Work Text:
Mu Qing knocked the man down with a side kick.
Behind him, his fellow group members look in admiration.
“Nice kick, boss!” says one of them.
Mu Qing furrows his eyebrows, turning towards the group with his foot placed steadily on the stomach of the body below. His high ponytail doing a graceful curve due to the movement, “Didn’t I already told you to not call me that?”
The man underneath his foot grunts in pain.
He spares him a scorning glance, “Does it hurts?” he asks, not caring at all. To emphasize the question, he steps a little harder.
The man tears up and exclaims, “What the fuck?! Yes, man, stop it!”
Mu Qing hums, “Hm, yeah? Then maybe next time try to not steal other people’s bag, asshole.”
“I already called the police,” someone of his group says.
“Good,” Mu Qing sighs, “Now let’s just wait for a few—“
He’s just ready to relax for bit, when a voice he knows very well interrupts him, “What the fuck are you doing on this side of town?!”
Too well, actually. The details of this are for later.
Feng Xin and three other guys Mu Qing recognizes from past encounters gather in front of him. The only thing between them being the yet in pain robber.
Mu Qing fists clench only by the mere sight of his— cough rival, “Feng Xin...” If possible his brows furrow further and he quickly lifts up his chin, as well as the foot on the man, “You don’t seem able to take care of your own problems and in the end it’d be up to us anyways, so it couldn’t be helped we took care of it for you.”
Mu Qing’s guys observe anxiously at Feng Xin’s neck veins popping out as he clenches his jaw.
He steps one foot foward, “This area is ours. Go away.”
Mu Qing snickers, “Yeah, I guess now that we took out the trash for you.” He manages to say it the most obnoxious way possible.
Another vein jumps on Feng Xin’s forehead. This fucking bitch.
“If you have that much free time, you should use it to fix your bitch attitude.” he says. Mu Qing throws him a nasty stare. “Don’t meddle into my business.”
They spend some seconds staring angrily at each other, then Mu Qing finally walks the opposite direction with heavy steps, muttering, “Incompetent asshole.”
Feng Xin really wants to make him shut the fuck up, but unfortunately he’s too busy for that today. He takes in a large breath and forces himself to calm down.
The atmosphere around is still hostile by the time Mu Qing disappears from Feng Xin’s eyesight.
The door of his apartment shuts and Mu Qing walks towards his couch and sits. He grabs a pillow and he presses it against his face.
He screams.
Whydidhesaidthatwhydidhesaidthat– WHY DID HE SAID THAT?
What the fuck. Is he a fucking idiot.
Mu Qing is actually very close to lose it. He can’t do this anymore. He can’t.
He calls Xie Lian.
“Mu Qing, hello!” His friend says on the other side, bright as ever. “What is it?”
Mu Qing flops on his back and stares lifelessly at the ceiling, “I did it again.”
“What?”
“What else would leave me in such a pathetic state?” he growls, “Only dumb shitty Feng Xin, shitty eyes, shitty hands, shitty muscles!”
“...”
“This kind of hissy fit messes up my aesthetic. I’ll make him pay for it.”
Xie Lian laughs a little, “So you fought with him again?”
Mu Qing sighs, “Yeah... But it wasn’t that bad. I mean, I managed to don’t get physical.”
“That’s good! Every kind of progress is important,” it’s the nicest thing Xie Lian can say at the moment. He always says nice things.
Mu Qing snickers, not really seeing any progress at all.
“But still, I don’t understand why you can’t talk to him normally, and—” Xie Lian continues, “Feng Xin is a good guy, he won’t hold any grudge against you if you apologize and say it was a misunderstanding, I already told you.”
Mu Qing almost cries when he hears that, “I could talk to him normally if I wanted to, I just...” his voice fades away, he can’t find a reasonable excuse, he can’t lie. “Ok, I can’t refute it, but I also don’t know why it happens, if I did I’d simply stop being like this...” now he’s actually very close to cry out of frustration. Fuck his life, really. And fuck Feng Xin for everything!
