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When Hua Cheng went back to Puqi Shrine after speaking to Xuan Zhen, he was immediately ambushed by his husband, frantic eyes and hands searching him for injury.
“San Lang! Yin Yu said he didn’t know where you were and I could not contact you—“ Xie Lian looked at him worryingly. “I was so worried. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, gege,” he answered gently, taking his husband’s hands in his. “I was searching for some answers, that’s all.”
“Answers?” Xie Lian tugged him towards the table, settling down beside him and pouring them both some tea. “Answers to what?”
(“He admitted it to me,” Hua Cheng refuted, taking in the shock making Mu Qing’s posture go rigid. “I just want to know how you feel.”
The other man stared at him, mind whirling. After a long moment, he asked, “Why? What does it matter?”
Hua Cheng leaned forward, earnest. “I want gege to be happy, whatever that means and whatever it takes.”)
“To find a solution to our…situation,” Hua Cheng murmured carefully, sipping his tea. “Regarding your feelings for Mu Qing,” he clarified, seeing gege’s confusion.
“Oh, San Lang.” Like a ceramic mask, smoothed to perfection until placed by far too much heat, Gege’s hold on his tenuous calm starts to crack. Like the jagged beginnings before the reveal of the facade, before the face beneath comes into view, Hua Cheng watches the pieces start to dissolve. “There isn’t anything to solve! I love you.”
“But you love him, too,” Hua Cheng whispers. “And-And that’s okay, gege, it’s okay. This San Lang is happy if gege is happy.”
And he means it. Gods above, he means it. Nothing mattered as much as gege’s safety and happiness.
“I am happy,” Xie Lian insists, grabbing onto Hua Cheng’s hands. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been—“
“But is it with me, gege? Or is it maybe because you’ve no more suffering to go through? Bai Wuxiang is gone; now you know for certain no one will or could hurt you as he had. You know you have a place to stay and food to eat and comfort when you’d spent almost eight hundred years with none,” Hua Cheng said, rubbing his thumb over what he could reach of Xie Lian’s hands.
“What-what are you saying?” Gege’s voice, soft but vehement, seems suddenly too pained, too desperate, barely balancing on that thin line of existence between remaining whole and shattering. “San Lang…”
It’s getting harder to breathe, to speak, but Hua Cheng has to push through. “Maybe...maybe gege needs some time without me influencing him.”
“San Lang—“
Hua Cheng can’t be swayed, not now, or he’ll never leave and gege would be stuck with him. Unhappy. “I’ll always be here! Always, gege. I’m not going anywhere—“
And then everything breaks.
“No, no, wait. San Lang, please! Let me, let me call Mu Qing! We can talk about this! Please, p-please d-don’t leave me,” gege begs, clutching tightly to Hua Cheng, gasping through sobs. “Please don’t leave me. I-I’m so-sorry.”
Hua Cheng nearly throws himself to the floor in plea for forgiveness, feeling wretched for hurting his beloved. But he couldn’t, not with how tightly Xie Lian held onto him. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for, gege. Nothing. He will not listen, gege, not while I’m here but I won’t leave you. I’m here, I will always be here for gege, I’m just giving you some space—“
(“I will not get between you!” Mu Qing had snapped. “Don’t talk about it like a game of Go where you can move pieces as you please! I will not have my reputation slandered more than it has been.”
“Is that all that matters to you? Your reputation?” Hua Cheng snarled. “Does gege’s happiness mean nothing?”
Mu Qing sneered, getting to his feet. “Let me out of here. I won’t entertain this foolishness and-and if you try to keep me here, I’ll only stay further away from Xie Lian!” He threatened.
Hua Cheng knew better than to test Mu Qing’s pettiness. At least, when gege’s happiness was at stake. He took down the wards wordlessly.
“You can tell him he can contact me once you’ve both gained some sense,” Xuan Zhen hissed, storming out the temple doors. “And not a moment before then!”)
