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It’s Xue Yang’s fault.
Xue Yang is broken, a shattered mirror where he sees his own faults fragmented and multiplied, like he’s watching himself as a fly on the wall of their shitty, too-cozy home. He’s too much to handle; too much for himself most days, and way too much for Xingchen and Song Lan.
They will never get it, and that’s their problem. That part is their fault.
He slams the bathroom door shut, frames of pressed flowers rattling on their nails against the pale blue wall. Xue Yang feels the vibration of the mismatched wooden frames against his skull.
Condensation gathers thick and foggy on the tiny pane of glass that usually looks out into the dark, heavy trees, past the garden, past the deck soaked a deep brown with last night’s rain, so dark it could be blood if you didn’t know any better.
The boards could rot under the weight of it, collapse and decay and fall to ruin like everything always does.
The trees would too, eventually.
Xue Yang’s elbows hit the counter hard. Hard enough that it sends jolts up his arms, but the anguished noise that heaves from his chest, violent and angry, is a product all its own.
The counter where he keeps his things, where Song Lan and Xingchen have made space for him.
Someone knocks on the door and it makes Xue Yang’s heart leap into his throat before he has a chance to tether it down, defensive veins over ironclad arteries.
Choking back the frustration swirling in his chest, Xue Yang braces himself against the counter and doesn’t look into the mirror in front of him. “Fuck you.”
“Open the door.”
“No.”
“Xingchen wants to talk to you.”
Xue Yang does not look in the mirror, but he doesn’t need to see them to feel the tears welling in the corners of his eyes. His stupid fucking body.
He isn’t weak.
“Too fucking bad,” he says. “Maybe I don’t want to talk to him.”
“A-Yang—”
“Don’t fucking call me that,” Xue Yang bristles, happy to staunch the dull, bitter burning with fury. No one gets to talk down to him, especially not Song Lan. Not today, or ever again.
“Sweetheart, please.”
Xue Yang freezes, lips still curled around another insult, another cutting blow that he hopes will drive Song Lan away for good so he can pack his shit and get out, let them find another fucktoy roommate, but it falls flat at the sound of Xingchen’s voice.
“Please come out of there so we can talk.”
“No,” Xue Yang says again. He doesn’t have it in him to say anything else, anything mean enough to piss Xingchen off for the second time today, because tears are still inexplicably gathering in his eyes and he doesn’t trust his voice to keep them covered up.
The doorknob turns and the door opens with a creak. Xue Yang hadn’t even locked it, had apparently been too distracted to remember to hit the lock. He thinks briefly that maybe he left it open on purpose, then buries that notion like a rotting corpse in the back of his mind.
If he’d left it open on purpose, he’d been hoping for conflict, nothing more.
Xingchen’s been crying, clearly, eyes bloodshot and damp. Xue Yang doesn’t think about it, doesn’t think about how it’s his fault and that he somehow feels bad about it, and that’s why he needs to go: he cares too much. It shouldn’t fucking matter if he pissed Xingchen off.
Xue Yang doesn’t feel guilt. Guilt makes you vulnerable, and vulnerability isn’t in his repertoire.
Xue Yang is a cornered animal, and it’s Xingchen and Song Lan’s fault for letting him in and allowing him to wreak havoc in his wild, untethered distress. They should have known better; this is a lesson. They should be thanking him.
He’s feeling particularly cornered when Xingchen steps into the bathroom, tentative and hesitant, like if he moves too fast he’ll startle Xue Yang.
“Please come out and talk with us,” Xingchen pleads, “It’s okay.”
---
That morning, Xue Yang started an argument.
He woke up early to the smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen.
The seeping warmth in his chest sunk like a deadweight the moment he noticed its presence; obviously this couldn’t last.
It wasn’t safe to get too comfortable.
Eventually, everything falls apart, inevitable atrophy.
Induced atrophy.
He’d stuck around for months. Months that were too happy. The night before, like every other night that week, Xue Yang had tossed his clothes from the day into the shared laundry basket and let Song Lan and Xingchen welcome him into bed, their bed and kissed him like he tasted of candy, tender but hungry.
In the morning it was too much to handle.
