Archive of Our Own ^beta

selcouth —unfamiliar, rare, strange, and yet wonderful

basorexia —the overwhelming desire to kiss

If Wu Xie were music, he’d be clarinet.

He’s a smooth, rich, almost-baritone, not-quite-tenor, and not deep enough for an oboe, but too settled to be flute. He’s not a string instrument, because you don’t have to hold your breath when you’re playing the cello or the guitar, and when Wu Xie’s in the room, it’s like he gathers all the air and holds it in his fists so that you want to come over, come closer. He doesn’t have the metallic buzz of brass or the sultry whine of a saxophone. He’s not a drum, because snares are too pitched and the timpani are belly-loud and sound closer to Pangzi (though Pangzi’s not music, not at all. He’s the sharp crack of campfire wood as the middle burns out and the tent peak of meringue on a fire-glazed custard and dust on your palms, in your hair, at your eyes). Wu Xie’s not piano, because there are too many octaves, and Wu Xie contains galaxies, but they don’t sound the same.

So clarinet.

“Do you want ham?” Wu Xie calls from the kitchen.

Liu Sang glares in his general direction from over his coffee. What he wants is not to be at Wushanju at this ungodly hour of the morning. The Iron Triangle are all Old and like doing things like getting up at 7AM and having meetings about tomb raiding. Liu Sang is still in his twenties and of the opinion that if he doesn’t have a job to do, he should be sleeping until ten.

Unfortunately, if he brought this up, Wu Xie would probably say that this is a job, which, okay, it’s going to turn into one eventually, but it isn’t one yet, and also why do they need him for the planning? His job happens during the expedition. He’s useless at planning. It’s why all of his clothes look the same.

“Liu Sang!” Pangzi barks from the same direction. “Ham or no?”

“No,” Liu Sang grumbles, then has to shout it because Pangzi says eh? because, once again, he is Old and Deaf. “No!”

“I’m giving you extra eggs then.”

“Don’t!” Liu Sang exclaims. “What part of ‘I don’t like eating breakfast’ do you not understand?”

“The part where you somehow survive without properly fueling your body,” Wu Xie says, coming into the dining room with a pitcher and a stack of glasses. He sets them down and begins pouring out juice into each one, just as Ouxiang appears from the hallway and disappears again into the kitchen, a brief glance of wind against river reeds. Wu Xie doesn’t even look like he notices, which Liu Sang supposed that maybe he doesn’t. When you live with Ouxiang the novelty wears off, apparently.

Wu Xie slides juice down the table, and Liu Sang has to fumble to catch it before it slips off of the edge. The glass knocks into his coffee mug and sends drips flying.

Pangzi and Ouxiang enter from the kitchen. Pangzi has three bowls balanced on his arms and is talking loudly to Ouxiang, who is already eating his own portion as he walks and is generally not being helpful. Neither Pangzi nor Wu Xie seem to care, though, because they just continue talking like there’s nothing out of place going on, setting dishes down on the table and passing things back and forth in time with their words.

Liu Sang sighs, yawns, places his chin in his palm. His other hand is curled tight around the coffee mug, absorbing as much warmth as he can while it’s still hot.

Ouxiang is heat like that. His face is Antarctic, but Zhang Qiling himself is a burst of hot air from an oven, the smell of gasoline, the bounce of fireflies, a blaze waiting to ignite. There’s something volatile behind his stare, like his face is a mask pulled tight and firm over a typhoon, an earthquake, a wildfire. There are natural disasters, and then there is Zhang Qiling, who is not a disaster but is the most terrifying piece of nature that Liu Sang has ever come across (Wu Xie is the exact opposite; there’s no way to convince him that someone like Wu Xie was pushed into the world with just the ingredients used to make everyone else).

“Xiaoge,” Pangzi barks. “Salt?”

Maybe it’s a testament to how well the Iron Triangle know each other, or maybe Pangzi just makes a point of being rude and refusing to speak in complete sentences, but Ouxiang wordlessly hands over the salt shaker, and Pangzi starts dumping it over the top of his egg and rice.

“So!” Wu Xie exclaims. He’s not looking at them, currently occupied with slicing his ham into appropriately bite-sized pieces, but he’s still talking, as if aware that they all orbit around his words unconditionally. “The trip! I’ve kept it between the four of us, because if Ershu gets his hands on it, it’s going to be all over the Jiumen, and then Zhang Rishan will find out, and then they’ll both show up and be a pain in our asses, so we’re keeping it on the down-low.”

“So… Wang Meng and Kan Jian and the kids all know,” Pangzi says, “Which means that Liang Wan knows. Which means that Zhang Rishan also knows. Which means that Ershu will never find out because Zhang Rishan refuses to talk to him. Or you. Okay. We’re fine then.”