The door burst open.
“Let go of me—! What is this nonsense?“ Mu Qing and Pei Ming(??) stood in the doorway, faces flushed. Mu Qing’s collar was caught in Pei Ming’s hand.
“Ming Guang—?” Hua Cheng stared at the two for a moment, before things began slotting in place. “Is this why you don’t want to be with gege? Because you’ve been entangling yourself with Pei Ming?”
“Wo ho ho, there, Crimson Rain. You misunderstand—“ Pei Ming raised his hands in surrender.
“Oh really? Then what are you two doing together?” He demanded, climbing to his feet. “I just told you how gege felt—“
Mu Qing laughed sarcastically, crossing his arms over his chest. “One barely decent, honest conversation and you think I answer to you now, Crimson Rain? Try again,” he sneered.
“I’m just here to help,” Pei Ming pouted, sulking. “Really. I do not have affairs with everyone I’m seen with.”
“Please, is this important now? Pei Ming, we really must talk to Mu Qing—“ Xie Lian intervened. Tears were still gathered in his eyes despite it being clear how desperately he was trying to hold them back.
“I told your husband I didn’t want to talk until you two found your brains or replaced them with ones that actually worked!” Mu Qing snapped impatiently. “But instead you call me to waste my time—”
“Hold your tongue!” Hua Cheng snarls, drawing his sword, those Mu Qing only glares, hand tightening on the hilt of his own saber. “Before I cut it off! You will not speak to His Highness—
“No! San Lang, please,” Xie Lian reaches out for him. “We mustn’t fight, not now—“
Pei Ming had leapt in front of Mu Qing, speaking the same time as gege. “Now, now. One really shouldn’t harm their soulmate.”
“...What?” Hua Cheng froze. Around him, Xuan Zhen and gege did the same.
That couldn’t be right. Hua Cheng loved gege. Only gege. How could he ever belong to anyone else?
But the god of love just grinned sheepishly. “That...that wasn’t how I meant to tell you. But yes. Mu Qing here is your soulmate.”
“You’re lying,” Hua Cheng ground out, shaking with fury. “I don’t know what you think you’ll gain from this—“
“No lies!” Pei Ming paled. “I can actually show you, if you’d like?”
And he reached out, capitalizing on Hua Cheng’s shock, barely touching his hand.
“Look down, between your ankles,” Pei Ming murmured.
Bidden, Hua Cheng did.
A string as red as his robes stretched from him to Mu Qing.
“But gege—“ He wanted to scream. 800 years. He’s spent 800 years loving a person who he longed to deserve. Who he worked tirelessly for and gave himself to time and time again in trying to build his worthiness—
And fate was denying him.
“That can’t— maybe the fates are wrong!” Mu Qing protests wildly. “Xie Lian—“
And Hua Cheng’s head snaps to the side to look at his husband. He looks devastated.
Like the day his parents left him, choosing suicide over the miserable life of poverty. After everyone and everything had gone, they still had chosen everything but him. Leaving him alone.
“Gege—“ Hua Cheng reaches out, suddenly uncertain if Xie Lian would even want to touch him now. He didn’t want this, he wanted to yell. He didn’t want anyone but gege.
“Damn, wait, I was unclear,” Pei Ming took his hand back. “Xie Lian and Mu Qing are also soulmates.”
“What?!” Mu Qing’s teeth clench on a near shriek, and his fists follow suit. “What kind of— Pei Ming!”
Pei Ming blinked. “I’m not sure what you’re upset about.”
Hua Cheng didn’t either. If anyone had anything to be upset about, it was him. While Mu Qing and he would likely never choose each other, gege had been missing Mu Qing for centuries. And Mu Qing had a right to him now, a claim even Hua Cheng couldn’t compete with.
“General Pei, are-are you sure?” Xie Lian asked. “Mu Qing— he and I are soulmates as well?”
