Work Text:
Xie Lian had saved him. Once again, Xie Lian had swooped in as the hero and saved the “undeserving Mu Qing.” And, despite his admission, he was still left alone.
He could taste the bitterness on his tongue. Even as he nursed his burns and picked his needle through Rouye’s fabric, anger and revulsion and resentment battled through him. But he could spare himself the indignity of asking them why. So he asked himself, asked himself as he always did because no one else cared to listen and no one else cared to answer.
Why accept him as a friend, why save him, when they truly couldn’t be bothered?
There’s a part of him that knows it’s not, that there’s too much to deal with to deal with him. He knows it, he’s always known it. Too well. The needle jabs into his finger, but it barely registers. His burns ached, pulling his skin taut, still he sewed, the pinprick only that on ruined skin. Besides, Xie Lian was missing his beloved—
(Mu Qing wanted to scream. Had he ever been missed? Had they ever wanted him for anything but his labor? What made everyone else so worthy of kindness, to be missed as a person, a companion, rather than as a servant?)
— and Feng Xin was likely consoling him. There was no time or place for him there.
(Mu Qing tries to think of the last time anyone ever consoled him and is only left with the painful memory of his mother passing after wishing he’d stay strong, that he’d help people who needed it rather than the people who could pay for it. Can only think of his tears falling onto cooling skin, knowing her memory, her spirit, were the only comforts he’d ever have.)
When he’d resigned himself to die, he had those moments to think that at least he would’ve made her proud.
“Mu Qing?” A soft voice broke his thoughts, coming from the doorway of his tent. Xie Lian stands there, ashen and his face streaked with dried tears, the blotchiness from crying not yet fully gone. “Oh. You needn’t do that now! Your injuries—“
He snorts. “Please. I rather do this now then hear complaints later.”
“....I would not complain,” Xie Lian steps closer. “I-I appreciate what you’re doing—“
“Xie Lian, is there something you wanted?” Mu Qing asks briskly.
He doesn’t want the platitudes or simpering sweetness spilling from between Xie Lian’s teeth. Not when everyone was pitying the poor god for his lost love and would surely have things to say if they thought that Xie Lian was trying to comfort him.
“I wanted to see how you were doing,” the other man whispers.
Mu Qing drops his needle. “What?”
“I wanted to see how—“
“You’ve never done that before! What do you mean by asking that now?” He demands, rising to his feet. Ruoye is gripped tight between his fingers and he had just an idle thought, a shred of relief, on how he was glad the cloth was not sentient yet.
“Nothing! I mean nothing of it but what I say—“ Xie Lian raises his hands placatingly.
“Well don’t bother! You’re missing your Crimson Rain, right? Perhaps you should be talking to Pei Ming—“
It’s harsh, it’s harsh. He doesn’t know any other way to be.
Xie Lian grabs him suddenly, squeezing his upper arms. Mu Qing tenses. This was it, this was when Xie Lian would snap and, regardless of his injuries, no one would care if Xie Lian added more, no one ever cared—
But Xie Lian only drops his head against Mu Qing’s chest. “Please Mu Qing, please stop,” he pleaded in a whisper. “I do not want to fight with you.”
He swallows roughly. Unused to the warmth against him, unused to the gentleness that beseeched him. “That’s all we know to do,” he said. “Because the times we didn’t, were only when I couldn’t.”
He could feel the flutter of Xie Lian’s lashes through the thinness of his night robes and heat flooded his face. In all of this, he’d forgotten his state of undress.
“What-what do you mean by that?” Xie Lian asks, raising his head to meet Mu Qing gaze. “Mu Qing, what do you mean by that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he brushes it off forcefully. “Go to bed, Your Highness. I won’t have Feng Xin bitching at me because you haven’t gotten your rest.”
He almost cringes at the venom he heard in his own voice. It isn’t right. Xie Lian is grieving. Mu Qing could try to give him a break, he should try—
Xie Lian pulls back, watching Mu Qing carefully. Analyzing. As if he were pulling back Mu Qing’s skin and baring everything the other god had to hide out to the open.
Mu Qing was never regarded so intently before.
He hates it. Xie Lian was seeing too much, why else would he stare for so long?
