Xin barely noticed they were incidents at all. They’d been watching some sort of foreign dignitary try to converse with His Highness about geopolitical implications on overfishing and Feng Xin would very much like to brain himself.
“Mu Qing,” he grouses, “I’m giving you the honour of fucking braining me.” To which Mu Qing had kept completely quiet. At the time, Feng Xin had chalked it up to sleepiness. Some measure of tipsy, maybe, if he had seen that stick-in-the-mud pick up a glass of wine even once that night. It’s not until later, when he’s lying in bed that he pinpoints the sense of unease. Mu Qing hadn’t jumped at the chance to express his intent to murder Feng Xin. Mu Qing had stayed absolutely quiet, without even a hint of agreement.
The fourth time had been Hua Cheng’s fault.
“How many times have I told you you can’t just abscond with His Highness?” Feng Xin demanded, stopping himself from throwing a punch squarely to his jaw because this is the man that, inexplicably, Xie Lian was in love with.
“A hundred times,” Hua Cheng throws out lazily, scratching the scar under his eye like he can’t be fucked to have this conversation in the slightest. “You can diligently say it a hundred more times.”
“You fucking– Mu Qing!” Feng Xin had barked, causing Mu Qing’s head to snap up from where he was studiously ignoring the two of them. “Aren’t you gonna fucking say something?”
“You’re his bodyguard,” is the only answer he gets.
Feng Xin doesn’t even know when he’d stomped over, but he had evidently stomped over so he can yell, “What the fuck is wrong with you? If you wanna quit, just quit and stop mooching around.”
“What has this got to do with me?!” Mu Qing yelled back, snapping quickly into action. He stands, chest taut despite the slender frame of his jacket, meeting Feng Xin exactly eye to eye. In the background, Hua Cheng crosses a leg and settles in.
“He’s your responsibility too, you know. If that motorbike fucking flips over–”
“–don’t talking about E’ming like that–”
“–then we’re both fucked over. Can you pretend for once that you actually care about His Highness?” Mu Qing stares at him, his jaw working so hard that Feng Xin imagines he can hear his teeth gnashing. He would very much like to push all the buttons he can find, that he’s surprised he knows how to find, but Hua motherfucking Cheng was still radiating an aura of infuriating smugness.
“Y’know,” comes the drawl of the devil from behind him, “if you guys fucked, it’d make things so much easier.” This is it, Feng Xin thinks, Mu Qing is absolutely going to snap someone’s head in half. Whether it’s Hua Cheng’s or Feng Xin’s, he still hadn’t decided to place bets yet. All he knows is that someone was definitely going to die.
But all Mu Qing mutters is a quiet, “Unbelievable,” turning his head away so all Feng Xin can see is the sharp cut of his cheekbones, the anger flushing his cheeks.
“That’s it?” Feng Xin goads, too, feeling a sudden sense of unity with Xie Lian’s sentient garbage bag. “That’s all you have to say? Congratulations, you’ve figured out a way to become more annoying than him.”
That fourth time, he’s the one who storms away first. But the fifth time it’d happened… well. There was a lot more blood lost than Feng Xin had anticipated.
—
It happens like this: they’re doing their usual meet-and-greet of the foreign dignitaries. His Royal Highness Xie Lian was welcoming them on behalf of his King father. He’s good at it too, not a drop of his smile was insincere in any way – even Mu Qing’s steely face was twisted in some semblance of a smile. He catches Feng Xin’s eye over Xie Lian’s head and rolls his eyes. Something warm guts itself in Feng Xin’s stomach.
“It’s hot today, isn’t it?” Xie Lian demures, as Feng Xin jerks his head to tell Mu Qing to stop being such a dick on an occasion like this, where there was a huge motherfucking camera blinking red right in Xie Lian’s face. “We should get indoors. We’ve prepared that wine you like so much.”
After that, the screams came. The swarming crowd of reporters parted sharply and a man dressed in a tuxedo surged forward, airport lanyard still swinging around his neck. Feng Xin blinks, sweat trailing at his temples, and watches in slow motion as the fucker of a foreign dignitary ducks behind Xie Lian. Blinks again and Mu Qing has darted right in front of His Highness, a flash of his dark blue suit and even darker tie, his hands raised to his face as if to protect himself.
Then, thank fucking god, some of Feng Xin’s basic combat training kicks in and he steps in front of Mu Qing, catching hold of the attacker’s wrist to point his gun high in the air.
