Work Text:
Xie Lian watched him work, happy to quietly sit and simply observe as his boyfriend carved his face into stone like he was a god.
To Hua Cheng, Xie Lian might as well have been a god. He'd start up the religion himself, build the man a temple and spread his name. Leave offerings and light incense every hour for him. But that would probably embarrass Xie Lian to no end so Hua Cheng settled for making the man his muse.
Xie Lian was a very good muse.
He used to feel odd being watched do his work. There was something very private about creating art for Hua Cheng. For so long no one had even wanted to see his art when it was finished and he hadn't been ready to share it anyways. Then when he finally shared it, it had been with art critics or strangers online, people who saw and guessed at stories or gave opinions about the final product.
No one watched him create. Well, no one before Xie Lian.
Then again, a lot of things in his life found Xie Lian to be the exception. If Xie Lian wanted to share in the vulnerable little bubble of half expressed feelings that filled his workspace, Hua Cheng was happy to have him there.
He liked the way Xie Lian seemed to be impressed or curious at every step. He liked the way Xie Lian's eyes always shone with awe when he saw the final product. He liked the way Xie Lian sometimes just fell asleep there too, the two of them together and open even while they did totally separate things.
Today though it seemed Xie Lian had something to say. He'd clearly been considering it awhile, head tilted in that thoughtful way and bottom lip pulled between his teeth to bite at it lightly. He was beautiful when he was overthinking things. (He was always beautiful.) But he didn't seem particularly distressed so Hua Cheng could let him stew in his thoughts until he was ready to speak.
"Why don't you ever make statues of yourself?" Xie Lian asked at last.
Hua Cheng couldn't help but smile. What a silly thing to be thinking so hard about. "Why would I do that when I have such a perfect subject right here?"
Xie Lian's cheeks washed with a light dusting of pink. "Did you ever make one before we got together?"
"No." Hua Cheng stepped back to study the way the 'gathered fabric' was coming along at the bottom of the piece. "Does gege want me to?"
"Not if San Lang doesn't want to. I know supplies can be expensive and its time consuming for you to make these pieces so it's fine if San Lang isn't interested."
"But gege is interested in one?" Hua Cheng asked, conversation pausing as he chiseled out a small detail to refine the 'embroidery' on the statue.
"I'd like to see it. You always make me look so incredible, I'm sure San Lang would look even more amazing carved in stone."
"Is gege going to leave me for a statue?" He teased.
"Why would I have to leave? I'll just get two San Langs." Xie Lian replied with a playful smile.
"What if gege ends up liking him better?" He pouted dramatically.
Xie Lian raised an eyebrow. "San Lang has a whole harem worth of statues of me but now I'm not allowed a second San Lang? What happened to 'I'd do anything for gege'?"
Hua Cheng laughed, putting away his tools to come over and kiss his boyfriend. "Would gege like his own harem too? I promise not to get jealous."
"I'll settle for the two. I'm not as greedy as San Lang."
"Oh is that so?" Hua Cheng stole another kiss.
"En. After all, I'd feel bad if I had any more than that."
"Why's that?"
"Well you can't tell him, but I'm pretty sure I'll like the real San Lang better. I'd feel bad playing favorites and neglecting a whole harem."
"Oh no gege, I have something to admit too."
"Hm?"
"I've been playing favorites the whole time."
Xie Lian shook his head, playing along as if this were a very serious matter. "I suspected as much. Alright, San Lang can tell me. Who replaced me as his favorite? It's the little springtime one you keep in the window isn't it?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you here. I wouldn't want the new one to overhear," Hua Cheng leaned in with an exaggerated whisper, as if the almost complete statue behind him would actually take offense to not being his favorite.
"San Lang can break the news to me over dinner."
Hua Cheng felt his heart sing at that loving way Xie Lian was looking at him. "What's gege making?"
"I was thinking I could just improvise. Something with carrots though, I've been craving them all day."
"I can't wait to see what gege thinks of." Hua Cheng smiled as they headed out to start dinner.
***
Hua Cheng did not like self portraits.
He avoided creating art of himself like the very act would hurt him. Why would he want to spend that long staring at himself to commit all his flaws and ugliness to something permanent?
Carving Xie Lian was fun. It was calming at times and challenging at others, but always rewarding. Always good. How could it not be when Xie Lian was his favorite person and every statue was an expression of his love and celebration of his boyfriend's beauty?
But carving himself...
He couldn't carve himself with feeling. If he carved with feeling it would be ugly and Xie Lian would be sad and.... It had to be good.
So Hua Cheng worked carefully, staring between the mirror he'd set up and the stone block in front of him as he slowly chipped away to begin.
***
Xie Lian always liked his work. It wasn't just empty words either, Xie Lian's eyes would always light up and his mouth would part slightly and he'd just look so full of wonder. It was the best compliment Hua Cheng could receive.
Xie Lian did not look at his statue of Hua Cheng like that.
"You don't like it." Hua Cheng could feel something in him crack, even as Xie Lian's eyes widened and hands waved in denial.
"No, its very good, San Lang can make stone look so lifelike! It's really incredible!"
"What's wrong with it?" Hua Cheng's gaze found the statue, mind instantly cataloguing every possible mistake and personal flaw.
"Nothing, it's just as handsome as San Lang." He bit at his lip. "It's just that... I can't feel the emotion like I usually can."
"Emotion?" Hua Cheng squinted at the statue.
"Usually when San Lang makes art I can feel the emotions behind the piece. This one... It feels like you carved a stranger."