“Alright,” Xie Lian acquiesces. “Alright, but only after you’ve applied this salve.”
And from his sleeves, he takes out a container of burn ointment. Another charity. Xie Lian doesn’t even have the money to spare, what is he thinking?
“I have no such need—“ Take it, take it back. It’s bad enough, I will not be made to be ungrateful again.
“Then I will not leave.”
The determination staring back at him was infuriating, reminiscent of days where Mu Qing was forced into obedience, like a dog cruelly trained over and over so it would not even bark. The threat of punishment and death, of Xie Lian’s greater strength and Mu Qing’s inability to fight back, to say no—
Xie Lian never said it, never quite demanded it beyond this status quo Xie Lian lived by but didn’t know, but the privileges that have always been for Xie Lian were all for only Mu Qing, and people like Mu Qing, to know. To know what they weren’t allowed, to know what made them lesser. All these privileges, Xie Lian knew not a thing of them. He only had to live them.
“You have no right,” Mu Qing snarls. “Who do you think you are—“
“Your friend, last I was made aware,” Xie Lian counters. “Or have you already gone back on your words?”
And oh, how Mu Qing wants to hurt him. How dare he? How dare he?
“Do not— I said I wanted to become your friend. That does not mean we are friends now! You haven’t—“ Earned it. Mu Qing bites down on those last words, unable to say such a thing when the accusations of betrayal and abandonment still rang in his head. But Xie Lian seems to hear them anyway.
“I haven’t what, Mu Qing? Earned it?” His patience is running thin, voice growing low and sharp in anger. “Of all of us, for you to say this—“
Hurt had always become anger, anger until Mu Qing didn’t care. He’d throw Xie Lian out if he had to, consequences be damned. “Yes, me! Do not stand here, in my tent, and play victim, Xie Lian! If you want for pity, go to Feng Xin but don’t waste my time!”
It’s not all his fault, it’s not. He’s taken responsibility, but he won’t take blame. After all this time…he won’t be the default again.
“I don’t want your pity!” Xie Lian’s voice rose, nearing a shout and dragging Mu Qing’s attention back. “Play victim? Is that what I’m doing? After you left me—“
“You made me leave!” Mu Qing shouts. “You were so self-absorbed— all that mattered to you was your pride, your parents, your damn inability to do almost anything for yourself! You have everyone on your side, what more do you want from me?! Do you wish to see me ridiculed, is that it? Want to hear people hurl insults for the ungrateful servant—“
“You were my friend!” Xie Lian shouts back, fists tight with rage.
“I was your slave!” Mu Qing screams, the words, eight hundred years in the making, finally falling from his chest. “A lesser being to the oh so glorious crown prince and his noble bodyguard! Only good enough to do your chores and your bidding!”
He stares, trembling, as Xie Lian watches him in shock.
“When I did all the laundry, when I cooked and cleaned, when I took care of your parents and you and Feng Xin and still accompanied the two of you to do manual labor every day, did you think about how I was doing then? When I told you it was growing hard for me to handle, did you think of me then?”
It was a choice, his choice. Born and torn between His Highness and his mother, his duties to them both…his care for them both. Why had it become expectation?
“Mu Qing—“
“When I was your servant, waiting on you while my mother lay sick far from me, was how I was doing ever on your mind? Or did it not matter because I did my chores and tasks to your liking?”
Mu Qing knows why, he knows why, he doesn’t even think Xie Lian knew for all that His Highness had deduced, but ‘friend’ doesn’t make sense when even that hadn’t been known between them both.
I wished you’d asked. I wish you’d believed me. I wish you didn’t let me go.
But even as these words he wants to say don’t come out, Mu Qing couldn’t stop. Anger and hurt, always the forefront, his instinct to rely on, has him only saying the rage on his mind, the bitterness that wanted to come out where the pain dare not. To be heard.
He knows he shouldn’t, but such reservation had become lost to him the moment he swore to never be the servant, the man, he’d been before. It doesn’t make it any bit right. It doesn’t let him stop his wrong.
Xie Lian is hurting, is missing his beloved—
Mu Qing finds his voice taking on a deathly edge before he thought to speak. “When your beloved Crimson Rain hit me, did you care then?”
