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He wakes, and for a brief moment, he doesn't know why.

It takes another few moments for him to realize that the source of his waking is a strange, obnoxious vibration across his sternum. The sensation – nearly ticklish, foreign instead of painful, so it doesn’t activate any of the reflexes that he instinctively knows would be set off it he had been in any pain – is accompanied by a sound. A rather loud sound, and one that reminds him vaguely of wind chimes except far less peaceful and far more startling.

He wakes up in a bed. The bed is not one he recognizes. Neither is the room. Neither is anything, really.

Ah. Interesting.

He wakes up without memory, and picks up the strange object on his chest between two surprisingly long fingers. It’s a smooth black box-like thing, small and cool to the touch. There is a screen that looks to be lit up from the inside, with a blinking sort of button two-thirds of the way down and a circular image in the upper third displaying the grinning face of a strikingly pretty man. Under the image is a set of characters – a name, he assumes. Wu Xie. And… what was that odd face-like thing next to it, surrounded by several cartoonish looking hearts?

He presses the button and experimentally swipes up on instinct. The button (texture-less and generally unlike a button in every way except for overall implication) turns green and the screen changes.

“Good morning!” He jolts as a voice – bright, lively, warm, and so very happy to speak to him, it sounds like – bursts out of the box. “I hope you’re hungry. Pangzi ordered lunch.”

Pangzi. He mouths the name silently as the man (Wu Xie? Surely that would make sense?) keeps speaking, trying to conjure up a face alongside it and finding himself overwhelmingly disappointed when all his mind lends to him is a blank space.

“Hey, you there?” Wu Xie’s voice has gone quiet, and he wonders if he missed a question.

He hesitates – he doesn’t know this Wu Xie person, doesn’t know how Wu Xie would expect him to respond. Would he speak? He doesn’t feel like someone that talks too much. The idea of a long and elaborate response, or even anything more in-depth than a simple acknowledgement, makes something in the back of his head cringe wildly. He settles on something simple. “Mhm. I’m here.”

“Uh-huh,” Wu Xie replies, sounding less than convinced. “Well, we’ll be back soon.” He pauses briefly, inhaling audibly on the other end of the box. Does he have one of his own? How does it all work? “Don’t- just, don’t go anywhere. Stay right there.”

He almost wants to scoff, and almost responds, but the light in the box goes dark with a few successive beeps before he can say anything. He presses at the device a few times but finds that he can’t access anything because of a password-lock.

Password? If this was his device, what would his password be? He racks his brain for any memory of any kind and finds himself lacking.

The bed is still slightly warm on the side that he is not currently laying in, a faint indentation of another body that’s since left. He drags his hands over the space, fine threads of the sheets catching against the calluses on the tips of his fingers. Someone slept next to him the night before, and he had allowed it.

He sits up and scans the room around him. Large bed, rumpled sheets, plenty of light streaming through the open blinds of the window to his right. The room is somewhat messy, floors clean but every inch of available wall, desk, and shelf space is cluttered with papers and books and photographs, cardigans and jackets tossed over chairs or closet doors with abandon. He rises to his feet, startled to find that he’s wearing absolutely nothing under the sheets and searches around for something to put on. In the bottom drawer of the dresser next to the closet are several rows of neatly folded underwear, and he picks one at random and slips it on. Tight elastic clings to his hips, but it’s bearable.

Next to his hand, neatly stacked against the closet and tucked away out of sight, are several old notebooks. Pages and photos stick out at varying angles, and something inside of him is tugged towards them. He’s just about to reach for the one at the top of the stack when there’s a loud clattering from somewhere outside the room. He sinks instantly into a low crouch, hand flying to the back of his waist to grab at something that isn’t there as his eyes track the room for any sort of weapon, ears hunting for any more disturbances.

There’s a sheathed blade next to the bed. The hilt feels like a memory of its own in his palm, and he slinks silently out the door and down the revealed hallway towards the sound.

“Xiaoge!” Someone – a man – calls loudly, his voice rough and boisterous. He hears the crinkling of something shifting around and the thud of weight against wood. There’s a second voice, slightly quieter and far less abrasive but one he recognizes.

“Xiaoge, stop skulking around, dammit! We know you’re here.”

He turns the corner to see a larger version of that distractingly pretty face, eyebrows creased in obvious concern as his arms cross over his chest. Wu Xie is wearing a cardigan very similar to one of the ones he saw tossed around the room he woke up in. Wu Xie is also staring rather obviously at the fact that he’s wearing boxers and nothing else with a sword held at the ready in front of him.

He straightens, lowering the sword and sheathing it one muscle memory alone.

Wu Xie is a few inches shorter than him. He has to tilt his head slightly upwards, which means that he looks up at him through long, dark eyelashes that brush the tops of his cheeks when he blinks in a rather distracting manner.

“When?” He asks, eyes searching his.

He blinks, not understanding the question. The first man – larger with a round face that’s lined around the mouth and eyes in a way that speaks more to years of laughter rather than frowning except for the odd way that he looks between him and Wu Xie, currently dressed in brightly patterned pants that look like pajamas and a startlingly pink t-shirt with a cartoonish looking cat across the front – makes his way across the room, having set up the table with three seats, bowls of steaming food wafting enticingly through the air. The first man slings his arm across Wu Xie’s shoulders, eyeing him up and down with perceptive brown eyes that meet his own somewhat sadly.

“When did you forget?” Wu Xie asks curiously, concern in his face but a softness in the graze of his fingertips across his left wrist that sends a sharp jolt up his spine that he forces down.

“Shit,” the first man says gruffly, “who’s going to tell Sang-bei’er?”