There was a hope attached to the general’s name that drove through Hua Cheng sharper than any sword. He drove this one into himself again and, though there were no spirits ripping his own to shreds this time, it felt all the same.
Perhaps even worse.
Because, even after all of this, he was still destined to be alone.
“Yes!” Pei Ming said brightly, painfully unaware. “All three of you are!” He put his hands together as if to provide a visual to what he meant. “It’d be romantic if there wasn’t so much tragedy and problems between you.”
“The three…” Xie Lian reached out to Pei Ming, “General Pei, may I see..?”
The god of love touched Xie Lian’s hand and Hua Cheng watched as his beloved looked between their hands and then on the floor between the former Xianle residents. “All three...San Lang!”
Xie Lian’s smile was radiant, though his voice stayed soft. “We’re all destined to be together.”
He looked between Mu Qing and Hua Cheng, almost as though he couldn’t believe they were even there with him.
I won’t have to lose either of you? Gege asked through their private array. I wasn’t wrong to love both of you?
“Anyways, I’ll be leaving now,” Pei Ming grinned, walking out the door. “You three have fun now! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”
“You have no such boundaries!” Mu Qing yells after him. “And what about all that talk of trauma and problems?!”
“You’ll figure it out!” Pei Ming called back. And then he was gone.
“I— what?” Hua Cheng rubbed at his brow, suddenly feeling tired. “We’re all soulmates?”
Something like relief filled Hua Cheng’s chest. He wouldn’t have to lose gege.
He took a breath, allowing himself to respond to Xie Lian in the array.
Gege is never wrong and gege would have never lost either of us. Not again.
“That idiot! Does he expect that things would just fall into place—?” Mu Qing rages, stomping towards the door.
“We could work on it,” gege said softly. His smile faded, having let his excitement over the potential be replaced by reality. “I-if you wanted. If all of us wanted.”
“Would that make gege happy?” Hua Cheng asked. He could put up with Mu Qing, he could accept him in their relationship, if at least somewhat, if it made gege happy.
Nothing mattered more.
Not Hua Cheng’s residual distaste over the man, despite how they learned to tolerate each other better, nor his rampant jealousy. He’d lock those feelings away. If it meant he wouldn’t lose gege, he’d rid himself of them altogether.
“Would it make him—?” Mu Qing freezes, just before opening the door, turning abruptly to snap vehemently at Hua Cheng. “Did losing your eye cost you part of your mind, Crimson Rain? Have you forgotten that you hate me?!
For a moment, just one, Gege had looked hopeful before Xuan Zhen opened his damned mouth. Barely, Hua Cheng resists the urge to gag the general with butterfly silk. Again.
“Mu Qing’s right,” Xie Lian murmurs. “I couldn’t ask that of either of you.”
Hua Cheng kneels down, taking Xie Lian’s hand in his. “Gege, there is nothing in the three realms worth more than your happiness. There is nothing this San Lang wouldn’t face or accept if it kept a smile on your face—“
“You’re overlooking one thing,” Mu Qing snarls. “Me!”
To think, just that minor conversation, a little piece of string, and Mu Qing suddenly thought Hua Cheng would care about his opinions. Would care about him at all. Hua Cheng grit his teeth, almost praying for patience, if only it wouldn’t upset his god more. “General Xuan Zhen—“
“Don’t bother! I know you don’t care for my opinion or me but as far as I’m concerned, there is nothing to work on.” Mu Qing glares at them. “I refuse to be another offering to your god!”
Silence fell over the three men. Eerie in the reverberations of Xuan Zhen’s vulnerability.
“If that’s all—“ Mu Qing says, sweeping up his sleeves dramatically before turning back to the door. Despite the bravado, despite the anger, Hua Cheng can see the barely there trembling, ever so slight beneath the thick robes the general wore.
“And if I say you won’t be?” Hua Cheng blurts out, biting back a grimace. For gege. He had to do this for gege.
“Then I’d say you were lying.”