(Like that day with the sacks of rice so long ago, begging for the chance to explain. Like that day even before then, when his father knelt and begged for someone to believe him, that he had not committed treason as he was accused.
There was no proof. There was never any proof for the poor).
“Did you care at all how he, just like you and everyone else, never listened to me, never believed me? All any of you ever do is ignore me and hit me when you’re displeased. I won’t—I won’t tolerate it, n-not anymore. I’m not your servant anymore!”
Xie Lian only stares at him in silence, stunned perhaps, for no one had ever spoken to him in such a manner before.
Mu Qing stares back surprised that he did. His chest heaves with staggered breaths. “L-leave. I’ll have Ruoye brought to you when I’m done.”
Without another word, Xie Lian tucks the ointment back in his sleeves and leaves.
——————
“What’s your fucking problem?!”
He should’ve expected Feng Xin to find out. That, in the amount of time Feng Xin would spend puttering and fretting about Xie Lian, he'd notice that Mu Qing wasn’t visiting.
He couldn’t fault the timing though; now that he finally finished sewing Rouye back together, Feng Xin can carry it back to Xie Lian like the loyal dog he’d always been.
“Haven’t you fucking done enough? He’s already hurting—“
“Take this,” Mu Qing said, tossing Rouye almost carelessly to Feng Xin. “Clearly I’m a problem so you give him this—“
Red colored Feng Xin’s face, that permanent scowl deepening. A moment from blowing up, a moment from throwing blows. “Are you fucking kidding me—“
Mu Qing wasn't in the mood. He hadn’t had any patience these last few days, scraped raw from his outburst at Xie Lian. He had even less tolerance for Feng Xin. “Get out.”
“What?!”
“Are you deaf? Get out!”
“Mu Qing—“ Feng Xin stomped closer and Mu Qing drew his saber, the first time he raised his weapon on Feng Xin rather than his fists. Feng Xin froze. “You son of a—“
“I won’t say it again!” Mu Qing snapped. “I am done.”
“You’re done—?!” Feng Xin’s hands twitched, like he was going to reach for his bow, but that would be stupid with Mu Qing’s saber so close to his throat. “After everything— the fuck happened to f-f-friends?”
“Everything? Friends? ” Mu Qing laughed coldly. “No, no. Neither of you ever had time for me before. It’s enough that I’ve made my intentions clear, it doesn’t mean I need to do anything now. We’ll work on ‘friends’ when I’m ready.”
“Oh,” Feng Xin scoffed. “So you’re playing victim again?”
“General Nan Yang,” Chen Weici, Mu Qing’s deputy general suddenly entered the tent. “Pardon this one’s impudence but General Xuan Zhen has asked you to leave. This one asks that you honor her general’s request.”
Feng Xin ignored her. “Making it all about you again. I should’ve known. Was that whole admission just some ruse—“
“General Nan Yang, this one asks that you leave,” Chen Weici said sharply, her own saber now pressed against Feng Xin’s neck.
Feng Xin’s rage was palpable. “You—“
“This one will not hesitate to act in her general’s stead, even at risk to herself.”
“As with us.”
Song Youyi and a few other of Mu Qing’s officials now stood at his doorway, hands on their weapons.
Feng Xin scoffed. “Whatever. Fuck you, Mu Qing, really.” He turned on his heel.
“Some friend you are, to once again listen to others before listening to me,” Mu Qing huffed, bitterly amused. “And you still wonder.”
The other god froze, for just a moment, before tightening his hold on Rouye and storming out.
“Send for some tea,” Chen Weici murmured, resheathing her saber. The officials behind her were quick to move, leaving the general and his deputy alone. Once they were gone, she reached out for him, coaxing him into resheathing his own blade. “Come rest, General, I’ll light some incense for you.”
He sank into a cushion. “Thank you, Chen Weici,” his voice cracked.
She knelt beside him, clasping one of his hands between both of hers. “Forgive this one for her liberties.”
“It is alright,” he felt blank, lost. As if just his body was there and his mind was somewhere else. All these emotional interactions were taking their toll, slamming through every wall he’d constructed around himself until he had nothing left to shield him.
“They will understand, General Xuan Zhen,” she pressed her forehead to his hand. “They will see you as you are, as I and all your devotees have seen you.”