**

Sang-bei’er is not, in fact, actually called Sang-bei’er, but Liu Sang. Liu Sang appears in mostly photographs, selfies of a rather young man with glasses and jaw-length hair, always holding up two fingers held in a heart shape with his own lanky, hooded form somewhere in the background. Looking at these makes him feel like Liu Sang had taken them as a challenge, to see whether he could catch him in the back of each photo without him noticing. There is a single photo of the two of them actively looking into the camera, one taken from a distance atop a clear concrete space, open blue sky behind them and the green tops of trees visible over the edge of a building. He is balancing himself on one hand with his feet high in the air, one distinctly more centered than the other, the other arm hooked behind his back and his own face upside down and captured mid-laugh. Liu Sang is standing on one foot of his own atop the boot attached to that centered leg, grinning widely with one thumb turned up at the camera and his other hand wrapped around the back of his neck to grip at his opposite ankle, stretching it high against his side as he points socked toes to the sky. His glasses look vaguely crooked. It’s such a strange pose that he finds himself laughing softly as he studies it.

Liu Sang is in only one of the notebooks. Wu Xie and Pangzi – the gruff man with the Hello Kitty t-shirt – take up several just on their own, on the various adventures he’s accompanied them to and apparently saved them from. Reading about them tugs at something in the back of his brain, an almost-recognition that he can’t quite take hold of.

The first notebook does not give him his real name, but it does tell him that he goes by Zhang Qiling. Wu Xie and Pangzi call him just about anything except that, but they mostly refer to him as xiaoge.

Xiaoge, come eat lunch. Xiaoge, make sure Tianzhen doesn’t cheat at pool. Xiaoge, you should leave the shop every once in a while, you used to be such a feral cat before Wu Xie got his own claws in and domesticated you. Xiaoge, let us know if you need any help jogging your memories – Pangzi could always use the shot to the ego if you need to know about how badly he failed at cooking that weird Western dish a few weeks ago. No, Xiaoge! It was only weird because Tianzhen bought the wrong ingredients!

He doesn’t mind the name. It feels better than Zhang Qiling, even if the notebooks have led him to believe that’s how he refers to himself outside of the two whirlwind men he’s currently cohabiting with. It feels more personal, more of a possession than the family name that barely belongs to him. All he has are titles, according to his notebooks, but he prefers almost everything to the one that is officially tied to him.

There are some things that his body remembers. How to wield a sword, how to scale a building, how to make a simple noodle dish and a ridiculously complicated stew that even Wu Xie and Pangzi don’t have a name for but that they also don’t question when he asks for some of the more obscure ingredients. The recipe for a medicinal salve bounces around his head for several hours before he sits down to make it, grabbing a beaten old plastic jar with awful handwriting, handwriting that he knows is his own from the notebooks, taped to the bottom and filling it to the brim before setting it aside. For what, he can’t remember, but his hands do.

The notebook that features Liu Sang also features the fact that Wu Xie is Zhang Qiling’s partner, going into great detail and with no small amount of tangible enthusiasm on their relationship, even if it rushes rather obviously through the parts that sound less than ideal about their rockier initial days. Apparently, he met Liu Sang around the same time that he and Wu Xie finally ended what he calls a decade-long half-courtship. Apparently, that was six years ago.

Zhang Qiling figures that their relationship status was relatively obvious given that he woke up naked in the man’s bed. Or it would have been obvious if not for Wu Xie’s behavior.

Wu Xie touches him, but briefly. He doesn’t ask for anything beyond the same sort of affection that he gives to Pangzi – hair tussles and wrestling over blankets or remotes or food, side hugs and hip checks in the mornings before breakfast. He doesn’t sleep in what is obviously his room. He won’t let Zhang Qiling suggest otherwise. His hands also remember how to touch Wu Xie, instinctively guiding themselves to the nape of his neck or the curve of his waist before he remembers that Wu Xie doesn’t want the touch of a man that doesn’t actively know him.

Zhang Qiling has been amnesiac for less than a few days before something inside him starts to ache at some loss that he can’t describe.

**

Liu Sang is bigger in person than Zhang Qiling had expected.

Not taller, not larger, not even more muscular. But he takes up space in a way that he didn’t seem to fill in the photos. His hair was much shorter in those as well, falling nearly to his shoulders in reality.

“Ouxiang,” he greets quietly, eyeing Zhang Qiling far more warily than Wu Xie and Pangzi had.

“Did they tell you?” Zhang Qiling is on the roof of the building that he apparently owns, laying on his back and staring up at the slowly-darkening sky as he hears the man approach. He’d received several texts from Liu Sang in the last several days. He hadn’t answered any of them, hadn’t known what to say, and going through past conversations revealed that he generally didn’t say much at all when he wasn’t suffering from retrograde amnesia.

“No,” he replies with a sigh, sitting down cross-legged, hip next to Zhang Qiling’s head. He’s wearing a pair of light grey plaid-striped trousers, a matching jacket hanging just barely a few centimeters above the ground, “I figured it out myself.”

He hums. The notes he’d left himself had said in no uncertain terms that Liu Sang was just as smart as any one of the Iron Triangle, so it tracked that he’d have figured it out on his own even if Zhang Qiling or the other two hadn’t said anything. Or maybe it was because they hadn’t said anything. “You’re in one of the notebooks, and some photos. Your hair is longer.”

“Yeah,” Liu Sang huffs, looking down at his fingers – long fingers, nearly as long as Zhang Qiling’s but far more even in length between the ten of them – and laces them tightly together, bouncing them in his lap somewhat anxiously, “you really don’t remember anything?”

Zhang Qiling shakes his head. “Did I miss something?” A particular day, perhaps, or some plan he’d made that he’d forgotten that morning. Liu Sang’s texts hadn’t been so frequent or frantic that he’d thought there was anything coming up that he’d forgotten, but he could be wrong.

“No,” he repeats softly, shaking his head and sighing unsteadily, “no, I- uh, no. You didn’t miss anything important. But yesterday was Saturday, and Saturdays you always make me run a fucking marathon before eight am, because you’re crazy and you like running and you especially like running when there’s no one around. So that’s how I figured it out.”

Zhang Qiling sits up suddenly, eyeing Liu Sang and letting himself get eyed right back. There’s a tension in the man’s shoulders that hadn’t existed in the photos. He’s wearing a tight grey turtleneck under the suit, several gold necklaces layered over it and his long hair loose and slightly wavy. His glasses are round, a thin gold-wire set of frames that settle perfectly over the bridge of his nose. They are not crooked in the slightest.