At the table, eggs and toast and coffee prepared exactly how they knew he liked them, Song Lan’s presence and Xingchen’s warm smile were suffocating.
If something needs to end, it ends on Xue Yang’s terms.
He lashed out.
Xue Yang didn’t even remember what he’d said. Didn’t particularly care, either. Something about Xingchen’s pathetic softness and how useless it was, something about how Xingchen only loves Song Lan because Xingchen loves everyone, bleeding heart weeping into every crevice it can find.
When Xingchen, sweet and soft and gentle Xingchen told him to fuck off, he knew he’d done enough. More than enough, probably, but that was better. When he stood up and shoved his chair hard enough to shake the table, even Song Lan looked rattled.
---
Now, corralled back into the kitchen, Xue Yang mostly feels worn out, frayed at the ends like a split wire. He should be feeling free for the first time in months, but he isn’t.
He should’ve been long gone by now. No one has ever put their foot in the door when Xue Yang wanted to split, usually thrilled to watch him walk out the door; this is new territory and his body doesn’t know how to react, teetering right on the line of wanting to throw a full-blown tantrum and wanting a goddamn nap.
Xingchen and Song Lan had cleaned up the mess that he barely remembers making when he’d spilled his cup of coffee across the table, not even an hour ago. He’s sure it was a bitch to clean up, sticky with sugar. It was probably Song Lan who’d done it, sleeves bunched up around his elbows as he scrubbed way harder than he had to.
The only evidence that remains is the scent of the all-natural cleaner that Xingchen keeps perpetually stocked under the sink, a crisp bite of pine in the air.
Song Lan starts a fresh pot of coffee—it’s likely that neither he nor Xingchen actually got to drink theirs this morning, after the shit Xue Yang pulled—and sits down at the table. Xingchen and Xue Yang hover awkwardly near their usual chairs until Song Lan reaches over and pushes them out, inviting them to sit because ultimately they’re both fucking stubborn and he knows it.
Xue Yang stares. The soles of his feet itch with the drive to bolt, now; he doesn’t even need his things, he’s made do before with nothing but the clothes on his back. What does he have to lose, really? But his legs won’t go. He stands, stock-still, and stares at Song Lan, then at his chair.
Xingchen accepts the offer first. Xingchen never looks comfortable, posture too perfect even when he swears he’s relaxed, but he looks particularly restless in the straight-backed wooden chair while he waits for Xue Yang to take his own seat.
Xue Yang wants to keep him waiting, keep him anxious, but the exhaustion building in his bones wills him to join them at the table. It’s still early, but the gray of early morning has given way to thin beams of sunlight filtered through the curtains on the kitchen window, landing in mottled patches on the floor.
Silence spans moments, then seconds, then minutes. The coffee maker beeps on the counter, and Song Lan retrieves three cups. Xue Yang watches blankly as he fixes his own, then Xingchen’s, then Xue Yang’s.
He sets Xue Yang’s down first. It feels like a test, like he’s waiting to see if Xue Yang will spill this one too and save them the trouble of whatever this conversation is going to be. He thinks about it for a second but the warmth of the cup between his numb fingers is too good to pass up. It feels heavy in his hands, a ball without a chain.
It’s Xingchen who speaks first.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out. He hasn’t touched his cup yet, hasn’t even put his hands on the table. He looks—it’s a look Xue Yang recognizes. He looks like he’s been scolded. Like he has a punishment to avoid, anxious in his worry.
Xue Yang doesn’t understand. He’d been cruel, yeah, but shouldn’t that make Xingchen angry? Shouldn’t he be telling Xue Yang to leave?
Next to him Song Lan is still, waiting.
Xue Yang doesn’t respond right away, but the visible tautness in Xingchen’s shoulders makes him feel—he’s not sure, actually, how it makes him feel.
“For what?”
“For yelling, and whatever we did to upset you. Either of us,” Xingchen says, then adds, “Or both of us. Can we talk about it?” He shifts in his seat.
This isn’t right. Neither of them did jack shit, that’s the whole fucking point.
Is this pity?
“What the fuck,” Xue Yang says; he doesn’t know what else to say.
“If you don’t tell us what’s going on, there’s no way for us to fix it,” Song Lan says.
