Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It wasn’t not easy being alone, but it wasn’t too bad. Xie Lian had suffered it before, so had Hua Cheng. And if Hua Cheng could suffer it too, then Xie Lian could suffer it again. It could be easy this time! There was no real pain and there were many things to do. He could keep busy, in his solitude. Easy. Very easy.

Every night Xie Lian lay down on his sleeping mat with his back curled up against the wall. Every night  he tucked his arms against his chest and fell asleep alone. Tonight was no different. The ground under the sleeping mat was hard, the fire did its best but wasn’t quite strong enough so he was trembling just a little as he closed his eye and—

He woke up warm. There was a sliver of gray light crossing the dirt floor, enough that he could where he’d thrown his arm out across the floor in his sleep. A heavy arm weighed down his waist. 

That wasn’t right. Xie Lian fell asleep alone. And yet someone very familiar was curled against him on the mat, their legs tangled together.

Xie Lian covered the hand with his own. The fingers were familiar; pale and a little bony with a heavy ring on the forefinger. He thought he would know those hands anywhere, and who else could sneak into his bed? Who else would be so cheeky? “San Lang?” 

There was a stirring behind him. “Shh,” Hua Cheng said, breath hot against his cheek. 

“San Lang,” Xie Lian yelped, bolting up. Hua Cheng’s arm slid down his chest and settled on the blanket. “You should have woken me!”

Hua Cheng cracked his eye open, tilted his head along the sparse pillow. “Gege, it’s early.”

His voice was laced through with exhaustion; his words slurred around the edges with sleep. He was pale and worn thin like an old bit of cloth, and there were dark purple circles under his eyes, but he was wholly there. Xie Lian could touch him. And so Xie Lian did. He traced the curve of his bare shoulder, white in the dim light; smoothed the black ink of his hair that spilled across his chest. He pressed his fingers lightly against Hua Cheng’s ribs — his San Lang, so thin. Was he thinner now than he had been? — and Hua Cheng made a quiet little noise, a sleepy grumble.

For the first time in a month, Xie Lian felt warm again. He lay his hand flat against Hua Cheng’s chest. There was no warmth to his skin, no heartbeat against his ribs, but he was just as beautiful and sharp as the day he’d left; just as steady and all-encompassing. “You should have woken me,” Xie Lian said quietly, laying his palm flat against Hua Cheng’s chest. “You were gone for so long, I wanted to greet you.”

Hua Cheng raised an eyebrow. “Gege, we went to sleep together,” he said, propping himself up on his elbow. He shoved his hair out of his good eye, peering up at Xie Lian. “I haven’t left.” 

Xie Lian smacked at his chest weakly, unable to put to words the crowded feeling in his chest, the spring green of relief against the uneasiness of Hua Cheng sneaking back in during the night. “You did, you did, but it’s okay, San Lang, because you came back to me!”

“Gege, it was just a dream,” Hua Cheng said. He raised his arm, tugging a little bit at a lock of Xia Lian’s hair. Gave that winsome smile that never failed to make Xie Lian’s heart flutter in his chest. “Come back to sleep.”

“How can I sleep when you’re finally back?”

“Gege, I didn’t go anywhere,” Hua Cheng said, sitting up. His knee bumped against Xie Lian’s and he almost sobbed at the contact, such a simple touch, but it was everything after months of emptiness. Hua Cheng put the back of his hand against Xie Lian’s forehead, as if checking for a fever, and Xie Lian tried not to lean into the touch but he couldn’t stop himself. He had missed him so much. “We ate dinner, and then you played the pipa for me, then we went to bed. That’s all.”

“But,” Xie Lian said. He could see it was true in the light of the coming day; there were the remnants of dinner on the table and a basket of fruit that Xie Lian hadn’t eaten this morning. And the table wasn’t his either, because this wasn’t his shrine. This was a small home he had never been in, with a quiet fire in the corner, and a real bed instead of a straw mat. There was no altar or idol, there was a solid heavy wood door instead of the one Hua Cheng had built. And there was a pipa in the corner, its neck upright. “I can’t play the pipa.”

“Gege, it was a bad dream,” Hua Cheng said soothingly. He curled his hand under Xie Lian’s arm, skating across his ribs — Xie Lian shivered. He hadn’t gone to bed without his sleeping robe, but he was without it now and Hua Cheng’s cold touch chilled him. Maybe it was a dream; it was far too cold to be autumn. He could see the traces of snow at the windows, shadows cast against the paper. 

“A dream,” Xie Lian mumbled, cupping his hand against Hua Cheng’s cheek. “No, I — no, you’re here.” Hua Cheng was so vibrant under his hands; even as tired and thin as he was, he was solid and real. He even breathed, a little habit from living that he had never shaken off. His chest moved against Xie Lian’s. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Hua Cheng promised, except that if this was a dream, he wasn’t. And the snow on the windows was piling up, little shadows across his cheeks, and maybe it was a dream but Hua Cheng was here, staring at him, his face twisted in worry and — Xie Lian didn’t want him to worry. He was tired. He was so thin. Maybe he didn’t even remember what had happened, maybe he didn’t remember disappearing at all. 

Maybe this was a dream. “A dream,” Xie Lian said doubtfully, curling his hands in Hua Cheng’s shoulders. 

“Shh, come back to sleep.” Hua Cheng pulled Xie Lian against him; Xie Lian cradled against his chest. He buried his face in Hua Cheng’s shoulder; sleep already pulling him back down.

He woke up alone on the small mat. Dawn was weak and gray, no red-gold autumn warmth bringing Hua Cheng back to him. He pressed his arm over his face, counted his breaths. In, out. In, out. He tried not to cry and the dream stuck in the back of his mind, strong, persistent. It wouldn’t fade away the way other dreams did.

The shrine was small, the walls closing in around him like a coffin. It had seemed so big when Hua Cheng had been in it, as if it was bursting at the seams, or maybe that was Xie Lian’s heart. 

He rolled onto his side, shivering, and pressed his face against the thin pillow. It had been almost two months since Hua Cheng had last laid here with him, the both of them carefully not touching. If he were here now, Xie Lian wouldn’t let them stay apart. He would hold Hua Cheng, or perhaps Hua Cheng would hold him, and they would be connected. Their hands and legs tangled together. Their cheeks would rest on the same pillow; perhaps even their lips—

He couldn’t think about this now. Not when Hua Cheng wasn’t even here.

He sat up, tugging the blanket around his shoulders to ward off the chill. The stove fire had gone low over the night. Such a little thing and yet Xie Lian had forgotten about it. Hua Cheng had often gotten up during the night to stoke it high and warm again.

It took a long time to coax the embers back into a little flame.

Puqi Shrine wasn’t cold but it also wasn’t all that warm. The small fire in the corner didn’t do much to heat the entire place, and Xie Lian was no master builder, either. The door of the shrine was possibly the only thing that could stand against the wind properly. But Xie Lian was used to the cold and didn’t mind it so much, even as he fell asleep. Though he wished that someone else could share his straw mat with him. Hua Cheng wouldn’t keep him warm, of course. He had no body heat. 

But the thought of him would be enough.

But today Xie Lian woke up warm again. Almost too warm, he threw a hand out from under the covers, searching for a bit of relief and hit something very fuzzy. It meowed at him and raced off the bed.

Xie Lian peered over the side of the elaborate bed, full of heavy quilts, at the little black cat that streaked through the door directly between Hua Cheng’s legs. Warmth bloomed in his chest at the sight of him leaning against the doorframe, neatly dressed and with a smile on his face. 

Hua Cheng raised an eyebrow. “Gege upset her,” he said, voice fond as he nudged the cat with his foot. He was carrying a breakfast tray.

Xie Lian rubbed at his face, hiding the fact that he was tearing up. It didn’t matter; this was a dream. This was not where Xie Lian had fallen asleep, in his cold shrine. This was — he was pretty sure this was Paradise Manor. He was — he flushed for a moment, hiding his face in his hands — he was pretty sure this was Hua Cheng’s bedroom. It looked like it could be Hua Cheng’s bedroom; red and gilded and elaborate.

And Xie Lian had dreamed himself waking up there. Wasn’t that too forward? Hua Cheng hadn’t even returned to him and Xie Lian was dreaming of a shared bedroom—

The dream Hua Cheng frowned. He slid his palm against Xie Lian’s cheek, tilting his face up. “Gege?”

“Hm?” Xie Lian was lost in the sensation of Hua Cheng against him. Dreams didn’t usually feel so remarkably real; the drag of sword calluses against Xie Lian’s cheek was so vivid. Hua Cheng’s rough thumb traced the corner of Xie Lian’s mouth. “Oh! Sorry, San Lang, I was distracted.”

“If you say so, gege,” Hua Cheng said after a moment. He pulled his hand away and Xie Lian mourned the loss, swaying forward a little bit with the motion. He was almost dizzy. Was that Hua Cheng or was he just still sleep-smudged, not full alert?

This was a dream; he wasn’t sleepy, he was still asleep.

Hua Cheng caught him, his grin growing wide. Xie Lian flushed again but Hua Cheng didn’t comment, only turned back to the side table where the tray was sitting. “You should eat, gege.”

It looks wonderful,” Xie Lian said, as Hua Cheng set the tray on his lap. The noodles smelled delicious and he was hungry; his stomach growling. And this looked much better than anything he’d managed to cook for himself lately. Maybe… maybe Hua Cheng had made this for him? “San Lang, I can get up, we can eat at the table—”

“Let me pamper you,” Hua Cheng said easily, like he said this sort of thing all the time. Xie Lian surely resembled a tomato with how much blushing he was doing — would Hua Cheng ever stop holding this sway over him?

“San Lang, ah, you can’t just go around saying these things!”

“Why not,” Hua Cheng said, lounging on the end of the bed. He wasn’t even properly dressed, Xie Lian realized; he was still in a red silk set of sleeping robes, loosely tied. Had he made breakfast like that? “Doesn’t gege deserve to be pampered?”

“I hardly need it,” Xie Lian said half-heartedly, but there was a little kind flame in his chest, like candlelight, at the thought of it. He had been pampered so much as a prince; so spoiled and ignorant. He had really thought he wasn’t; that he had avoided the trap, but he never had. But this was wholly different. It was pure warmth, threaded through and through.

Xie Lian was no spoiled prince anymore and yet Hua Cheng treated him with such kindness.

Xie Lian knew, of course, that he meant so much to Hua Cheng. But it was different to see. Before, Hua Cheng had such bold things as let me pamper you. He had been playful and straightforward and sometimes heartbreakingly earnest, but just to hear it now, so plainly said — Xie Lian was warm all over with it.

The little fame in his chest only built when Hua Cheng curled Xie Lian’s hair around his fingers, pulling it back into a neat tie to keep out of his face while he ate. He did it with no hesitation, moving around Xie Lian’s shoulders like he’d done it a million times before.

Xie Lian wanted him to have done it a million times before.

“What should we do today, gege,” Hua Cheng said easily. He let Xie Lian’s hair fall from his fingers, rested his hand loosely over Xie Lian’s shoulder. “I’m all yours today.”

Xie Lian dropped his chopsticks fall back against his empty bowl. Hua Cheng really was a good cook. “Mm, I don’t know,” Xie Lian said, leaning back against the pillows. He was warm and comfortable, sated in a way he hadn’t been since Hua Cheng had left him. “There’s a river, in what used to be Xian Le. We could go there.”

Hua Cheng tilted his head. “Gege wants to go to a river?”

“It’s a very nice river,” Xie Lian said defensively. It was tucked away in a valley that rarely received harsh weather. No snow, and the nearby farms and markets were always full of lush vegetables and cheerful people. It always reminded Xie Lian of home, in a way — he and Feng Xin had used to go there often when they were younger, usually when Xie Lian was being escorted to a summer home. Before he’d become so serious about cultivation.

Hua Cheng smiled. “If gege wants to show me a river, it must be the best river anyone has ever seen.”

“I don’t know about all that!” Xie Lian laughed. “It’s only a river.” He hadn’t been back in almost a century but the last time he had been, the water had been so smooth and clear as he cupped a hand to bring it to his mouth. He had marveled at how some things never changed, even in a life as old as his.

He had thought, maybe, that it would be nice to have someone to share this with again.

Xie Lian chanced to twine their fingers together; an action that wasn’t quite new in practice but still felt entirely novel for the intent Xie Lian understood behind it now. “But it is my favorite. I want to show it to you.”

Xie Lian fell asleep on the riverside, head pillowed in Hua Cheng’s lap, and woke up in his shrine. He hadn’t been this disappointed in so long that it took him a moment to recognize the slightly nauseating sensation that built in his chest at the sight of the gray, cobwebbed ceiling. He’d fallened asleep against the brilliant blue sky, dotted with puffy white clouds that Hua Cheng had kept pointing out shapes in.

That one is a rabbit, he’d point out. Xie Lian would open one eye, follow the elegant line of his hand up towards the sky, and go, Yes, of course, a handsome little rabbit.

It had been so comfortable. In the dream, Hua Cheng had found Xie Lian’s awkwardness about romance endearing; he took the lead as they walked through the market. His hand was never far from Xie Lian’s waist, a comforting weight. He bought Xie Lian some dumplings and a slip of candy that Xie Lian didn’t even mention he wanted. Hadn’t even known he’d wanted until Hua Cheng handed it to him.

Xie Lian wondered if the real Hua Cheng would be awkward, like he was. Would his hands also tremble a little bit, the first time they held them again after their reunion? They had kissed so many times, but it had all been under a flimsy guise of spiritual energy. Would he look nervous when Xie Lian kissed him, when he came back? Would he fumble the first time a stall owner asked them if they were married or would he pass over the money in one smooth elegant motion, smirk, and say that’s right.

That was what Hua Cheng had done in the dream. He had been so confident. He had been waiting eight hundred years, after all, why shouldn’t he be confident? But maybe — he had waited for Xie Lian all that time, maybe he too had no experience in such things?

Xie Lian didn’t know. All he had were confident dreams, dreams where Hua Cheng brought him breakfast and doted on him and took him to his favorite river, just because Xie Lian wanted to.

“Gege, wake up. The peaches are ready.”

Xie Lian smiled into his pillow. He’d thought — he’d hoped — that when he closed his eyes, he would wake up in another dream. That Hua Cheng would be here again for him while Xie Lian waited for him in the real world. “The peaches can wait, can’t they,” he mumbled, spreading his hand out behind him “San Lang, come back to bed.”

Hua Cheng’s chest was pressed to Xie Lian’s back; there was a quiet rumble as Hua Cheng laughed. He must be kneeling at the side of the bed. Hua Cheng always woke so early; so industrious. “You’ll regret saying that tomorrow. Gege, it’s harvest time.”

Spring then, if peaches were in season. In the last dream it was vibrant summer, in the dream before it was the dead of winter. Xie Lian didn’t know what the pattern meant. It was the end of autumn in the real world but in this dream — Xie Lian breathed in deep. Spring air, just on the edge of crisp. A cool rainy chill that would burn off by midday.

Xie Lian liked spring but — “Are you sure they can’t wait,” he checked, because he had grown greedy after two nights of dreaming of Hua Cheng. He did not want to leave the bed; he wanted instead for Hua Cheng to come join him. “Maybe I don’t like peaches anymore.”

“You love peaches,” Hua Cheng said, pressing a kiss to Xie Lian’s shoulder. He tugged, lightly, at a lock of Xie Lian’s hair. “Come on, come on. Come see.”

Xie Lian rolled over, bringing with him a heavy quilt. He couldn’t quite see in the dark; he could only make out the vague black outline of Hua Cheng, broad and familiar. Xie Lian wiggled a hand out from under the blanket and found Hua Cheng’s jaw, warm under his palm.

“Gege, you know we don’t have time for that.” He tried to be stern but couldn’t pull it off; laughter threatened to break out.

“Alright, if San Lan says I must get up,” Xie Lian said, defeated but thoroughly warm all over by the sound of Hua Cheng’s stifled giggles. He sat himself up, the blankets sliding off his shoulders.

Hua Cheng stood too, his silhouette looming. He neatened Xie Lian’s hair a little bit, his hand lingering on Xie Lian’s jaw. His thumb hovered lightly over Xie Lian’s bottom lip then he seemed to remember himself.

“Breakfast,” he said, pulling away with a quiet little chuckle. He hadn’t even touched Xie Lian’s lips, but they tingled anyway. “It’s still hot.” He left the door open as he left, a little bit of golden-brown shimmering through the doorway from a candle. It was barely enough to see by; there was no light coming through the bedroom window. Xie Lian could only make his way around by feeling the edge of the bed, tapping his feet carefully to avoid any pitfalls. There was a set of robes lying on a trunk at the end of the bed, soft and worn. They fit him perfectly.

Xie Lian did not know where this dream had taken him. He couldn’t imagine wanting peaches so badly that he’d dream about a world where he and Hua Cheng would go peach-picking but Hua Cheng was right: he did like peaches. Maybe he wanted to share that with Hua Cheng.

Hua Cheng himself was in the next room, moving around in the half-light easily. He looked up as Xie Lian stepped through the doorway, tying up his hair for the day.

“It’s just past dawn,” he said quietly, as if speaking too loudly would break the spell. Xie Lian was beginning to see the edges of his face more clearly; his eyes were still shadowed but the flash of his smile was clear in the glow of the candle light. “There’s breakfast.”

Breakfast, Xie Lian discovered, was congee, hot in a wok on the stove. Hua Cheng eyed him from his perch near the door as Xie Lian poured some into a bowl, warming his child fingers. “It tastes good, San Lang,” Xie Lian praised. It always tasted good. Hua Cheng truly had become such a masterful chef in Xie Lian’s dreams! Maybe he could help with Xie Lian’s meals; he was still the only person able to eat them without complaint.

“Mm, eat all of it,” Hua Cheng said easily, pulling on his boots. Work boots, Xie Lian noted, and beside them, a slightly smaller pair that must belong to him. Hua Cheng stood, pressing the toe of shoe against the ground to adjust them, then gestured Xie Lian closer.

Xie Lian padded over, the bowl in his hand. “Did you forget something?” He was thinking that Hua Cheng had already put his shoes on and maybe Hua Cheng needed Xie Lian to get something from the bedroom for him.

“Yes,” Hua Cheng said. Xie Lian waited, . Hua Cheng leaned over and brushed his lips against Xie Lian’s.

Xie Lian gasped into it, surprised. It was a gentle thing, a promise of a good morning. Hua Cheng’s lips were warm and soft against his, and far too familiar than they had any right to be. Xie Lian could lose himself in the sensation, his eyes fluttering closed as they pressed closer to each other.

“It should be a clear sunrise, gege,” Hua Cheng said when he pulled back. He licked his lower lip, Xie Lian stared, entranced. “Eat fast.”

“Mm,” Xie Lian said intelligently, because he had absolutely forgotten about the bowl of congee in his hand. As if the congee was going to be able to follow the kissing. How could anything follow a kiss like that?

Hua Cheng grinned as if he knew what Xie Lian was thinking. But he only shrugged on his coat, and disappeared through the front door.