His notebook had also said that Liu Sang modeled. It makes sense. He has the face for it. It had said six years – six years of running marathons on Saturdays, every week except for one.

“What do I make you do on Sundays?” He asks, cocking his head to the side. Liu Sang shrugs, pulling his knees to his chest and dropping his cheek to one.

“Spar, mostly. Though last week we agreed not to since I had a fitting today and a shoot on Tuesday. Too risky if I get bruised up between now and then. I think we were keeping it open, but you and Kan Jian suggested that the two of us bring dinner to Wushanju after my fitting.”

“Kan Jian?” The notebooks hadn’t mentioned him – not the ones he’d read, at least, and there are still several that he hasn’t even touched yet. Zhang Qiling narrows his eyes.

Liu Sang’s left eyebrow quirks. “My boyfriend. And housemate. He works for Wu Xie.”

Ah – the notes had briefly mentioned a partner of Liu Sang’s but no name or any real detail. Just vague updates, the last of which been dated at a month prior to his onset of amnesia and only referred to them moving in together, and that had only been in the context of using the front door rather than the balcony of Liu Sang’s apartment, since that led directly into the bedroom.

He nods in assent, the information slotting in alongside all the little details he’d collected from the notebooks. “How did you know I was here?”

Zhang Qiling hadn’t even planned on visiting the decrepit old building that Pangzi had mentioned his ownership of over breakfast that morning, but it had happened anyway. He got the address, and a touch curious, and suddenly he was wandering the grounds.

It was a nice view, all things considered.

“You’re a little feral, even domesticated,” Liu Sang says softly, smiling, “and I’m not Wu Xie or Pangzi, but I know that you like to be somewhere high and unenclosed when you’re feeling restless.”

He nods, feeling uncomfortably exposed. Zhang Qiling could have guessed that about himself, sure, but Liu Sang obviously was familiar with his habits. He just wasn’t familiar with the amnesia, if he were to guess, and certainly not in the way that Wu Xie and Pangzi were, taking it all in stride and one step at a time, picking up when he dropped off like nothing had even happened.

“Ouxiang-,” Liu Sang starts, just as something clicks in his head.

“Why do you call me ouxiang?” He asks, mirroring Liu Sang’s seated position. His posture is perfectly straight, so much so that he almost feels like his spine is going to snap under the strain of mimicking Liu Sang, and Zhang Qiling doesn’t slouch to begin with.

Liu Sang laughs, rather than getting upset or offended. “Because it’s what I’ve always called you. Because you didn’t want me to call you anything more formal than that.” He shrugs. “And because you hate it when I call you Zhang Qiling.”

That also makes sense – something deep inside him revolts at the thought of Liu Sang referring to him by that title.

He hums in acknowledgement again rather than replying, unsure what to say. The notes, as well as Wu Xie and Pangzi, had referred to Liu Sang as his student. They also implied that the last time he’d been amnesiac like this was nearly two decades ago, so even if he’d warned him of this happening, it was still the first time that he’d ever have to really experience it.

“I’m going to call Kan Jian to pick us up,” Liu Sang says, shaking his phone in emphasis, “we can pick up food and then go back?” The question is clear.

It’s an easy out. An easy way to avoid having to make any decisions while he’s still trying to balance on such unsteady ground. Zhang Qiling nods.

**

Kan Jian is another strikingly pretty man, who grows even prettier when he smiles bright and soft and fond at Liu Sang as he pulls up to the building, squeezing his hand almost discreetly as he passes by to open the door to the back seat to Zhang Qiling . Zhang Qiling wonders if Wu Xie has a habit of doing this – collecting beautiful people and keeping them close the same way that he collects beautiful and valuable antiques. It wouldn’t shock him in the slightest, even though he’s only actively known Wu Xie for a little more than a week.

Kan Jian drives them back to Wushanju in silence, and like every other silence he’s sat in so far it doesn’t feel awkward or uncomfortable, merely existing in the space between them as a natural state of being. He murmurs occasionally to Liu Sang in the passenger’s seat, and occasionally Liu Sang will shuffle around the plastic bags on his lap that smell of spices and warmth and make him realize that he hasn’t eaten in several hours at least.

He wonders vaguely if this is the way that the people around him have learned to treat him, with hushed silences and quiet words and inconspicuous glances, and then he disregards the thought. Nothing about the way Wu Xie or Pangzi or Liu Sang or even Kan Jian have behaved towards him has indicated anything other than fondness and respect. The fondness surprises him, based off of what he’s read of himself in his notes. The respect doesn’t. Zhang Qiling strikes himself as the sort of man that commands it without asking, his body knowing how to settle itself threateningly and powerfully without his mind ever consciously deciding on anything.

There is a strange sort of timelessness to existing in a world that you cannot remember. Zhang Qiling watches each day pass, off-center and out-of-step and with one-and-a-half feet outside of the steady stream of routine that Wu Xie and Pangzi seem to ground themselves in. He goes on tomb raids on the odd occasion that there is one to come along on, and Liu Sang makes him continue their usual training schedule (which helps, it helps so much, because at least then he’s centered and focused, the blood rushing in his ears and the ground under his feet so much more solid and real than he feels when he’s just lounging around waiting for his memory to return or something to happen), but his student has a day job and the weeks pass with no sign of remembrance, and the longer he goes without his memory the more convinced he is that it’ll never return.

Wu Xie and Pangzi seem certain that it will, and that it changes very little even if it doesn’t – he has the notebooks, he has them, and what else could he need? If he needs a memory, he has two walking memory boxes to help him.

(Three, really, though Liu Sang is the busiest man he’s ever met and can’t always get to his phone.)

It’s interesting, then, that Kan Jian reaches out across the space between Zhang Qiling and the rest of the world.

“I’ve always been curious,” the young man begins one morning, hoisting himself over the edge of the rooftop that Zhang Qiling has commandeered for observational purposes, “about you and Liu Sang and your rooftop lurking.”