Wu Xie frowns. “How do you know that they all know?”

“Because you obviously told Wang Meng to watch the shop while we’re going to be gone,” Pangzi points out. “So he knows that there’s a trip. And you hate booking plane tickets and I hate booking plane tickets, so you would have made Kan Jian do it, and then he would trade notes with Wang Meng, and they’d figure it out pretty quickly. And then Kan Jian would tell Ya Li, and Ya Li would tell Su Wan and Yang Hao and Liang Wan, and Liang Wan would tell Zhang Rishan, but Zhang Rishan doesn’t like talking to anyone so as long as you don’t fuck this up, Tianzhen, we should be in the clear.”

Wu Xie frowns. “Am I that bad at keeping secrets?”

Pangzi throws his head back and laughs and he looks like the sun. Pangzi is a mix of Wu Xie and Ouxiang, a middle spectrum of pure, undiluted natural force and the gentle lap of man-made sound. And somehow, despite being larger than all of them physically, emotionally, Pangzi is the smallest. Wu Xie and Zhang Qiling are infinite, sprawling swaths of stars, the roll and tumble of memory and vast caverns of depth and feeling and the weight of lives packed into each of them, but Pangzi is simple. Quiet. Kind. It surprises Liu Sang, because he thought that Pangzi was overly bright, bold, brash, but really he’s a gossamer sheet thrown over a golden ball of light, one that sits in the stomach and warms you from the inside out. It’s not that he isn’t a world of a human, it’s that you can see all of what he gives you. There’s no hiding, not from Pangzi (you’d think Ouxiang would be the sharpest out of them all, but it’s Pangzi that Sees).

If Liu Sang thinks about it, it makes sense that he’s a little bit in love with all of them. And thank fucking God he’s better at keeping secrets than Wu Xie is, because this secret is a little too loud for him to whisper. He thinks he might scream.

Liu Sang doesn’t like people. He never has. He thought he was never going to. It’s strange, what your brain tells you you should want and what your body refuses. He never had time for liking people. He didn’t even like himself. Now he does, he thinks, because even though there’s a lot of ink-dark lines running over the pages of his past, he’s slowly, slowly turning them into craggy mountains and bottomless seas and leaving his truths on the sand. But it’s still confusing to him, how three people can find each other and love each other so infinitely, because Liu Sang’s never loved like that.

No one’s ever loved him like that.

He doesn’t know how.

But he can see it, laid out between Pangzi and Ouxiang and Wu Xie, their Wu Xie. A thousand-and-one stars in their eyes, a breath of wind that trickles down each of their throats, like they’re sharing the very air they’re breathing as intimately as a kiss. Liu Sang can hear heartbeats, and it’s like the Iron Triangle all roll together, a single unit against the drum rhythm of the earth’s core.

He can see it, he can hear it, and he thinks that maybe, one day, if he sticks around long enough, he’ll understand.

So he eats his eggs and pretends like he’s calm in front of Ouxiang and hisses at Pangzi and does the dishes with Wu Xie. And he watches, listens, watches.

Of course the tomb is a fucking disaster.

It wouldn’t have been if they’d just listened to him when he said, Maybe we shouldn’t go over there, because the tap he’d given the ground had reverberated suspiciously, but Pangzi said it would be fine and Wu Xie listened to Pangzi and Ouxiang didn’t say anything because they’re a damn unit, and then the floor had caved in and sent them tumbling into two separate areas of the tomb, and now Ouxiang and Pangzi are on one side and Wu Xie and Liu Sang are on the other, and Wu Xie’s being obnoxious.

“Do you hear him?” he asks, and Liu Sang wants to punch him.

“I won’t hear anyone if you don’t stop talking,” he says. “I know you want to get back to making out with Ouxiang as soon as possible, but Pangzi and I are still here, you know. So keep it in check.”

“What?” Wu Xie says.

“Pangzi and I don’t want to see what you two get up to in your own time,” Liu Sang snaps, trying to get his ear as close to the jumble of rocks that they’re up against as possible. “Now shut up.”

Wu Xie doesn’t shut up. Instead he laughs, a triple staccato. “You think Pangzi—oh my god. Liu Sang. What do you think Pangzi does?”

Liu Sang glares at him. “He’s a tomb robber? I don’t fucking know, Wu Xie.”

“He’s with us,” Wu Xie explains slowly. “Like. We’re all together.”

“Yes,” Liu Sang grumbles. “I know. You’re the Iron Triangle. Whoever gave you that nickname should be shot.”

“It was Pangzi, and no, he shouldn’t,” Wu Xie says. He sighs. “Liu Sang. Xiao-ge and I are together.”