“There’s nothing to fix,” Xue Yang snaps, finding some vitriol at the suggestion that there’s something that can be fixed here, that there’s any way to pull the venom out of Xue Yang’s existence. “I’ll leave, and you can have your perfect little relationship back. You were just fine before I showed up.”
He puts his hands flat on the table, ready to push himself up, out of the chair and out of Song Lan and Xingchen’s lives when Xingchen covers them with his own.
“But, sweetheart, we care about you,” he says, voice sweet like the coffee that Xue Yang is holding. “We love you.”
It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before, but in the wake of this morning, Xue Yang feels his brain shut down, that sweet sugary voice spilling over and wreaking havoc over spent wires.
“All I do in this fucking house is cause problems, leave my shit all over the place, and you say you love me? Are you fucking kidding me?”
Xingchen cracks a hint of a smile at that, and Xue Yang’s blood boils.
“He thinks it’s cute.”
Xue Yang’s head whips around so fast it makes his vision shake.
“What?”
“Xingchen thinks it’s cute. Your attitude,” Song Lan says, “and the way you leave your shit all over the place.”
Xue Yang cannot fucking believe what he’s hearing.
“Yeah? Well what about you? I know you fucking hate it. Neat freak.”
“No, I don’t like it. But-”
“Don’t listen to him, A-Yang,” Xingchen interrupts; he’s fully smiling now. “He likes your attitude too. He really doesn’t like the messes, though, that part is true.” In the sunlight beaming in through the window behind him, Xingchen looks like an angel, glowing and golden-haloed.
Xue Yang stares back like he is an angel, one that’s fiery and horrible and speaking in tongues too ancient to understand.
No one loves Xue Yang, that’s by design. Xue Yang is covered in thorns and teeth and claws so sharp that no one can get close enough, vicious as he is.
Yet here are Xingchen and Song Lan, molded around those sharp parts like it isn’t painful.
Hot, aching pinpricks needle at his eyes as tears dredge themselves up from their wells.
He drops his face, looking down into his lap.
“What,” Xue Yang says to no one and everyone at once, “are you playing at here?”
The room is silent. If he looks up, Xue Yang knows he’ll see both Xingchen and Song Lan with confusion in their eyes, so he continues with his head down.
“What the hell do you get out of this?”
The moment the question leaves his mouth, he feels the walls crumble around him. He can almost sense Xingchen’s gasp, too, so quiet he barely hears it but it still feels like it’s stolen the air from his own chest, like he’s been punched.
Xingchen exhales. “Oh, A-Yang.”
Xue Yang still won’t look up, won’t let them in. He’s never seen Song Lan cry, not once since he moved himself in with them, and Xue Yang isn’t going to get caught first. It’s pathetic; he doesn’t cry.
Xingchen has no such reservation, and when Xue Yang peeks up through the curtain of hair that he barely noticed had fallen into his face, he can see Xingchen’s eyes shining with unshed tears.
He’s still smiling, with just a twinge of adoring pity, lips soft as the subtle rise of their edges.
Xue Yang remembers the first time Xingchen kissed him—those soft lips on his own—right before they all got together, officially. A movie that Xue Yang can’t remember playing on the television, Song Lan and Xingchen on the couch, Xue Yang across the room in a chair he’d claimed as his shortly after moving in despite Song Lan’s complaints that it was his. It was, but Xue Yang didn’t give a shit; other peoples’ boundaries weren’t his problem and he figured he’d be back to staying in motels within the month anyway.
Song Lan had leaned in to give Xingchen a kiss, and Xue Yang chimed in, “Hey, can I get in on that?”
Just to piss them off, to see what they’d say. They were both pretty damn hot, anyway; Xue Yang actually thought he might miss the eye candy when they finally threw him out, another roommate situation gone awry.
Xingchen gave Song Lan a look that Xue Yang couldn’t decipher, rose to his feet, and before Xue Yang had a clue what was happening, Xingchen was kissing him. Just a chaste kiss, like butterfly wings against his lips, but it left him breathless nonetheless.
That’s how it feels now, looking at Xingchen across the table.
There’s a lot that Xue Yang doesn’t get, he sees that now, and it’s terrifying. Like why he’s been given chance after chance, how anyone could care about him at all, why Song Lan and Xingchen are looking at him like that. Unmistakable fondness, despite it all, and Xue Yang wants to think they’re stupid for that but he doesn’t.