Zhang Qiling eyes him curiously without responding, watching as Kan Jian settles himself in a neat cross-legged seat a few meters away, facing the courtyard below instead of the lurker.

“It is a nice view, though,” he muses quietly, crossing his arms over the ledge and resting his chin over them, eyes tracking the movements of his bosses below as they bicker and chatter at each other loudly. Zhang Qiling keeps an ear out for Pangzi and Wu Xie while his eyes remain on Kan Jian, taking a moment to study him. He’s smaller than the persona he generates, obviously strong given the definition in his bare biceps but still lean and somewhat delicate when he’s not restlessly bouncing around or flinging marbles through the air, his body and energy more settled and perceptive than he thinks Kan Jian is aware of.

Every single one of the people living around him puts on an act, every single day of their lives, even in front of the few that already see through it. Zhang Qiling looks at all of them and wonders how exhausted they must be.

“Are you busy?” Kan Jian asks, still facing away from him. “I told Wu Xie that I’d pick up lunch since Wang Meng is out.”

Zhang Qiling is not busy. He slides over the edge of the rooftop, landing neatly on both feet in front of Wu Xie, who has a large box in his arms and a stray lock of hair out of place, falling between his brows in a way that make his fingers twitch to brush it back.

“Hi,” the man grins, eyes bright and fond in a way that makes his chest and lips ache, “going somewhere?”

Kan Jian calls from above. “He’s helping me pick up food. I’ll make sure he doesn’t fight anyone.” Rude. Notebook-Zhang Qiling doesn’t strike him as the type to just randomly fight strangers, so why would he be different?

But Wu Xie nods firmly. “Good.” He turns to Zhang Qiling and gives him a quick once-over, eyes settling on the hood over his head with a wry twist to his mouth. “Be nice. It’s just food.”

He doesn’t pout. He wants to, but he doesn’t.

Feeling oddly brave, Zhang Qiling raises both hands, one cupping Wu Xie’s soft cheek as the other delicately brushes the lock of hair back into place. All of him is soft – skin, hair, eyes, mouth, even as hard as he knows the man beneath it can be at times from all the stories that he’s read and heard of him. He follows his fingertips with his mouth, pressing a brief kiss to his forehead before he can decide against it. Wu Xie gasps softly, and his dark eyes are wide when he pulls away, his pretty red mouth hanging half-open and speechless.

Zhang Qiling doesn’t linger, following close behind Kan Jian as he guides him out of Wushanju.

**

He knows now why Kan Jian had said the things he’d told Wu Xie.

People, even strangers – especially strangers, as he’s learning – are unbearable. They crowd close and tight and loud in the streets, yelling after each other and yelling at each other and yelling over each other in a way that makes his head go hazy-red and overwhelmed. Wu Xie and Pangzi had told him to get out of the house, but if this is what they’d meant then absolutely not. He’s never leaving Wushanju again, not unless it’s for sparring or raiding.

Kan Jian had eyed him closely once before telling him to wait outside of the small restaurant he’d ducked into, and that if he wanted to hide on the roof there then he was more than welcome.

Zhang Qiling decides against the roof, because that would make him predictable.

He regrets it almost instantly.

“Watch it, asshole!” The man that deliberately shoves himself into his shoulder as he passes gives him a filthy look, lip curling up and half-snarling as if he considered himself a threat of any kind. Zhang Qiling feels the response build hot and fast and furious in his stomach as the man turns back to him, but he stifles it. Nothing’s happened, not yet. No need for haste.

“You bumped into me,” the man says slowly, dropping his bags to the ground and snickering as the contents go splattering, the people passing by instantly leaping out of the splash zone to avoid getting stained – several young women throw both the man and Zhang Qiling irritated glances before moving on. “You should apologize, you made me drop my lunch.”

Zhang Qiling ducks further into his hood and resists the urge to smirk. Kan Jian would be out soon, and Wu Xie did tell him not to get into trouble.

“Hey!” There’s a hand on his collar jerking him forward and away from the wall he’s been lounging against, sending the slow fire in his blood several hundreds of degrees higher into a roaring inferno.

So much for not getting into trouble.

“Off,” he growls, batting the man’s hand away. He doesn’t put that much force into the motion, but there’s a sharp snap anyway at the man’s wrist as he backs away, clutching the arm to his chest. His beady eyes are angry, thin brows drawing in and downward almost comically.

“Xiaoge?” Kan Jian’s voice reaches through the blood rushing in his ears as he pushes off the wall and straightens himself to full height, looming over the man like that alone would be enough to scare the stupidity out of him. “What’s- hey, back off!” The man ignores Zhang Qiling entirely as he lunges towards Kan Jian before he can dodge, but not before the bare-armed man holding three bulging bags of food aims a solid kick to his stomach that sends him flying backwards, curled over his gut and injured wrist. “What are you picking fights for, man?” Kan Jian sends both him and Zhang Qiling baffled glances that neither respond to.

Zhang Qiling finally notices the crowd they’ve gathered, four or five other men backing the one that had antagonized him first, all of them laughing loud and obnoxious among themselves as they point towards himself and Kan Jian. He catches a flash of silver glinting bright and dangerous in the midday sun, flipping through hands and threatening conflict.

Ah. Thugs. Zhang Qiling keeps his head bowed and lets the smirk creep across his face.

First one to try and throw a punch goes down with a swift break to the kneecap, howling and clutching his leg as the other four men rush towards him. The initial man, still on the ground, crawls out of the way, and he sees Kan Jian sigh exhaustedly in his periphery, placing the three bags in a nearby chair before launching himself in the fray.

“Xiaoge!” He calls, ducking and weaving to place himself at Zhang Qiling’s side. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Fighting,” he replies simply.

Kan Jian stops, dodging a fist to blink widely at Zhang Qiling. “I see that.” Another thug gets himself thrown over the sniper’s shoulder, landing heavy on his back and groaning loudly. “Why?”