What the fuck? “Yeah,” Liu Sang says.

“And Pangzi and I are together,” Wu Xie says.

“Like friends,” Liu Sang says.

“No,” Wu Xie says, “No, not like friends. Well, I guess like friends, but also not like friends.” He sighs again, runs his fingers through his hair, which just makes it all dirty and stick-uppy, and Liu Sang has the mortifying desire to smooth it back down again. “It’s all three of us. Together.”

Liu Sang just stares at him. If Wu Xie’s trying to say something, he should really just do it.

“Jesus Christ,” Wu Xie mutters. “We’re all dating, Liu Sang. Xiao-ge and Pangzi and I. All together.”

Oh. “What the fuck?” Liu Sang asks.

“Is this why breakfast didn’t work?” Wu Xie says under his breath, which Liu Sang might have missed if his ears weren’t so good, but he tables that question for another time, because right now he’s having trouble breathing.

“You… all of you… you’re… huh?”

Wu Xie is looking at him with something like pity now, which Liu Sang hates. “I thought you knew.”

“Well,” Liu Sang says stiffly, “I didn’t.” He turns away from Wu Xie and presses the side of his face into the stone so hard that it hurts.

“Sorry,” Wu Xie says, and then, slightly more tentatively: “Do you mind?”

Liu Sang wishes that the fall had knocked him out; that would be a lot more pleasant than whatever this is. “I don’t care,” he mutters. “You guys can do whatever you want. It doesn’t bother me.”

“Okay,” Wu Xie says, softly. “Sorry.” He steps back, leaving Liu Sang suddenly cold despite the actual temperature of the tomb not changing in the slightest.

Liu Sang knocks on the wall, pulling back just slightly so the reverberations don’t deafen him. Pangzi? Ouxiang? Are you there?

There’s a brief pause, and then he hears, very faintly, We’re here, Liu Sang, we hear you, and Liu Sang is suddenly struck that they know it’s him knocking, that they can pick him out that well, but then he realizes that it’s probably the opposite; they know Wu Xie. They can tell when it isn’t him. It has nothing to do with Liu Sang, and everything to do with who he isn’t.

He swallows down his disappointment, begins to stalk off down the corridor without waiting for Wu Xie to ask what he’s heard. “They’re this way. Come on.”

Wu Xie doesn’t say anything.

There are two secrets, actually.

The first is that Liu Sang is a bit in love with Wu Xie and a bit in love with Pangzi and a bit in love with Zhang Qiling (though he’s still a lot in love with the idea of him, because the idea of him means safety while the actual sight and sound of him screams lethal terror overwhelm), and ever since Wu Xie revealed that they’re apparently all in love with each other, Liu Sang cannot stop thinking about it.

He hates thinking about it, but at the same time, he’s so curious, because he doesn’t know how it happened. He likes to know the how of things, likes getting into their secret nooks and chinks and wiggling his fingers deep inside, taking things apart and seeing how they fit together, how they run. Maybe it’s because he can see inside things without really Seeing Them. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t know how he himself works.

So he finds himself really watching, closely, and now that he knows the Truth, it’s so hard to ignore the way that Ouxiang will drape himself along Pangzi’s shoulders when it’s just the four of them in Wushanju, the way that Pangzi holds Wu Xie’s hand when they’re at an antiques market, the way that Wu Xie will brush a kiss away from Ouxiang and then turn right around and deposit it onto Pangzi’s cheek. The way Wu Xie wears Pangzi’s old hoodies. The way Ouxiang will come back from the rooftops with a checkered box that Pangzi delights over. The way that Pangzi pushes Ouxiang’s hair back with his hand so that he can see his eyes.

It all screams of people who are wonderfully, horribly, disgustingly in love, and Liu Sang wants to know how the fuck they managed it.

That’s the second secret. It’s that Liu Sang doesn’t know, because there is something fundamentally wrong with him.

He’s not dumb. He has access to the internet. He knows what romantic relationships look like and he knows what has to be happening when he’s not around but for some reason he can’t fathom it. He thinks about them, at night, he thinks of Pangzi and Wu Xie and Ouxiang all tangled up together and maybe they’re kissing and maybe that’s weird for him to have in his head but then it just stops. It doesn’t go any further than that. He thinks maybe they kiss. He knows they have to do more than that, they’re all adults, they’re adult men who have lived and bled and died with each other, there’s no way that this one thing, this final last grasp at love isn’t present in their lives, but he has no idea how they got there. How they get there. He has no idea how to want it.