Xie Lian dragged a hand down his face, returning to the kitchen to eat. It was far too bold to dream of such a thing like this. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe his Hua Cheng would kiss him with such… emotion. He could trust in that more than anything now; that Hua Cheng was coming back and they could be together as more than friends.

But it was a different thing to dream about. He could imagine it well — he had kissed Hua Cheng before. But he hadn’t allowed himself to truly enjoy it, to take it further. He always covered the action up. It’s rude to want more, he told himself, not allowing himself to believe what Hua Cheng was showing him, he has a beloved out there. This is just business. But it hadn’t been business then and it hadn’t been business now. This was a first kiss that felt like hundreds had come before and hundreds would come after it.

It was a kiss that felt like they could perhaps be proper husbands in a proper home, taking care of each other the way married couples were supposed to.

Xie Lian wasn’t surprised he’d dream of such a thing.

“Gege, it’s almost sunrise,” Hua Cheng called from outside, voice faint. Xie Lian jumped, hurriedly spooning the rest of the congee into his mouth. He was fond of sunrise; the way pale colors would spread against the sky only to burn vibrant and colorful.

“I’m coming, San Lang,” Xie Lian said, stepping outside. It was bright enough to see; to the left, there was a small copse of trees, their black shape against the ever-lightening sky. Just the barest hint of blue smudged through the black, like water spreading through ink. “Oh, it’s chilly!”

“It’ll be warm by midday,” Hua Cheng said eagerly, appearing from the trees. He carried one round pink peach in his hand. “No clouds.”

Xie Lian tilted his head back to the sky. His breath came in tiny little puffs; it wasn’t so cold as to be winter, but the sun was still making its approach and it was cool. “Mm,” he said. “I love sunrise.”

Hua Cheng beamed, possibly the biggest smile Xie Lian had ever seen on him. “I know.” Hua Cheng settled on the porch next to Xie Lian, their shoulders bumping together companionably, and carved a few slices out of the peach with a quick flash of a silver knife. “Taste.”

Xie Lian held his hand out obligingly but Hua Cheng bypassed him, depositing the peach curve directly between his lips. “Mmph,” Xie Lian said, then the taste overshadowed embarrassment. “It’s good!” He really did love peaches.

Hua Cheng cut him another slice while the sun started to lighten the sky. Xie Lian watched, enraptured, as the promise of sunlight revealed a small orchard and cottage. There were fields to the right, as well as a little vegetable garden. The peach trees were full, almost bowing under the weight. It truly was time to pick them all.

Hua Cheng hopped up once he was done with his half of the peach, leaving the pit neatly on the side of the porch. Dawn filtered through all the tree branches, leaving Hua Cheng’s dusty red robes shadowed from the leaves. Xie Lian watched, finishing off his peach slice — truly the best of the crop, he thought — and then stood to help.

“Gege, not those,” Hua Cheng said, puzzled. He peered down from the ladder, the shape of him long against the sun. Xie Lian looked back up at him, a peach from the lower branches cupped in his hands. “Have you forgotten how to tell if peaches are ripe?”

Xie Lian wasn’t sure he’d ever known how exactly to tell if a peach was ripe. He’d never picked peaches before. To him, a peach was ripe if it was still edible. “Remind me,” he suggested, and Hua Cheng laughed, a big laugh that bounced around the orchard.

“Gege is playing with me,” he said, stepping down from the ladder with another peach in hand. He pressed Xie Lian’s fingers against it. “The ones near the sun first,” he said gently, his breath ghosting along Xie Lian’s cheek. Xie Lian swallowed, tried to focus on his two peaches. The one he had picked was paler in color. Smaller, not so firm. “See? This one is firm. It can go to the market this morning.”

“San Lang is so knowledgeable,” Xie Lian said, and was rewarded with another laugh. He smiled too, “San Lang is—”

He looked up and his breath caught. He hadn’t seen Hua Cheng in the sun, yet, but sunrise filtered against his face now, pale gold. And Hua Cheng was tan, his cheeks a little red from the slight chill and his nose peeling from long days in the sun. Even his hands against Xie Lian’s were warm. Hua Cheng was never warm. Hua Cheng was a ghost, he had no body warmth at all.

But this Hua Cheng brimmed with it, fully mortal.

“Gege?”

“I’m fine, San Lang,” Xie Lian said hastily, depositing his ripe peach in Hua Cheng’s basket and keeping the smaller one for himself. “Let’s, um. Get going.”

They were a good team against the day, filling up a few baskets quite easily. Xie Lian went slower; both new to this and because he kept sneaking glances over to Hua Cheng. He himself had reached towards his core and found no qi. His sword callouses had been replaced with that of a farmer’s; his hands tanned and worn as he wrapped them around peaches.

Hua Cheng had freckles. They dusted across his cheeks, light. Xie Lian found them charming. His Hua Cheng could never get freckles; he was a ghost. But they danced across the nape of his neck here where the knot of his hair fell away. Pronounced from where the sun touched him. Xie Lian found the whole thing so charming he could hardly stand it; a smile stayed on his face even as he went up and down ladders, racing the sun.

Xie Lian was no stranger to hard work. He’d collected trash, he’d built houses, he’d been a bodyguard once or twice. Hard work was something that he found honest comfort in. He’d even spent a few seasons helping out as a farmhand, tilling soil and helping to cut down wheat.

There was something different here, though. With Hua Cheng at his back as they worked their way down the rows of trees. The way he made bad jokes while they stepped around each other. Sometimes the jokes lapsed into stories; gossipy little things about people in town that Xie Lian didn’t know. He valued them just as much as the information Hua Cheng had passed to him about old cities or ghost traditions.

And he liked the way Hua Cheng called, “Gege!” so brightly, the sound echoing across the orchard to the other side where Xie Lian had slipped another peach into his basket. “Market is soon!”

Xie Lian hefted his peach basket onto his hip, winding his way through the trees. His fingers ached a little bit; unused to the work of a farmhand once again. Hua Cheng took the basket from him easily, setting it on the back of the cart among all the other baskets.

There was an ox lazily swishing his tail in some of the farmland on the other side of the orchard, but Hua Cheng opted to hitch up a small, stubborn donkey to the cart. She refused to pay attention to him or anything around her until Xie Lian took her halter, gently leading her.

“She likes gege more than me,” Hua Cheng said petulantly, helping Xie Lian into the cart. Xie Lian took the reins himself, since the donkey had eyed Hua Cheng’s sleeve like she might decide to eat that next.  

“Mm, I like San Lang best, so that’s alright,” Xie Lian said cheerfully. Hua Cheng, where he was holding the gate open for the cart, flushed a deep red, such a mortal color that Xie Lian had to laugh.

Hua Cheng directed Xie Lian down the road, the cart comfortably bumping along in the deep wheel ruts. They passed a few other farms on the way; one woman straightened up from her plow and waved cheerfully as they passed. “Is it time for peaches already?”

Hua Cheng cupped his hands around his mouth. “First of the season!”

“Aiya, Xiao-hua, save some for your auntie, hmm?”

“If auntie can’t make it to market, she might find all the peaches are gone!”

“Ay, you brat!” The woman laughed, the lines of her face deep-set and wind-worn. “A-Lian, you make sure your husband saves me some peaches!”

“Of course, auntie,” Xie Lian said, waving. He might have been red from her calling out your husband so neatly, but hopefully it could be disguised by the sun, a clear morning bright over their heads. But he liked the way it sounded in her mouth, he liked the way it felt. He liked him and Hua Cheng to be a set, a duo; whether it was fighting together or picking peaches together.

Husband, he mouthed to himself, trying out the way it felt to say. He had never thought he might have one; that the man lounging besides him would mean everything to him. And yet, here Hua Cheng was. Right beside him.

He fell asleep in the cart on the way back home after selling all their peaches. It always happened so fast —nodding off against Hua Cheng’s shoulder only to woke up in his shrine. He already missed the little house he and Hua Cheng had lived in. He missed the vegetable garden he’d kept around the back and the little stubborn donkey. He missed the little carvings set on the bookcases; birds and pigs and oxen, all that must have been done by Hua Cheng’s deft hand. Wasn’t it such a thing, to miss a dream so clearly? To hold onto it, before it faded away into absent memory?

Xie Lian pushed himself upright, thinking maybe he could start his own vegetable garden outside the shrine once spring started, and Hua Cheng was back to help him. His shoulders ached and his hands were dry. There was a smudge of dirt on his palm, left behind when he and Hua Cheng had held hands in the market.

Xie Lian stared at it, wondrous. A dream couldn’t do that. But what else could it be?

“Ge?”

“Mm, San Lang,” Xie Lian murmured, before he even opened his eyes. He was becoming terribly spoiled, to wake up to Hua Cheng every single day. He thought that he’d like to be spoiled like this, when the real Hua Cheng was back.

There was a slight bit of laughter. “Ah, is gege feeling flirtatious today?”

Xie Lian didn’t feel much of anything besides a little sleepy. He cracked an eye, surveying this new dream. He was truly beginning to suspect they were something a little more than dreams.

They were in a cave, then — no, it was a carved-out shrine in the side of the cliff face; a perfect half-moon divot. He and Hua Cheng sat in the entrance to keep out of the rain. There wasn’t much room in the shrine; the god’s statue took up most of the space. Xie Lian’s knee brushed against the statue’s nameplate; Hua Cheng’s leg hung over the ledge. Xie Lian’s feet were in his lap as they leant up against the sides of the little cave, but Hua Cheng was a little bit too tall. He had to tilt his head forward to fit.

Xie Lian had seen dozens of little shrines like this, traveler’s shrines carved away. He turned his face towards the statue but it was worn down from time and weather. He couldn’t even read the nameplate.

Once again, Xie Lian couldn’t imagine dreaming of something like this.

“Go back to sleep, ge,” said this Hua Cheng gently, a little loud over the sound of the rain. He smoothed his hand over the knob of Xie Lian’s ankle; his skin warm. “It’s not your turn for watch, yet.”

Xie Lian nodded absently. “San Lang,” he said sleepily. “Can I come over there?”

Hua Cheng’s thumb dug into the knob of his ankle. “Of course, ge,” he said, sounding a little confused, and then he opened his arms wide, automatic. Xie Lian scooted forward, arranging himself — he hadn’t exactly thought this through; his head smacked the top of the cave and he squeaked. Hua Cheng laughed, something gentle and sympathetic, and he looped his arm around Xie Lian’s waist. Before Xie Lian had even thought about it, he was seated again, tucked in between Hua Cheng’s legs.

He was warm again this time. “Mm,” Xie Lian sighed happily, leaning back against Hua Cheng’s chest. Hua Cheng rested his chin just on Xie Lian’s shoulder. Xie Lian liked how he fit perfectly. “I missed you.”

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” Hua Cheng said, amused. Xie Lian tilted his head back, getting a glimpse of the stars just outside the cave roof. Even through the rain, they were beautiful. “You were the one who said I was too hot and decided to sleep over there, gege.”

“Did I?”

Hua Cheng’s fingers pressed into Xie Lian’s side, causing him to squirm. “It was barely a moment ago, did you already forget?”

“Mm, I forgot. I’m sleepy.” He didn’t think he forgot. He didn’t think he would dream forgetting that. He didn’t think he would dream up a Hua Cheng who was warm, hot even. So hot that Xie Lian sometimes, laughingly, kicked him out of the bed. He wouldn’t dream of Hua Cheng alive — wrong. He wouldn’t dream of Hua Cheng as human. His Hua Cheng was a ghost.

It wasn’t that Xie Lian didn’t want him to be human. He wished more than anything that Hua Cheng had not endured hardship or misery, that his death had not come. That it had not come many times over, in a way.

But Xie Lian also wanted his Hua Cheng. Not this Hua Cheng, even though he was wrapped around him, even though this Hua Cheng was idly playing with his fingers, wrapping his hands around Xie Lian’s. Xie Lian wanted the Hua Cheng that he had fallen in love with, the Hua Cheng who was his and the Hua Cheng he belonged to.

This Hua Cheng was nice. But Xie Lian suspected that some other Xie Lian belonged to this Hua Cheng. Xie Lian himself was only a guest.

“Tell me a story,” Xie Lian said, burrowing in a little deeper to keep warm. He hoped whoever Xie Lian was, in this world, that he wouldn’t mind a visitor stealing some comfort. “Do you remember how we met?”

Hua Chang made a little disparaging noise in the back of his throat. “I was only five,” he said dubiously. “I can’t even remember a time before I knew you. Gege was just always there with me.”

That sounded nice. Xie Lian lolled his head against Hua Cheng’s shoulder, looking out at the rain. It was just a muddy road out there, no town. He and this Hua Cheng were only travelers. Maybe they had been traveling together a long time; they were supposed to have known each other since they were five. He wanted his Hua Cheng and him to be able to say the same, to say that eight hundred years apart was nothing against the eons they were going to have together.

“Tell me what you remember anyways,” Xie Lian suggested. “I want to hear it.” It was perhaps a little sly of him, to ask this. He wanted to know. He wanted to — this wasn’t his Hua Cheng. Xie Lian was beginning to understand that now, really. But there was still something nice about a Hua Cheng who loved him.

Hua Cheng groaned. “Haven’t gege heard this one enough times?” he said, voice fond.

“No?”

Hua Cheng laughed, turning his head to brush a kiss against the nape of Xie Lian’s neck. “Once upon a time,” he whispered, breath warm against Xie Lian’s skin. “There was a little boy who was very kind and very beautiful. Even though he was only seven, everyone expected great things from him.”

Xie Lian relaxed back against Hua Cheng. He always liked when Hua Cheng told stories; he could make them come alive.

“And one day,” Hua Cheng continued, “He stopped some bullies from beating up a younger kid. This gege gave the kid a meat bun and asked why he was covered in mud. And the kid said… said the other children were bullying him, because of his red eye—” Hua Cheng’s fingers touched his eyepatch gingerly, “And this gege told the child that it was beautiful.”

“It is.” Xie Lian couldn’t know this, of course. He’d never seen it. He knew that Hua Cheng had had a red eye from a childhood affliction. He’d seen it in E-Ming. But he’d never seen such a thing in Hua Cheng’s face. He would have loved it there too, though, so this lie was nothing but the truth after all.

“Gege was the first person to ever tell me that.” Hua Cheng cleared his throat. “Perhaps it’s presumptuous to say I fell in love with gege right then?”

“You were five!”

Hua Cheng pressed his grin against Xie Lian’s shoulder. “I was very dedicated.”

“Stop,” Xie Lian complained, light and completely insincere. “Keep going.”

“The rest of the story isn’t quite so interesting, the two boys were inseparable. That kind gege was only a few years older, but he already knew how to read and write. He said he’d teach the child, but…” Hua Cheng’s voice slipped out of his story-telling voice. “I — pretended to be worse than I was, for years, so that gege would spend more time with me.”

“Aiya,” Xie Lian said, embarrassed laughter rising. He wondered if the version of him in the story had ever known this or if he too had been scared of accepting Hua Cheng’s affections.

“It was your mother, you know, who stepped in.” Hua Cheng sighed. “She told me that it was time to stop pretending and propose if I was just going to mope around her house all the time.”

“And did you?”

“Gege’s mother is very formidable!” Hua Cheng’s hand rose, his fingers tracing Xie Lian’s jaw. “How couldn’t I tell you how much I cared for you? Everyone could see. I didn’t even know what love was before you.”

Xie Lian leaned his head back. He liked this world; a world in which he and Hua Cheng had grown up together, twining around each other like the roots of a tree. Xie Lian could hardly imagine being so close to someone. “That’s a nice story,” he murmured.

Hua Cheng brushed a kiss to the underside of Xie Lian’s ear, a place that he never would have found romantic before, but he shivered from the sensation. “Do you — I know we’re almost there, but we could go home. I don’t need to go.”

Xie Lain shook his head immediately. “No,” he said, because Hua Cheng would give up anything for Xie Lian and Xie Lian didn’t need him to. Wherever they were going, it was clearly for Hua Cheng.

“It’s just an apprenticeship, gege, I can sculpt just as well back home.” Hua Cheng turned Xie Lian’s face towards him, searching for something. “Say the word and we’ll go back home. You can see your mother.”

Xie Lian smiled at him. “Don’t you think my mother would be disappointed to see us come home so soon?”

“Okay, gege, but really—”

“Are you really going to argue,” Xie Lian said, inexplicably fond. “I’m really alright. Let me do this for you.”

“But the story—”

“Sometimes I just like to hear you talk,” Xie Lian said, closing his eyes. He could hear Hua Cheng’s heart like this, steady and reliable. “It’s nice. You have a nice voice.”

“Oh,” Hua Cheng said dumbly.

“I’m going to fall back asleep now,” Xie Lian told him gently. “Alright?”

Hua Cheng hummed. “I’ve got you.”

Xie Lian woke up in the shine as he always did after a dream or a journey — whatever it was. It was clearly something. He wished he had better access to Ling Wen or her scrolls to ask what, exactly, it was, but there was no way to let her know without letting Feng Xin or Mu Qing know, and they’d make a fuss over it.

Xie Lian remembered the feeling of Hua Cheng’s arms around him. Warm. Not a dream; he was so sure it had been real. He wouldn’t have dreamt that.

He had heard of a curse like this, a long time ago. One of those middle centuries he didn’t remember very well. A curse about people who could glimpse opportunities, other lives.

He remembered visiting a town he could not remember the name of, or perhaps it was so small it didn’t have a name. Someone had asked him for help — he didn’t remember the name of this man asking, either. When you were as old as Xie Lian, the names of people you met for a night or a week tended to slip away.

There was a young man in the village who woke up addled in the middle of the night. Sometimes he’d scream. Sometimes he’d wander outside, despite the weather, in search of his wife. He told anyone who would listen he was having strange dreams of her.

His wife had died this past winter from a fever. She had died far too young, leaving this man alone with their young child. They had been childhood sweethearts; everyone had known they would have a happy, long life together. Except that was not how life worked.

Of course he would see her in his dreams. He was grieving.

But sometimes the man woke up and didn’t know who anyone was. People who talked to him worried that he was losing his mind. The healer they brought to help him said he wasn’t ill; he was cursed.

Now Xie Lian knew a lot about curses, but he’d never heard about one that made people forget who they were for just a night. Made someone remember some things about their life but not others. And the man was desperate. I want to stop seeing her, he begged, over and over. Please, I keep seeing her in my dreams, I need to stop.

Well, Xie Lian was no healer but he figured that if an entire village of people was worried about this one man, they might know that this wasn’t the typical grief. Xie Lian was no healer but he knew things attached to grieving souls all too easily.

Xie Lian sat with him that night. He waited for the man to fall asleep. He watched the man’s soul dim. He watched the man wake up. “Hello,” Xie Lian whispered quietly. “Do you remember me?”

“Daozhang,” the man said, squinting. “I’m afraid I don’t — where is my wife?”

“She died three months ago,” Xie Lian told him, because he had never quite figured out the trick of comforting someone who needed it.

The man’s face fell. “And my son?”

Xie Lian pointed to the cradle where the two-year-old was sleeping. The man’s face lit up, bright and earnestly painful as he picked up his body, the sleepy child curling against his father’s shoulder.

