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It’s nearly three in the morning, and Mu Qing’s dozing in the armchair when a motorbike drives up to their street.
The engine is loud enough that he’s up in a flash, hands automatically reaching for the kitchen knife that’s hidden under their coffee table, but his gaze lands on his phone.
There’s a row of messages, but the one right on top is from Feng Xin, telling him he’s coming home. Outside, the engine shuts, and there’s footsteps coming closer.
In the dead of the night, it’s easy to make out Feng Xin’s heavy breathing, the shuffling of his feet as he walks up to their apartment.
Mu Qing gets off the chair, stretching his arms till his sweatshirt rides up.
His muscles are sore from a whole day of brutal rehearsal, and the bag of ice that was on his ankle is now melted, pathetically slumped on the floor.
He walks to the door, from where he can hear the tell-tale creaks of someone trying to keep quiet, but failing miserably.
Mu Qing has no patience, so he slams the door open to see a figure slumped against the railing of their staircase.
One of his best friends, one of the people he hates the most. One of his roommates, the only love of his life.
Feng Xin peeks through the eye that isn't puffed up, and his mouth comes up in a grimace.
He should kick him right out, Mu Qing thinks, even though it's Feng Xin’s house as much as it is his and Xie Lian’s.
It doesn’t change his option that he doesn’t deserve Mu Qing’s pity.
Slight irritation simmering in his veins, Mu Qing lets go of the door while it's mid swing, does an about turn and trudges back inside.
Feng Xin skulks in behind him, sliding in before it shuts with a thud.
They’ve done this too many times for Mu Qing to keep up the facade that he could turn Feng Xin away.
You can only wipe blood off someone’s cheek and ice their wrist so many times before they realise that you don’t hate them.
Too bad Mu Qing learnt this from experience, he thinks.
He flicks on the kitchen lights, and then takes a good look at Feng Xin. There’s crimson everywhere.
On his shirt, lining his knuckles, dripping from a corner of his forehead.
Blood trickles from the edge of his mouth, blooms like an ink stain from the gash on his stomach. He's gotten slashed, Mu Qing’s sure.
His lips are busted, right eye is coloured black and purple, so swollen he can barely keep it open.
And of course, the piece de resistance, he's gone and smashed his nose in. The blood mixes with rainwater, rivulets of pale pink running down the sides of his face.
He's crimson and ink and ivory, a mixture of shades that inspire terror and confusion. And yet, he looks beautiful.
“You look like a mess.” is what Mu Qing says.
He crowds him against the counter, weight leaning on one hand while he rummages through the first-aid kit with the other.
“Get up there,” he nudges, and Feng Xin goes.
It’s routine by now, to place hands on the countertop and lift himself up, shuffling until his back hits the wall.
Feng Xin winces as he settles, and Mu Qing wants to tell him he deserves it for coming home like that.
Feng Xin widens up his knees, muscles shifting under the taut denim.
It's barely an inch, scantily enough space for a mouse to enter.
Mu Qing huffs in exasperation, slides his palms up from where they rest on his knees, until they’re gripping his leg, inches above his knee.
He pushes, and they go as far as they can, and he steps closer, bracketed by Feng Xin’s thighs, hands on either side.
If his heart wasn’t beating loud enough to burst, perhaps he could have heard Feng Xin’s breath catching from above him, could have seen his eyes widen and fingers grip the edge of the counter like a lifeline.
But he’s a nineteen year old boy who’s in love with his best friend, so all he can think about is how unfair it is that even in the unflattering pale yellow of their shitty kitchen lamp, Feng Xin still looks beautiful enough to kiss silly.
Such things aren’t meant for him, he reminds himself, and so he turns to the side to pull the first-aid kit towards them.
Mu Qing pulls out a wipe that reeks of antiseptic, and presses it harshly against the scrape on his knuckle.
Feng Xin’s eyes screw shut in pain, and Mu Qing feels a sick sense of justice.
That’s right, he scoffs, that’s what you get. Regardless, the next swipe against the slashes on his hands is gentle.
Mu Qing methodically cleans the scrapes, disinfects the injured skin with careful movements. Above him, Feng Xin’s lips thin, trying and failing to keep a stoic face.