“Run!” he hollers, loud enough that his throat hurts from the reverberations. There’s a tearing noise and he remembers wondering if he had actually yelled that fucking loudly, only to be distracted by the wetness dripping down his button up, slicking his pants damply to his thighs.
The shock of the blood is what kicks him into action – he grabs the attacker’s arm and twists it around his back, effectively forcing the gun out of his grip. With his last surge of energy, Feng Xin smashes the grip of the gun against the attacker’s head.
“Fuck you,” he spits out with what his quickly depleting anger. It’s hard to stay enraged when his vision was swimming and spotty and dark around the edges. He blinks to shake his head free – when had he gotten horizontal and why was he looking straight into the fucking sun? – of the wooziness, but all he sees is three of Mu Qing’s head, his face contorted like Feng Xin’s never seen before.
“‘u Qing, you look so fucking stupid,” he points out, then promptly passes out.
—
He has to endure two solid hours of testing when he wakes up: whether or not he’s poisoned by blade or how much impact the puncture in his lung was going to be. The whole time, Mu Qing, who’d been assigned to babysit him, wore the perfect look of steely annoyance, mouth pressed into a thin line as he scribbled in his moleskine whenever the doctor gave recommendations.
“I’ve been stabbed before,” Feng Xin says eventually. Though, as if the universe wants to spite him, the last of his word catches when he shifts a little too hard and the bandage presses down on his wound. Fuck. Mu Qing’s hands are immediately on his waist, his shoulder, firm and guiding, as if wanting to hold his weight while he settles back down on his impossibly finicky hospital bed. “I’m fine.”
“Jesus,” Mu Qing sneers; Feng Xin doesn’t even have to look up to know he’s rolling his eyes, “you’re fucking welcome too.”
He’s about to retort that he’s not an invalid, thank you, when he catches the tight band of white peeking out from under Mu Qing’s wrist. Without thinking, Feng Xin grabs his arm to push back the soft, dark material. Demands, “What’s this?”
“I’m fine,” Mu Qing echoes, just as brusquely. He snatches his hand away and treats Feng Xin to a withering stare. “I’ve been stabbed before.”
“Really?” Feng Xin answers, even as he can’t stop thinking about the pinprick of red blooming under the stiff pallor of the bandages. “I don’t remember doing that.”
“Not everything revolves around you, dumbass.” Mu Qing’s rubbing the slender taper of his wrist and Feng Xin thinks, me too. “Go to fucking sleep before His Highness scolds me for fighting with an inva– with someone who almost died saving him.”
“I didn’t almost die,” Feng Xin grouses, because there’s an itch under his own bandages. Because Mu Qing is already pocketing his moleskine like he’s ready to leave him in this fluorescent cocoon with nothing to show but a jagged split along his guts. “Don’t be so fucking dramatic.”
As if on cue, the muted TV hanging in the corner of the room flashes to the coverage of his stabbing. Whoever’d been holding the camera had been panicking initially, the screen swinging wildly as it struggled to focus on where Feng Xin was clearly lying, undignified, on the ground. On screen, everyone had taken a sweeping step back except Xie Lian and Mu Qing. Shortly after, their back-up bodyguards had hauled Xie Lian off his feet too. The shot cuts to the solemn news anchor, leaving Feng Xin to bleed out in a small box next to her head.
What he’s staring at, though, isn’t the terrible way his white shirt had been stained quickly with red, but the way Mu Qing’s hand cradled the back of his head. His pinched expression. The trembling hand hovering over Feng Xin’s chest, as if unsure what the fuck to do with it. Through the dulled pain, a vision of the sharp lines of Mu Qing’s face swims into his memory. The crumpled lines of his worry, the way he mouthed and mouthed something that Feng Xin couldn’t hear.
Abruptly, the screen flickers shut and Mu Qing says, “These fucking people.” His grip on the remote control is tight and his lips are clamped shut in the way he usually did when he would very much like to bash Feng Xin’s head in at a very public conference.
“Makes me look heroic,” Feng Xin says, waving his hand dismissively. He’d done his job right and despite the stupid stab wound, he felt indescribably light. “That bastard is lucky he didn’t actually get to injured His Highness.”
But Mu Qing doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he stares at Feng Xin with an unreadable expression. Then he tosses the remote control and turns around to leave the room.