And in the quiet candle light, his sun his lap, the man talked about how he traveled. He was not the man who had fallen asleep in this bed last night. He wasn’t the man who had lost his wife, no. I’ve been all over, daozhang, the man said, letting out a little laugh. Places you wouldn’t even dream of.

The man was a farmer. He had never gone anywhere further than the village over, to sell grain. He probably could not even read.

Have you ever thought — if only things were different?

Xie Lian was the crown prince of a fallen country. He had lost both of his only friends. He had betrayed his last loyal follower. Xie Lian had wanted, many times, for things to be different. “Yes, of course,” he replied.

I fall asleep and travel to places that are different, the man said simply. He told fantastical tales; stories where his wife was a spirit, stories where the man himself had married someone else, stories where they lived as gods. The baby stirred in his arms, babbling sleepy baby talk and the man gave such a sad smile that Xie Lian ached. In my life, my wife lived. He ran a hand over his child’s head, pressed a kiss to his temple. My son — this son — caught the fever instead.

In the end, there was nothing to be done. Xie Lian could not stop a traveler’s soul from traveling; if anyone had cursed this man, it had been a curse from another country, another time. Another version of this man.

“It will get better,” Xie Lian had told him in the morning, when the man had woken up again, the right man. And he told a story about how he had woken up to find his wife alive and his son dead. But Xie Lian did not know if it would get better. He only knew what the man from the dream worlds had said. It will get better, one day. One day, he’ll learn how to be alright with it.

Xie Lian curled his fingers in the edges of his sleeves, suddenly cold.

He had never traveled like that before. Never opened his eyes and found a different bedroom, different people, a different life. But then, neither had the man from the village until his wife died.

I am not grieving, Xie Lian thought stubbornly. It was still dark out but he got up and stoked the fire, suddenly determined not to sit around. He could make a meal, improve his cooking for when his Hua Cheng came back. I am only waiting for him.

Perhaps Xie Lian, too, had a traveler’s soul now, seeking out his Hua Cheng while he waited.

He will be back and I will have no need for dreams.

Still. He couldn’t help but look forward to the other worlds, a little bit. Even something was better than nothing.

He woke when something wet touched his face.

“San Lang,” Xie Lian laughed. This had to be the wettest kiss he’d ever received, which maybe wasn’t saying much, given that he hadn’t received very many, but it felt like Hua Cheng was licking him instead of kissing him. “San Lang, that tickles, stop!”

He wrenched his eyes open and found a red fox.

He jerked back, firmly catapulting himself off the side of the bed onto the ground with a thump. “Ooh,” he said breathlessly, flat on his back.

The fox let out a tiny yip, followed by a shuffling noise. Its red face appeared on the edge of the bed, looking down at Xie Lian.

“You ought to be proud, managing to chase me off the bed like this,” Xie Lian said, keeping his voice low and soothing. He’d never had much luck with wild animals — either hunting them or befriending them. Mu Qing had managed to endear himself to a very dedicated crow when they were teenagers but Xie Lian had never succeeded in performing the same trick.

The fox whined a little bit, a very cute noise. Despite it being a wild animal, Xie Lian felt himself softening. What could a fox really do to him?  Xie Lian stretched out his arms, stretching his consciousness to the tips of fingers. No shackle, he realized. No godhood. Just his cultivation, sitting steady.

“It’s alright,” Xie Lian told the fox, who leapt off the bed and landed on his chest with a heavy thump. That put the fox’s teeth very close to Xie Lian’s face, which he wasn’t particularly interested in. Maybe the fox knew how worrying that was, because it slipped off Xie Lian’s chest to the rug and instead, nudged his snout against Xie Lian’s outstretched arm.

Xie Lian curled his fingers on instinct, slightly worried the fox would bite, but the fox only pushed his head against his palm, almost like a dog wanting to be pet. “Ah, did I — worry you?”

The fox cast him a baleful glare. Xie Lian didn’t know foxes could have such strong personalities. “I’m fine,” Xie Lian told the fox, sitting up.  He wrapped the blankets over his shoulder, a little chilly now that he was on the ground. They were heavy furs, maybe a wolf’s pelt. Xie Lian himself was still wearing a set of white winter robes. He even had his boots still on; it must have been quite cold when he fell asleep.

This wasn’t Xie Lian’s shrine. This looked more like a hunter’s lean-to, a small haven for travelers. Xie Lian had been in many over the course of his life.

Granted, he’s never had a fox in them with him. The fox had padded over to the stove, wrapping his tail neatly around his paws. He was a big red fox, redder than most foxes Xie Lian had seen. Foxes weren’t usually quite so red, were they?

He had a long scar through one eye like he’d gotten in a fight. His left eye.

Xie Lian felt ridiculous for even saying it. But Hua Cheng could shift forms, and if this was a dream or — well, maybe it wasn’t, he thought that it wasn’t — but if it wasn’t a dream, the only one Xie Lian would embarrass himself in front of was the fox. “San Lang?”

The fox turned his head immediately.

“San Lang,” Xie Lian said again, just to be sure. The fox’s tail rose almost eagerily as he padded back over to Xie Lian.

Xie Lian stifled a laugh. Hua Cheng had been — he had been in every dream, if they were dreams. (Xie Lian hadn’t been able to check into any peculiar curses; what with Ling Wen’s palace still out of commission.) So this fox could be Hua Cheng too. He was remarkably… cute, actually; even with the sharp teeth.

Hua Cheng bumped his head up against Xie Lian’s fingers, like a cat begging to be pet. Xie Lian obliged, thoroughly charmed. “You are very cute,” he decided. “Can you understand me?”

The fox flicked an ear.

“Can you turn human?”

The fox whined in the back of his throat. It was a remarkably charming little sound.

“I see, I see,” Xie Lian said quietly, warmed through and through. In this world, even if Hua Cheng could not be a human, his soul steadfastly remained at Xie Lian’s side. “Well, thank you, San Lang, for being here.”

The fox nodded, padding around in a little circle like he was happy to be praised.

“I suppose we ought to move on,” Xie Lian said, eyeing the little hut. These were really only meant to be used for a day or two. He could see his pack, neatly stacked at the foot of the bed, like he always did whenever he was moving on. The Xie Lian he was currently replacing had been planning on it.

If Xie Lian left, would another Xie Lian wake up with this fox licking his face, in a new location, a day missed that he didn’t remember? Xie Lian himself wasn’t all that sure he was missing days, but then — there was no one to let him know if he seemed different. He was alone in his little shrine.

He couldn’t bear the thought of staying.

“We should go,” he told the fox determinedly, scooping up the last of his breakfast and deadening the fire, so that it was just burning embers for the next person. The fox sat by the door, watching him collect the last of his things and adjusting his robe properly around his shoulders. It was a nice robe, fur-lined to keep him warm. It had been a long time since Xie Lian had something like that — a god didn’t need something like that.

But he didn’t think he was a god, here. He could be fine with that for a day. “Come on, San Lang,” he called, picking up his bamboo hat by the door — it might not protect him from the cold but it was familiar. “We might as well go.”

Hua Cheng leapt out into the snow immediately, his paws sinking down into the powder. He shook one out, annoyed. Other than his red coat, the entire world seemed like it had lost color. A solid layer of white powder covered the ground, the trees were black against a pale gray sky, and fat snowflakes drifted down immediately, catching in Xie Lian’s coat and hair and Hua Cheng’s red fur.

“Did you want me to carry you?” It couldn’t be comfortable for Hua Cheng to have to jump with every step to get through the snow. But Hua Cheng only growled in the back of his throat and set off down what Xie Lian assumed to be the road, leaving a thin trail for Xie Lian to follow. He stopped every few steps, checking behind him as if to make sure he hadn’t lost his daozhang in the snow.

“I’m still here,” Xie Lian promised, moving slowly through the world of white. It was cold but his core kept him warm; his hat blocked a little bit of the snow from catching on his face, and despite the fierce wind, it was lovely to walk outside freely, no companion but one red fox.

Xie Lian didn’t break the silence with words; he only made a little comment every now and then— the sky is getting bluer, San Lang. Look, there are birds flying, isn’t that nice? Hua Cheng responded to each one in his own way; a swish of his tail, a little leap. He seemed devoted to making sure his doazhang wasn’t just talking to nothing, as if to say I’m here, I’m with you.

It was lovely. If Xie Lian had had such a kind, intelligent animal like this by his side in his own life, perhaps he would have been able to be happier, all those long years.

“You are quite kind to me, San Lang,” Xie Lian said softly, hitching his pack up a little higher onto his shoulders. It had stopped snowing and Hua Cheng was taking advantage by running to the forest edge to snap playfully at rabbits and such things before running back to the road, nudging at Xie Lian’s legs. “Yes, yes, I’m going. Do you know where we’re going or are you just pushing me, hm?”

He didn’t know. He thought he’d follow the fox forever and be perfectly content with it. He didn’t know where he would sleep or if he had enough food for the night or if he’d be able to start a fire to keep them both warm, but he and Hua Cheng would solve it.

There were a few houses dotting the road, though Xie Lian didn’t see many people. Of course not, with the snow piled high! Occasionally he caught sight of someone sweeping the snow aside from the walkway, but it didn’t seem to do much.

One man caught sight of him, letting out a cheerful laugh and a big waving arm. “Daozhang,” he called. “I barely saw you against the snow!”

Xie Lian chuckled —only Hua Cheng could really be seen against the white whirlwind. Xie Lian’s white clothes were utterly coated by now, he was little more than a ghost.

“Do you need a place to stay tonight?”

Xie Lian looked down at his fox, resolutely leading him on. He didn’t imagine a fox would be all that welcome in a farm, even one as tame as Hua Cheng. He still had teeth after all. “Thank you, uncle,” he said. “But I’ve an animal with me; I wouldn’t want to bother you.”

The man laughed, leaning on his broom, not at all alarmed by a cultivator being led around through the snow by a fox. “I’ve a woodshed, daozhang,” he said. “Out near the barn! It stays warm because of the animals.”

Xie Lian looked down at the fox. The fox looked up at him. “That would be lovely,” Xie Lian found himself saying. The fox wiggled in the snow, pouncing at his foot as Xie Lian let himself into the garden.

He declined to eat inside with the family. He didn’t want to leave Hua Cheng alone in the woodshed; it might have been plenty warm but there was something cruel about it. Hua Cheng had stayed with him. Xie Lian should do the same.

The man’s son brought them a thick blanket and dinner then; a thick soup and several hot buns directly from the oven. He seemed far too interested in feeding the fox, something Xie Lian wasn’t willing to explore. Hua Cheng had been kind and docile all day but he was still a wild animal. Xie Lian didn’t think they’d be able to stay in the woodshed if the boy’s fingers were gnawed off by sharp teeth.

It was warm with the blankets and the soup. There was even a mat in the back corner; clearly many travelers had stayed here, back pressed up against the wall shared with the barn so that he could give some warmth.

Xie Lian curled up on his side, tucking his arm under his head for a pillow. “Thank you for being with me here today, San Lang.” There was no light in the woodshed, he could only make a little glint of Hua Cheng’s one black eye as the fox circled, trying to find out where he wanted to sleep that night. “You were a very good companion.”

The fox let out a quiet wuf, as if to say of course!

“I wonder how long I haven’t been alone,” Xie Lian said thoughtfully. He couldn’t pin an age on himself, being immortal. He didn’t think foxes lived very long, but then Hua Cheng seemed to be a quite special kind of fox. “I’m grateful. Ah, San Lang, I’m so grateful, you can’t understand how much this means to me, today. Today especially.”

The fox nuzzled at his hand. Try me, Xie Lian thought it meant. Even without words, Hua Cheng could make himself known.

“I’m not your Xie Lian today.”

The fox was the first person that Xie Lian had told this to. It was rather freeing, even though the fox growled.

“I’m a Xie Lian,” Xie Lian reassured him quickly. “I’ve — I’m a different one. Aiyo, I’m explaining this to a fox. Have you heard of the traveler’s curse?”

And the fox listened. Hua Cheng always listened to him, really; before him, Xie Lian had never experienced such devoted listening, even if it was about something small or silly, like the cooking or the mending. Hua Cheng considered every word that fell from Xie Lian’s lips important.

Xie Lian had no way of knowing, really, what the fox understood; he could very well only be reacting to tone of voice and body language. But it didn’t matter. It was a relief to tell him all this, to explain how nice it was to not be alone on a long day, to talk long into the night until his voice grew raspy and his eyes started to slip close for longer and longer periods.

Hua Cheng had wormed his way under Xie Lian’s arm; a curled-up ball tucked against his hip. He was still listening, even as Xie Lian fell asleep.

The days he spent truly awake felt longer even as they grew shorter, night coming quick and cold. Xie Lian’s shrine was a lonely little thing; he spent a lot of time in the village talking to people. Mu Qing and Feng Xin visited often — Feng Xin seemed to want Xie Lian to come be the new Heavenly Emperor; Xie Lian did not want that.

He wasn’t even doing anything to help; it was Mu Qing and Feng Xin who were devoting their time to restoring the heavens. They were always so dutiful in a far different way than what was familiar to Xie Lian. He did not necessarily belong up there with them, despite what they might think.

Xie Lian was just … trying to reinforce the walls of his shrine as the winter started sweeping in, as the days got colder and he got lonelier. Xie Lian was just waiting as best he could.

He woke up in his heavenly palace. That was wrong because his heavenly palace had been destroyed, along with… well, all of the Heavens. Maybe this wasn’t even his palace, it wasn’t as if he had spent a lot of time there before. The Heavens had never been a place for him beforehand, and he was uncertain of his place in it. 

This place was golden. It was built in the style of Xian Le which was familiar the way a missing tooth was familiar — remembered more for its absence than the memory of it — and Xie Lian didn’t know it so well, anymore. It was quite empty of servants and notably, also missing Hua Cheng.

“San Lang,” Xie Lian called out, sitting up. The words echoed, a little bit, bouncing off the golden walls and floors. “San Lang?”

He had yet to wake up in a life without Hua Cheng. He didn’t think it was too bold to say that Hua Cheng was the reason his soul was traveling; of course it was. So where was he?

“San Lang?” Xie Lian struggled out from under the covers. He was tired in a way he hadn’t been in a while, like he’d needed sleep — full gods didn’t, but many of them slept anyway, out of habit or to pass the time. A full day with nothing to break it up could be very annoying. Xie Lian had needed to sleep because he was a banished god and—

He still was one. The cursed shackle was still around his neck; he could feel his fingers brush against it while he straightened the collar of his far too ornate robes. He hovered in between human and god still; he did need the sleep. “San Lang? Where are you?”

Hua Cheng was supposed to have broken it. Had poured everything he had into breaking Xie Lian’s bonds. If he hadn’t broken it, then surely he was here, somewhere. Hua Cheng wouldn’t have left if it hadn’t been for that. Ever since they met, Hua Cheng had barely left Xie Lian’s side.

It was a temperate spring day when Xie Lian stepped outside. It was always a temperate spring day in the heavens, even though Xie Lian would have liked a bit of weather. Gods bustled around easily, dozens of junior officials passing by carrying scrolls. No one spared him a second glance.

Xie Lian didn’t know any of these people and he didn’t want to stop them when they were so busy. He stepped into the flow of people, keeping to himself, looking for any familiar faces — there.

 “Mu Qing!” Xie Lian caught the edge of the man’s sleeve as he went by.

Mu Qing outright glared at him. He had a plum-colored bruise blooming high on his cheekbone that the other him, obviously, had not had. “Does the scrap collecting god have need of me?”

Xie Lian dropped his sleeve. “Ah,” he said, a little thrown off. It wasn’t as if he and Mu Qing were particularly close but it had been some time — had it been ever? — that Mu Qing had looked at him with such abject poison in his eyes. “Sorry. You have a — have you and Feng Xin been fighting again?”

Mu Qing scowled and the bruise rapidly healed, purple ripening to green, green fading to a faintly nauseating yellow before smoothing away like he had never been hit at all. “Tell me what you want and get on with it.”

It was funny how this was the reaction Xie Lian had expected last year, when he’d first arisen. He’d expected acerbic hate, cruel words. He’d expected the sharp look Mu Qing leveled at him, the kind that had always been able to level cities and cut sharp. Not to say that his Mu Qing had been kind. But Xie Lian had not realized until now exactly why none of the other gods liked Mu Qing at all. 

Xie Lian bowed. Perhaps Mu Qing would be in a better mood if he bowed. That he might not be so… acidic. It might have been what Xie Lian expected when he ascended last year, but he no longer thought he deserved it. Perhaps even his Mu Qing no longer thought he deserved it. “Can you tell me where San Lang is?”

“Who,” Mu Qing said flatly. “Did you finally get a junior official?”

“No, no, not an official, my…” Xie Lian didn’t know what Hua Cheng was to him in this world. He was not even sure what he could call Hua Cheng in his world. Lover seemed too bold even if what Xie Lian felt, clearly, was love. Husband was just an outright lie, even if it settled nicely. “My friend?”

Mu Qing rolled his eyes. “If you’ve got any of those, I don’t know them.”

“Hua Cheng,” Xie Lian tried. Maybe Hua Cheng hadn’t introduced himself with a nickname here then. He could still be Hua Cheng.

“Crimson Rain?” Mu Qing raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you destroy the ring that held his ashes last year?”

No.

“No,” Xie Lian said immediately, “No, I didn’t, I wouldn’t—” he put a hand to his chest, searching for the familiar ring, but there was nothing but that cursed shackle, because Hua Cheng hadn’t broken it, because Hua Cheng wasn’t there, because Hua Cheng’s ashes were —

“Yeah, you destroyed it after he broke into heaven and kidnapped you,” Mu Qing said, utterly oblivious to the bile rising in Xie Lian’s throat and his shaky legs and the way he was hot all over. Could he keep standing? He had to. He had to keep standing, had to find some way to restore Hua Cheng’s ashes, he couldn’t — he had to —

Xie Lian had been destroyed before. Carved apart, alone. It had never been so acute as this. Hua Cheng had always been there for him, before. All those other times Xie Lian crumbled, Hua Cheng was there.

His hands were trembling. He couldn’t feel them. Xie Lian had killed him.

Mu Qing noticed. “Dianxia?”

“I’m,” Xie Lian said, and couldn’t say I’m fine because he wasn’t, he was being wrenched apart at the seams, he had killed Hua Cheng.

He couldn’t be fine because he was alone in this world again, permanently; he couldn’t be fine because he loved Hua Cheng and some version of him never had. Or had decided it wasn’t worth it. Had cast such a wonderful, loving person away. Xie Lian couldn’t say I’m fine because the Xie Lian he was supposed to be probably would have been fine at this news. If Xie Lian said it now, if he said he was fine, he would just be killing Hua Cheng again.

“I’m going to pass out,” he said thickly, and did just that.