He startled at her touch, peering down at the austere young woman before him. She could be a goddess in her own right, if she so wanted. So many years had passed since she was just a little girl hiding from ghosts and spirits in the ruins of Xian Le. Mu Qing had comforted her, carried her out. Did the most basic acts of humanity of feeding and clothing her before leaving her with a decent childless couple far from the cruel master who she’d run away from and—
She stayed beside him. That was all it took. Bare efforts, the slightest kindness had won him his most devoted worshipper. The first to see him and see him as good. The first to build a temple in his honor, too little and unskilled (it had no paintings or statues, just the hair clip he’d given her to tie her hair, placed on a small shrine made haphazardly of rocks, stubby candles lit around it. She wore it in her hair now, ever since Mu Qing had pulled her into Heaven).
“Thank you, Chen Weici,” he said again, more present this time, and gently brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear.
“If only others saw me as you do,” he murmured. Saw and believed in his goodness and kindness...but Chen Weici was only one of the few. Perhaps one of the few that ever would.
———————
He couldn’t keep himself away. As usual. Mu Qing couldn’t help but laugh at himself. Even after all this time, after all the posturing and declarations, he was still pathetic.
Thankfully, his pride was saved as he managed, no ensured, that he was discreet; able to deposit cooked meals, fresh fruit, and better clothes in front of the shrine door with Xie Lian being none the wiser, always perfectly timed for when the other god was out helping his villagers or the residents of Ghost City.
(Honestly, the ragged and dusty white robes he wore were almost insulting . Sure, Xie Lian had accepted this life of modesty, of little means, but poverty didn’t mean a complete lack of regard for one’s appearance. Mu Qing would know . His mother’s fingers nearly bled at times with how many fixings she had to make to people’s clothing, just so they could have an appearance of dignity and decency that was so typically denied to them. It was a matter of pride— of seeing and respecting your worth even when the wealthy only looked to money for a person’s value. Of course Xie Lian would be crass enough to not care for such things.)
Mu Qing wasn’t so lucky this time.
He thought he had time— Chen Weici assured him that Xie Lian had been sighted heading to Ghost City and, if rumors were right, he’d be there all day tending to some silly dispute over head stealing. So when Mu Qing saw a few children huddled together, obvious in their messy and gaunt appearances that they lacked caregivers, he’d crouched down without a second thought. Even at a distance, he knew what he was seeing, was familiar with it as much as he was with servitude and loneliness. The children had seen the basket in his hand, were waiting for him to leave it so they could take what was inside. It was obvious in the haunt of hunger in their eyes, in the twists of their mouths.
There was no need for that.
He tapped into his array, requesting his deputies to send more food, and began unpacking what he did have.
“Well, come on,” he called out, beckoning them over. “You wouldn’t want it to get cold, do you?”
That’s all it took for the children to hurry over, the draw of a warm meal when they likely hadn’t had one in a long time, had they ever had one. They crowded around him, nervous but wanting. Despite the bruises some of them wore, likely by careless or cruel adults who didn’t want to be bothered with them, they were desperate enough to risk further abuse to see if he’d really feed them.
If they knew him, they’d not hold such doubt, he mused. He’d given when he’d barely had anything and he could give more now that he had almost everything. His only regret was the lack of utensils on him or anything to place the food in (Xie Lian thankfully was mindful enough to have dishes of his own), but he supposed it was of no matter. Hunger wasn’t so particular as to care for manners.
Mu Qing carefully passed the steamed buns, each equal in size, into the waiting hands in front of him. A bolder child, perhaps no older than four, pressed himself against him, letting Mu Qing’s body brace his weight as he nibbled on the bun, much to an older child’s obvious despair.
“Didi, don’t—“ she began, reaching to pull the child away.
“It’s okay,” Mu Qing assured quickly, sitting down on the ground so the child could settle in his lap.
He was no stranger to such seeking of comfort— no town was free of orphans, no matter how wealthy. Children needed nurturing, needed support, his mother always reminded him whenever he balked at her affection, embarrassed the way only a young boy could be when he secretly was given what he wanted but didn’t want to be ridiculed for wanting it.