He thinks about the trees out back, heavy with rain and the passage of time, creaking under the weight of their own gnarled, overgrown branches.
It’s too much, and Xue Yang doesn’t know what to do with it.
Song Lan is closer, and he’s at his side before the first sob wrenches itself from his body, wretched and heavy.
It hurts, more than anything, and when Song Lan pulls him against his shoulder, Xue Yang buries his face in it and lets warm tears seep into the dark fabric of Song Lan’s shirt. He’s tense, Xue Yang registers vaguely. But he allows it.
“You,” Song Lan says, voice more gentle than Xue Yang has ever heard it, “are a pain in the ass.”
Xue Yang wants to jab back, or to laugh, but whatever he settles on comes out choked.
He doesn’t even notice Xingchen until suddenly there’s another hand on his back, rubbing in soothing circles.
Pressure on all sides, pushing tears out of him like a vise.
Every instinct Xue Yang has picked up over the years is telling him to fight, telling him to pound his fists against Song Lan’s chest, lash out against Xingchen’s gentle touch. But he’s so tired. Tired and heavy with feelings he didn’t know he was capable of carrying and would have liked to go the rest of his life without confronting.
Song Lan and Xingchen couldn’t even afford him the luxury of ignorance.
“Listen,” Xingchen says behind him, and Xue Yang is so absorbed in the weight of it all that he barely hears. “We’re here. We’re not going anywhere, and neither are you.”
If he doesn’t think too hard, Xue Yang might make himself believe it. He shudders in Song Lan’s arms. The tears have stopped, dried up, and there’s a damp patch on Song Lan’s shoulder.
He doesn’t move; he’s completely wrung out. He doesn’t remember the last time he was this tired.
Xingchen puts a hand on each of his shoulders and pulls him upright to look him in the eyes, like he’s trying to read Xue Yang’s mind through the bottomless black pits of his pupils.
“A-Yang,” Xingchen says, “Can you try to give this another chance? For us?”
It’s at least a few seconds, or maybe a few minutes before Xue Yang can make his mouth work for anything resembling words. Eventually he manages, “Okay.”
Song Lan’s voice is a muffled thing in his ear. “Xingchen, let’s get him to bed. Look at him, he’s exhausted.”
Xingchen nods. That fondness hasn’t left his face. It feels gentle. Xue Yang wishes he could sink into it like a warm bath, slip under the water and sleep forever.
He doesn’t react when Song Lan picks him up, bridal style, and carries him all the way back to the bedroom.
Not the spare bedroom where he half-expects to be dumped, where he deserves to be dumped, but to their bedroom, the mess of blankets and pillows exactly the same as he’d left them that morning when he rolled out the door with all the force and intent of a hurricane.
In Song Lan’s arms the weight in his limbs lessens, rises off his body like smoke. He feels so light, now, like he could float away if Song Lan let him, but something in him knows that Song Lan wouldn’t do that.
Xingchen tidies up the bed, just enough, and to Xue Yang it feels like the mattress has risen up to meet him when Song Lan puts him down.
He barely feels present, but he feels warm sinking into bed, soft sheets caressing skin in the places it’s bared.
Song Lan and Xingchen slip under the covers, surrounding him like guardrails.
It’s cozy.
It’s only mid-day, the noon sun beaming aggressively through the gap in the curtains, but Xue Yang feels like he could sleep for a fucking week; if he doesn’t move a muscle for the rest of the day he’ll be thrilled. He doesn’t know how long he lays there, silent, lost in the haze of thoughts he can’t figure out yet.
“Hey, by the way,” Song Lan says, drawing him back to reality, or as far into it as Xue Yang can manage.
“What?”
“You should really stop taking your coffee with so much sugar, that shit’s gonna rot your teeth out.”
Xue Yang snorts and presses his face into Song Lan’s chest, voice coming out muffled against his shirt. “How I take my coffee is none of your damn business.”
“Are you going to stop spilling it then?”
“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we?”
Behind him, Xingchen laughs, soft and easy, and Xue Yang closes his eyes; his thoughts can wait.