He woke up in a panic, shout on the tip of his tongue. He ripped apart his robe, the collar undone and hanging by a thread, but the ring was there. The red ring on a chain that was always warm because Xie Lian kept it against his skin, against his heart. “San Lang,” he sobbed, cupping his hands around the ring. “San Lang, I miss you, you have to be alright, you promised — you wouldn’t lie to me, San Lang, you wouldn’t—”

Babbling to the ring was not the same as being able to talk to Hua Cheng. But it was all Xie Lian had. Him, alone in the shrine, talking to a ring and suffocating. “I miss you,” he sobbed, pressing the ring against his lips. “I will wait forever for you, I hope you know this, San Lang, you are so wonderful, you — you mean everything to me.”

If he had thought he was burning apart those months ago, when Hua Cheng had vanished in his arms into a thousand butterflies, then this was like drowning. Each limb heavy, each gasp brought no relief.

“I would wait a thousand years just to see you one more time, but if that was the case, I’d never let you go. Don’t — don’t hold it against me, what some other Xie Lian did to you. I would not do that. I would call you husband, if you let me.”

It was too dark, it was too lonely, he couldn’t breathe. The guilt was crawling down his throat, like river mud. He threw the door open.

Outside, it began to snow.

Chapter Text

He tried not to sleep after that. It was easier than he expected; he’d done it before. Just like he’d gone without eating before. He could do it. It wasn’t all that important, even; he mostly kept it up out of habit instead of any real need. His shackle was broken, after all. He wasn’t confined to any human problems.

But the nights were so long, when you sat up alone with them. What was there to do at night? He could only spend so long sitting and watching the quiet little fire, mind empty, before he let himself nod off, chin tipping down onto his chest.

And he woke in Hua Cheng’s arms, and cold. 

Hua Cheng was asleep. Xie Lian was awake, held in his arms, and he could not stop sobbing. He buried his head in this Hua Cheng’s chest — it might not be his, but it was one and Xie Lian was beginning to learn that when it came to comfort, he couldn’t be picky. 

This Hua Cheng’s arms moved to pull him close just as easily. “Gege, what’s wrong,” he mumbled sleepily, hand caught in the divot of Xie Lian’s waist. He pulled them together, which didn’t make Xie Lian any warmer. How many times had Xie Lian woken up in his arms recently; how many times had he sought comfort from a man who wasn’t even his? “Is it a nightmare?”

“Yes,” Xie Lian mumbled, listing his head. This Hua Cheng looked young and small, more like San Lang, if San Lang hadn’t been well-fed or clean. There was a swipe of dirt above his eyebrow and he was faintly transparent, far less powerful than the Hua Cheng that Xie Lian knew. His Hua Cheng could pass as human. Often did. “Yes, it was a nightmare, this is all just a nightmare. When I wake up—”

 “You don’t have to worry about what happens when you wake up,” Hua Cheng said confidently. “We’ll find him. Ghost City isn’t that big.”

Find who, Xie Lian didn’t ask. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t finding anyone. “Of course, San Lang,” he said instead, burying his face in Hua Cheng’s chest. He wanted to stay forever.

He wanted to leave.

Xie Lian wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be noticing the way the villagers around his shrine would check in on him every few days without fail. He could tell they were worried, but they tried not to show it, the way people always did. Maybe it would be nice if they would just tell him — there was a certain discomfort in the food they brought him every few days. Dumplings wrapped up neatly, congee still hot in a neat pot.

“I can cook myself,” he told them helplessly, taking the dumplings and the congee and the three deep purple plums that the auntie down the road had been saving. “If you’re saving these—”

“No, no,” the auntie said, waving him off easily. “You need to eat!”

“Yes,” Xie Lian said, forcing a smile and digging his fingernail into the purple skin of the plum, much like pressing down on a bruise. “Thank you.”

They made him think he ought to be worried about himself; he wished they would just say something. He was fine enough, really. It was just a long, cold winter made cold by the absence of someone who had warmed his heart. He hardly even had to eat or sleep really; that was something nice about being a full god again. But he kept at it. It was a way to break up the days, instead of watching the winter sun rise, struggling against the watery gray.

And he could not handle the nights alone anymore. He didn’t know how he ever had.

He tried so hard not to sleep, he tried. But it kept happening; he would fall asleep in his chair or standing up outside or wherever he just happened to be. He had always possessed the ability to fall asleep anywhere he needed to; it had always been a useful skill until now.

And now he kept waking up with Hua Cheng at his side. Some nights, he couldn’t help himself — he would reach out to touch. Marvel at Hua Cheng, even if this wasn’t his version. When he was human or ghost, young or old — there was something beautiful in that that Xie Lian couldn’t stop himself from straying towards.

He tried not to wake up Hua Cheng, these long nights. His fingers would hover just between Hua Cheng’s shoulder blades, but never touch.

“Gege, what’s wrong,” this Hua Cheng said quietly. Xie Lian winced, tucking his hand up against his chest as Hua Cheng rolled over, the weight of his arm comforting around Xie Lian’s waist.

“Nothing, San Lang,” Xie Lian said cheerfully, instead of saying I miss you, I wish you were here, I cannot bear to see you. “Go back to sleep.”

“Gege, are you feeling alright?”

“Gege, is something wrong?”

“You know you can tell me if something is upsetting you, right, gege?”

Every Hua Cheng knew. Something was wrong, no matter how Xie Lian tried to hide it, no matter how much he smiled. No matter the Hua Cheng, either.

“Dianxia.” In this world, Hua Cheng was well-dressed and sleek. Both his eyes were ink-black and he was well-off enough in the world that he was allowed to wander the gardens where Xie Lian had hidden. Xie Lian himself was currently tucked away near one of the gates — he’d only barely stopped himself from slumping against the ground because he remembered his robes, fit for a prince again. It had been so long since he’d had to care about dirtying the fancy robes he wore. “Perhaps I should not say, but you do not seem well.”

Xie Lian rubbed a hand over his face, his earrings clinking against his neck. He shouldn’t say anything. He was pretty sure that in this world, he and Hua Cheng were set to be married, two princes to merge countries. Hua Cheng was not familiar with him, yet. Xie Lian imagined they had only met a few times as the wedding preparations started. He ought not to say anything. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

It wasn’t technically untrue. He was supposed to be sleeping right now, he was asleep right now. And this was not well.

Hua Cheng carefully extended a hand. Their chaperones were certainly somewhere close by; Xie Lian had run off and Hua Cheng had found him. “I am sorry to hear that,” Hua Cheng said, and he sounded like he meant it. “I know we are not close, dianxia, but… you could tell me about it?”

Xie Lian stifled a laugh. “Yes, I do imagine I could,” he said fondly, shaking his head. “It’s alright. A walk in the garden will do me good.”

He didn’t think he was imagining the quiet flash of joy in Hua Cheng’s face, when Xie Lian tucked his hand among his elbow.

Spring came. Xie Lian started a little vegetable garden; radishes and snow peas and eggplants. He wasn’t very good at it — Hua Cheng probably would have known what to plant better than he did; Hua Cheng seemed to know a little about everything. Instead, some of the farmers in the nearby village offered him seeds and conflicting advice.

“Where’s Xiao Hua,” they’d ask, helping him plant. Maybe they thought he was lonely. “Such a nice boy like Xiao Hua should be helping you!”

Xie Lian had thought Hua Cheng would be back to help him by spring. With his luck, the vegetables would come out horribly; with Hua Cheng’s luck, they might come out alright. But it was just Xia Lian now. There was no Hua Cheng yet; there were no peach trees to pick and laugh from. This wasn’t their home together yet.

“He will help me harvest me when he gets back,” Xie Lian said to the villagers each time, patting the soil back into place over the seeds. It was cool under his hands. “He’ll be back soon.”

There was one world — Xie Lian woke up, chest tight and fingers tingling. Hua Cheng was slumped over his bed, hand clutched around his. It was a sweet gesture against the musty air, which smelled like sick.

“San Lang,” Xie Lian whispered. There were some constants in these worlds — Hua Cheng often went by San Lang, even though Xie Lian had long suspected his Hua Cheng had never gone by it until he introduced himself to Xie Lian as such.

Hua Cheng stirred immediately. “Gege! You’re awake!”

“Mm, I am.” It was only then that Xie Lian he realized how tired he felt, like he was ill. His whole body ached like he’d been in a fight. He blinked a few times to clear his blurry vision but nothing happened. “Oh… what happened?”

“Nothing, you’re fine,” Hua Cheng said, which of course meant that nothing was fine.

Xie Lian propped himself up on elbow, ignoring the stabbing pain that shot up to his shoulder. Immediately Hua Cheng tried to soothe him back down, elegant hands fluttering at Xie Lian’s shoulder like he wasn’t sure where he could touch without bestowing pain. Xie Lian examined Hua Cheng, the dark circle under his eye, how he looked even paler and thinner than usual. “That doesn’t sound fine,” he said quietly, though he did allow himself to lie back down. It made Hua Cheng happier, at least, and... well, he was not feeling so good, after all.

“It will be,” Hua Cheng said. His cool fingers pressed against Xie Lian’s forehead, feeling for a temperature. “Just — if you can just hold on, Black Water will be back and he’ll bring medicine.”

“I’m sick?”

“Just a little.”

Xie Lian squinted up at Hua Cheng. “Alright, San Lang,” he said, though he didn’t believe it for a second. But the way Hua Cheng looked at him, trying to disguise that fear — Xie Lian knew that fear. He felt it at night, in the dark, just before he fell asleep. The fear the Hua Cheng was not coming back. This Hua Cheng felt it now, worrying about Xie Lian — and Xie Lian thought he might be dying, actually. His body ached and his fingers didn’t work and each breath he took was a rattle in his ribcage. He didn’t think he could hold on much longer. And didn’t this Hua Cheng deserve to see his own Xie Lian in this case? “I’m going to fall asleep again,” Xie Lian said out loud, then coughed. Hua Cheng was quick with a handkerchief; when he pulled away, Xie Lian spied blood on it. “Will you be here when I wake up?”

“Nothing could tear me away, gege.”

Xie Lian closed his eyes. If he fell asleep quick, the other Xie Lian could be back. “I know,” he murmured. “I know you will.”

When he woke up, of course, hale and hearty, Hua Cheng was still missing. Xie Lian knew, though, that Hua Cheng would come back to him as soon as he possibly could.

Xie Lian woke to brilliant gold sunlight, so bright he immediately screwed his eyes back shut and decided never to get up again but—

— the merest brush of lips against the back of his neck.

“Dianxia,” Hua Cheng whispered. Something Xie Lian had found out, in these little nighttime journeys, was that Hua Cheng was very good at telling when Xie Lian had woken. It was as if he was waiting for the merest hitch in breath, attuned to even the quietest stirring that would signify consciousness. As if he couldn’t wait, as if he’d die if the first thing Xie Lian heard wasn’t his devoted well wishes. Xie Lian shivered and rolled over, away from the burning light and into the soothing shadow of Hua Cheng’s arms. Hua Cheng laughed, quiet, the rumble of his chest warming. “Good morning.”

“San Lang, you’re dressed,” he mumbled. There was something inviting about the way he had rolled over immediately into Hua Cheng’s waiting arms, tucked against his chest. He tilted his head up to look at this Hua Cheng. “Come back to bed.”

Hua Cheng smiled, a little cocky. He had two eyes today, the left one red as brilliant rubies, and against Xie Lian’s hand, where it lay against his chest, his heart was beating. “Shouldn’t dianxia get up, instead?”

“I think not today.” Xie Liang traced his thumb across the delicate skin of Hua Cheng’s left eye, taking his time. Hua Cheng tilted his head, politely baffled, and Xie Lian’s hand traveled with it, cradled against his jaw. His thumb just at the edge of that red eye. He thought there was fond confusion in Hua Cheng’s soft gaze, but Hua Cheng didn’t ask, just followed along. Allowed Xie Lian to turn his head, exposing the sharp angle of his jaw to the sunlight sneaking through the curtains. 

Xie Lian always liked that about Hua Cheng, how he took Xie Lian’s idiosyncrasies in stride. If he laughed about them, he did it in such a way that made Xie Lian feel warm, as if Hua Cheng considered every bit of him beloved. Xie Lian liked that, about all the Hua Cheng’s. He liked that about his Hua Cheng; that they could laugh together.

Under his careful ministrations, Hua Cheng smiled. He ducked his head for a quiet, soft kiss; the kind that were supposed to follow warm mornings and the kind that Xie Lian had never had. He only let the kiss go for a brief moment — it always felt a bit like stealing from some other Xie Lian, or even from his own Hua Cheng. But it was comforting, in a way, to have even this, even if it wasn’t his, even if it was stealing, even when he didn’t deserve this yet—

—he pulled away. He never let the kisses go too long and Hua Cheng usually smiled at him anyways, traced a hand across his jaw or his nose or his shoulder. Places Xie Lian hadn’t thought could be comforting or familiar or particularly sentimental until Hua Cheng.

This Hua Cheng did it now too, choosing to eccentrically tug at Xie Lian’s earlobe before pushing up off the bed. One of the gauzy curtains that hung around the bed trailed across his shoulder, drapping him in gold. “Wake up soon, gege, alright? You have a big day today.”

“Alright,” Xie Lian said, unconcerned. Hua Cheng would fetch him when he needed to be woken up and besides, whatever this Xie Lian needed to do today, it hardly concerned him. And he was warm and comfortable here in bed, sleepy and curled up. The bed was luxurious; the blankets warm, and — it took a moment, but it was familiar. Xie Lian had not been in his own palace bedroom in centuries but this place looked a lot like it.

He sat up, scrutinizing. It was hard to tell. Was this? Wasn’t this? Hua Cheng was too old for it to be, but then, so many of these journeys had shown Xie Lian that things could have been very different so easily. Perhaps something was different, somewhere. He just didn’t know what.

He should call someone in to dress him, but the thought of it prickled his skin. He was not this prince anymore and he could dress himself, so he shoved the warm blanket off. The cool breeze through the curtains prickled his skin and carried the conversation from the next room.

“He’s still sleeping,” Hua Cheng was explaining, his voice drifting through the open door. It was soft and hushed, clearly trying to avoid waking Xie Lian up. He was always so thoughtful.

“Isn’t he supposed to meet with someone for lunch?”

Xie Lian cocked his head, took a few steps towards the door. That was Feng Xin’s voice; Xie Lian knew it well. He’d overheard this conversation before, with Mu Qing snapping that dianxia needed to get up and Feng Xin saying he could sleep a little while longer, couldn’t he? And yes, he could see the edge of Feng Xin’s shoulder as he hunched over something at the table. Breakfast, maybe?”

“It’s still early.” Hua Cheng’s shoulders were set properly straight, as befitting an… attendant? An attendant of the crown prince? Very different than the casual, appealing slouch he had in Xie Lian’s waking world. Feng Xin was the same way; he’d never gotten rid of it even in these eight hundred years.

Feng Xin huffed quietly, a sound more familiar to Xie Lian than his own breathing. “Fine, fine.” Feng Xin waved his hand around — the arrow he’d been working on traced a haphazard path through the air. He was always like that, gesturing big. What wasn’t familiar, though, was the casual way he spoke to Hua Cheng. Like they were friends. Xie Lian’s own Feng Xin sometimes did this now, when he never had when Hua Cheng was actually around. Asking awkward questions about Hua Cheng and Xie Lian, trying to make the absence better. “You’ll explain if he’s late then!”

“Of course I’ll take responsibility.”

“Aw, you’re no fun.” He’d heard Feng Xin say that too, whenever Mu Qing was too serious, and now it seemed it was Hua Cheng’s turn. It warmed Xie Lian’s heart to hear Hua Cheng say I’ll take responsibility, solemn. And just a bit of fondness threaded through his voice, quiet like he didn’t want Feng Xin to know. Perhaps even Xie Lian wouldn’t be able to place it if Hua Cheng hadn’t woken him up this morning so gently, so full of love.

There was a gusty sigh that could be no one other than Mu Qing. Sure enough, he stepped into view soon, holding a tray that surely was Xie Lian’s breakfast. He looked annoyed as he put it down on the table, and batted Feng Xin’s hands away, as per usual. “He really has to get ready. The princess will be waiting.”

Feng Xin hummed. “Do you think dianxia will marry her?”

Hua Cheng’s hand slipped, the smallest amount, against the handle of his sabre. He covered it up fast, tucking his hand against the small of his back in an impressively proper way that Xie Lian had never seen before. He stood even straighter. “He didn’t like her.”

“He hasn’t liked any of the princesses he’s met with,” Feng Xin said disinterestedly, too busy testing the sharpness of his arrow against the pad of his thumb. “He’s going to have to marry one someday.”

“Shut up,” Mu Qing said tiredly. “Don’t you both have anything better to do?” Feng Xin didn’t notice — wouldn’t notice. But Mu Qing clearly had caught the shadow on Hua Cheng’s face, hastily covered up. He kicked at Feng Xin’s chair, hard enough that Feng Xin’s hand slipped and the arrow tip drew blood.

“Hey!”

Mu Qing clicked his tongue. “That looks bad.”

“Jerk,” Feng Xin huffed, jerking away from the table with his bleeding hand held above his head. He tried to swipe at Mu Qing as he went and Mu Qing neatly stepped out of the way. They didn’t look so young as they did in Xie Lian’s memories but that didn’t stop them from messing it around.

Hua Cheng carefully dropped into Feng Xin’s emptied seat, folding his hands on the table so precisely it was painful.

“It will be alright,” Mu Qing said to Hua Cheng hesitantly. It rather warmed Xie Lian’s heart to hear Mu Qing try, like this. Like they were friends in this world, without the history of the last. “Dianxia has never been interested in — well.”

Hua Cheng hunched his shoulders just the smallest bit. “Dianxia will need to marry one day.” Half of his face was lit up in brilliant sunlight and the other half shadowed dark as night. “I have made my peace with that.”

Xie Lian was abruptly angry with his other self, for making Hua Cheng sound like this. So hollow. So helpless, like there was nothing for it. Has this Xie Lian done that to him, not let him know how loved he was? Had he cared more of his duties than — he probably had, hadn’t he. Xie Lian, perhaps a younger version of himself, might have done the same.

Mu Qing sighed. “Want an orange?”

Hua Cheng shook his head. “Those are for dianxia.”

“He surely won’t mind.”

Hua Cheng gave a small little smile, crooked. “They’re for dianxia,” he repeated again.

“You should have one,” Xie Lian said.

“Dianxia,” Mu Qing murmured, bowing his head immediately. He held up the tray of food, the oranges a smear of color.

Xie Lian smiled, reflexively, though he wasn’t paying Mu Qing much attention, to be honest. He couldn’t, not with Hua Cheng right there. He didn’t want to see such a small smile. He wanted Hua Cheng to know he was loved. “Have one, San Lang,” he said, taking a few steps forward. It was cool and his feet were bare on the floor but he wanted Hua Cheng to have an orange. “We can have one together.”

It seemed impossible to go back to ignoring Hua Cheng after that. How could Xie Lian wake up, wherever he was, and not care for Hua Cheng, even if it wasn’t his Hua Cheng? No, it was far too cruel. And it was cruel, too, to worry Hua Cheng, to have him keep asking gege, are you alright? The other Hua Cheng’s didn’t deserve to worry; Xie Lian wanted to comfort them too.