Zhang Qiling shrugs. “They wanted a fight.” He’d seen it in the man’s eyes almost instantly, that hunger for violence and blood from someone that he likely saw as a threat or an equal, a far quieter predator than his bold blustering arrogance and one that he’d assumed could be taken down easily. The reasoning men give for their violence makes little sense at times, but Zhang Qiling has heard dozens of stories of those that pick fights just because they want to see how someone bleeds.

It’s not nearly as good as sparring with Liu Sang (but it is better, in one way – that bloodlust that he’s been half ignoring since he woke up without any memories is far easier to sate this way, when he can drive his fists as hard as he likes without caring about the damage they’ll leave – but worse in that all these opponents are slow and stupid and obviously untrained), but he doesn’t say that out loud. He also doesn’t say that he wanted the fight too, had wanted it as soon as the first man had given himself the audacity to run himself into Zhang Qiling like he was someone to be threatened.

“I’m not telling laoban about this,” Kan Jian mutters, taking down the last man with a solid punch to the throat, “don’t even have my slingshot on me.”

Kan Jian takes the two steps to retake their prize, easily lifting the bags into one hand as he eyes Zhang Qiling almost balefully.

“I told him that you wouldn’t get into trouble,” he sighs wearily, eyes dropping to Zhang Qiling’s fists and the faint bloodstains streaking his pale skin. Kan Jian points at him in a distinctly Pangzi-like manner. “You’re telling him, not me.”

Zhang Qiling shrugs, his blood settling sated and content in his veins as the adrenaline dies down. His hood still covers most of his face as he keeps himself a shadow at Kan Jian’s back, hands stuffed in his pockets and shoulders hunched in tight against the crowds of people suddenly swarming back in and around him.

Wu Xie sighs instantly upon their return. “You said you’d keep him out of trouble!”

“I was gone for literally less than half a minute, laoban,” Kan Jian replies, dumping the food to the table and shrugging helplessly, “though in his defense, I don’t think he started it.”

Pangzi scoffs audibly. “Did you start it, Xiaoge?”

Zhang Qiling looks up from his under his hood, catching the moment that his housemates register the way his mouth is curved up in half of a smirk. “I finished it.”

All three of them groan audibly.

“Next time,” Wu Xie sighs again, sidling up to him, hesitating for the briefest of moments before pressing the length of his side against Zhang Qiling’s, “I’ll just go myself.”

“No, you won’t,” Pangzi snorts. “But I appreciate the effort.”

Wu Xie pouts next to him, mock-offended as he barks something back that barely registers over the way that the shorter man presses himself further into Zhang Qiling’s side, warmth seeping through his jacket and to the marrow of his bones. Zhang Qiling vaguely wants to move his arm, to toss it over Wu Xie’s shoulders and tug him in close, press him even more firmly against his own body and curl over him until he’s burning just as feverishly, warm and glowing from the inside out and sated in a different way from the sort of contentedness that came from satisfying the hunger in his blood.

But he doesn’t. He keeps himself still and lets Wu Xie move in as close as he likes and silently hopes that it means he’ll get to be even closer in the future.

**

No one had told Wu Erbai.

No one had told Hei Xiazi, either.

Only one of them takes it even remotely well. It’s not the person that Zhang Qiling would have expected.

“Wu Xie,” Hei Xiazi’s voice is hard behind his splitting grin, teeth grinding audibly together, “where the fuck do you get off on this?”

“Now, Xiazi,” Wu Erbai starts, holding out a hand in an obvious stand down sort of gesture that the leather-clad man proceeds to bat away. His brows are creased behind his glasses, and Zhang Qiling knows intuitively that this blind gaze is focused entirely on him. Wu Erbai sighs, but says nothing else.

Zhang Qiling knows of both of them – there are whole chapters in his notebooks dedicated to both of them, to all of Wu Xie’s companions (he knows this because he’d gone looking for them after meeting Kan Jian, had found a single notebook that lists names and occupations and the various ways all their threads interweave with each other and with Wu Xie). He knows that Xiazi is like him, in some ways. He does not know how to navigate this.

Both men had shown up on Wushanju’s doorstep far too early in the morning for Zhang Qiling’s liking, even if he’d already been awake.

The man in the neatly pressed grey suit over a cream sweater that looked strikingly similar to Wu Xie’s had pulled at him as familiar, but familiar in a way that looking at photographs of Wu Xie and his family was familiar, his search of the man’s frame instantly pinpointing specific features that spoke to a common lineage and deriving at least some degree of close relation from it. A curve of a cheekbone here, the tilt of a brow there, perhaps the softness in the chin contrasted by the sharp edge of a jaw and the same shade of fluffy ink hair. Wu Xie and Wu Erbai have the same dark eyes, the same lethally perceptive gaze. But while Wu Xie hides that cunning cleverness behind a mask of bubbly innocence and ignorance, Wu Erbai only hides his behind a pair of sophisticated half-rim tortoiseshell glasses.

Hei Xiazi, on the other hand, feels familiar in the same way that Pangzi and Liu Sang do, that easy sort of instinctive respect and half-trust. Not like Wu Xie, not in every inch of his body, but fondness still rises unbidden in his chest at the sight of him, even if his mind has no conscious idea why.

Zhang Qiling lounges on the roof above the courtyard and watches as the four of them face off, uncle and nephew having a silent conversation of their own while Xiazi seethes and Pangzi sniffles tiredly.

“Xiaoge!” Wu Xie calls up to him instead of responding to Xiazi. Zhang Qiling huffs almost audibly, rising from his half-hidden spot in a dark corner of the roof and lightly stepping off, landing neatly on his feet just behind Wu Xie, slinking up behind him to ghost along his left side and ignoring Pangzi’s weary sigh on Wu Xie’s right.

He nods at both Wu Erbai and Hei Xiazi, keeping his eyes pinned to the latter. Wu Xie bats his hand across the front of Zhang Qiling’s face, pulling his hood back so that both men can see his face.

Wu Erbai gives him a long once-over, scanning his face for something that he can’t place before coming to some conclusion or another as he nods firmly. “Just checking in. Be careful, Xiao Xie.”