It’s easily mistakable in a moment, deceiving where it disappears in the air, but Hua Cheng isn’t one to easily forget nor confuse. He can hear it even in the general’s silence…
The sound of heartbreak.
Hua Cheng feels it like an extension of his own— the desperation of wanting to be loved and being refused. Of having no worth to anyone.
Guilt used to taste like ash and smell of blood.
Now it tasted like the salt of falling tears.
“Mu Qing is right, San Lang, I’m being...inconsiderate,” Xie Lian whispered, a small, self-deprecating laugh slipping past his lips. “And perhaps a bit greedy, as well. I have your love and Mu Qing’s friendship; I needn’t ask for more.”
Hua Cheng shook his head. “Never, gege. You deserve everything you want and wish for. There is no amount of love worth you. If you are complete with both our love, who am I to deny you?”
He swallowed the urge to add ‘who was Xuan Zhen’, now knowing it wasn’t right. Now that he knew, it wasn’t fair.
“This San Lang is willing to work on it. If not love, I can work on at least having a peaceful companionship with Xuan Zhen, if the general is willing.”
Hua Cheng couldn't, wouldn’t pressure him. Wouldn’t dare make Mu Qing look at gege or him and remember the nobles of the palace.
Mu Qing blinks. And blinks again. “I—but why?“ He looked at Xie Lian helplessly. “What can you get from me? What can I offer that Hua Cheng has not given you?”
Xie Lian looked back thoughtfully. “What would you be willing to give me? Give both of us?”
“I don’t know!” He snaps before breaking eye contact. His fingers curl into fists and loosen again repeatedly where he thinks they cannot see. “I h-haven’t loved anyone in the way you have.”
It’s obvious in the aborted movements, in the silliness and the way he stays away, that he’s far from enraged and no longer brave enough to keep looking at them, at the situation they’re in, not when it meant they were looking back and waiting for him.
“Would companionship not be amenable, General?” Hua Cheng asked, and he wondered, briefly, if the other god could love or if all he knew of love was how to be used. “Until we know what we want from one another and how we fit together?”
“But is it not unnecessary? To have another person beside you but who can do nothing for you that is not already taken care of?” Xuan Zhen argues, seeming to grow more irritated, as if their misplaced patience with him was only fueling his desperation to get away.
Hua Cheng watches him and thinks, maybe, maybe it’s little more than confusion. Little else but despair.
“You are more than a service, Mu Qing,” Xie Lian speaks with a quiet determination. “More than a servant. To want and have your companionship does not mean there is a need that has to be fulfilled.”
“But do you not expect affection? Or-or...?” He blushes fiercely suddenly, flailing his hand as if that explained anything.
“Nothing you don’t want,” Xie Lian promised. “I just...I would like to have you around more often. I would like to hold you on occasion, if that is okay. Anything else, we can work on.”
“...and Hua Cheng?”
There was tension along the general’s body. Fear.
It wasn’t something Hua Cheng wasn’t used to people treating him with— he relished it these days— but here? When the question regarded something so intimate, when it asked whether or not Hua Cheng would be forceful—
How evil must he appear to give such an impression?
“Nothing will happen between us that you and I don’t agree on,” Hua Cheng assured, trying to not feel sick. He tries to snort instead, a facade of mockery in trying to make Mu Qing relax. He thinks it sounds right. “But I have to learn to do more than just tolerate you first. It shouldn’t be too hard—it’s not like you didn’t spend the time of our courting and early years of marriage just leeching onto gege’s side.”
“The irony. You must lack mirrors in Ghost City, I didn’t leech, you—” but Mu Qing drops the bait suddenly, expression again troubled. “Are we not too damaged? You heard Pei Ming—there are so many problems between us. I don’t even think I like myself. How could expect I possibly care for anyone else? I’m surprised that either of you can!”
Surprised that they could care about each other? Jest over, Hua Cheng glares. Of course they could care about each other! Had Hua Cheng not proven that, time and time again?