He had never been able to ignore Hua Cheng, not even at the very beginning. He had never had a hope; it seemed as if they had been drawn together time after time. How funny it was, for it to feel like fate and know that it was the furthest thing from it. Is that what the point of all this traveling was? To know how much Hua Cheng loved him, to know how best he ought to love Hua Cheng?

Xie Lian could do that. He could keep these little bits of information, holding little bits of the other Hua Cheng’s close to his chest so that he could love his Hua Cheng properly. He’d never loved anyone like he’d loved Hua Cheng; it had taken him this long and so many worlds to understand it himself.

But he loved Hua Cheng so much he could burst with it.

He would wait as spring threatened to turn into summer and his crops came out poorly. He would wait so he could love his Hua Cheng properly.

Hua Cheng spoiled Xie Lian in all these worlds. More often than not, he woke up with Hua Cheng beside him, tangled together in some sweetly intimate way. It was always a nice difference waking up to the dreams then it was to wake up alone in real life.

But today, it seemed, he was alone. It was just a small cave on what looked like a forest; there were no other people around, Hua Cheng or otherwise, and no animals to be seen either. It was still night out, even. Perhaps this was a world in which Hua Cheng and Xie Lian hadn’t met yet?

It was an almost nice thought. That had so recently been Xie Lian, not having any Hua Cheng, and his life had been just fine but it was all the better for having Hua Cheng nearby. And he was sure that Hua Cheng must be nearby, even if he wasn’t right there. That was the point of all these journeys, wasn’t it? There had never been a world where Hua Cheng hadn’t been part of it.

Xie Lian threw dirt on the small fire — with his luck, he’d start a forest fire before he even managed to leave — and scoured the cave for his belongings. He could stay there, he supposed, but he… wanted to see Hua Cheng. He wanted to put this Xie Lian even a little closer to the Hua Cheng of this world, since fate was always stacked against them.

(Could it really be stacked against them, though, when they had managed to come together in so many worlds? That seemed close enough to fate to Xie Lian, really; that they tried so hard each time. Wasn’t that all the good fortune the world had to offer?)

Outside the cave was a forest with remarkably friendly-seeming trees — Xie Lian recognized this forest for the path just outside of Ghost City. It hadn’t seemed exactly friendly the last time here was here but now the trees were in full bloom and he found he knew the way.

He hiked his pack up on his back cheerfully. It seemed he could go along to Hua Cheng after all. Just to put this Xie Lian a little closer to his Hua Cheng. And Ghost City let him easily enough; it seemed friendly too. It was busy and cheerful like it always was, ghosts and spirits and what have you mingling together until you could hardly tell what was what. And no one could tell a wayward cultivator from a dead one, really, so long as he didn’t have to eat the food.

Perhaps he ought to go to Ghost City in his own world, see what had become of it in Hua Cheng’s absence. Perhaps half a year was nothing to ghosts and it was still like this, happy without the interference of any gods.

Hua Cheng’s manor was right in the middle of the city. Xie Lian found his way there as if by accident. Without Hua Cheng at his side, it was much more imposing. The windows and doors seemed to stare down at him, crushing him small like he wasn’t supposed to be here. Perhaps he shouldn’t have come after all. What was he going to do in Ghost City, really? Wouldn’t his other self be alarmed to wake up here? It didn’t seem a particularly sensible place to try and leave someone to meet a significant other.

“Don’t I know you,” one of the guards said. He was a skeleton missing several teeth. Despite the lack of eyes, he gave Xie Lian a piercing look.

“I, ah,” Xie Lian said. He hadn’t expected to be called upon! “I’m hoping—” Ah, he hoped this wasn’t too presumptuous. He wasn’t even sure if Hua Cheng knew him here. Thousands of ghosts must want to see him every day. But the guard had found him familiar, so maybe there was a chance? “To see Crimson Rain? I’m… Xie Lian.”

“Oh, you again,” the other guard said. He had a pig head with a neat ribbon around one of his ears. He gave a little scoff but it didn’t seem entirely derisive. “You don’t give up, do you?”

“No?”

The guard jerked his head in towards the gate and Xie Lian entered, passing through the gardens that he’d not had much opportunity to see before but that was full of white and red flowers, all blooming despite the black sky. One of the servants gestured him in to a large sitting room, also all draped in red fabric. Xie Lian stuck out quite badly, a swatch of white against all the red as if someone had managed to erase paint from the canvas.

He twisted around as he heard Hua Cheng approach, hoping to see—

“You again,” Hua Cheng said disdainfully. Xie Lian must have woken him up; he was only dressed in a simple pair of black trousers and nothing else. His arms were crossed over his bare chest.

“San Lang!” Xie Lian shut his eyes immediately, blush rising to his cheeks. “You — are — I can wait while you fetch a robe?”

“I’ll wear what I like in my own house,” Hua Cheng said. Xie Lian shivered; even with his eyes closed, he could tell that Hua Cheng was scrutinizing him. “Xie Lian, isn’t it?”

“Ah — oh, um, yes,” Xie Lian said, opening his eyes in confusion. The guards had recognized him, so he’d assumed that Hua Cheng would know who he was. Were they not close, in this world? How could that be?

“Right.” Hua Cheng took a seat on one of the red divans, leaning forward. His black hair was a mess. He really had just woken up. “Well, I’m not your Hua Cheng.”

“What?”

“You come here every month or so,” Hua Cheng said, bored. He picked at his fingernails instead of looking at Xie Lian, which Hua Cheng had never done before. It made Xie Lian feel small, like a bug to be brushed off. “Not the real you, of course. A dreaming traveler’s version of you.”

Xie Lian jerked his head up. “You know—”

“Yes, I know you come here every month or so because you wake up in this world and think you ought to be with me.”

Something sank deep into Xie Lian’s heart, tenterhooks dragging him down. Drowning without water, sinking while steady. He had never even realized this was possible. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

He felt peculiarly hollow, all of a sudden. What was the point of this world then, to be cruel? To make him feel the breath vacate his body, like the implosion of a spell that collided, exploded, left nothing behind? He hadn’t felt like this since — he hadn’t felt like this since — he hadn’t — when Hua Cheng was dead — but he wasn’t—

He was being crushed like he was at the bottom of the sea. It took him ages to swim back to the surface, his eyes unblurring until Hua Cheng came back into view, crisp and intense. He seemed to have been waiting. Possibly all the other Xie Lians had done this too, made a quiet scene in his palace. Xie Lian likely even the first to be overcome by this news. He couldn’t take much comfort in the fact that he wasn’t alone.

“So here we don’t know each other?”

Hua Cheng shrugged. “I’ve talked to the real you before. Got a ghost to find him; he was annoying me.” He bared his teeth in approximation of a smile. “Nice guy.”

Xie Lian wondered what that meant. Hua Cheng wasn’t the type to let little annoyances lie. Generally, Xie Lian admired this about him. If Hua Cheng had a rock in his shoe, he wouldn’t walk on for miles with it and he wouldn’t let Xie Lian walk on it either. In all honest, he thought Hua Cheng would probably have killed someone over this without much issue. “You didn’t… you seem the type to not let things drag on?”

“I’m not.” Hua Cheng smirked. “We have a deal. I’m holding up my end, you see — I’m explaining things to you and I’m being nice about it.”

“You are being very kind,” Xie Lian agreed, because he couldn’t imagine it was easy, explaining to a lost man every few months that you weren’t who he thought you were. Hua Cheng gave him a look that might have been impressed. Or annoyed. “Would you mind terribly if I ask a few more questions?”

Hua Cheng sighed, clearly put upon. “That’s part of the deal too.”

“What does he give you?”

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

Xie Lian tilted his head. His Hua Cheng was like this too, always trying to protect Xie Lian from things he wasn’t sure he ought to know. It was kind and sometimes a little overprotective, but Xie Lian didn’t mind that either. At his age, it was nice when someone treated you gently. It was funny that Hua Cheng did the same now, in a world where he didn’t seem to feel the need to treat Xie Lian any which way at all. Xie Lian decided not to push it. “What do I do in this world?”

Hua Cheng shrugged. “I don’t know. Is that really what you want to know?”

“What else should I ask?”

“You usually ask me if we really aren’t together.”

“That… seems rather obvious,” Xie Lian said slowly, the little hole in his chest eating him away. He didn’t like that. He felt… punctured, like the warmth was leaking out of him like blood from a wound. “But it seems rather crude to keep asking, if you … really have no intentions of being together with me, despite. Um. Never mind.”

It was very crude to keep pushing someone to get together with a man he didn’t know, just because they were together in other worlds. But Xie Lian couldn’t get the wrongness of it out of his mind; it seemed a phantom had sunk into his body for how hard it was to make it move the way he wanted to. He folded his hands in his lap, suddenly cold, and it seemed to take an eon to get the scarred fingers into position.

“He did ask me if we could try it.” There was a false sort of thoughtfulness in his voice, like he was contemplating what he might eat for dinner the next evening and not contemplating the entire fate of Xie Lian in this world. “I suppose there’s something to be said for all those worlds.”

Yes, there was a lot to be said for all those other worlds, Xie Lian thought. But that was nothing that he would be saying here.

“He didn’t seem all that interested, though. And neither am I. I’ve got someone.”

The words hit Xie Lian like a punch. His eyes dropped to Hua Cheng’s hand where it balanced on his knee, the neatly tied bow on his pinky. Only the red string didn’t loop towards Xie Lian’s own fingers. Instead, it trailed off the edge of the divan and out the door, presumably down the hallway to where Hua Cheng’s real lover slept.

“You seem like a nice guy,” Hua Cheng said after a minute. He probably wouldn’t bother to say that if it wasn’t true. And even — even though this wasn’t Xie Lian’s Hua Cheng, even though this would never be any Xie Lian’s Hua Cheng — he was being very nice too. He flicked his gaze up to Xie Lian’s, assessing how he felt. Xie Lian had been under that intense look before; he knew it well. It was kind. Even now, Hua Cheng was being kind.

“Thank you,” Xie Lian heard himself say. He couldn’t take his eyes off the string. When he looked at his own hand, his fingers were bare.

Hua Cheng had chosen someone else.

It did not feel good, that there was a Hua Cheng that wasn’t his. Apparently, he was so possessive as to be bothered by it — the thought permeated through Xie Lian’s every action. Even when he weeded the garden, he jerked the little plants out so heartily that sometimes he brought the eggplants with them. They were half-grown malformed things barely longer than a thumb.

Xie Lian put them down with a sigh. They looked pathetic lying there in the dirt alongside the weeds. Maybe he could try to eat them anyways? They just weren’t ready; it was too early in the summer. The sky was a brilliant blue above Xie Lian’s little shrine and all he could think about was the black starless night of Ghost City and how friendly it had been at first. Until he’d—

It was fine. Not all Xie Lians could be with their Hua Cheng, could they? Surely sometimes a Hua Cheng would be too fed-up with his Xie Lian or underwhelmed.

Busy. Otherwise occupied. Had someone else. Surely sometimes there was a Xie Lian found wanting; he only could be grateful that it wasn’t him.

He shoved his hands deep into the damp soil, until they were covered up to his wrists.

This dream, he seemed to work in some small store. He hadn’t much been listening, too busy turning his head this way and that to catch a glimpse of Hua Cheng as he wandered around the town, only there wasn’t one in this dream, either. His feet kept moving, one in front of the other along the path. It was a big enough town, surely Hua Cheng had to be somewhere.

He couldn’t leave Xie Lian alone here, could he, leave him alone again? No, Xie Lian just had to keep looking, that was all; he could find him this time and it would be different.

Instead, some woman found him. She scolded him, kindly, and dragged him back down the street, the way Xie Lian had already come and away from the rest of the town where Hua Cheng could be. Xie Lian’s stomach knotted uncomfortably, pressure building in his chest and crawling up his throat like he might be ill. And he had to work like that! The woman nudged him into what might have been a jewelry store, chiding him all the while for being late. And Xie Lian had done hard labor before but he had never stood for so long behind a counter, dressed in the neat uniform robes that the other employees wore while all the while his heart battered against his ribcage, wanting to be released back out into the town to find Hua Cheng. So they wouldn’t be apart here, either.

But he couldn’t. This Xie Lian had a job and luck that wasn’t so bad that he broke whatever he picked up. He showed off hairpins and earrings; he sold a small bottle of rouge to a woman with laughing eyes and a beautiful rosewood comb that came in a set meant for married couples. It was a wonder he never broke anything, with his luck.

He had never had the opportunity to work like this — usually the jobs he had picked up were hard labor that no one wanted to do and more often than not, they were disgusting. A job like this was … not nice, exactly, because a woman in very expensive robes did scream at him, but different.

Looking at his elegant, unscarred hands, he wasn’t sure this Xie Lian would fare well in hard labor. He had to keep the job for this one.

He thought staying there behind the counter with the rouge and the hair sticks was possibly one of the hardest things he had to do. Hua Cheng was out there. Hua Cheng could be looking for him! He could be looking for Hua Cheng—

And just like that, Hua Cheng found him. His voice floated through the open door, talking about sheets of silk and coins per sheet and Xie Lian’s knees buckled. Even the sound of Hua Cheng’s voice was enough to soothe him, as easily as if Hua Cheng was there by his side. Everything in Xie Lian’s body was attuned to him.

One of the women drew him close, eyes laughing. “Your young man is here,” she whispered, giggling.

“My young man?” Xie Lian felt heat rush to his face, embarrassed. He couldn’t stop staring through the door, at the shadow of Hua Cheng coming closer.

“As if you don’t know he came here last week and the week before that just to see you,” the woman laughed. “What need does a scholar have for hairpins? Give that poor boy a break; you haven’t even told him your name yet!”

“Ah,” Xie Lian said, embarrassed but overwhelmingly happy about it. Every part of him strained towards the door, a veritable ache singing through his body just for that first glimpse of Hua Cheng.

And there he was, dressed in fine silken robes befitting a scholar, with his hair neatly pinned up off his neck. He was distracted with one of the men bouncing around him. “Yes, tell him that I’ll be back for dinner — yes. No, I —” and then he looked up. Xie Lian saw the moment Hua Cheng saw him; his dark eye opened with surprise then curved into a crescent as he smiled. “Hello.”

Xie Lian meant to say hello. He really did. He opened his mouth to say hello and instead he burst into tears.

“Oh, ah!” Hua Cheng’s face twisted into a comical rendition of panic and if Xie Lian weren’t so busy embarrassing himself, he’d tease Hua Cheng about it.

“Apologies,” Xie Lian managed to say through sobs. He covered his face up. He was not a very pretty crier; he wished that Hua Cheng didn’t have to see him like this. But Hua Cheng took him gently by the elbow and led him out of the store and into the back room, one arm gently hovering around his shoulders as if he didn’t know it would be proper to touch. A polite young man, Xie Lian thought hysterically, and swallowed down a laugh amongst the sobs.

“Sit, sit,” Hau Cheng murmured. “Let me fetch you a drink—”

“Oh, ah, I don’t—” but a cup was already being pushed into his hands. Xie Lian drank, very aware of the way Hua Cheng’s fingers lingered on his wrist. “Thank you.”

Hua Cheng was knelt in front of him, worry evident on his face. Xie Lian hated to see it there and was selfishly glad for it. To see such care with such abandon, after the last world —

They didn’t know each other well, in this one, Xie Lian could tell that from the gossip going on outside. But there was still something there, like they were hooked together. Xie Lian felt himself tangling; he could tell that Hua Cheng felt it too. They were just drawn together and Hua Cheng didn’t even know why he felt such an urge to lean in, be gentle.

That was comforting. That some Hua Cheng could still want him, even if he didn’t know him. Even if Xie Lian never saved his life, was never kind to a scared little boy with little in the world but hope. This Hua Cheng was a completely normal man, untouched by war. A scholar if the rumors were to be believed. That was sensible — Hua Cheng was a smart man. He knew a little bit of everything. Of course he could be successful in this.

Xie Lian swiped his fingers carefully under his eyes, hoping to remove evidence of his minor breakdown. Hua Cheng produced a handkerchief from his sleeve. “Ah, thank you,” Xie Lian said with a little laugh. “I’m rather a mess today. What’s a nice young man like you doing, coming back for me?”

“This nice young man only wants to know your name.”

“And nothing more?” Xie Lian raised an eyebrow and the tips of Hua Cheng’s ears tinted red. He didn’t fully blush, really — Xie Lian only saw it because he knew Hua Cheng so well. He was too confident in himself — not full of himself, exactly, but confident. He knew his worth; he had fines robes and a assured sound to his voice as he talked to his subordinates. A reliable man, maybe. Someone anyone would be flattered to have the attentions of.

“I would happily accept anything you are willing to give.” Hua Cheng insisted, “It just seems sensible to start at the beginning.”

“I suppose we should,” Xie Lian said, though this was only the beginning for one of them. Two possible lovers, meeting in a store. Feng Xin had read romance novels like this, years and years ago. Xie Lian had never understood much about them unil now.

Hua Cheng brightened, subtle. “You’ll tell me?”

Xie Lian smiled, a seed of warmth blooming in his chest. “Come back tomorrow,” he said, placing his hand on Hua Cheng’s elbow. “And ask me then.”

The next time, it was dark. It was so black that opening his eyes did nothing at all. In fact, Xie Lian wondered if opening his eyes somehow made it even darker. He reached out, blindly, and slammed his hand against hard wood. He traced his hand further down, to the side, discerning the shape and it seemed—

Ah.

He’d been here before. Trapped inside a coffin. No wonder it was so dark; he was locked away and buried under the ground. Nearly a hundred years he’d spent innhere — that was a guess only, he wasn’t keen to count. The air was unbearably stale against the roof of Xie Lian’s tongue. He would probably pass out soon — he twisted his hand around awkwardly to try and touch his throat, to sense if there was a shackle there, but he couldn’t manage it. He was so weak. Who knew how long he had been here?

He remembered having trouble walking when he was first freed and his arm was caught between the lid and his chest and he couldn’t force it out no mater how he tried, squirming and flailing like a child and all he succeeded in doing was making things more painful for himself. There was a nail through his stomach. All the moving did was rip him open.

The coffin was painfully tight. The air was painfully thin. He needed to breathe and there was little else to do about it and he had to regulate his own breath. In, out, in, out, in out. He was constantly just on the edge of dying in this coffin, so he had to breathe. If he panicked, he would lose his senses even faster. His heart would pound and pain would sneak into the cavern behind his eyeball and every stale breath whistled through his lungs like they were full of holes. He couldn’t think. If he could see, his vision would blur, but there was nothing to blur but streaks of black, no light, empty black, and—

The pain threatened him. He couldn’t get his hand up to his temple to press against his eye, alleviate the pain there that was so strong he’d rather just not have a body at all if it was going to feel like this. His hand was stuck crossed over his chest and he was just pathetically beating on the lid of the coffin with his knuckles. The sound barely made a dull thud; he was so weak.

He would call out but his voice was stuck in his throat. He would cry if he wasn’t so terrified of pushing himself too far with the lack of air until he was unconscious and woke up again and — maybe he should do that. Maybe he should leave this Xie Lian to his fate. If he was dying, undead, living in a coffin — Xie Lian had already done that. He couldn’t do it again, he couldn’t stay here — he should just be unconscious. If he was unconscious, he would go back home.