Wu Xie’s cheeky grin is tangible even if he doesn’t turn his head to see it. “Who do you think you’re talking to, Er-shu? I’m always careful.”

Pangzi audibly rolls his eyes, but Wu Erbai has enough grace that he simply raises his eyebrow and spins on his heel.

“Coming, Xiazi?” He calls over his shoulder without turning around or even slowing down, hands tucked neatly into his pockets as the heels of his shoes click audibly against the stone courtyard.

Xiazi only shakes his head. “See you later, Er-ye.”

“Don’t be like this,” Pangzi grumbles sleepily, “it’s too early for fighting. Come inside and let me make some breakfast before we all get hissy.” He grabs Wu Xie’s arm and spins the both of them around, leaving Zhang Qiling alone with Xiazi still studying him intently.

“Do you know who I am?” He asks, taking two long steps towards Zhang Qiling. He nods once in response. “Good.” Xiazi sighs, cracking his neck from side to side. “That’s all he had to say, really, the damn gremlin.”

“Xiazi! Xiaoge!” Wu Xie’s voice calls the both of them from inside, and Xiazi snickers as he saunters past Zhang Qiling, hands stuffed into the pockets of his leather coat.

Xiazi, Wu Erbai, Liu Sang – how many more will come calling for him as they realize that he no longer knows to contact them himself? Zhang Qiling follows at Xiazi’s back, mildly exhausted at the thought of so much potential socializing and yet silently, quietly pleased. Notebook-Zhang Qiling stresses often that he is one of a kind, that even when surrounded by people he is still alone, that Wu Xie is the only real connection to the world that he has.

He’s starting to think that Notebook-Zhang Qiling is wrong, in a way.

Wu Xie is his truest anchor, the north star for him to guide by when he is lost in a haze of half-remembered sensations and unfamiliar territory. He is by far his strongest connection, and his favorite of all the people he’s found himself surrounded by in the months since waking, and the only person that looks at Zhang Qiling in a way that feels like he’s being cracked open at the ribs in the most wonderful way possible. Wu Xie is brilliant and beautiful and kind to a fault, forgiving and cruel in equal measure, and Zhang Qiling feels like he might explode at times with how immediately and easily he’s fallen for him, notebooks and sense-memory aside. But Wu Xie isn’t the only person that would miss him if he were truly gone.

“How did you figure it out, then?” He hears Wu Xie ask as he makes his way inside, two bodies settling down at the table and one heading deeper into the house towards the kitchen.

“You and Pangzi have been too quiet,” Xiazi replies loudly. “Your uncle told me about three different tomb raids that you went on, just the three of you, and I didn’t hear a word about any of them.”

“You were out of town,” Pangzi calls from the kitchen, waving his spatula at Zhang Qiling as he takes his own spot right behind Wu Xie.

“I have a phone!”

Wu Xie is warm at his side, arms and shoulders brushing lightly together. The smaller man sways in place as he argues with Xiazi over the relative strangeness of their apparent radio silence, slowly moving himself closer and closer into Zhang Qiling’s space until they’re pressed from shoulder to hip to ankle.

“Xiaoge, Tianzhen,” Pangzi grumbles when he catches sight of them, plates balancing precariously over his arms, “eating time. Personal space.”

Wu Xie does not move. Zhang Qiling does not make him. Pangzi sighs loud enough that it’s likely audible from the courtyard.

“So, you’re still together?” Xiazi asks casually, fingers instantly plucking a strip of steak from the plate in Pangzi’s right hand and clearly missing how everyone else freezes.

Pangzi moves on as if nothing at all has been said, lowering the plates to the table in a loose circle and distributing utensils.

Wu Xie has pulled away, and Zhang Qiling knows in his bones that he has never felt so cold.

“Ah,” Xiazi says, having the decency to sound just a little bit awkward about it, “right.”

Zhang Qiling closes his eyes against the sigh in his throat – they’d been getting somewhere, dammit, and one step forward with Wu Xie was really closer to two steps backwards most days. He has the sinking feeling that bringing any attention to it at all has put them about ten steps backwards.

“Well, Xiazi,” Wu Xie starts as they plate their food, eyes carefully facing the table even as he hands the first full plate to Zhang Qiling, “you’ve been gone for a bit – why not tell us what you’ve been up to then?”

Zhang Qiling sits back and picks at his food without tasting any of it.

**

“Liu Sang.”

Zhang Qiling had known that showing up on his student’s balcony in the darkest hours of the morning was a risky move. He’d toyed with knocking on the door for several moments before deciding against it, instead picking up his phone and calling.

He hears the ring of the call connecting from inside, and the rustling of blankets.

“Ouxiang?” Liu Sang’s voice is slurred with sleep as he murmurs softly to someone on the other end to go back to sleep – Kan Jian, most likely, though if it isn’t then Zhang Qiling would be genuinely shocked and a bit furious. “What- it’s two in the morning?”

His student phrases it as a question, whispering quietly into the phone.

Zhang Qiling almost hesitates, almost ends the call and runs. He doesn’t. “I’m on your balcony.”

Liu Sang sighs audibly. “Okay.” Sheets ruffle in the background as he presumably gets out of bed. “No- Ah Jian, go back to sleep.” The intimacy in Liu Sang’s voice almost makes him uncomfortable, the easy way he uses the nickname and the softness in his tone pulling painfully in his chest. Liu Sang has never struck him as cruel or unfeeling sort of person, but it was obvious from the moment he re-met him that such closeness is rare and hard-won. To hear it so easily spoken aloud feels intrusive in a way that he is surprisingly uneasy with.

“Meet me downstairs, ouxiang,” Liu Sang says quietly into the phone, waiting for Zhang Qiling’s affirming hum before ending the call.

His student hasn’t bothered to change out of his nightclothes, soft linens under his long olive trench coat and tucked loosely into barely tied tactical boots. It’s the least presentable that he’s ever seen his student, sparring matches included, and its so jarring that Zhang Qiling can only blink at him for a moment before his student sighs at him.