That’s what’s wrong with him, when he admits it to himself, as he does every so often, a reminder that no one is going to want him like that. Or maybe they will, but it won’t matter, because Liu Sang does not back down, does not succumb to pressure, does not let people break him even if it hurts hurts hurts because the alternative is losing himself and that hurts worse. So if someone, someday, out of every impossible universe, ever likes him enough to want that, he’s going to have to say no. Because he doesn’t. Want it. He hates the idea of it, hates the thought that someone could have their hands all over him and be touching him and that his body will do something, that it’ll betray him in the worst possible way, because he’s read things, he knows things, he knows what bodies do, and it makes him so sick that he promised himself he wouldn’t ever let anyone close enough to find out.

The internet calls him asexual and the Freudian psychology books call him traumatized and he calls himself broken because fuck all that noise, there doesn’t have to be words to know something’s wrong.

There isn’t music loud enough to drown out screaming, writhing, frothing hate.

(But Wu Xie’s music. Ouxiang’s a storm. Pangzi is sunlight. Liu Sang is quite gone.)

He finds himself over at Wushanju again.

It’s the third time he’s been there for dinner that week, and it’s only Thursday (he tried to turn Wu Xie down on Tuesday but Wu Xie said that they needed him for something important which turned out to be replacing the couch in the living room, which was annoying because Liu Sang was not necessarily required for that task but appreciated because that couch is where he falls asleep when he’s too tired to make his way home again and so he likes that he got to have a say as to where he lands) and he’s tired, extensibility worn thin and ragged running after answers, so he doesn’t say no when he’s asked for Thursday, and besides, where else would he go?

So he’s at Wushanju, sitting at the kitchen island, watching Pangzi stir-fry noodles and vegetables and meat, and then Ouxiang—he can tell by the footsteps, the heartbeat, the sounds—comes up behind him and languidly, loosely, wraps him in his arms.

Liu Sang freezes. He thinks his brain’s maybe short-circuited, because what?? The fuck?? There’s no way this is real there’s no way this is happening he’s alone he’s dreaming he’s alone he’s alone—

But the warmth around him doesn’t leave. He can smell the soft cotton of Ouxiang’s hoodie—with Wu Xie’s fucking detergent, again—and feel his pulse beat a love march against his ears and then as quickly as it happens, he slides away, brushing a hand over the small of Pangzi’s back as he’s turned to the stove, goes out the door.

Liu Sang gapes. He looks at Pangzi, who doesn’t give any indication that he’s noticed anything. He looks down at his own chest. His shirt is just the slightest bit pressed, the only indication that Ouxiang even paid him more than a glance. His lungs feel tight, because oh. Oh, he’s in love with him.

Pangzi comes over to him, a bowl of steaming food in one large hand. He sets it in front of Liu Sang.

“The others aren’t here yet,” Liu Sang manages.

“Don’t tell Tianzhen,” Pangzi says conspiratorially, and winks, and puts his hand, warm and warm and warm, on the back of Liu Sang’s neck, and leaves it there.

It’s not for more than a few moments, just his fingers resting and a gentle squeeze and then pulling away, humming, going back to his stove and his cooking and shit, Liu Sang’s in love with him, too.

The rest of the dinner goes by in a daze, though if the Iron Triangle can tell that Liu Sang’s in the middle of a crisis, they don’t let on. At least, not until he goes to leave, after food he barely touches and drinks he doesn’t drink and the worst round of Monopoly he thinks he’s ever played, and Wu Xie walks him out.

“Thank you for coming,” he says, and his heartbeat is elevated, he’s nervous, which snaps Liu Sang out of it, because why is Wu Xie nervous on the threshold of his own house?

“Oh,” Liu Sang says, “Yeah. Um.”

“I hope I’m not reading this wrong,” Wu Xie says, and sighs, and then leans in and kisses him.

And oh.

Oh, that’s what it is.

Because Liu Sang is comfortable here, on the doorstep in the chill of the dusk, and Wu Xie’s lips are soft and they just kiss, they just kiss, they just kiss on his stoop. Liu Sang’s wearing shoes and his coat with the hood and his hands are in his pockets to ward off the chill and Wu Xie’s hands aren’t anywhere near him.

Wu Xie pulls away and Liu Sang opens his eyes because he had closed them which he only does to better hear things but he can’t hear anything over the rushing of blood in his ears, so this is strange, and Wu Xie says, “Come back Saturday?”

And Liu Sang says, “Yeah. I’ll come back.”

And Wu Xie says, “Okay.” He doesn’t go back inside.

Liu Sang nods, slowly, and makes his way down the entrance path and out of the gates before he slumps back against the stone wall outside of Wushanju and tries to catch his breath.

Saturday. Saturday. Okay.

He can figure this out by then.

Figuring it out means going to a club, apparently, because he’s shit out of other ideas.