At his acceptance, the other younger children drew closer, sitting beside and leaning against him, eager for contact from someone who wouldn’t hurt them.
Mu Qing gently patted their heads, smiling softly. Children needed nurturing. He reminded himself of that whenever a mission called him to some city or town, taking care to visit the orphanages, always bearing foods and treats, before he returned to heaven.
A shadow crossed over him just as he began pulling out other items from the basket. He paid it no mind, recognizing the gait and sound of a limping leg, and distributed some soybean sprouts among the children.
“My lord, I brought what you asked for,” Song Youyi said, the shameless grin obvious in his voice, delighted by the sight of his general all but swamped by children despite seeing this scene before in other places, with other faces.
Mu Qing just sighed, taking the dragon fruit he had in the baskets and carefully peeling the skin from it. “Thank you, Song Youyi, please place it by the door. Oh, and if you can fetch some water?”
“Of course, my lord.”
“This gege is a lord?” One child asked, suddenly tense with worry.
“Mn. Does it matter?” Mu Qing asked as he shared the fruit among them.
They looked at the fruit in their hands, peeked at the now empty basket, and glanced at each other.
“No gege, it doesn’t matter,” the girl from earlier said. “This one thanks gege for the food.”
The others followed her lead in thanking him, some in between licks of their fingers, much to his amusement. As he reached out to pack up his things, a bucket of water and a ladle appeared at the corner of his eye.
“Ah thank you, Song Youyi—“ he looked up, right into Xie Lian’s eyes. His breath caught almost violently.
Despite the smile on Xie Lian’s face, the easy way he interacted with the children around him as they happily squealed over a gege they did recognize, Mu Qing could almost feel the tension in the other god’s body. He went to try and climb to his feet but a strong grip, one he couldn’t free himself from without considerable force, without sending the children scrambling away in fear, held him down.
Xie Lian wouldn’t allow him to escape today.
Only once the children had scampered off did Xie Lian turn back to him. “I sent your official back to heaven,” he said simply, as if he had the right—
“I know I have no right to, but we need to talk,” he continued, now tugging Mu Qing to his feet and leading him towards the shrine, hand caught around Mu Qing’s forearm.
“This isn’t— what are you doing?! This isn’t appropriate—“ Mu Qing protested.
Other villagers were milling about, they’d see them if Mu Qing were to make a scene— he couldn’t make a scene! They’d look down on Xie Lian and wouldn’t come to his shrine—
“Let us talk, let me listen to you,” Xie Lian pleaded. “Just for a few minutes.”
Let me listen. Wasn’t that what he wanted? Attention and patience, a chance to speak without being silenced— Would Xie Lian truly give it to him?
It had risks. But he thinks with Xie Lian, maybe he could take them.
Sighing, Mu Qing let Xie Lian pull him inside, watching almost anxiously as the shorter man closed the door behind them.
It’d been a good day, no anger building up his bravado. But that only made him feel more vulnerable, more like the Mu Qing of his youth. He took a careful breath. He could take the risks.
“You’ve been bringing me supplies,” Xie Lian murmured, moving to his kitchen and setting water to heat on the stove. “I’ve been hoping to thank you.”
Or maybe the risks were too much. The anxiety thrummed through him, lashing inside his skin like a whip striking over and over without pause. Xie Lian was trying to serve him.
Mu Qing panicked, though one would be hard-pressed to see it, waving his hand dismissively. “If that’s all—“
“You know it’s not, Mu Qing,” and, rather than furious as Mu Qing had thought, Xie Lian only sounded fondly exasperated. “The things you said at Mount Taicang…”
It was coming. The insults, the accusations, the verbal beating— would Xie Lian throw the hot water on him, he thought wildly, remembering fists and rice, mud and stones.
“You’re right.”
Mu Qing blinked. Xie Lian met his stare, guilty and repentant and wholly unashamed to be.
“What?” He croaked. He must’ve misheard.
Xie Lian stepped closer. “It was not my intention, but I had mistreated you, I had overlooked you. I’ve put you down, perhaps more than once, with empty words and crueler actions.”
“That’s not…Xie Lian…” Mu Qing swallowed hard. Of all the things he expected, an apology was not one of them. It almost doesn’t feel right— above all, Mu Qing knew his own faults, his own wrongs better than anyone. He knew the world, his and Xie Lian’s, separate as they had been wasn’t made for their ideal.