(Part of him realizes it wasn’t enough, it’d never been enough. He’d proven himself to someone who didn’t have anyone else to compare to and it still wasn’t enough.)
“What does that mean? What does caring about yourself have to do with caring for someone else?” Xie Lian asks, frowning.
This was ridiculous. How was Hua Cheng to hold up his promise if even a short conversation makes him want to stab himself, again, just to not deal with the general?
(When it makes him doubt any goodness gege said he saw in Hua Cheng?
Was he truly nothing more than the cursed child, now cursed adult, that people saw in Xianle? A demon in human skin, unable and undeserving of love and care and kindness?)
“Well, can you name something about yourself that you like?” Mu Qing sputters slightly, before catching himself and tilting his chin up, challenging.
Hua Cheng pauses. Something that he liked? He liked that he was married to gege, liked how skilled and powerful he was, but somehow he had a feeling Mu Qing wasn’t talking about such things. Wasn’t talking about things that made them worthy to society or weren’t truly about them as individuals. He glanced at gege, wincing slightly when he saw the same conflicted expression on the man’s face.
At their silence, Mu Qing continues, still cold, still stilted, but firmer. “Can you name something about yourself that you hate?”
Yes, Hua Cheng thinks. In that, he had a whole fucking list. All the times he failed gege, the ugliness of his own person; he’d gotten rid of his accursed eye and forged it into the most feared blade, demonic and evil. All the faults that the people of Xianle saw in him now in a single, untouchable weapon worth hating.
(An extension of his past, of himself, worth hating).
All of them, all shadows and bruises marring gege’s glory. A boy with no worth, a youth with no aspirations, an adult with no purpose...all reminders, all stages, of his continued uselessness.
He looks at gege again and knows much of the same hateful thoughts were turning through Xie Lian’s mind. Memories of failure on top of failure on top of failure—)
“Can you honestly not see the same faults within yourselves in each other?” Mu Qing asks. “Is it not hypocritical?”
“Gege is not—“
“San Lang isn’t—“
They speak at the same time, freeze at the same time.
Me.
The last word to both of their outbursts.
Mu Qing scoffs—it wavers, a moment of honest vulnerability where he hides all his uncertainty in dishonesty—and rolls his eyes again. “See? And I do not need to ask what faults you see in me. Weak, ungrateful, self-serving…” he lists them off almost casually, as though having accepted it as a fact of his character rather than an opinion. “’A despicable man with morals’, right? And you want to upset eight hundred years of devotion, over twenty years of marriage, for that? Are you actually insane?”
“Mu Qing, you’re not—“ Xie Lian begins, caught between frustration and anguish. “Those things—“
“They’re what you said of me!” Mu Qing argues, matter-of-fact without the usual bite of accusation. “Just because you’ve grown more patient with me, they do not become less true—“
“It’s not patience! What do you think? I just tolerate you?” Xie Lian demands.
He stalks towards Mu Qing, voice lowering as the urge to make the general listen and believe grew. Obstinate in this, impatient in his determination to make Mu Qing see and agree. These parts of him that Xie Lian learned long ago to repress, at the doubting of his affection, they were all rising.
“Haven’t we discussed this? I never just tolerated you! I liked you— I liked who I thought you were and I like who I know you to truly be. These faults, these cruel words, they were all said when we never took the time to learn and understand each other.” Gege takes a deep breath, forcibly calming himself. “I know better now. I know you better now.”
“If you can accept this about me,” Mu Qing speaks carefully, but meets Xie Lian’s eyes. Fearless, the way he said he never had been around gege. “Then why can’t you accept it within yourself? If Hua Cheng can accept your faults, what of his are any different? How does one understand and accept their own faults but only when it’s in another body? Is that the only way you can convince yourself it’s okay?”
“When,” Hua Cheng interrupts, openly bewildered. “Did you become so damn philosophical? And knowledgeable about emotions, of all things?”