The lid shifted.

Burning light peered through the crack, crossing Xie Lian’s chest, and he screwed his eyes shut. He remembered that the light had burned his eyes after so long spent underground. He had cried out in pain and the man who freed him hastily made him a blindfold. Xie Lian didn’t take it off until it was night and even the half-moon was far too bright, bathing the forest in silver. The man’s robe, at night, was a gorgeous dark blue and Xie Lian could not stop looking at it, breathless with the sight of colors again. They were so new to him he almost had to relearn them.

He closed his eyes now as the light crept ever further forward.

“Dianxia,” someone gasped, and Xie Lian’s eyes flew open.

“San Lang,” he gasped, trying to sit up, but he couldn’t. There was a nail in his stomach and he hadn’t eaten in — in — he didn’t know, but he wasn’t hungry, really, because there was a nail in his stomach. And the light was too bright, though at least it was dusk.

Xie Lian squinted up at the purpling sky painfully. His eyes were much better this time; he could see Hua Cheng’s worried face and the dark red of his robe as he carefully set about removing the nail. All the while murmuring, “Don’t worry, dianxia, I will take care of this. Please… please bear with the pain for a moment.”

It was with a painful sort of pop that the nail left his stomach, but it was not so bad as it could have been. The sky was bright, but not so burning as it could have been. And Hua Cheng was kind, as kind as he could possibly be. The first two things were made easier by the presence of the third. Hua Cheng had found him before he’d ripped apart too much of his stomach. Hua Cheng had found him before his eyes adjusted to constant darkness. Hua Cheng had found him.

Xie Lian did not want to be in the coffin a minute longer. “Will you help me up?”

Hua Cheng was so careful this time, the way he braced his hands against Xie Lian’s spine. “Slowly,” he cautioned. “Dianxia is very injured.”

“I’ll be fine,” Xie Lian said, and he meant it. The moment he stepped over the shallow wooden barrier of the coffin edge, he would be just fine. And Hua Cheng was there supporting him, fingers cool against the crook of Xie Lian’s bare elbow where his sleeve had torn away.

He wore no shoes. The grass against his feet was cool and so very comforting.

Hua Cheng settled him against a nearby tree, faced away from the coffin and towards the river, painted violet in the fading light. The trees above them were turning red, as red as Hua Cheng’s robes. He was Hua Cheng today, Xie Lian noted, instead of San Lang. His shoulders were broader; his hair was loose over them. His face was bordering on gray and he still had the eyepatch. Xie Lian knew he did not particularly like the eyepatch, though Hua Cheng had never said so. If Hua Cheng had had a choice, perhaps he would have chosen to be San Lang instead, appearing healthy and whole and alive, but there was no choice for him when Xie Lian was so injured. Over and over again, he would put his fears aside for Xie Lian.

“Please excuse this lowly one,” Hua Cheng murmured, placing his fingers on Xie Lian’s wrist to feed Xie Lian a thin stream of spiritual energy. Xie Lian pressed his lips together against his smile — Hua Cheng, so deferential! A far cry from the cheeky young man who had appeared in the back of that ox cart and stuck to Xie Lian like a bur on his robes.

But it hadn’t been so many years this time, had it? Hua Cheng was still young, really. What was a hundred years or so against eight hundred? Eight hundred years of searching could wear a man down, making him sharp, make him want in a way that this Hua Cheng was not yet prepared to do.

“Thank you.” Xie Lian accepted the flask of water that Hua Cheng had gone down to the river and fetched for him. The water burned against his dry throat. “What year is it?”

Xie Lian hadn’t asked this, last time. Last time, grave robbers had cracked upon this coffin — he thought. It had seemed like they were, but they were terrified of the very real, living body in the coffin, instead of a corpse and they ran immediately. And Xie Lian was nailed in, so he just lay there, eyes screwed shut against the light, waiting to regain a bit of strength to remove the iron from his stomach.

It wasn’t until a kind traveler, carting crops on his back, came across the coffin that Xie Lian was really free. That man had been very kind to him, and Xie Lian had been grateful, but he’d never asked what year it was. It had been a good few decades after that that Xie Lian overheard someone mention the date, so he could guess at the number but had never wanted to.

Hua Cheng told him the date.

It was a date not very far after Xie Lian had been trapped. Maybe a few years? Less than ten, he was pretty sure. Hua Cheng had found him in less than ten years this time. Ten years was nothing compared to a hundred. Ten years was kind, even if the Xie Lian of this world wouldn’t know it so.

Xie Lian slumped against Hua Cheng gratefully. “You found me quite early this time,” he said, warmth suffusing through him. It seemed warm enough that it could heal him inside and out. Hua Cheng had chosen him this time. Hua Cheng chose him.

“This time?”

“Ah, San Lang,” Xie Lian said, then, “Is that your name?”

Hua Cheng paused for a moment. He clearly dearly wanted to say yes. “No. This lowly one is Hua Cheng.”

Xie Lian smiled. His San Lang, always so good when it came to him. “Ah, Hua Cheng,” he corrected. “In another world, I know you as San Lang.”

Besides the fox, Xie Lian had not told anyone about his world traveling. Feng Xin and Mu Qing would have worried and berated him in equal turns, and he couldn’t deal with their henpecking. Ling Wen was far too busy, and none of the villagers would have been able to understand. Hua Cheng was the only person Xie Lian could tell this to, and so this Hua Cheng became the first one to hear the story.

It was… perhaps overly flowery. Xie Lian was no good at stories, not really — he had no flare. He only had the truth, which was rather emotional, but who else could Xie Lian spill his secrets too, if not Hua Cheng? Hua Cheng had seen them all. And Hua Cheng listened to it all, hanging on his every word with his eye wide and lips slightly parted as if to drink it all in.

Xie Lian did not care to be careful when explaining about his San Lang. He was sure his own words were besotted and lovelorn, but he did not care. Perhaps this Hua Cheng could benefit from knowing this, even if he didn’t seem able to bring himself to ask.

“So in another world,” Hua Cheng said slowly. He’d allowed Xie Lian to grip his hand tightly through the entire explanation, even though he had protested at first, saying it wasn’t proper. “I didn’t manage to find you here?”

“That’s right.” Xie Lian twisted around to look at him. His robes protested, they were disgusting and rust-colored due to the dried blood. They were mostly in tatters; Hua Cheng had given him a fine cloak to ward off the chill. Xie Lian protested that it would get disgusting, not that Hua Cheng had cared. “It took us many more years before we met.”

“How long was dianxia in the coffin?”

Xie Lian smiled easily. He would not tell Hua Cheng that. “What does it matter now that you’ve found him?”

“But the other me didn’t,” Hua Cheng pushed, as if annoyed with the other Hua Cheng’s incompetence. “You suffered for much longer.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Xie Lian repeated. Hua Cheng was always too hard on himself. “You found me. Him.”

“But I failed you,” Hua Cheng protested, as if he could have crossed into another world to save Xie Lian several hundred years ago. If anyone could have done it, it would have been Hua Cheng. He was saving Xie Lian in thousands of worlds. What did it matter if he hadn’t in the last? It was sad, true, that that Hua Cheng hadn’t loved him, but this one did. So many Hua Cheng’s did.

“How could you have failed me?” Xie Lian shook his head. “Haven’t you stood beside me all these years? Haven’t you been my little ghost fire and my Wuming all along?”

Hua Cheng looked shocked. “Dianxia, you—”

“I know,” Xie Lian said, smiling. “The other me will not, but he won’t mind either. I think he’ll be glad for it.” He snuck a look at the coffin at the corner of his eyes. “He will be glad for anyone,” he admitted, because it was true and he did not want to lie to San Lang. “But I will be glad it is you.”

“You make it sound very simple,” Hua Cheng said after a moment. He still wouldn’t ask, then. Wouldn’t ask what the other him was to Xie Lian. He wasn’t ready. He was too scared. The Xie Lian of this world wouldn’t be ready either but they could take those first steps together.

“It is to me,” Xie Lian admitted. “I apologize for putting this burden on you. You are the first I’ve told.”

“No one else?”

Well… “I told a fox once.”

Hua Cheng pressed his lips together against laughter but it didn’t work; soft, quiet chuckles worked his way out until his eyes were crinkled and his shoulders shaking. “Really?”

“I wouldn’t lie,” Xie Lian protested, laughing a little helplessly himself. The motion pulled at his wound, but it was mostly healed and little more than a dull ache, thanks to Hua Cheng’s deep reserves of spiritual energy. “The fox couldn’t tell anyone, after all.”

“Should I not tell anyone?” Hua Cheng’s brow furrowed. “Even…”

Xie Lian considered. “I don’t know,” he said contemplatively. “I don’t ever meet myself, you see, so I can’t be sure what they will think. I can only guide them towards what I know.” He shook his head, feeling a little silly. Hadn’t he learned that he could not always matchmake himself and Hua Cheng? He should know better than to meddle. After all, sometimes fates did not align. But Hua Cheng was already here. “I leave it up to you.”

“Would you want to know?”

“No.” Xie Lian was surprised with how quickly he found the answer, but that wasn’t quite it either. He rather thought he would prefer if some other Xie Lian had never found his way into his world at all. “I am very happy as is.”

“Even if it took us — you — so long to meet?”

Xie Lian considered. “I wish I had known San Lang longer,” he said after a long moment. Hua Cheng could have been such a comfort to him. But Hua Cheng had been such a comfort to him. “And I am happy that you have found your Xie Lian earlier. But I would not trade mine and San Lang’s story for another.”

Hua Cheng looked unhappy still, but didn’t press. Hua Cheng wouldn’t understand this, not really — all he wanted was for Xie Lian not to suffer. It must be hard to swallow the idea that in another world, Xie Lian had suffered for some odd couple hundred of years while Hua Cheng could do nothing. But Xie Lian had seen, now, dozens of stories, hundreds of other ways that he and Hua Cheng could have been written. Some of those stories had been beautiful, some of them had been unkind.

In the end, he loved his Hua Cheng very much. In the end, he loved their story, despite the separation, despite the pain.

“Ah, Hua Cheng, don’t look so stern! I’m really very happy, you know.”

Hua Cheng looked down at their intertwined hands. “You and your San Lang…” he trailed off, not wanting to ask fully. He must know; Xie Lian had not been subtle but not had he said anything direct.

“I care for him very much.” He did not say love. He hadn’t said it out loud before, and while this might be a Hua Cheng, it was not his Hua Cheng. He would tell his own San Lang first; even if his San Lang knew, he should hear it first.

Hua Cheng nodded, filing it away. He didn’t quite look as if he’d fully believed that statement, like he was still too young and uncertain to be sure. But he held Xie Lian’s hand fine and fed him spiritual energy and that was enough, for now. Tomorrow he could have some other Xie Lian to dote on, to… to save.

“You have to put me back in the coffin.”

“No!” Hua Cheng’s face went even whiter. “Dianxia, no—”

“Yes,” Xie Lian said, though he didn’t relish the idea of doing that much either. He craned his neck around the tree to see the coffin, a little splintered but not nearly as demolished as he might like it to be. “Tomorrow, he won’t remember you saving him. You have to save him again.”

“No,” Hua Cheng said, sitting up. He knelt in front of Xie Lian, knees digging into the soft dirt, and begged. “Dianxia, please, I can’t bear it. Don’t make me — I’d have to — you were nailed in!”

Xie Lian felt at his stomach, where the wound was newly healing. He’d have to break it open again, cleaving himself in two. But he could do it for some other Xie Lian, for them to experience the pure rush of joy-gratitude-shock-guilt-too many emotions to count when the lid cracked open. “He should have that,” he said after a moment. The feeling, a swoop of elation in his stomach that he hadn’t felt in so long that it almost became nausea. Seeing Hua Cheng for the first time. Being cared for. “I can put the nail in myself.”

Hua Cheng made a wounded noise. “No.”

“Hua Cheng.”

“Dianxia, I truly cannot bear it.” Hue Cheng twisted his hands together in his robes, wrinkling the fine silk. He always would ruin himself to save Xie Lian. “What if — when you wake up, I can pretend I saved you overnight, wouldn’t that be enough? Please.”

Xie Lian watched the dangerous wobble of Hua Cheng’s bottom lip, his suspiciously shiny eyes, and gave in. “Alright,” he said, because he knew it would not be easy for him to watch Hua Cheng go through his tortures again. How could he ask Hua Cheng to do the same, to drive the stake through his stomach with his own hands? How could he expect to live with those hands, knowing they forced apart someone he loved? “Alright, that sounds fine. Stop crying, Hua Cheng.”

“I — I’m not.”

“It’s fine,” Xie Lian soothed, reaching out to unpeel Hua Cheng’s hand from the knot of his robes. “Just sit with me while I fall asleep, hm?”

“I — alright.”

“And be careful in the morning, his eyes won’t be able to handle the light very well.”

“Dianxia—”

“Just sit with me. Right there.” Hua Cheng sat and Xie Lian felt warm. “Thank you.”

The villagers helped him with the crops. End of summer crops, they’d crowed delightedly, before manhandling Xie Lian out of the way as if sure his bad luck would turn the eggplants to dust the second he touched them. He did not tell them that he’d been living here with the crops for months, so they were a lost cause.

But only two-thirds of them turned out bad, and at least several of those bad ones were still edible.

Xie Lian would be sure to tell Hua Cheng about it when he got back. Look, he’d say, showing off a terribly ugly little eggplant, A lot of them are still edible! Your luck must be rubbing off on me, I think. And then perhaps Hua Cheng would not feel so bad at leaving Xie Lian for so long, because Xie Lian was sure that he would be feeling guilty about it, and he didn’t want that.

And it wasn’t so bad, really. He even got to cheat; got to see other variants of their love until his own love swelled inside his breastbone like ocean tides. If Hua Cheng was the moon, tugging him this way and that. But he thought Hua Cheng thought him the moon, and wasn’t that nice? To each think of each other as the moon and the stars, as the fates and all the luck, whether it was lives together or edible turnips.

Knock, knock.

He did not recognize this room. He didn’t always recognize the rooms he woke up in but his own shrine and Hua Cheng’s manor appeared often enough. This room was dark, only black shapes looming and the barest hint of gray light peering through the curtains.

The knock came again.

“Come in,” Xie Lian called, tired. His body weighed down against the mattress, too heavy to move. As if he had been weighted down by lead. To the left of his bed — he got a bed, this time — a door clicked open, sickly yellow light flooding into the room around the edges of a silhouette. “Who—”

“Dianxia,” the voice said quietly, and it was Hua Cheng. It was a little hoarse and young, but Xie Lian, over the months, had gotten very used to all the iterations of Hua Cheng’s voice. Young and bold, older ones, ones that were full of laughter and accompanied by Xie Lian’s favorite smile. This one was quiet. Deferential. “You aren’t dressed?”

“No.” Xie Lian’s voice was rough. “Come closer.”

He wasn’t surprised to see the white, smiling mask of Wuming appear out of the gloom. The knowledge of where — who — Xie Lian was, this time, was threaded into his heavy bones, bleak sorrow wound around the ribcage where nothing else beat.

Wuming tilted his head. Xie Lian imagined that under his mask, he wore worry on his face. “Dianxia,” he said quietly. Xie Lian rolled his head away from him, staring at the opposite wall. “You ought to get up.”

Xie Lian should get up. “I’m fine.”

Wuming hesitated, unsure of what to do. It wasn’t easy, probably, to push a calamity, but nor could Hua Cheng be happy to see Xie Lian so pathetic and listless. Of anyone, Hua Cheng had been the only one to love him when he was completely nothing. Of anyone, Hua Cheng had been the only one to want to change that. Perhaps even Wuming could not bear to see it.

“I will come back in an hour,” Wuming settled on, and the door clicked shut, black spreading across the room.

Xie Lian wanted to call him back. He wanted to beg, to ask to be wrapped up in strong arms, to have that warm voice tell him, again, I have seen you at your worst and my only regret is that I could not ease the burden. He stifled a sob, one thin hand clamped to his mouth. He wanted his own Hua Cheng to say it, to hold him close. Wuming would, but it wasn’t the same; he wanted his San Lang. He wanted to bury his face in his chest, to cry knowing it wouldn’t make Hua Cheng leave him. 

It was hard to imagine it. They had still been at the beginning when the end arrived, and — no. It was not the end. It was only a pause. Hua Cheng was going to come back to him.

“Dianxia?”

“Wuming.” Xie Lian opened his eyes. The ceiling greeted him. “Has it been an hour?”

“Yes, dianxia.”

“I don’t believe I can get up.” Xie Lian felt as if he had been flattened, every bit of life in him wrung out.

“Allow this one to can help you, dianxia,” Wuming said, and his soft footsteps crossed the room. A small creak of the wardrobe accompanied them after a moment. “I will run you a bath.”

A bath did sound lovely. He was so cold. “Please.”

Wuming disappeared. Soon enough, the sound of water splashing and thin steam floated over to Xie Lian. But the heat from the bath clung wetly in his lungs. It wasn’t appealing at all, even when Wuming knelt by his bed and helping him up gently. Practiced, like he had done this thousands of times before.

It made Xie Lian want to cry, when he slipped into the hot, perfumed water, and Wuming picked up the comb. So familiar, but not the way Xie Lian wanted it to be.

“Allow me,” Wuming murmured, and he caught Xie Lian’s hair in a gentle grasp. He curled it around his palm as he ran the comb through it, starting with the tips and working his way up. Xie Lian bowed his head forward, the rhythm comforting, and tried not to cry. One lone teardrop made it onto the back of his hand anyways.

He splashed his face with the water, spluttering at the sudden heat, to hide any more tears as Wuming helped him back out of the bath.

Wuming moved with quiet grace, his actions completely known. He didn’t stumble; this was a dance he had done before. He settled the robes on Xie Lian’s shoulders easily, hands gentle as he smoothed out the wrinkles and tied the sash. This was not this Xie Lian’s first time being unable to get out of bed.

Xie Lian caught Wuming’s hands on his chest, fingers encircling his wrists. “I’m fine, Wuming,” he said, unbearably sad for the Xie Lian he was wearing today. The one who had made the wrong decision. The one who was unable to leave his bed in the morning. Xie Lian had been so close to being this calamity, aching with hollowed bones. And for the Wuming who helped him get ready. The Wuming who would never get what San Lang had.

Maybe he didn’t even dream of such things. 

Wuming swallowed hard. “Your mask,” he said quietly, twisting out of Xie Lian’s grip carefully. He held out the half-smiling, half-crying mask that was hauntingly familiar.

Xie Lian hesitated. “Not today.” He could do many things for the sake of other Xie Lian’s. But not this.

Wuming’s mask hid any expression on his face and he was steady as he bowed low, his black braid slipping over his shoulder. It mingled with the shadows of his robes; Wuming was little more than nothing at all here. Even the lamps were not lit, save for one on the bedside table. Xie Lian could see almost nothing at all.

“Perhaps we should open the curtains,” Xie Lian suggested.