He can’t ask his friends because 1) he doesn’t have many and 2) the ones that he does have are also friends with Wu Xie and Pangzi and Ouxiang and will Absolutely Tell Them if Liu Sang comes to them asking questions about how to want to have sex. So he turns to the next best option which is to do Field Work and Research, because he is very good at Field Work and Research, and also no one in Field Work and Research knows him.

He hopes.

He’s tucked himself away in the corner of the club, about as far away from the speakers as he can get, because even though he’s wearing his best headphones, the bass is still rattling through his skull and making his teeth ache. He’s drinking a seltzer water, because even though he would prefer to be blacked out for this, he needs to get data, and to do that, he needs to be conscious.

The club smells like sweat and cologne and a faint undercurrent of weed, which makes sense, because he’d chosen a relatively upscale venue, so the people who frequent it would probably be able to afford that kind of thing. Liu Sang smells like sweat and cologne and probably nerves, because he’s shaking, just a little bit, as he scopes out the crowd.

It’s not as crowded as other bars, even with the dance floor full, but Liu Sang’s still very much on edge. He’s wearing the least amount of clothing he could without feeling like he was going around undressed, which is a low-hanging t-shirt and the tightest jeans he owns. He’s not even that uncovered, but he feels open and vulnerable and weird.

Some nameless, faceless man comes up to him, and Liu Sang listens to him ask if he can buy Liu Sang a drink, and Liu Sang says yes, but he doesn’t remember what he orders, and when it arrives, he doesn’t drink it. The nameless, faceless man talks about his job, which isn’t very interesting, and talks about his car, which is slightly more interesting, and then he puts a hand on Liu Sang’s thigh.

“This doesn’t seem like your scene,” he says, which is perhaps the most attentive sentence he’s come up with in fifteen minutes.

“No,” Liu Sang says, “It’s not.”

“We could go,” the nameless, faceless man suggests, and Liu Sang wants to go, he really wants to, but not with him. He wants to go home by himself and put on the biggest sweatshirt he owns and climb into bed and curl himself up tight, tight.

He’s not doing this for him, though. He’s doing it for Wu Xie and Pangzi and Ouxiang, who are going to be waiting for him tomorrow.

So he lets the nameless, faceless man take him by the wrist, lead him to the car he was just talking about, and push him into the back seat. Liu Sang falls back onto the leather, which is slippery and dry, and then the nameless, faceless man is on top of him and kissing him and it’s nothing fucking like Wu Xie.

It’s… it’s awful. It’s wet and clinging and there’s someone else’s spit getting in his mouth, and even though the nameless, faceless man’s lips objectively feel nice, the way his hands are on Liu Sang’s chest and thighs and roaming around to his hips is distracting and he chokes a little bit, which the nameless, faceless man takes as encouragement, because then his tongue is poking into Liu Sang’s mouth, edging toward the back of his throat, and Liu Sang’s eyes are open, his eyes are open, they’re open, open, open, but it’s too fucking dark, he can’t see shit, the nameless, faceless man is on him, on him—

He jerks, and the man stops, pulls away. He starts asking a question, but Liu Sang doesn’t even hear it, despite how good his ears are. Instead, he fumbles backward, grips the door handle and pulls it, shoving the door open and tumbling backward onto the pavement, heels kicking at cement as he tries to stand up, this is worse than the zombies, worse than the skin mummies, worse than the hallucinations, worse than the idea that Wu Xie and Pangzi and Ouxiang won’t want him once they find out.

He gets up and he runs.

He runs and it’s only by sheer luck that he ends up at his own apartment, and can let himself in with a shaking key, and then he dumps everything from his pockets and goes and stands in the shower fully clothed, turning the heat up as far as it can go, letting it pound down on him. His shoes are soaked. His palm is bleeding. He feels slightly sick, feels the phantom press of tongue in between his teeth, and then he really feels sick, and has to take a moment to lean against the wall and swallow down nausea, his hair wet and dripping in his eyes.

Fuck. Fuck.

He’s in love with three men and they might love him back and it’s not going to matter because they won’t after this.

He got the tattoo because he hates to be looked at.

It was partially for Ouxiang, of course it was. Zhang Qiling is a monstrous form of toppling strength that Liu Sang would cling to on the darkest nights. The tattoo is a brazen reminder, when his brain won’t quite supply it, that there’s someone out there that no one can touch.

If Liu Sang is a bit like him, then maybe it will be easier.

But no one has seen the tattoo, not really. Not until Wu Xie and Pangzi and Zhang Qiling (he guesses Wu Erbai was there too but Wu Erbai had been the least interesting person in that tent), and he wouldn’t even have shown them if not for how desperate he was to get Ouxiang to look at him, to see him, so that Liu Sang could maybe see a part of himself in Ouxiang, looking back.