This whole conversation made sense. A scary amount of sense. But coming from Xuan Zhen? It made no sense at all. The man was allergic to feelings.
Startled, that soft red colors Xuan Zhen’s face again, this time going down the length of his pale neck until it disappeared beneath his clothes, and Mu Qing casts his gaze to the side, muttering something unintelligible.
“So that’s why he was here? Pei Ming’s been talking about emotions to you?” Xie Lian blinks, rapidly, clearly having heard since he was so near and very apparently unhappy about it. “And only just to help the three of us come together? How long…?”
“A few years,” Mu Qing swallows. “Sometime after you were married. Something about deep-seated trauma…”
“Since San Lang and I were married? You’ve been...talking for so long?” Xie Lian looks mildly horrified and very worried. “Just talking? No other lessons about anything else?”
Even Hua Cheng balks.
He’d heard the gossip among the gods and goddesses before when they hadn’t known He Xuan was not Ming Yi. Had heard the dark desires and imaginations they whispered and giggled about when they hadn’t realized someone else was there to hear them. General Xuan Zhen and his beauty was no stranger to these conversations.
It didn’t matter that Pei Ming had denied it when he was here. How long had it taken him to know Mu Qing’s fated loves, how close had they gotten before Pei Ming decided he had had his fill—
“Nothing like that!” Mu Qing practically yelps, eyes widening with affront. He takes a step back even as he shoves an accusing finger towards Xie Lian. “Dianxia! H-how could you imply—? Just emotional competency! Therapy! N-not anything else! And-and we’ve agreed I don’t need any more meetings now!”
“Oh no?” Hua Cheng raises a brow, getting to his feet as Xie Lian moves that step closer to Mu Qing. “I’m a little curious as to how this conversation even happened.”
“And how they continued for so long,” Xie Lian pipes in, humming thoughtfully. “The timing’s rather convenient.”
“Well, I d-don’t...he’d approached and...the talks seemed to be helping so I just...kept going?” Mu Qing’s eyes dart away at the admission, focusing on nothing and everything in a panic, and his voice grows more awkward as he speaks, blush growing impossibly brighter. He is almost pressed against the door, hands up and waving between him and Xie Lian like he were raising a shield and warding them off. “It wasn’t anything inappropriate! It was just...the timing and with his reputation, it might seem...“
“And you’re sure of this? He hasn’t quite made it a secret he’s found you beautiful,” Hua Cheng adds idly. He had had enough with all the sentiments, thank you very much, and was rather grateful for a reprieve. Hua Cheng can afford to tease more if it means giving himself a break, particularly when it’s at Xuan Zhen’s expense. “He hasn’t mentally manipulated you, has he? Cast some spell, throw an array—”
“As if he could! That’s just...all of it...a mere…” Mu Qing looks closer and closer to making a run for it, not unlike in Tonglu. But this time, he’s visibly flustered, not scared. And Hua Cheng…he doesn’t expect to feel so relieved by that, but he is.
“Coincident?” Xie Lian asks, almost sounding too genuine, too understanding. An obvious tease. “Is that what you’re going to say, Mu Qing?”
He glances at Hua Cheng, growing pleased by the turn in conversation (gege didn’t like pressing on scars that still hurt like not-yet-healed bruises. This was easier, it was always easier, to not be the focus. To not let pain be the focus).
“You ‘coincidentally’ have been learning about emotions and need no more lessons once having a relationship with us becomes possible? Do you believe in coincidences, San Lang?”
Hua Cheng steps beside Xie Lian, cautiously, carefully. Mu Qing just stares at them, as if waiting, and Hua Cheng allows his weight to settle, sure that, in this moment, Mu Qing isn’t scared of him being so close, and peers that little bit down at Mu Qing where the man was only slightly shorter. “No, gege, I don’t,” he murmurs.