Shock emanated from Wuming, palpable. “Of course! Of course, dianxia, allow me—”

He was of a height with Xie Lian and when he wrenched open the curtains, the sun was blinding for just a moment. It was as if he was in the coffin again all over; Xie Lian had the sudden sensation that if he put his hand in front of his eyes to block the light, the sunshine would go right through his translucent hand.

But when he lifted them, his hands were solid.

“Wuming,” he said quietly, tilting his face. His eyes were adjusting; Wuming was a black silhouette against the sun. “I want to ask you something.”

“Anything.”

Xie Lian’s mouth curved into a pale smile. He had thought that would be the answer. “You may tell me no,” he said, leaning his elbow on the window. He didn’t recognize outside, but it was grayer than he had thought despite the sunlight. He must not have seen the sunlight in so long. “If you do not want to, I want you to tell me.”

“I understand.” Wuming probably did not understand, having served a calamity for so long, and Xie Lian was selfish to ask. Wuming would give him anything and while his San Lang would do the same, it was different. He and his San Lang were equals. Wuming was a servant.

But his most precious one, even now. 

“Wuming,” Xie Lian said. “Do you have a face?”

If he did, he wondered what it looked like under the mask. Young? He must be young. He was shorter than usual. And nervous, though perhaps Xie Lian was very unpredictable. This was a far different battlefield then the ones Wuming had fought on before; this was not war and this was not vengeance, this was the bedchamber of a falling-apart calamity.

“I… believe that I do, dianxia.”

He did not know. Xie Lian found this immeasurably sad. He was grateful for Wuming, always — but in his memory, Wuming had been cruel because Xie Lian had been crueler. Now Xie Lian was sad and Wuming too was sad. He did not know if Wuming was happy, truly — he would probably say he was, to serve Xie Lian this way, but Xie Lian didn’t think that was true.

“Wuming,” Xie Lian said carefully. He raised his hand, traced it around the edge of Wuming’s mask. His thumb against cool skin. They were both cold. “Might I see your face?”

Wuming swallowed hard. Nodded. He was scared, maybe. He didn’t know what was under his mask either. Xie Lian knew that so many times, Hua Cheng would choose him over and over again. Just that sometimes, choosing Xie Lian would not always make Hua Cheng happy. Xie Lian didn’t want that for him. Xie Lian didn’t want that for himself, either.

Xie Lian tucked his fingers under the edge of the mask and lifted it up. Underneath, despite the sun, it was all shadow.

He did not like that world very much. His Wuming was so unhappy. There was another reason, layer on top of the many thousands, that Xie Lian suddenly became abruptly grateful that he had not become a calamity after all. Perhaps it was the most selfish reason he had, but it was true.

And no one else knew it but Hua Cheng, not really. Mu Qing and Feng Xin did not know the true extent; when they came down to have tea with him the next day, they did not know about his dreams and they did not know that once he was so close to being a calamity that he sometimes still felt the power of it in his bones.

He was so tired. He felt very old in a way that he never quite had, after that dream. He was an old god, that was true, but he had never felt it so acutely. When he was with Hua Cheng, he always felt so young and free again.

“Dianxia?”

Xie Lian startled, jumping up to look at the man stepping out of the carriage. “I, ah,” he said, because of course it was Hua Cheng, finely dressed despite the rain. The man truly had a sixth sense for these things.

“It is you!” Hua Cheng smiled, beaming despite the way the rain dripped down his nose. “I thought so! Dianxia, please let me offer you a ride.”

Xie Lian hesitated, thinking of the rain, of the fine carriage, of the way his robes were dripped in mud. He was already going to accept, of course he was — he had little other choice, not when Hua Cheng and he were destined to twine together so often — but he waited too long and Hua Cheng’s expression turned worried.

“Dianxia, I promise you would be safe with me.” Hua Cheng lowered his voice, eyeing his driver who was patently not listening, as he was probably paid quite handsomely to do. “No one here is familiar with the fall of Xian Le.”

It was a cool curdle of guilt-regret-sadness then that made its home in Xie Lian’s stomach. He ignored it as best he could. “Alright,” he agreed, taking a step closer. “If you don’t mind my state of being.”

“I do not,” Hua Cheng proclaimed, and he gestured Xie Lian in. Xie Lian settled gingerly on one of the padded seats, very aware of the way the cushion soaked through immediately even if Hua Cheng was not. “Dianxia, this one is named Hua Cheng. May he ask where he should direct the driver to?”

“Oh, just take me wherever you’re going, that’s fine.”

“It’s no trouble to take you where you’re headed.”

Xie Lian blinked. “Ah, I’m not headed anywhere,” he admitted. “I was sleeping in a cave but it started to flood in the rain.” It had been a rather unpleasant unawakening, but not at all the worst once Xie Lian had ever had.

“Do you have no attendants?”

“No?” Truth be told, Xie Lian wasn’t sure. No one had been in the cave with him, after all, so it must be a no. Besides, he was surely no longer any sort of prince, not with the tattered robe he was wearing.

Hua Cheng sat back, assessing. He chewed on the inside of his bottom lip while he thought, a trait utterly unique to this Hua Cheng, but adorable all the same. “Perhaps dianxia would not mind staying at my estate tonight? It would be warm and safe.”

Xie Lian didn’t see anything wrong with that, not when Hua Cheng was insisting so much. It was Hua Cheng, after all, and he always wanted to take care of Xie Lian, no matter what the world. Even a Hua Cheng who was healthy and human and clearly wealthy, who was handing Xie Lian a bit of cloth to use as a towel.

“Ah, thank you, you are very kind,” Xie Lian said, gratefully patting at his face. The cloth came away mostly muddy but at least he could see without raindrops clinging to his eyelashes. “Ah, you said — Hua Cheng?”

“Yes. Though…” Hua Cheng wore a complicated expression.

“What is it?”

Hua Cheng startled, clearly surprised to be caught out. Xie Lian knew him too well, was all. “I have met dianxia once before,” he admitted. “When I was a child, you caught me when I fell out of a tower.”

Xie Lian gasped, delighted at this little similarity. “Ah, Hong’er! Is that right? It is Hong’er, isn’t it?”

“I did not expect dianxia to remember,” Hua Cheng admitted, a faint blush coming over his face. “It was long ago.”

“It was quite memorable,” Xie Lian replied, thinking back. In this world, he estimated that it had been perhaps twenty or thirty years since then. It wasn’t hard to tell; they were both human. Hua Cheng wore his age well with the crinkles around the corner of his uncovered eye and around the edges of his mouth, where he must smile often. It was a pleasant sight.

“I have often hoped for an opportunity to repay you.” Hua Cheng shook his head. “What a fortunate occurrence, that I could see you on the street.”

Xie Lian huffed. “I did what anyone would have done,” he replied, because it was true. It had been second-nature at the time, to leap and catch that child regardless of the consequences. Even when Guoshi had been mad, even when his robes had been dirty — even when the boy ran off with his earring! — he didn’t regret saving the child. He perhaps didn’t even think anything of it, as pampered a young prince as he was. Of course he would do something heroic to save a child.

“Anyone wouldn’t,” Hua Cheng said as the carriage crawled to a rather lurching stop. “But you did. So let me be grateful.”

“If you must,” Xie Lian teased, allowing Hua Cheng to help him down the step. He was tired, the way humans often were, and hungry as well. He certainly wasn’t as well-fed as Hua Cheng, who was strong enough to support his weight. Xie Lian shook him off, much steadier on his feet now that he was on solid ground. “This is your home?”

The house belonging to this Hua Cheng was nice and big. Befitting a wealthy merchant or a minor noble. It was no Paradise Manor, of course, but Xie Lian could hardly judge. This Hua Cheng was a mortal, of course he couldn’t run a ghost city.

“Yes,” Hua Cheng said fondly as they crossed the garden. “This is my home.”

There was a little girl standing in the doorway, her fist shoved in her mouth even though she was too old for it. She seemed to be too old for being held, too, but Hua Cheng scooped her up onto his hip immediately, her legs dangling down and kicking at his knee. “Were you good today?”

“Yes!”

“Very good?”

“Yes, I promise!”

“We’ll see about that,” Hua Cheng told her. They turned as a pair back to Xie Lian; Hua Cheng coaxing the girl’s hand out of her mouth. “A-Yan, this is my—” he paused, considering. Possible he didn’t want to tell a child that Xie Lian was a prince. Who knew who she could tell?

“Good friend,” Xie Lian said. “Call me shushu.” No one had ever called him shushu and he thought he might enjoy it, even though he had always looked too young to be one.

“Call him shushu.” Hua Cheng made a grateful face over the top of her head.

“Hello shushu,” she said dutifully, utterly unconcerned with his presence. She shoved her hand back in her mouth and Hua Cheng persistently pulled it back out.

Xie Lian smiled. “Ah, San Lang, who knew you were so good with children?” He’d never seen Hua Cheng interact with children without a little semblance of disdain?

Hua Cheng’s brow knit together, confused. “Dianxia, what—”

“San Lang!”

Xie Lian blinked, surprised, at the other voice calling. He had never heard anyone else call Hua Cheng by San Lang, he had rather thought that anyone who tried might have been eviscerated. But there was someone else, not him, calling him San Lang, voice loud and warm, as if the owner was smiling so big he could not contain it.

“Ah, gege,” Hua Cheng said happily. He leaned down to press a kiss to the cheek of a small man in elegant robes with an elegant cane. “Dianxia, this is my husband, Deng Jiao. Gege, this is taizi dianxia.”

“Oh!” Xie Lian had not expected a husband. He began to wonder if he should be expecting more of them.

“Ah!” The man smiled wide. He looked kind and he had a very warm-sounding voice. Standing next to Hua Cheng, he should look much smaller but his warm presence took up space. “This is truly taizi dianxia?”

Xie Lian smiled reflexively. “It would appear so,” he said, wrong-footed. It was odd to see Hua Cheng give this man such a doting look; at least that Hua Cheng from the other world had not had his own lover there to give fond looks too. Xie Lian likely wouldn’t have been able to handle it. As it was now, his stomach felt a little queasy over it. “Hua Cheng has a very good memory.”

“You saved my life, dianxia, I could not forget you.” Hua Cheng smiled, soft. His husband leaned up against his side easily; an action borne of years of experience that Xie Lian did not yet have. “I have always wanted to repay you.”

Xie Lian smiled too. “No repayment necessary,” he promised, because it never had been. “But seeing you happy and living your life is repayment enough.”

And it was, he was surprised to find. He thought it would be more bitter, to watch Hua Cheng hold his child on his hip and laugh with his husband and lead the way into the dining hall for a steaming hot dinner. Hua Cheng had a whole happy life here and Xie Lian had only been a footnote in it. And yet Hua Cheng was still so grateful as to try to repay it twenty years later. He could have dismissed it as a misfortune of childhood, something he had clearly conquered — his luck had turned, he was married, he was wealthy, he was in the position to repay a favor and the rare kind of man who would unerringly do so.

But it barely hurt at all to see Hua Cheng this happy. To see what he could have been, in another path.

It was all Xie Lian had ever really wanted for him.

Mu Qing and Feng Xin tended to visit him every few weeks, as if worried he might wilt away like half the vegetables in his garden. Xie Lian had assured them once that he spent plenty of time alone, but that had not been as reassuring as he meant. Feng Xin had gone unpleasantly pale and Mu Qing’s lips had pressed into such a thin line that it was amazing his mouth didn’t bleed from the force. It had not been Xie Lian’s most tactful moment — though he couldn’t say he had many of those these days.

As it was, they tended to visit and Xie Lian didn’t mind. After Feng Xin had told him, painfully earnest, that he wanted to visit and then Xie Lian shouldn’t have to spend time alone, Xie Lian saw them often.

Well. He usually didn’t mind.

“What if he doesn’t come back?”

Xie Lian froze, the broom in hand. That was Feng Xin’s voice; they were due to visit today. They must be walking up the path to the shrine but Feng Xin was always far too loud to manage to keep any secrets. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted Xie Lian to overhear this.

“Then I’ll kill you myself,” Mu Qing replied, his voice growing ever louder. “Shut up. Do you want dianxia to hear you?”

“You shut up,” Feng Xin grumbled. “It’s an honest question, alright? It’s been almost a year—”

Yes, what would Xie Lian do if Hua Cheng never came back?

Xie Lian woke to a burst of godly, spiritual light. When it cleared, Hua Cheng stood there, E-Ming at his hip, and a frown on his face. When his gaze caught on Xia Lian, it cleared immediately, like the sky showing blue after a bout of rain. Xie Lian couldn’t help his own smile, the way his own face probably looked so fond, the way his Hua Cheng’s did. 

This Hua Cheng looked marginally frightened, as if seeing Xie Lian was too much for his weak (immortal) heart.

Xie Lian had seen Hua Cheng in many ostentatious outfits, even brilliant red ones that had rivaled his own as the crown prince. He rather thought it was funny that now he was a god, he was dressed utterly practically, none of the bright red or silver jewelry. Just a handsome piece of armor and clean white robes. “Hello there,” Xie Lian said, already charmed by this Hua Cheng. “Did you stop my sword?” 

His sword was out, after all, though he didn’t remember pulling it. He must have woken up mid-swing. That had never happened before. Perhaps it meant the original in this world had fallen unconscious with Hua Cheng’s appearance?

Hua Cheng’s eye widened; he hastily sheathed his scimitar to his waist. “This one apologizes, taizi danxia,” he said quietly, bowing deep. His black braid tumbled over his shoulder, the red earring knotted neatly at the end. “I mean no offense.”

Xie Lian pressed his lips together to avoid bursting into a smile. This Hua Cheng was so polite! Xie Lian could hardly imagine his own Hua Cheng doing anything of the sort. “You know me?”

“This one has… heard of you,” Hua Cheng settled on carefully.

Xie Lian tilted his head. “How so?”

“It would be truly disrespectful for such heavenly officials to not know such an outstanding ghost as the prince of ghost city.” Hua Cheng hesitated, fingers twitching. “The one hopes that The Prince Who Claimed the Ghosts will not take it out on any other than this official.”

“Is that my name,” Xie Lian said, a little delighted. He rolled it around on his tongue. The Prince Who Claimed the Ghosts. He held his own hand up; glimpsed the embroidered red sleeve. “That’s not bad.”

What a stunning little switch of fates, for Hua Cheng to be the heavenly official. He was a handsome god. Perhaps Xie Lian was a handsome ghost king. He felt much better than he had as Bai Wuxiang, much more brimming with energy. Much more like his own Hua Cheng did, he imagined.

Xie Lian eyed Hua Cheng, who still had his head bowed deferentially. He must have chosen to ascend in Mount Tonglu. Perhaps he thought that was the best way he could help Xie Lian, then. “Tell me your name and domain?”

Oh, Xie Lian did find it a little adorable the sudden flash of panic of Hua Cheng’s face. “You can call me San Lang.”

Of course he could. “San Lang, you really shouldn’t go out giving your name to strangers,” Xie Lian scolded. He ignored that there was no mention of his other name. “Why is it I always find you do this? Do you not go by Hua Cheng here?”

“Then… Taizi dianxia already knows my name.”

“No, no,” Xie Lian said. “Well, yes, I have heard of you — ah, San Lang, my memory isn’t quite right, you see. I thought we had met each other before.” He sighed, tilted his head. He rather thought these two would work it all out on their own, without any interference. Sometimes he felt more inclined than others to share about his own particularly kind brand of curse.

Hua Cheng didn’t correct him. Didn’t say oh, but we have met before. Didn’t explain. He was always so secretive, as if there was any way that Xie Lian couldn’t love him. But he didn’t know that yet. Ah, Xie Lian wished he could have more time. Could understand Hua Cheng’s domain, could worship at his temple. Hua Cheng deserved that, didn’t he?

“Dianxia?”

“Perhaps we could have a fight,” Xie Lian suggested, holding his sword out. If Hua Cheng knocked him out again, perhaps the real Xie Lian could meet Hua Cheng. Perhaps they could talk or they could fight or they could decide they didn’t get along at all. Maybe they’d decide they wanted nothing to do with each other but a fight against a real opponent, a true test of skills. That would be enough. “You seem very good. Will you do me the honor?”

“Of course.”

Xie Lian readied his sword, waiting. Hua Cheng waited too and they both laughed, smiled upon realizing the other was using the same tactic. So Xie Lian attacked first, a quick one-two step that was common in in Xian Le. And there was much of Xian Le’s style in Hua Cheng’s own movements, so that they were neatly partnered in a dance. It was fun, like this. Hua Cheng was smiling too as they moved, a wide-open grin that he didn’t seem to know was on his face.

Xie Lian mesmerized the look of it. When the blow came that rattled him again, knocked him back, he let himself be taken. Hua Cheng would catch the other Xie Lian just fine.

But what will Xie Lian do, if Hua Cheng took too long to return? He would wait in this shrine, of course. It was his home, he could wait there. He would attend to any heavenly duties that the other gods required of him. He would plant his vegetable garden again and hope it was less pitiful this time.

He didn’t know what was so very sad about it. He had been telling the truth. He was far too used to being alone.

It was just harder now.

Hua Cheng woke Xie Lian up with a kiss. Xie Lian embarrassingly moaned into it before sitting up in alarm, cheeks red. The one thing about all these past worlds is that Xie Lian didn’t always find himself in a palce where Hua Cheng could just casually touch him — a hand on his shoulder, fingers sliding against his wrist. A kiss.

“Morning, gege,” Hua Cheng said with a grin, as if delighted by Xie Lian’s embarrassment. He probably was. “I made you breakfast.”

Xie Lian peered at the breakfast tray interestedly then realized that Hua Cheng was wearing nothing but a loosely tied red tunic that didn’t cover much at all. “San Lang,” he gasped, taking in the open door of the bedroom and the neatly arranged breakfast tray and his very uncovered chest. His cheeks were on fire. “Did you make breakfast like that?”

“What of it?”

“I — you aren’t wearing any pants!” As if Hua Cheng wouldn’t be aware of this.

Hua Cheng grinned, smug. There was a red-purple bruise on the side of his neck — several, actually — that he seemed to be showing off, if they way he tossed his head was any indication. “I am aware, gege,” he purred, setting the tray down over Xie Lian’s legs.

Xie Lian stared down at his food. There was a steaming bowl of congee and the pickled vegetables had been carefully arranged in the shape of a heart. “I,” he said pathetically. Hua Cheng was trying to kill him, he decided. Make him so embarrassed and warm and full that he just would die here and turn into the most love-stricken ghost anyone had ever seen. “You should wear pants, San Lang.”

“Why?”

 “B-because,” Xie Lian sputtered. “Someone could see you!”

“I like if they see me,” Hua Cheng said, sprawling across the foot bed. The red robe draped loosely around his chest, revealing bare skin. Xie Lian let out a tiny squeak, staring back down at his food. It didn’t help; he could see the edges of Hua Cheng’s languid form. “Don’t you like if they see me, gege?”

“I — of course San Lang should do what he likes.”