He doesn’t know how long he takes, removing the blood that’s begun to crust. The only sounds are their breathing and the occasional car that drives past.
It should be awkward, and Mu Qing would have started an argument just to break the silence a long time ago, had it been any other night.
But there’s something different today, a certain vulnerability in Feng Xin, and Mu Qing finds that he really doesn’t want to fight. He discards the wipe and pulls out a new one, now to clean Feng Xin’s face.
Mu Qing shifts so his hand is closer to his centre, right outside Feng Xin’s hip. The other is covered by the wipe, and strokes along his chin, the curve of his jaw.
He pokes at the nose, sighs when he ascertains it isn’t broken. Feng Xin looks at him in a half lidded gaze, while Mu Qing runs the wipe along his split lip.
Before Feng Xin’s idiocy infects him and Mu Qing tries something stupid like confessing his undying love, he forces his gaze away and throws the wipe.
Now for the stomach wound. It looks grisly, but the mere fact that Feng Xin came home on his own is testament that he wasn’t stabbed.
Mu Qing takes the scissors from the box and pulls Feng Xin’s t-shirt taut, and snips away at the material that covers him.
It’s impossible for Feng Xin to raise his hands, and so they have to make do.
And if the memory of flesh to flesh contact is one that is dredged up when he wakes up hot and bothered, then that’s between Mu Qing and his right hand.
He presses a palm against the flesh, and Feng Xin’s breath audibly hitches. Mu Qing wants to look right back up at him but he forces his head to remain down.
He takes the cotton soaked in iodine, and swipes it against the gash. It’s skin-deep, so he isn’t too worried about it getting infected, but the way Feng Xin’s muscles tense under his hand may drive him to an early demise.
He soldiers through, bites his tongue lest a snide comment slips through and disinfects the wound.
Mu Qing wraps gauze and bandage around it, arm going behind Feng Xin in a loop that has them pressed chest to chest and flushed with red, and he’s done.
He sets the wipe down, white now stained with red. He should shift away, should rinse and repeat these age-old motions, yet his feet refuse to budge.
Instead, Mu Qing raises the ice pack, gently places it against Feng Xin’s swollen eye.
Slowly, slowly, Feng Xin’s hand comes up to cover his own, and it's just the two of them in this moment.
“Why?” A single word, but so much power. It breaks through whatever peace had solidified around them, and now there’s only tension, drawn taut and gripping both of them round the neck.
Because they’ve done this before, haven’t they?
A fight gone sour, a bruised ego who couldn’t handle the fact that he lost. That’s how it was in the past, Mu Qing knows, because he’s seen it with his own two eyes.
Unfair numbers and rusted daggers, aiming for the two people standing at the side when they couldn’t take Feng Xin down.
He dealt with them, because they thought that someone wearing makeup and tights would be weak and beg for mercy.
Those people were wrong, of course, but the only reason why they escaped alive is because they were two, sometimes three.
Never one, because to go alone is akin to suicide. If Feng Xin has a match, one of them goes with him.
If it’s not Mu Qing, it’s Xie Lian, and they make him swear he would tell them, because they’ve seen his body lying on the hospital bed, broken and bleeding and eyes firmly shut, and none of them want that to happen again.
They’re a mess, the three of them, but this is how they work, and Mu Qing is furious that Feng Xin didn’t tell them.
They had a deal for a reason, he thinks, frustration winding and winding until it lines each ridge of his body.
“How many?” he asks, “and don’t you dare lie.” His own fingers are white with tension, gripping hard enough it would bruise.
He sees Feng Xin consider for a second, then his shoulders slump in defeat.
Mu Qing wants to feel some sort of satisfaction at coming out on top, but all he feels is a dawning sense of horror, the feeling that he’s not going to like whatever comes next.
And he doesn’t, because Feng Xin whispers a seven, and Mu Qing’s speechless with his fury.
“Are you an idiot?” he forces out, vexation tainting his words red. One against seven, how the fuck did he even think he would have survived?
The only hope for coming home alive would have been to run away and even then, chances would have been slim.