“Is this really what both of you want?” Mu Qing demands. He shifts nearly imperceptibly, uncertainly. “Are you truly so certain?”
Hua Cheng met his husband’s eyes.
Are we on the same page or not? Are we okay with this or not? Gege’s eyes said all that he felt and nothing at all, too many emotions swirling together. But Hua Cheng knew one thing with absolute certainty.
Whatever gege wanted, whatever would make him happy, Hua Cheng would walk beside him.
So the answer was easy.
“Yes,” Hua Cheng answers simply.
Mu Qing huffs and crosses his arms, a grumpy, petulant man as ever, but his resolve clearly is nonexistent. There’s fondness, a deniable amount to anyone who knew him less familiarly, in his rebuke. “After all these years, Dianxia, how can you still want to be so reckless?”
Xie Lian laughs suddenly, light and free, as if, finally, all the dredges of the misery plaguing him had dropped off of his person. As if he had finally found his salvation. Permanent and complete, rather than the temporary, incomplete relief he got when with either Hua Cheng or Mu Qing separately. “We’re not even doing anything!”
“Right,” Mu Qing says dryly, almost a sneer. He lets Gege step closer, drops his voice lower. “You’re not thinking this through. It’s not like your fairy tales, Xie Lian. You’re just thinking about, idealizing…”
“Thinking what?” Hua Cheng smirks. “What are we thinking and idealizing? You, Xuan Zhen? Are you so used to your pedestal, you’ve mistaken us for your worshippers?” He leans a bit closer. “Or have you simply been thinking and idealizing, and you think we’d be the same as you? Is the famed coldhearted general such a hopeless romantic?”
It’s a strange thought to entertain. To be admired or wanted in such a way by anyone else, Hua Cheng isn’t sure what to make of it. But he needn’t decide now. Instead he watches, as expected, Mu Qing flounders.
“You—! Don’t think so highly of yourself—“
“Tell me, General, how many years has Ming Guang helped with those thoughts?”
“Why don’t you go and find out?” He snaps, and then pauses, eyes brightening in triumph. “Actually, if we’re doing this, both of you should have to attend the weird emotional therapy sessions, too. I will not be the only one—“
Xie Lian laughs again, wetly this time. “Of course, of course. We can work on caring for ourselves and still learn to care for one another and share your miseries of dealing with Pei Ming,” he agrees. “Anything else?"
If the easy acceptance bothers him, the general doesn’t show it. They all know it’s a token last demand, a show to show he didn’t give in so easily and without reservation even as he gives in willingly, with less fight than anything else he’s agreed to.
Rolling his eyes, Mu Qing just grumbles, “And tell no one of this! No one can know. Not until we're sure. I won't be made to be some homewrecker on top of everything."
"Would it make much a difference?" Hua Cheng snickers. "I think that would hurt someone who didn't have your reputation. What face do you have left to save?"
“Have you forgotten yourselves? Compared to Heavens’ thrice rejected prince and the bane of Heavens’ existence, my reputation is commendable.”
“If only you hadn’t been born so poor, maybe it actually would matter.”
The general’s eyes narrow but Xie Lian interjects quickly, not allowing Mu Qing to find a new ridiculous reason to reconsider, hands raised placatingly.
“No one has to know about the three of us, not until we are all ready or even if we never are. Otherwise, you agree then? Can we just try?”
His voice is soft, a plea, and Mu Qing finally deflates entirely, all fight gone and leaving him almost sulky. “Y-yes.”
“Are you sure?” Hua Cheng said, gaze searching. He wouldn’t force Mu Qing, no matter his determination that they do whatever is necessary to make gege happy. Of all the things he’d willingly do, that is not one of them.
(To love out of obligation, to force a love where there isn’t one, was no love at all…)
“Yes,” Mu Qing sighs, waving his hand impatiently, but his lips quirk in almost smile. “I wouldn’t agree if I wasn’t.”
(…But maybe it wasn’t an obligation after all.)