It’s a balm regardless. He’d wanted it, always, and still wants it now. But the words aren’t right. ‘Put down’ isn’t so much as true as the feeling that maybe he didn’t truly matter, that his value was relative to something he couldn’t see. What was seen as privilege only left Mu Qing feeling that there was no safety, no security in anything. Everything was something that couldn’t be promised. The feelings are wrong, the apology’s wrong, and he goes to say as much, only to stop, gaping mid speech as Xie Lian lowered himself to the ground. “What-what are you doing?” He hissed. “Stand up!”
But Xie Lian only places his hands before him, pressing his head down in penance. “Will you allow this one to apologize? Will you allow this one to learn to care for you as a true friend, as I’ve always wanted to?”
“S-stop bowing! Xie Lian—“ Mu Qing was well-aware of the distress in his voice, unable to hide it even as he desperately wanted to. He grabbed at Xie Lian’s arms, trying to pull him up unsuccessfully. “Don’t bow to me!”
It wasn’t right! Mu Qing had only apologized like this once, centuries ago, for a piece of gold foil that’d caught his eye and everyone’s ire. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t, do it again. He never wanted to feel so small again. But his reluctance wasn’t the only matter. Xie Lian was the crown prince, his prince, and Mu Qing— no. Mu Qing almost falters. They were both gods. Equal in status now. But it still wasn’t acceptable. Gods didn’t bow to each other like this! He tugged harder but Xie Lian refused to budge.
“Will you give me such permission, Mu Qing?”
He floundered tactlessly, clumsy as one would never see him. Xie Lian should not debase himself, not in front of him. “Y-yes, just get up already unless you expected me to bow to you, too!”
The idea makes Mu Qing feel sick. Xie Lian makes him feel like he should.
When Xie Lian rose, he did so with a smile. “That’s not necessary.”
“You did that on purpose!” Mu Qing accused, red-faced and flustered.
“Well, yes. I thought that was obvious,” Xie Lian, oh-so-sweet Xie Lian, was being sarcastic. In a weirdly sweet way! Mu Qing was going to kill him.
"T-to what? So you could--" He couldn't even find a reason such an action would make sense.
Xie Lian sighs, ever-patient once again. “If one can bow at the waist for grains of rice, then surely I can bow even lower for something of greater value.”
“G-greater value?” Mu Qing asks, almost weakly. “What of this do you find to have value worth shaming yourself—“
Because even the hundreds of years Xie Lian’s been gone, even the sight of him so unlike how Mu Qing knew him to be, couldn’t make him feel so comfortable in Xie Lian’s disgrace. Mockery sat on his tongue, idle entertainment until it became too true.
“It is not shameful to recognize one’s mistakes and ask forgiveness,” Xie Lian shrugged, stepping closer. “And I have always wanted your friendship; I thought I had it but, knowing I didn’t, I want to have it for real. I have long only seen the wounds you left me with and not the ones I gave you. I see them now and I want to make amends, Mu Qing, if you’ll let me.”
Mu Qing took a careful breath. And another. And still another, but a tear still slipped past his eye and he turned his head away sharply.
“It wasn’t a matter of feeling being put down,” Mu Qing insists, voice tight. “Humiliation hadn’t been...”
And he can’t figure out the ‘hadn’t been’. There was some part of his pride that rankled, the part that resented the reminder that all anyone saw between him and His Highness was obligation and his failure. All the ways he’d done wrong when he’d tried so damn hard to make everything right.
“However I made you feel,” Xie Lian says easily when Mu Qing doesn’t continue. “If it hurt you, I apologize for it.”
“…would you forgive me for what I’d done?”
He doesn’t specify, he can’t. The fight from before sits between them as another fissure, as did too many things.
Xie Lian reached out, catching Mu Qing’s tear and swiping it away without thought. The action brightened the flush on Mu Qing’s cheeks and he nearly sputtered out an admonishment had Xie Lian not continued talking.
“I probably should have, years ago, when you apologized the first time,” he mused. “I was not so understanding then.”
