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Hua Cheng cries in his sleep.
The Crimson Rain Sought Flower, the Devastation-Level Ghost King who has loved Xie Lian for eight hundred years and more, who was powerful enough to defeat the Heavenly Emperor, who has cheated death more times than Xie Lian can count, who is the great love of Xie Lian's life, who has finally returned from dissipation through sheer force of will. He cries in the night.
And Xie Lian would never have noticed it at all if his husband breathed, or if his heart kept a steady beat.
Only the minute tremors of half-caught breaths clue him into anything being other than normal when he wakes one night in the small hours, unsettled by something he can't immediately name. It takes him a long moment to identify what it is, and when he realizes, he holds still, keeps his breathing even and measured and waits and listens even as he wants to cry out, to shake, to scream.
Hua Cheng is crying. His husband is crying, and he's doing so completely silently. He shudders out a breath, draws a long, slow, measured one that catches almost entirely silently. His hair covers his face, but there might be tears glistening on his cheek.
It is as if he expects no one to care.
Then Xie Lian realizes, when Hua Cheng’s gasping breath makes a tiny bit more noise and he holds it, reflexively freezing against the curve of Xie Lian’s side. No, it's worse than that. It's as if he dares not let his grief be discovered or overheard.
He thinks of what little he's gleaned of Hua Cheng's childhood, and finds it wanting. He knows that no adult had looked for Hong'er after he fell from the city wall; no one had objected to his enlisting in the army even when he was clearly far too young. Hua Cheng is convinced to this day that his red eye is cursed, unsightly, unworthy, unlucky. None of that points to a happy childhood, a loving home.
Hua Cheng shudders out a breath, low and shaky, and Xie Lian's heart breaks for him. He's moved before he can think better of it, embracing his husband, pulling him close to Xie Lian's chest as he did in the cave of a thousand statues, speaking with touch as much as with words.
"I'm here," he says. "It's all right, I'm here. You're safe."
Hua Cheng gasps, buries his face in Xie Lian's shoulder and weeps, and weeps, and weeps.