“Well? The usual’s still open, let’s go.”

The usual happens to be a tiny little twenty-four-hour shop four blocks from Liu Sang’s apartment, where he proceeds to order several different kinds of steamed bao and hoarded them to himself as he guides Zhang Qiling to a nearby park.

“It’s not a roof,” Liu Sang says quietly, still blinking away some of the sleep in his eyes, “but you like hanging out in this one tree – the branches are wide enough to sit on without falling, and the leaves hide you pretty well.” The tree in question is at the far edge of the park, a large sprawling thing that he doesn’t know the species of, but he sees what Liu Sang means.

Zhang Qiling takes a running start and launches himself at the tree, hoisting himself into the branches and settling himself across the widest one. Liu Sang is smiling softly below as he stuffs the paper bag holding their treasure between his teeth and starts climbing.

“You used to do this sometimes,” Liu Sang says after settling himself in his own wide branch, one leg swinging freely below as he fiddles with an earplug, the other hand full of half-eaten bao, “used to come wake me up in the middle of the night because you were restless and didn’t want to wake Wu Xie. It helped that I was usually up anyway.”

“Used to?” He asks. Liu Sang nods, the shifting of his coat against the trunk of the tree gentle in the quiet night.

“It’s been a while. I think the last time you did this was about a year before I met Kan Jian.” He’s still whispering even in the emptiness of the park with no one around to be disturbed. Zhang Qiling takes a bite of bao and hums.

“Why?”

Liu Sang doesn’t need any elaboration, seems to understand the whole question with only the single word. “You and Wu Xie had a fight about a tomb. He’d gotten pretty badly injured on the last one and was trying to get himself into another one while on crutches and in an arm sling. You and Pangzi had to hold him down for weeks until he finally got the casts off.” Liu Sang’s head shifts towards him, dark eyes luminous in the moonlight. “Night before the casts came off, you dropped by.” His student snorts softly. “You’d thought that Wu Xie didn’t know about your little nighttime escapades, which seemed quite stupid to me. Wu Xie knows everything, ouxiang.”

Zhang Qiling hums again, this time in vague acknowledgement. He considers the story, short as it is.

“This is about him, obviously,” Liu Sang states simply, sticking his hand into the bag and pulling out another bun. Zhang Qiling starts, even though he knows all too well that the man would have come to that conclusion quickly enough. He receives a side-eyed glance in response. “What? When is something not about Wu Xie, with you?”

He shifts against the tree, trying to hide further into his hood even though he knows that its not his face that gives him away to Liu Sang. “Never, probably.” It feels like the truth – he doesn’t quite revolve around Wu Xie, except he does. He’s capable of being on his own, being without wide dark eyes and a sunlight laugh and too-sharp cleverness. But he’d rather die than willingly leave Wu Xie for good.

“Mhm,” Liu Sang says, “that’s what I thought.”

Zhang Qiling huffs loud enough for the sound to carry, even if Liu Sang would hear it anyway.

The younger man only laughs. “Don’t get upset with me about your predictability, ouxiang. So what is it, then – I take it that you haven’t actually spoken with each other about anything even remotely related to your relationship?”

“Liu Sang,” and if the name comes out as accidentally petulant and grumbling, Zhang Qiling is ignoring it completely, “I thought you were going to help.”

“I am,” he replies, giggling softly, “but it’s almost fun to see you like this. First time around, I had no idea what was going on until I actually got face-to-face with Wu Xie alone. This time, I know just as much as you do. More, even.”

Zhang Qiling resists the urge to pout – when his instincts had told him to go to Liu Sang, he hadn’t expected the young man that called him ouxiang with the same amount of fondness that Wu Xie and Pangzi called him xiaoge would also proceed to tease him so cruelly for his relationship problems. Or his not-relationship problems.

This is why he needs help, he thinks, because he doesn’t know what the fuck to call himself and Wu Xie. “One real connection” is all very well and good, but it leaves a lot of grey fucking space.

“I know you probably won’t,” Liu Sang says, half a yawn in his voice, “but the only real way to fix this is to tell him what you want. He wants you – he always wants you, ouxiang – but like it or not, you’re the one that’s changed.”

“Talking.” He says the word like it burns in his mouth, crossing his arms and sliding down against the trunk of the tree until he’s looking up at the sky through pitch-dark leaves. Liu Sang hums in acknowledgement, a familiar tenor to his own that makes his mouth quirk slightly.

“Yes.” Liu Sang chuckles softly. “Neither one of you is very good at that, I’m afraid.”

**

Talk, Liu Sang had said. So he talks.

Or, he tries, anyway.

He leaves gifts on Wu Xie’s desk, in the room that is supposed to be Zhang Qiling’s but that has been Wu Xie’s for the last several months, in the pockets of his sweaters and cardigans and jackets. Small trinkets that he finds in tombs or while exploring, anything he notices Wu Xie looking at with any measure of longing, small sweets every now and then if Wu Xie expresses a craving. Flowers for his nightstand and the entrance to Wushanju, lunch before he even makes a move to ask for it, new notebooks for his thoughts and sturdier pens with better and longer-lasting inkwells that don’t dry up if left open overnight. Zhang Qiling even goes so far as to give him jewelry – a pair of jade bracelets that look lovely and bright against his pale, thin wrists, rings for every finger except for one and even a small diadem made of lace-like gold wires interlaid with opal and diamonds. He comes across it in a tomb, hides it in his bag and cleans it off in the empty warehouse between sparring matches with Liu Sang until it sparkles even without sunlight.

The diadem is mostly just for decoration or future profit, unlike the rings and the bracelets which are purposefully meant for regular wear, but Zhang Qiling places it over Wu Xie’s fluffy dark hair one morning without word of warning, and in the dawning sunlight streaming across the courtyard hitting his jaw and cheeks and eyes, he looks like a god.

Zhang Qiling knows that, memory or no memory, Wu Xie is the only divine thing he’s ever believed in.