All this situation has an old record. One that takes back in highschool, when Feng Xin didn’t even know his name yet and probably thought of Mu Qing simply as another one of the loner kids Xie Lian talked to. Back then, due to certain circumstances, he helped Mu Qing to get out of a really awful situation; the type that could cost his scholarship. And alright, maybe for Feng Xin it wasn’t anything worth remembering (at least he didn’t seem to), but for him it meant a lot. He couldn’t just ignore it and act like nothing had happened.
Which is the reason for the current mess.
Teenager Mu Qing thought of the following steps: his plan was to become someone that could talk with Feng Xin as an equal— yeah, Mu Qing’s line of thinking could get pretty embarrassing-cliche like he was some damn anime character, but he’s a changed man—, then thanks him for his help in the past and ask for uhm maybe a friendship or simply part ways after that.
Nothing went according to the plan teenager Mu Qing had in mind. In the end, he couldn’t stutter out a word that was pleasing to the ears and took the lead of a group rival to Feng Xin’s. Ah, and he insisted on punching him and insulting him and picking on him— every time they crossed ways.
You know how it goes.
“—that was what I was supposed to do,” Mu Qing finishes. He grabs the pillow and hides on it again, he feels his whole face heating up, “But whenever I meet Feng Xin I go crazy and start blurting out nasty things I don’t even MEAN!” he says in utmost speed.
“...Calm down a bit,” Xie Lian tries to say.
“I can’t stand it anymore.”
“...”
“But just thinking about being friendly with him makes me wanna throw up.”
Ok. Xie Lian feels the edgy tone in Mu Qing’s speech, he’s finally on the limit. Having listened to that monologue nearly a hundred times, Xie Lian doesn’t know how to help him though, since his friend refuses his help.
Xie Lian sighs, “I know eventually things will fall into place...” It’s a shame, he thinks. He always thought his two friends would get along with each other once they met, he didn’t expect there would be so much clashing between them.
“The only thing that will fall into place next time I see Feng Xin it’s going to be my fist on his face.” Mu Qing isn’t even kidding, as much as he wishes he is.
“Mu Qing!” Xie Lian actually laughs, even if he wants to cry.
“Don’t. I’m being realistic.”
Xie Lian smiles dishearteningly.
He tries to thinks of a way to lift up Mu Qing’s mood and changes the subject, “You’re upset. Pass by the convenience store I’m working later if you can, ok? Let’s eat the leftover stuff together.”
Free food is something Mu Qing will never reject. Even when his want is to mope surrounded by nothing but his apartment walls.
And Xie Lian knows. What a curse (and a blessing).
They say their goodbyes and finish the call. Half a hour later, past midnight, Mu Qing puts his door keys into his jacket pocket and hurries to meet Xie Lian.
Xie Lian really has a lot of patience with him, Mu Qing thinks. Bearing to hear Mu Qing’s complains now and then. If he was the other, he wouldn’t like being around someone difficult like him. For a reason Mu Qing isn’t aware of, Xie Lian does.
“Mu Qing!”
At the shouting of his name, Mu Qing rises his gaze from the floor to see his friend smiling and waving arms to him. The convenience store led lights wrapping his silhouette.
“I already saw you, you can stop now,” he says when he gets closer to the shop, and takes a look around. It’s empty.
Xie Lian giggles, “Then? Do you know what you want already? There’s a lot of stuff today.” He gestures for Mu Qing to follow him inside.
“...Some noodles left?” Mu Qing mumbles, averting his gaze.
“Yes, and since I knew you were going to ask for noodles, I put two in the microwave a little before you got here,” said that, he took the two cup noodles out of the microwave at the corner of the store, “Ta-da!”
“...” Mu Qing looks at the ‘pork-flavored’ written on both pots, and feels a wave of warmth in his chest.
Xie Lian is the only person able to spur this reaction in him. At least at the moment, when the times he can think of Feng Xin in a non-hostile way are scarce.
They sit side by side on the curb of the sidewalk.
Mu Qing grimaces when he hears Xie Lian slurping, the sound unsettling. He usually refrains himself of doing it around others since he finds it quite unsophisticated.
Thinking these exact lines, Mu Qing gets his chopsticks and, too, slurps his noodles. Because being around Xie Lian is different from being around others. It doesn’t bother him slurping noodles in front of Xie Lian.