Hua Cheng looked at the statue, the one he'd carved removing himself completely from the process, focusing only on the facts of his features instead of feeling anything in particular about it.
"Gege can tell?"
"It... San Lang's art looks different when he cares about it. Even when he dislikes it. It has a certain energy about it... But this is a good piece! It really looks just like San Lang, it's incredible."
"If I added emotion I thought gege wouldn't like it," he admitted.
"I like everything San Lang makes."
Hua Cheng met the eye of his statue, thinking about the way he would create himself if he really let himself create with emotion. "It won't be pretty."
"Maybe not. But it'll be San Lang's so I'll love it anyways."
***
Hua Cheng did not think stone was a good medium for creating himself. It was good for Xie Lian. Xie Lian was his metaphorical rock, so his image should be in stone. Stone required subtle care and patience to chisel out details without breaking off too much. It was not known for being especially easy to fix mistakes in, but that just made it that much more rewarding to get right. That just made the mistakes marks of unique character.
But Hua Cheng did not see himself like he saw Xie Lian. Hua Cheng was not stone. He was clay.
Hua Cheng didn't try to mimic the details in the mirror, but instead worked like he did when he created Xie Lian, relying on memory.
And so under his hands formed... him. A younger version of him, maybe around fifteen or so when he'd been his most baby faced and ragged but had a hard enough air in his mismatched eyes that most adults avoided him.
He was so ugly. So angry looking. Two eyes still, but most days Hua Cheng found himself glad he'd lost that stupid red curse. How could Xie Lian love a disgusting creature like this?
On impulse, Hua Cheng found himself gouging out the statue's right eye, tossing it in front of piece. The hole was messy and not really accurate to the sunken socket he had now but... But the imperfection was gone.
Hua Cheng looked at the hands, fingers carefully sculpted. And he mashed them, the details fuzzing together in an ugly mess, just like he'd made them every time he'd gotten into a fight and busted his knuckles open, raw and bleeding and a few times even breaking his fingers. Some of them never set back right, a slight bend to them.
He raked his nails across the knees he was always scraping up.
He smacked dents into the clay mass of his head where blows had once been aimed.
He lashed gouges across its back where he knew he still had light scarring, because Xie Lian had a habit of tracing them.
He strangled the little clay neck, his fingers leaving an imprint around them like he'd once had bruises.
He tore a chunk out where his heart would be, because this version of himself had always felt so hollow, especially now that he knew what it was like to wake up truly happy.
He bashed and battered that ugly little clay child until it was even uglier, details blurred and pieces missing and a small mass of ripped out clay sitting in front of the piece.
And he stared.
This was not the piece Xie Lian wanted. It was angry. Hua Cheng had known it would be, that was why he had made the stone statue without emotion. It was... kinder perhaps than he would've been to himself when he was younger. There was more that he could admit he liked about himself now than he had as that angry fifteen year old, but he still hated that version of himself and that version was the one that seemed to stick in his mind the loudest. At the end of the day, no matter how much he'd worked on himself he so often felt reduced to that useless angry child.
But he wasn't. Xie Lian was good and would love him, even if he were that stupid child but Hua Cheng didn't love himself like that. So he'd changed.
So he'd grown.
After a few more moments of gazing at his wretched creation, Hua Cheng reached out for the extra mound of clay and began sculpting.
***
"Oh San Lang..." Xie Lian's eyes were tender and full of that wonder for his art again.
He liked it.
"Gege doesn't think its too much?"
"It's beautiful, San Lang really is so creative!" Xie Lian walked around the statue, taking it in from all sides.
Hua Cheng was well known for sculpting three things. First was Xie Lian, but the other two were flowers and butterflies.
Hua Cheng had not sculpted butterflies for this piece, he'd painted them, a bright silver metallic set off against the dark red he'd painted his mangled form.
He had sculpted flowers though. Every mangled and broken spot on the statue had been adorned with little clay flowers. It did not fix the gaps or hide them. But... Hua Cheng had made them. He'd cultivated those flowers himself. He grew himself into something he could like better than that ugly child.
He didn't think it was beautiful, but Xie Lian did. And they both thought he was sharp and strong and... And he liked it. He liked himself.
Xie Lian's fingers traced ever so gently over the delicately painted white flowers, the stark purity of them contrasted nicely against the blood red and shimmering silver. "Can we put this next to the springtime one of me in the window? They're about the same size and they both have flowers."
The springtime statue was Xie Lian in a fluttering hanfu, wielding a plum blossom branch like a sword. It was delicate and powerful and, in Hua Cheng's opinion, had a very different flair from the piece he had done of himself.
But they did both have flowers and Hua Cheng did think he always looked best standing next to Xie Lian.
"Alright. The metallic paint looks better in the light anyways."
Xie Lian picked it up carefully, holding it like a fragile treasure as he carried it out to their living room.
"It's pretty sturdy gege, you don't have to be so gentle."
"There's so many little flowers, I don't want to break any of them."
Hua Cheng couldn't help but smile watching how gently Xie Lian treated him. He was always treating him gently. Always taking care of him.
"I love you," Hua Cheng smiled as Xie Lian lightly set down the little Hua Cheng next to the graceful Xie Lian statue. A mismatched, perfect set.
Prompting Xie Lian's smile was an art all of its own, and it was Hua Cheng's favorite thing to create. Surprisingly easy, it blossomed into reality now, turning towards Hua Cheng loving and perfect and the best thing he could ever make.
"I love San Lang too."