His matches are on the east side of the city, and they live downtown. He’d only get home so fast if he...
“You were downtown?” Mu Qing asks, disbelief etching onto his face. “Why?” Feng Xin’s chin comes up, stubborn set to his jaw.
He won’t say another word, and Mu Qing drums painted fingernails on the cold marble in confusion.
Downtown, downtown. Xie Lian’s in a library up north, and if Feng Xin wasn’t training in the east, where the fuck did he go?
A beat, then two, and Mu Qing’s face sours.
He slams the first-aid box shut from, metal clanging as he leans forward.
Mu Qing places both his palms flat on the table-top, and moves in closer until he’s looking up at him, inches from each other's mouths.
“You were at the studio, weren’t you?” If he wasn’t so angry, there would be red staining his cheeks at the proximity, but he’s fuming.
He narrows his eyes, because it’s clear to him why Feng Xin was out playing the fool, and Feng Xin’s glares right back at him.
“I didn’t do it for you,” Feng Xin’s a terrible fucking liar, and it’s so obvious he can’t even fool himself.
Mu Qing wants to slam him against the wall and press in close until he admits it’s the same people who taunt Mu Qing for being an orphan, for fighting tooth and nail for a chance to get a scholarship because there’s no other way he would be able to dance, for showing up to practice with second-hand shoes and worn tights because it was either new clothes or dinner for a week.
He knows, because even though he’s never said it the words slice into him like knives, poison spreading through his body, and both Xie Lian and Feng Xin can tell.
Xie Lian knows he hates it so he keeps his mouth shut, silently wraps a hand around his wrist and tugs him away, but Feng Xin is loud and brash and wouldn’t know subtlety even if it hit him in the face.
It’s easy to guess what might have happened, and Mu Qing doesn’t like it one bit.
“I can take care of myself, Feng Xin.” Don’t get hurt for me, Feng Xin. I don’t want to see you in pain, Feng Xin.
He’ll never say these words, but it's all the same as shouting them through a loudspeaker, because the crease between Feng Xin’s eyebrows deepens and his mouth twists.
Mu Qing wants to kiss it away. He opens his mouth, probably to argue, to say words that are better left unsaid, but Mu Qing won’t let him.
“Just shut up.” he snaps, because if Feng Xin keeps talking he might slap him, then shove his tongue into his mouth.
Mu Qing wants to rage and shout until he’s hoarse, wants to grab him by the collar and shake until he understands how utterly dumb, how stupid that was. But he knows the stupidity is characteristic of all that encompasses Feng Xin.
He was like this when they were young, with dirt underneath his fingernails and mud stains on his shorts and getting into fights in the sandbox because someone said Xie Lian was unlucky, like this when they were pimpled and gangly teenagers and Mu Qing’s homework was ripped to shreds by some rich kid who thought he was funny.
He has always been an utter fool, thinking with his heart instead of his head, and Mu Qing hates that it makes his soul sing, his eyes soften around the corners, makes him thrum with want.
He wants to smear the blood on Feng Xin’s lips with his own, mark up the column of his neck, the only part of him that’s unhurt.
He wants to place his ear against his chest to hear his heartbeat, wants to run his fingers through his hair and kiss his forehead.
Instead, he steps away, and turns to the side to clean up the mess of wipes and bandages on the counter.
Feng Xin gets off, slowly, and Mu Qing ignores him in favour of soaking a cloth in water and wiping the smooth marble.
It’s silent, and his brain starts to overcompensate. He could have died today, Mu Qing realises. His hands in their motions, muscles freezing as his brain warms up.
Feng Xin could have got his skull shattered, could be lying dead in a ditch right at this moment and nobody would have found out.
Mu Qing could have woken up tomorrow morning and not known that he’d breathed his last, and the fear paralyses him.
Mu Qing can’t lose him. He’ll swear up and down to whichever god that will listen, he’ll dig his claws in and drag him back home, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep him here, because Mu Qing cannot lose him.
Not after his mother, not after she pressed her lips to his forehead and told him she loved him, then her eyes slipped shut and she left him all alone.
He can’t go through that again, and the thought of it being Feng Xin, or heaven forbid, Xie Lian, has him wanting to claw through his skin.