The tattoo is for him. It’s a mural that curls around the skin on his back and his shoulder and his pectoral and down his arm and he put it there himself because no one can go deeper than that tattoo, no one can get into his blood like the ink did, he did that himself, he did that himself, he’s his own, he’s his own, he’s his own.

Saturday comes.

He wakes up at eleven and his head is pounding and his pulse is thready and his eyes feel like they’ve swollen during the night, pushing against the sockets. He drags himself out of bed, goes to the bathroom, downs a glass of tap water and gets in the shower again. His clothes from last night lie in a soggy heap on the tile and he’s tempted to just throw them away.

He maps out his body in the shower, because if he divides himself down, if he turns this into data, into equations, then maybe he’ll be able to get through tonight without coming undone. He gives himself Good Areas—hands, arms, knees, shoulders—and Fine Areas—neck, face, lower back, stomach, shins, feet—and Concern Areas—mouth, thighs, hips, thighs—and he doesn’t even think about The Last Place because if he does he’s pretty sure he will stay in his empty apartment with his floundering heart.

So he catalogues, and then he scrubs himself down, turns himself pink with soap and hot water, lathers shampoo into his hair and grinds at his scalp. The shower turns cold and the foam runs down the drain, so he turns it off and gets out.

He finds a loose pair of cargo pants and a large striped sweater that… actually might be one of Pangzi’s. Their laundry must have gotten mixed up after a trip and—yup, there’s that stupid detergent again, does Wu Xie ever use anything else?—but it smells… nice. It smells like warmth and old leather and dust after rain.

Liu Sang sits on the edge of his bed and buries his nose in the sleeve and pretends that he’s nice, pretends that he’s normal, pretends that he will still be loved, after all.

The first thing that throws him off is that Pangzi isn’t there.

His presence is, obviously, because what would Wushanju be without Pangzi? There’s cooking on the table when Liu Sang arrives (only ten minutes late, and with a bottle of soju), and brightly-colored oven mitts on the counter, and Pangzi’s slippers at the door, but no Pangzi.

The second thing is that Wu Xie has obviously dressed up, though that wouldn’t be obvious to anyone who didn’t know him. He’s wearing black jeans and a large white sweater with a collared shirt under it, and it’s his nice sweater, the one he wears to go visit Wu Erbai. The sweater that means someone important is coming over, but the only person coming over is just Liu Sang.

“Hi,” Wu Xie says and immediately runs his hands through his hair, which had been styled very nicely, but no longer. “You came.”

“You asked,” Liu Sang says simply, because that’s the truth.

Wu Xie laughs. It’s too high-pitched, a little bit nervous. “I guess I did.”

Ouxiang comes in, then, and thank God, he looks normal. He nods at Liu Sang and then suddenly decides to not be normal anymore, because he smiles at him, and Liu Sang’s heart drops into his knees, throwing his entire center of gravity off.

Shit. He’s not making it through this in one piece.

Dinner—is it even dinner? It’s like four in the afternoon—is quiet without Pangzi, which Liu Sang still just finds weird. The food is his, and the table is his, and Ouxiang and Wu Xie are his, so without Pangzi, it just feels… lonely, like a dandelion with the seeds all blown off. Pangzi’s lion’s roar-voice is missing, and while Wu Xie tries to fill the empty space, he can’t quite manage it.

And then. Dinner ends.

Wu Xie stands up from the table, and his heartbeat has quickened, and Liu Sang thinks, This is it.

He stands up, and Wu Xie’s eyes go a little bit wider, and his pulse beats in eighth notes. Ouxiang gets up too, and though it’s more lazy, more controlled, something in his eyes has sharpened, and Liu Sang thinks, Oh, that’s hot.

Which. That’s a new one.

Because he can distinguish between what’s beautiful and what isn’t, he knows when someone is hot, objectively, but it’s never driven a quiver into his gut like this, never sent lightning bolts racing into the tips of his fingers, and when Zhang Qiling kisses him, it’s like being turned into stars.

Ouxiang kisses like everything else he does, with sole-minded purpose and attention and dedication. It rages into Liu Sang’s blood like a tornado. His stomach goes into free-fall, his fingers are numb.

“Xiao-ge,” Wu Xie murmurs, and somehow, his voice is hot, and Liu Sang is drowning in it. “Don’t overwhelm him.”

Wu Xie is composed where Zhang Qiling is fierce; a minuet, a rondeaux, an aria in G. He’s fingers in Liu Sang’s hair, thumbs on his jaw, he pulls him upwards and in and Liu Sang goes willingly.