“But what does gege like,” Hua Cheng murmured, stretching one hand out towards the head of the bed, where Xie Lian sat. Hua Cheng’s arm was far enough away that Xie Lian couldn’t feel the weight of it; only could feel the bedcovers tight against his thigh as Hua Cheng’s arm weighed them down. He wished, suddenly, that they were much closer.

Xie Lian chanced a glance up, taking in Hua Cheng’s smug expression. He thought Hua Cheng rather liked being seen like this, truthfully. That he might have been playing up like a pretense, but that actually, he liked if people knew that he belonged to Xie Lian. Xie Lian would like for people to know he belonged to Hua Cheng to.

Xie Lian decided very fast. “I like San Lang to do what he likes.”

Hua Cheng’s self-satisfied expression slid into something soft and warm; his mouth parted with surprise. “Ge,” he mumbled, sitting up.

“San Lang should be as he wants,” Xie Lian murmured, and he could not think of anything truer. He wished this more than anything for the real Hua Cheng; that he did not have to pretend that things he wanted were a joke. Xie Lian was not going to be scared off. “San Lang shouldn’t be afraid to reveal all of himself to me.”

“I do—”

“I want to see all of you too,” Xie Lian said resolutely. Hua Cheng had seen all of him, been at his side every step of the way. Xie Lian had not been able to do the same; it was only the thoughts of him that kept Hua Cheng company.

Hue Cheng leaned forward, lips parted, and kissed Xie Lian breathlessly. Xie Lian squeaked — he usually tried not to kiss these Hua Chengs in the journeys, it felt a little too exhilarating for him to be comfortable with and a little too sad. But it was hard to pull away once he got started, usually — Xie Lian felt like the tide being slept away.

“My breakfast, San Lang,” Xie Lian murmured against his lips, but he waited for Hua Cheng to pull away. Hua Cheng carefully neatened the tray too, like the few drops of spilled congee were too much for him to bear.

Every new Hua Cheng, Xie Lian thought he had reached the limit, that he couldn’t fall in love his own Hua Cheng even more. And it wasn’t exactly falling in love here — he had his own Hua Cheng — but he couldn’t wait for his Hua Cheng to come back, so that Xie Lian could see them the way all these worlds had hinted they could be. So he could see what little odds and ends from other worlds rang true for his Hua Cheng. So he could discover, too, what made his Hua Cheng happy.

Hua Cheng will come back to him. It had been a year now, autumn was full and fiery. Hua Cheng had to come back to him.

Knock-knock.

Xie Lian blinked, picking his head up from the table. It was most confusing, the days he woke up in his own shrine where he had fallen asleep. It was sometimes hard to tell what was a dream journey and what was real. But he was pretty sure he hadn’t fallen asleep at the table, so this must be a dream even if the shrine looked the same. “Coming!”

His throat was dry and his neck sore. He’d slept in a lot of bad places before but that never made them very comfortable, even after all these years. His first few steps he was dizzy but the floor straightened out until he could make his way to the door.

He didn’t recognize who was behind it, though. “Can I help you?”

The boy bowed. He was wearing sleek armor that Xie Lian didn’t recognize and his hair was pulled up severely out of his face. “Good morning, dianxia. Are you still able to join me in the heavenly palace today?”

Was he? Probably. “Yes,” Xie Lian said slowly, furrowing his brow. “Please excuse me, I’m afraid I can’t remember your name.”

“Liang Guan,” the boy said helpfully. Now that Xie Lian looked, he could see the faint aura of godliness, but it wasn’t a face that Xie Lian had ever seen before. “The general of the south.”

Xie Lian blinked. “Ah, did—” he frowned, raising a hand to his temple. Mu Qing did not respond in their array; neither did Feng Xin. “I’m so sorry,” he said, attempting a smile. The disciple’s grin slipped a little bit in response; he must not be doing a very good job. “I’m — my memory isn’t very good, I’m a bit ill. You are?”

“Liang Guan,” the boy repeated. Only he wasn’t a boy. “The general of the south, dianxia. We met two hundred years ago?”

“But — Feng Xin—” Xie Lian looked down the path behind him as if he could see Mu Qing and Feng Xin coming up, squabbling and elbowing each other like they were eight instead of eight hundred. But there was nothing but the empty dirt road and a cold wind that chilled Xie Lian to the bone. “Mu Qing? They share the south.”

The boy frowned. “General Nan Yang descended nearly five hundred years ago,” he said helpfully. “And General Xuan Zhen faded shortly after that. I took over the south from them afterwards.”

“That can’t be right,” Xie Lian said, caught up in shock. “I saw Mu Qing just days ago. He’s — he’s very popular.” He couldn’t have faded away five hundred years ago; it was impossible to pass through any city without finding numerous temples dedicated to him. And Feng Xin wouldn’t descend, why would he — they wouldn’t— “This is a joke, isn’t it? A prank?” Feng Xin and Mu Qing could pull pranks, theoretically. They were always too eager to the punch to set them up, but they’d tried. Never against him, though.

“I’m sorry, dianxia.” The boy bowed again. He did seem very sorry. Xie Lian wanted to wring his neck. “They asked me to check in on you once I took over their territories.”

Dread always crept up slow, like ivy or ice. It caught his legs first. “Why?”

Dangerous territory. The boy clearly knew, if that was caution in his eyes as Xie Lian suspected. Why would he be cautious? Xie Lian should stop calling him a boy. He was a god. The god of the south. “Because you’re alone here in your shrine,” the boy said quietly. “They — they were good generals, dianxia. They cared for you.”

“I’m not alone.” He wasn’t. Hua Cheng had to be around here somewhere.

“Until Crimson Rain comes back,” the boy clarified.

Hua Cheng wasn’t back yet?

“Please don’t be mad, dianxia. They wanted to make sure you had company.”

But he had to be back now, if things were really as long as this boy was saying. He had to be back. He wouldn’t have left Xie Lian waiting all these years. “How long?”

“Until?”

“Since,” Xie Lian corrected. He supposed it was an odd question. He should just know. “Since anyone last saw Crimson Rain.”

“Over eight hundred years, dianxia.”

Xie Lian’s legs buckled, dread curling up his lags and catching thorns on his arms, ice in his veins. “No, that’s not—” and he couldn’t speak very well either, like his mouth was full of plants and frozen water too. “That can’t be—” he could practically taste blood in his mouth. “I don’t—”

“Dianxia—”

“I actually don’t think I can join you today,” Xie Lian managed to say through a mouth full of thorns. He eased the door shut right on Liang Guan’s worried face. It was true; he absolutely wasn’t up to it. In fact, the second the door shut, he collapsed to the ground, legs as weak as a newborn fawn. He couldn’t get up; if someone tried to open the door it would do nothing but bang against the curl of his spine as he shrunk in on himself.

He could hear Liang Gian calling his name through the door — he must be a nice kid, if Mu Qing and Feng Xin — who were dead, who were gone, who had been gone for so long that maybe the real Xie Lian had forgotten their faces — must be a nice kid. Mu Qing and Feng Xin wouldn’t have trusted him if not, but they weren’t here and so Xie Lian didn’t have to open the door.

He had always been good at making himself sleep anywhere. On the dirt floor of his shrine, blocking the door, was as good a place as any.

He woke up crying on his straw mat and Hua Cheng was there immediately, soothing him. Xie Lian clutched him close, sobbing so hard it shook his body. “San Lang, you were gone, you were—” he choked on his own words and spit, let out a hiccup. “For so long, San Lang, please don’t make me wait that long—” and all he could think about was the pity on that young god’s face as he watched a broken god break even further.

“I’m so sorry, gege,” Hua Cheng told him, earnest and painful, and Xie Lian wrapped his arms around his neck, still sobbing. Some other Xie Lian could deal with the fallout of this. He couldn’t even remember waking up and falling asleep, only remembered waking up as Hua Cheng pulled him into his arms. “Your San Lang is here, don’t worry, I’m here, I’m not leaving—”

“When I wake up, you’ll be gone again,” Xie Lian said, pitifully beating at Hua Cheng’s shoulder like he could make the pain in his chest stop if only he pushed himself a little harder. That had always worked before; it should be working now too only it wasn’t, he was still crying and he still felt crushed, compressed, peculiarly disjointed. “Every time I wake up, you’re gone!”

“Not this time, gege, I promise. I won’t ever leave you again.”

“You can’t promise me that,” Xie Lian cried as Hua Cheng used the corner of his sleeve to carefully wipe the tears and snot from his face. He looked so worried; so intent. He looked thin and tired too, bags under his eyes and lips chapped. He needed to rest but Xie Lian couldn’t let him go to sleep because if he went to sleep and Xie Lian went to sleep then he would be alone again when he woke up.

“I’ll show you, gege.” Hua Cheng pressed a small kiss to Xie Lian’s temple, lips brushing against the edge of his hair as he added, “If you don’t believe me, I promise to show you until you can.”

“I believe you,” Xie Lian protested, because he did. The two notions warred inside him. Of course Hua Cheng would be there, that he had promised and he never broke a promise to Xie Lian, that he would do anything to keep those promises. Xie Lian believed in Hua Cheng more than he believed in anything else. 

But when he woke up, this Hua Cheng would be taking care of some other Xie Lian. And Xie Lian would be alone again, waiting. There would be no Hua Cheng to take care of him, staring at him with such a desperate look in those eyes, like he only needed to be told what Xie Lian needed and he would tear out his own heart to make it happen.

Xie Lian didn’t want him to tear out his own heart. Xie Lian wanted them together. He patted Hua Cheng’s cheek clumsily.  “It’s not your fault, San Lang, you’ll — you’ll be here for him, won’t you?”

“Gege, I am here. I came back as soon as I could.”

Of course he did. “I know,” Xie Lian said, sniffling. “Of course my San Lang did, I know that.” It wouldn’t be another eight hundred years. It was only the first year, after all! Hua Cheng would come back earlier than that, Xie Lian knew. He believed that.

(The other Xie Lian, waiting alone for eight hundred years believed that too.)

But that was another world. It wasn’t Xie Lian’s.

Hua Cheng’s hand slipped against Xie Lian’s jaw, brushing away the tears collecting at the corner of his eyes. “I thought gege would be happy to see me,” he said with a ghost of a smile.

“I am!”

“Gege cried over me.”

“Of course I did.” Xie Lian leaned into Hua Cheng’s palm like a wayward cat seeking attention. It was cool against Xie Lian’s hot cheek. “I—” he stumbled over the words. He couldn’t say love. It wasn’t his Hua Cheng. His Hua Cheng had to hear it first, even if Xie Lian waited another eight hundred years to say it. He would say it eventually. He would. “San Lang is very important to me. More important than anything else.”

“Gege is more important to me than anything else too.”

“Of course I know that,” Xie Lian murmured, dropping his head to Hua Cheng’s shoulder. His outburst had exhausted him; energy sapped from his limbs even though it was morning. The entire shrine was lit in a red-autumn glow. Xie Lian was supposed to sweep the leaves away from his door today. But that was his own door, not the door of another world’s shrine. He looked up at the silver circle of Hua Cheng’s earring catch light and the square of sunlight from a hole in the wall splayed across his cheek and missed him —loved him — wanted him. It wasn’t the same but he was glad not to be alone today.

“Gege should take it easy today,” Hua Cheng said, after a long contemplative silence. He hadn’t removed his hands from around Xie Lian’s waist, they sat there on the intertwined mat for what seemed like ages, both of them unwilling to move.

Xie Lian traced his fingers over a bruise on Hua Cheng’s jaw. “Both of us.”

“Of course,” Hua Cheng agreed, falsely bright. He ran his fingers up each knob of Xie Lian’s spine until he could cup the back of his neck. It made Xie Lian feel grounded. Hua Cheng’s hand on his neck, Hua Cheng’s shoulder under his cheek, Hua Cheng here with him. Solid. “Is gege feeling better now?”

No. “Yes, I suppose,” Xie Lian sighed, more open with Hua Cheng then he meant to be. But it was hard to hide things from Hua Cheng when every part of Xie Lian strained towards him. “I’m glad you’re here.”

That was true too.

It was a quiet day. Xie Lian managed to totter to his feet and make something to eat — a habit he hadn’t gotten rid of, though he didn’t need to eat much anymore. The heat from the stove was nice, as was the quiet, contemplative way that Hua Cheng sat at the table, chin pillowed in the palm of his hand. He lounged back casually but his eyes followed Xie Lian across the small room, watching to make sure he was really okay.

And Xie Lian was okay, but he did feel fragile. Just enough that he couldn’t muster up the energy to tease Hu Cheng, that the air in the shrine was a little heavy instead of the sunshine-warm feeling that Xie Lian had come to associate with Hua Cheng.

But it was still there, if faint — when Xie Lian set a bowl of food down in front of Hua Cheng and Hua Cheng the entire thing, barely stopping at licking the entire bowl clean — that made Xie Lian feel warm. And when they fell asleep together on the straw met, Xie Lian tucked up against Hua Cheng’s chest and Hua Cheng dropped a kiss to his forehead, that was warm too.

“Sleep well, gege,” Hua Cheng whispered and if a voice could be warm, Hua Cheng’s was. “I’ll be here tomorrow.”

Xie Lian woke up in Hua Cheng’s arms. This was his shrine, Hua Cheng was here. Hua Cheng had been here when he went to sleep last night and he was still here. That didn’t happen. There was supposed to be something else in there, the limbo where Xie Lian lived his life while waiting. But he hadn’t woken up to that. He’d woken up to Hua Cheng again today.

And — yesterday. He hadn’t realized it, but he’d woken up to Hua Cheng yesterday too. He’d been so panicked, but that wasn’t how it usually worked. He always woke up alone. And he hadn’t! Could this be — was this —

Xie Lian spotted the same bruise on the underside of Hua Cheng’s jaw, a nasty purple-turning-green, and elation flooded his chest. “San Lang,” Xie Lian cried, shaking Hua Cheng awake. Real. Solid under his hands. Cold. His San Lang.

Hua Cheng’s eye slid open immediately. “Another nightmare, gege?”

“No, you’re here! You’re my San Lang!”

Hua Cheng smiled reflexively. “Of course I am, gege,” he said, and he seemed a little brighter today. More alive, if a ghost could be alive. Hua Cheng could be, of course. “I was here yesterday too.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know it was you!” Xie Lian threw himself at Hua Cheng, wrapping his arms around Hua Cheng’s neck. Hua Cheng’s arms circled his waist immediately, comforting and familiar. “I thought I was dreaming!”

Hua Cheng pulled Xie Lian imperceptibly closer, fingers digging into the coarse fabric of Xie Lian’s robe. Xie Lian loved the pressure of it. “Is that why gege was acting so strange?”

“I wasn’t—” Xie Lian started, then gave up. He could never fool Hua Cheng. “Yes, but — oh, San Lang, I ruined it, I didn’t realize you were home! I would have been so happy to see you!”

“Gege was happy to see me.” Hua Cheng took his hands, pressed a kiss to each of his wandering fingers. “Gege could never ruin anything.”

“I cried all over you — I’m doing it again, I’m just so happy—” Xie Lian traced his other hand over Hua Cheng’s face, that bruise under his jaw, the tip of his nose. He was unable to stop himself from touching. It was all blurry from the tears but he could tell Hua Cheng was smiling, laughing. His Hua Cheng. His San Lang was here with him again. His San Lang was peppering kisses against his hairline, the corner of his eyes, so bright and beautiful. “San Lang!”

“Gege.” Hua Cheng dropped a kiss to the tip of his nose.

Xie Lian kissed the top of Hua Cheng’s nose back, overwhelmed. Hua Cheng turned a brilliant, beautiful red and how could Xie Lian stop then? He kissed Hua Cheng’s flushed cheek and the center of his forehead, relishing the fact that he could spoil Hua Cheng too. That was all he wanted, really. The chance to make Hua Cheng happy too.

But Hua Cheng was here.  It wasn’t a dream this time. “San Lang, you’re really back.” His Hua Cheng, there on his straw mat with his sleep shirt sliding off his shoulder. His Hua Cheng, with his cool hands and that bruise under his jaw and everything him was perfect. This Hua Cheng was just perfect for him in a way that no other Hua Cheng could be. Xie Lian’s thumb was resting at the edge of Hua Cheng’s mouth. “San Lang, ah, I think — do you know—”

“I know, gege.”

“But I want to say it,” Xie Lian said, letting out a little bit of laughter. He’d saved it for so long and it was somehow much harder to create the words when his Hua Cheng was there now, beautiful, tired, here, looking at him. “Won’t you let me tell you how much I love you?”

Hua Cheng sucked in a breath. He didn’t look surprised, really. He looked at Xie Lian with wonder.

Xie Lian wanted to kiss him properly. Kiss his Hua Cheng properly. No pretenses, no nonsense. He wanted to start the kissing that would come for the rest of those lives, the way so many other Hua Chengs in so many other worlds always kissed their Xie Lian’s. “San Lang,” he started.

Hua Cheng kissed him first. Xie Lian’s eyes were still open wide as he gasped and tugged Hua Cheng closer.

They’d kissed before, technically. It wasn’t like this, not at all. Xie Lian hadn’t allowed himself to enjoy those and now he could. None of those kisses were like this real one, like melting, like settling. Xie Lian couldn’t even think of anything except the way Hua Cheng felt under his hands, strong and real. Couldn’t think of anything but the way Hua Cheng’s hand slid against his jaw and the soft, low noise he made in the back of his throat. Xie Lian’s chest was tight and his heart was dancing. He thought Hua Cheng might live warm in his ribcage now, alongside his heart. Perhaps it was the sun there, bursting into brilliance.

“Oh,” Xie Lian said giddily against Hua Cheng’s lips. Now that they were back together, he couldn’t imagine the sky ever being clouded ever again. “Ah, San Lang — oh!”

Hua Cheng pulled him into a fierce hug, burying his face in Xie Lian’s neck. “I’m sorry, gege,” he breathed. Just barely, his shoulders were shaking. Bewildered, Xie Lian wrapped his arms around Hua Cheng’s waist. Was it that bad a kiss? “I’m sorry I made you wait so long. I missed you.”

“Oh,” Xie Lian said. He must have worried Hua Cheng yesterday with his actions. “Oh, San Lang, I’m sorry I worried you, but I’m alright! I know you came back to me as soon as you could.”

“But gege seemed so lonely.”

“I missed you,” Xie Lian admitted. It hadn’t been a very good year. But it could have been far worse, if he hadn’t had his dreams to disappear into for a bit. “But you know — this sounds so strange, San Lang, but you kept me very good company, as it turns out.”

Hua Cheng pulled back, a confused frown on his face. “Gege?”

“I have such a story to tell you,” Xie Lian told him, smiling.

“Whatever story gege tells is sure to be the best story that has ever been shared.”

“Ah, San Lang,” Xie Lian said, laughing. The corner of Hua Cheng’s mouth curled up reflexively, and that — that — that was what Xie Lian wanted to see. Xie Lian didn’t think he’d travel much anymore now that his Hua Cheng was home. What was there to see, with his Hua Cheng right beside him? When it was his turn, now, to love Hua Cheng properly? But he wanted some other Xie Lian to wake up in his place and see that smile and know he was loved. “Perhaps not as much as all that. But I think it’s a good one."