“I- Xiaoge!” Wu Xie blushes beautifully in the sunlight, the crown stark and bright against the darkness of his hair like stars against the night sky, and Zhang Qiling has to back several paces away before he does something stupid.

“Tianzhen, what are you wearing?” Pangzi’s voice is playfully judgmental behind him as he lounges against a pillar, arms crossed and eyebrow quirked and mouth split in a teasing grin.

“Xiaoge got it for me,” Wu Xie says proudly, suddenly over his blushing as he lifts his chin. Zhang Qiling turns and heads back inside before his legs and hands mutiny against his brain. He unfortunately cannot miss the gleefully wicked glance that Pangzi gives him as he passes.

“There are better ways to get in Tianzhen’s pants,” Pangzi muses thoughtfully as he appears in the doorway of the room Zhang Qiling has commandeered from Wu Xie as he neatly folds away one of his jackets, “but you’ve picked a pretty good one.”

Zhang Qiling remains silent.

“I know, I know,” he sighs, “you don’t just want in his pants – but you’ve already got the biggest chunk of real estate in his heart, Xiaoge, save some for the rest of us.” Pangzi takes two long steps from the door to drop down onto the bed, poking Zhang Qiling in the side. “Pay attention to me, dammit.”

Zhang Qiling refuses to admit aloud that he’s that possessive, that he wants to own the entirety of Wu Xie’s heart even if he knows there’s more than enough space in there for him and Pangzi and his uncles and everyone else that Wu Xie cares for, or cared for, in many cases. Wu Xie’s heart is not nearly as scarce a resource as it should be for his own good.

But he turns his head and pays attention to Pangzi.

“You’ll let us sell the crown, right?” Pangzi asks, still rhythmically jabbing his finger into Zhang Qiling’s hip. “Come on, it’ll go for so much – you could by him a dozen others with the amount of money we’d get for it.”

Zhang Qiling narrows his eyes at him, and the larger man instantly backs off with his hands held high in placating surrender.

“Yeah, I figured,” he grumbles.

He nods, tucking the jacket away in the closet next to his stack of notebooks and settling on the clear space of the nightstand next to the bed, feet braced against the side of the headboard.

Pangzi eyes him wearily. “You could at least sit on a surface that’s meant for your ass, Xiaoge.” Zhang Qiling only blinks in response. “I give up,” he tosses his hands in concession, pinching the bridge of his nose and muttering, “the things I do for you two, honestly.”

“Pangzi,” he says simply. Get to the point.

“Just ask him, okay?” Pangzi blurts out, dark eyes going concerned and solemn as the mask drops away. “Please, for all of our sakes – for damn Sang-bei’er’s, even, because he hates this too – just ask him. I've been through this once already, I'm not doing another decade.”

Zhang Qiling wonders absently at the true nature of Pangzi and Liu Sang’s half-hostile friendship that the man would break the façade of their bickering long enough to tell Zhang Qiling off for dragging him into it, but he doesn’t get the chance to ask as Pangzi rises from the bed, faster than he’s ever seen the man move, and closes the door behind him as he leaves.

**

Zhang Qiling doesn’t ask, because he’s contrary like that.

(And because Wu Xie doesn’t give him the chance, but he’d rather pin it on his own nature than blame Wu Xie for anything.)

Wu Xie corners him after dinner one night, after Wang Meng and Kan Jian have gone home and Pangzi’s left to go drinking with some of his men from the market. He lifts one hand faster than Zhang Qiling can react and cups his jaw, rings and bracelet cool even against his chilled skin as he turns Zhang Qiling’s head to the side to kiss him.

It’s much gentler than Zhang Qiling had expected. His mouth is just as soft as it looks, his fingers warm against his jaw and cheek as Wu Xie kisses him deep without being desperate, slow and sensual as he pulls his bottom lip between his own, Zhang Qiling’s mouth opening instinctively so Wu Xie can slip his tongue in.

Zhang Qiling feels a little desperate as one hand flies to Wu Xie’s wrist, the other latching to the soft hairs at the nape of his neck. He feels dizzy, too, light and hazy as Wu Xie’s gravity sucks him in even closer.

Wu Xie seems content to keep the kiss slow and gentle, even if it’s nothing close to chaste, sliding himself into Zhang Qiling’s lap to straddle his hips as he presses his free hand to the other side of his jaw. Zhang Qiling has to let go of his hair and wrist to catch him at the waist, hands flexing involuntarily at the shape of him under soft cotton.  

“Xiaoge,” he whispers against Zhang Qiling’s mouth, brushing their noses together as he presses Zhang Qiling further back against the wall, “Xiaoge.”

“Here,” he says, breathless. “I’m here.”

The next kiss is a little firmer, a little harsher as he nips at Zhang Qiling’s bottom lip. “I missed you.”

“I’m here, Wu Xie,” he repeats, wrapping his arms tighter around that thin waist to crush them even closer, something in his chest squeezing at the soft, wounded sound that Wu Xie makes. He wants Wu Xie under his skin, wants to hold him fast against time and reason and everything that would have them separated.

His arousal is a slow thing low in his stomach, content to sit there kissing Wu Xie to the end of the world if that’s what he asks of Zhang Qiling. He’s warm and soft and eager in his lap, hands still cupping his jaw as Wu Xie tilts his head back almost far enough to ache.

“Take me to bed?” Wu Xie asks, pressing their foreheads together as they breathe in sync, Wu Xie’s heart thrumming against his palm as he drags it up his chest. Zhang Qiling pulls back just far enough to meet his eyes, to see the hesitant hope visible even in the dim lighting of the night.

Zhang Qiling hooks one hand around the back of Wu Xie’s thigh and winds the other around his waist as he stands, relishing the way Wu Xie hooks his ankles around his back as he carries him to the room he’d stolen from Wu Xie. Even when Wu Xie was being stubborn, it never should have been his – always theirs.

**

Zhang Qiling wakes to soft puffs of breath into his neck, to the warmth of an arm clinging to his waist and a knee somewhere around his hip, Wu Xie’s hair tickling his jaw, and remembers.