He stumbles on his toes, and Wu Xie takes that as his cue to lead him down the hall like they’re tethered together, with Ouxiang following as ever he does.

Wu Xie’s bedroom is dim-lit already, like it was expecting them. The bed is huge, six pillows spread across it, and the comforter is soft and warm when Wu Xie pushes him down against it, climbs onto it over him, Liu Sang between his thighs. Ouxiang goes to the other edge of the mattress and slips onto his side, leaning up against the pillows, watching, waiting, but Liu Sang doesn’t feel trapped by his gaze. He’s too distracted by Wu Xie’s hands, Wu Xie’s arms, Wu Xie’s lips—

He pulls his sweater off, because Wu Xie is getting a little handsy at the hem, and it is sort of hot, so he drags the fabric over his head and then makes tiny grabbing motions at the bottom of Wu Xie’s sweater. The older man complies, his laugh like champagne bubbles as he shucks the thick fabric onto the floor and kisses Liu Sang again, and he’s like a symphony, a volley of strings.

“It suits you,” Ouxiang says, and Liu Sang tips his head back, rolling his eyes upward to see Zhang Qiling looking at the tattoo on Liu Sang’s chest. Ouxiang reaches out, brushes his fingers along Liu Sang’s shoulder, then moves his head forward and his tongue is pumice stone, scraping against skin.

Liu Sang shudders. He swallows. His fingers clench against the comforter, he needs to hold onto something, and he no longer has his sweater sleeves to wrap around his hands.

Wu Xie’s kissing his neck, Zhang Qiling is—are those his teeth, Jesus Christ—and then Wu Xie’s hands fumble at the juncture of Liu Sang’s pants, and his body goes terribly, horribly cold.

He flinches, probably more dramatically than is warranted, and finds himself at the end of the bed, away from Wu Xie’s hands and Ouxiang’s mouth, panting and clammy with goosebumps rising on his arms. His hair’s standing on end. His tattoo feels like a burn.

Wu Xie blinks at him. “Are you okay?”

Liu Sang falters. He wants to say, no. “Yes.”

Wu Xie and Ouxiang exchange a glance, and Liu Sang suddenly hates that, hates that they can have that without him. He wants it, he wants it, he does.

“I’m fine,” he insists, but he doesn’t move back toward them. He stays rooted to the foot of the bed. The comforter feels like it’s going to swallow him.

Wu Xie says, “Liu Sang, do you want to keep going?”

It should be easy, to say yes. It should be the simplest thing in the world, because he loves them, he does, he loves them, he wants to show them, he would run to the ends of the earth for all three and yet here, on this bed, in the house where he feels safest, he desperately wants to disappear forever.

He told himself—a version of himself, a much lonelier, much more scared version—that he wouldn’t compromise them, and he won’t go back on that, not when it feels this bad. He owes him that much. He owes them both that much.

Well. It was nice while it lasted.

“I don’t want to,” Liu Sang blurts. “I… don’t want to.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, shivering as cold air sweeps over his naked torso. This is the part where they say, Oh. The part where they say, Really? The part where they let him down gently and never call him again because they’re different on a fundamental level, a difference too wide to be breached by Liu Sang’s eyes or hair or whatever the fuck they find attractive about him, because he can’t do it, he can’t.

“Oh,” Wu Xie says behind the dark of Liu Sang’s closed eyelids. “Okay. What would you like to do, then?”

What?

“What?” Liu Sang says, his eyes flying open more from shock than from a desire to see Wu Xie or Zhang Qiling.

Wu Xie’s got his head cocked to the side—oh, bad choice of wording, Liu Sang—like he’s confused, which, okay, it’s not the first time Liu Sang has gotten that. “You don’t want to have sex, so what would you like us to do?” He frowns. “Was kissing okay?”

“Yes,” Liu Sang blurts, because kissing had been okay. He really, really liked the kissing. “Um. What?”

Zhang Qiling is back to reclining on the pillows, but he’s turned his chest toward Liu Sang, to show that he’s listening. “You get to decide,” he says quietly.

“If you don’t want sex, that’s fine,” Wu Xie tells him. His hands, which had been so active only minutes before, are lying loose and open on his knees, the bedspread bunched around him. “Pangzi doesn’t either.”

“What?” Liu Sang asks, because apparently his vocabulary has been limited to this one word.

“Did we not say that?” Wu Xie asks, the question directed more towards Zhang Qiling than Liu Sang. “I could’ve sworn we told him Pangzi was ace.”

Zhang Qiling shrugs, hie eyes dark and gentle.

“Oh,” Wu Xie says. “Huh. Well. He is. Sorry. I thought that you knew.”

“How would I know that?”