He’s shaking, he realises. He blinks back into focus, and all he sees is bruised skin and black hair. They've shifted to the couch and there’s a hand rubbing circles on his back, slow breathing that rings in his ears. Feng Xin is holding him, he realises.
He freezes, because they don’t do this.
They argue and call each other names and scream and shout but this sort of comfort is not meant for the two of them.
Mu Qing wants to pull away, wants to run into his bedroom and lock the door behind him, wants to hide away because he feels exposed.
But he’s greedy, so greedy, so he stays. Tucks his head under Feng Xin’s chin, breathes in the sour tang of antiseptic and copper.
They’ve veered too far off the script, and it’s only a matter of time before they come crashing back to their senses, and Mu Qing thinks it can’t be ruined more than it already is.
He doesn’t care anymore, for his ice-cold facade and the stinging words that are second nature. He’s tired, and Feng Xin is warm, and the hand on his back is still petting him, so he’ll take this for himself.
But he still needs to clear this up while they’re shrouded in the ambiguity of the night, so he leans back a little, and he squeezes the hand that holds Feng Xin’s own. "You can’t do that again.”
Perhaps it's the late hour, because Feng Xin doesn’t quip a joke at him. His hand stops mid-circle on his back, chest still moving up and down. His palm is large and warm, and the heat seeps through the thin cloth of his sweatshirt.
“I don’t want to owe you this,” he says. I don’t want to lose you again, he doesn’t say. Yet Feng Xin hears it all the same.
The hand clasped in his tightens, and the palm on his back pushes, crowding him in close.
Their breaths synchronise, and Mu Qing can hear Feng Xin’s heartbeat. He’s sure Feng Xin can hear his.
It’s steady, a reassurance. I’m here, it says, I’m not going anywhere.
“You won’t,” he says, and Mu Qing wants to hate how Feng Xin knows what he doesn’t say, but it’s nearing four and sleep tugs at him, insistent.
So he just lets them settle into the couch, elbows poking into thighs. Just as he's abut to drift off, Feng Xin presses his mouth to Mu Qing's forehead, and it's a sign that things have changed irreversibly when Mu Qing just shuffles closer and his eyes flutter shut.
In the morning, Xie Lian will trudge in after his night shift, and balk at the both of them cuddled and asleep on the couch. He’ll set his bag down, tiptoe closer.
He’ll see the bruises that mar Feng Xin’s skin, and the red rims around Mu Qing’s eyes, and he’ll know enough.
There will be tears shed when they wake up, bleary eyed and hair tangled beyond belief, because Xie Lian hates it when they get hurt, and hates it when he isn’t there to help them.
He’ll make them swear to tell him when it happens again, and they’ll nod their heads.
But their fingers will be crossed behind their backs, because they both know Xie Lian runs himself ragged to keep both his scholarship afloat and money coming in at the same time, and neither wants to make him worry more than he needs.
Xie Lian will know that they’re lying, because this is a dance they’ve done since Feng Xin first picked up his gloves and Mu Qing slipped on his first pair of pointe shoes, but he’ll let it go in favour of scurrying around in their apartment, pulling out old duvets and threadbare pillows to shove upon Feng Xin.
They’ll end up making a makeshift pillow fort and Feng Xin will whine until Xie Lian lets him put his head on his lap. Mu Qing will roll his eyes, and complain that they’re too old to be cuddling.
But then he'll bury his head in the crook of Xie Lian’s neck, and a hand will wind down to lay on Feng Xin's waist.
Xie Lian will conveniently forget to mention that the flowers in the vase were not bought by him, and Mu Qing and Feng Xin will spend forty minutes arguing over which movie to watch.
Someone will spill popcorn all over the couch and they’ll eat breakfast at three pm, and it will become one of the memories Mu Qing tucks in and hides away for rainy days.
But that is for the morning.
Right now, it is for them, curled up safe and dry on this couch, hearts beating to the same rhythm.
The blood flakes as it dries, and Mu Qing’s arm is bent at an uncomfortable angle between them, but Feng Xin is safe and well, and for now that’s good enough.