Their friendship is one of the only constants in his life. It comes from high school, Xie Lian still was a rich kid and hung with Feng Xin up and down, the two of them always together, and Mu Qing still felt like he was from a category apart of Xie Lian’s world.
As life followed its course, everything went wrong for Xie Lian; that was the time they became closer, when Mu Qing taught new things to him and they bonded as fellow poor almost-adults.
What he’s trying to say is that they’ve been together for a long time now.
When Mu Qing still didn’t thought of him as a friend, Xie lian was there. When his mother died, Xie Lian was there. And when Xie Lian’s life crumbled apart, Mu Qing was there for him too; others were also there, including Feng Xin.
Unlike himself, Xie Lian is lovely and charming, his sincerity attracted a lot of good people to his life. Mu Qing doesn’t think he’s the first person Xie Lian will turn to when he’s feeling troubled and he doesn’t think he’s Xie Lian’s greatest friend either. He isn’t the best of friends, he knows it; Xie Lian has a lot of more appealing options than him.
Yet, he tries to not feel so dejected when he thinks about it.
Xie Lian may have better friends to be with, but Mu Qing only has Xie Lian.
Mu Qing side eyes the smaller man. After some good seconds, as if he repeated the words in his mind before saying them, he asks, “How’s going everything?”
Xie Lian slurps another mouthful, big eyes meeting Mu Qing’s, “Fine. Why?”
“Aren’t you overworking?” Mu Qing says as he blows his noddles.
“I’m not,” more slurping, “Life’s peachy.”
Mu Qing cringes at the lame line, fighting the urge to roll his eyes, and analyzes carefully Xie Lian’s face, looking for any signs of lies or dark circles. He doesn’t finds them, in fact, Xie Lian looks great.
Mu Qing squints at him, finding it very suspicious. How could Xie Lian be looking fine working at the night shift? He searches in his memories for something that could be the cause of such a shining skin and gets to the (unfortunately) most likely answer, “...Are you and that brat finally dating or something?”
Xie Lian instantly becomes a red mess and almost chocking on his noddles he stutters, “W-what?! You know that— How could—“ and a few more of these before it gets out, “San Lang and I aren’t like that!”
“Who says it was him I was referring to?” Mu Qing interjects.
Xie Lian mouth stays open, baffled, his chopsticks idle in the air, “I— Now you’re being unfair, who else do you call ‘that brat’?”
Mu Qing ignores him, “Anyways, I guess that means you haven’t confessed yet,” he pauses, “I don’t know which is worse, you two dating or you two don’t dating at all, both are equally hell.”
Xie Lian puffs a laugh, rare slight mocking tone on his voice, “I could say the same of you and Feng Xin.”
Mu Qing glares.
“Yeah, the difference is that everyone knows you like each other, meanwhile Feng Xin must hate me and everyone thinks I hate him too,” he says without real anger in it, more like a fact. And it appeases the talk.
They sit together in depressing silence, the now empty cup noodles gathered between them. When a chilly breeze passes by, Xie Lian gets up and goes inside the store, taking the cups with him. Mu Qing stays there, not quite looking at anything.
Suddenly something comes across his face.
‘Hot & Spicy Chicken Flavor’ in cursive red font.
Mu Qing whips his head towards a smiling Xie Lian.
“There was a big one left, it’s unusual luck so that makes it a special event,” he sits again by his side.
It isn’t anything special, but for some reason Mu Qing’s heart feels a little lighter. He understands.
Xie Lian gives him another pair of chopsticks and both of them loom over the bigger cup, excited. The tamp is removed and hot stew alongside with red noodle broth meet their sight.
“Working at convenience stores is great,” says Xie Lian.
Mu Qing nods, “A lot of benefits,” he smirks, “If your boss needs another employee, please tell me.”
Xie Lian looks at him skeptically and Mu Qing suppresses a laugh.
The night doesn’t seem as lonely as a few moments ago, and the cold weather isn’t so unbearable anymore.
Sharing an even tasty spicy cup noodles, Mu Qing wonders how Xie Lian always knows.