“You didn’t think we just left Pangzi out, did you?” Wu Xie laughs a little. “That we just decided to have our merry way with you without him? What kind of relationship do you think we’re running here?”

“He’s… I… he’s not home,” Liu Sang stammers, which, fuck, that’s embarrassing. Get it together, Liu Sang.

“Yeah, because he knew we were going to try having sex, and he doesn’t really care for that,” Wu Xie explains. “Because he doesn’t really like it. Because he’s asexual.”

“Okay,” Liu Sang snaps, because he knows what being asexual means, that’s literally what he— He grinds his knuckles into the mattress, glaring at his own still-clothed thighs.

“Do you want him to come back?” Wu Xie asks softly.

Liu Sang snaps his face to Wu Xie. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t have the words, because he doesn’t want to let on how much he would love Pangzi to be here right now.

His face seems to tell Wu Xie all he needs to know, because then Wu Xie is reaching for his phone on the nightstand, unlocking it and typing in a quick text message. “Alright then.” He tosses the phone onto the comforter. “Is it okay if I touch you?”

“Um,” Liu Sang says, and he’s sure that this is a dream, sure that at some point he’s going to snap awake in his own bed, in his empty apartment, alone. “Yes?”

“That still sounds like a question,” Wu Xie says, but there’s nothing admonishing in his tone, just quiet encouragement. “I’m asking your permission. Is it okay?”

“Yes,” Liu Sang says, his voice barely a whisper, because he does like it when Wu Xie touches him, likes the feeling of his long fingers on his shoulder or elbow or knee or around his wrist, just not… not anywhere else. Not anywhere private.

Wu Xie reaches for him slowly, and he’s not moving toward the Concern Areas, he’s just reaching for Liu Sang’s cheeks, his hair, smoothing it back and using his thumbs to tuck it behind his ears as he kisses him on the forehead.

“Tell us, okay?” Wu Xie says seriously, and his eyes are just as loving as they were before. “We’ll stay anyway.”

Liu Sang feels his throat swell, feels his eyes prickle as he stares at Wu Xie’s face, open and honest and beautiful, and he’s so sorry, he’s so, so sorry, he wishes that he could do this, that he could be more. That he wanted more. But the thought of touching and moving and feeling is so much, too much, and he was so scared before.

He’s not as scared now.

“Shh,” Wu Xie murmurs. “Here. Lie down.”

Liu Sang’s stomach jumps, but Wu Xie really does just mean lie down, lie down next to Ouxiang, so that Wu Xie can put an arm around him and lie right there too, just lying, and Ouxiang’s hand comes to rest on his elbow, and Wu Xie presses a kiss into his shoulder, but they’re just lying there, silent and still, and Liu Sang can maybe let a tear escape from his lashes to splash down his cheek toward his Ouxiang, who, if he notices, doesn’t say anything.

Minutes later—he hasn’t counted them, not exactly—the door to the bedroom opens, a shifting creak against the backdrop of their silence. Liu Sang can hear Pangzi’s heartbeat, can hear the weight of his footfall as he comes to the bed, saying, “Budge over, Tianzhen, it’s my turn.”

Wu Xie shifts away, leaving Liu Sang’s side cold for a moment, but then Pangzi’s there, rocking Liu Sang up a bit so that he can slide an arm underneath Liu Sang’s neck, cradling his shoulders like they’re a treasure found in an ancient ruin, which maybe they are. Pangzi smells like curry spice and the damn laundry detergent. Pangzi has all of his clothes on, still, even his leather jacket, and while normally Liu Sang might be annoyed by someone wearing outdoor clothes on the bed, it’s somehow the most comforting thing that could have happened, because it means that he’s safe.

“Hey, bei’er,” Pangzi says, his voice a gentle rumble, almost entirely encapsulated in his chest. “I’ve been there too.”

Liu Sang turns his face into Pangzi’s chest, squeezes his eyes shut. He can feel Wu Xie’s fingers just brushing his skin as he hangs his arm over Pangzi’s side, and Ouxiang isn’t touching him anymore, but his breath is cool on Liu Sang’s bare back, and Liu Sang shivers, not necessarily because he’s cold, but because the breath reminds him that he’s half-naked and had been decidedly uncomfortable earlier and though he’s getting back to himself, to where he feels fine, he still is off-kilter and anxious. His tattoo is air-stricken; he feels like he’s falling.

And then there’s a blanket being draped over him, covering him up, and it’s like a switch has been flipped because oh, now he’s safe, now he’s safe.

Pangzi’s lips touch his forehead. Wu Xie is humming softly. Ouxiang is just there, all within reach, within heart.

Liu Sang thinks, Now, this. This is love.