But how could either of them be? Their rights and their wrongs never made anything make sense, never let them make sense to each other until all they knew of each other, the only way they knew to be with each other was misunderstanding. ‘Betrayal’ rang in Mu Qing’s ears, stuck behind his eyelids. ‘Ungrateful’ stained his skin. But Xie Lian wasn’t any less marred, not in Mu Qing’s eyes and not in Xie Lian’s own even as they both knew some things to not be true.
“I was not either. Nor am I now,” Mu Qing warned. The years they’ve spent apart, even as Mu Qing’s name came to have weight in Heaven, didn’t make him any better of a person. All it’d done was make him more distrustful, and colder than the youth of him ever been. “I am irritable and unkind…”
’A despicable man with morals.’
He knew the list of his faults, the traits of his that people hated, by heart. He wore them as a shield. His efforts, no matter the intention, had always been misconstrued; he told himself the same accusations until he didn’t care to hear them, until he himself could believe them. Until he knew it as his appearance better than he knew his truth. A hurt only hurt for so long, until one became acclimated to it. Mu Qing had long grown used to his.
“And you’ve only helped me since I have re-ascended. You said it yourself, save for that incident on the mountain, you’ve only tried to take care of me.” Xie Lian pauses. “I had misjudged you, just as you had me, though we had our reasons. We’ve left open wounds on each other’s skin and it’s time we’ve let them heal.”
He added as though an afterthought. “If that is amenable to you, of course.”
Mu Qing nodded, throat tight. He felt as though he might cry, something he hadn’t done since his mother passed, and for what?
“Will you allow me to hug you?” Xie Lian asked carefully. “It has been awhile.”
And Mu Qing knew where this was coming from. Even in their youth, Xie Lian craved contact, touching others almost shamelessly, if not for all of them being innocent gestures, wrapped in his infectious enthusiasm and glee. Mu Qing too, had been that way, before his father had died and he was taken away to work at the palace, eagerly seeking out affection and falling into the warmth of others’ hugs and comfort easily.
When was the last time he and Xie Lian had approached each other in such a manner? Since their days in battle? He couldn’t recall a more recent time. Had Xie Lian truly not regarded him with such a physical display of kindness since? It made sense though; back then, Xie Lian was too stressed out, too angry, to be kind to most anyone, let alone Mu Qing who was always busy, always working and doing something, and always too uncertain to approach on his own, no matter how much he wanted to.
Mu Qing nodded again, quick before his anxiety talked him out of it, caught in the feeling of longing. He was wholly unprepared for the way Xie Lian’s arms wrapped around him, tugging him close almost fiercely.
“Forgive my shameless confidence in saying this, but I have missed you,” Xie Lian laughed breathily into his hair, voice cracking with emotion. “I’ve truly missed you. And I did bow to also throw you off guard.”
"You asshole," but the heat wasn't there. Instead, something in Mu Qing crumbled, his knees nearly giving out as his face found the crook of Xie Lian’s neck, and he sobbed silently, supported in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt, not since after his mother had fallen ill.
It was nice. The realization of how nice it was only had him clutching on tighter, until Xie Lian carefully lowered both of them to the floor, arms still secure around Mu Qing’s body.
He knew he’d let go soon, scrub the tears as discreetly as he could from his face, and probably not touch Xie Lian again for a while. Put his walls up all over again. But, this time, he’d put a door in (maybe a window— doors allowed too much access, more than he was willing to give right now). Somewhere where he could give his friends space to know him, give himself space to know them beyond the preferences he kept in mind from his days of servitude.
But, for now, he let himself have this. For just a few moments, he would let himself have this, because he didn’t know if he’d ever have it again.
(There was a sliver of hope, just outside his rationale and logic that said not to push his luck, that his attitude would chase them away as it has before. It whispered that he could have this. Would have this. He just had to reach out and try. He couldn’t run away this time.)
Mu Qing knew they had not solved their issues with each other, not even close — too much to unpack and explain for a single conversation, too many bad habits and mentalities to fix— but it was a start. It may take them years, centuries even. But they had the time and they had taken that step, had put the first bandage down knowing many more will need to follow.
They would heal their open wounds, once and for all. Together.
(Feng Xin, well, he’d talk to him later. Their disputes hardly lasted long, anyhow.)