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As long as Zhang Qiling can remember, and sometimes he can’t remember much, his heartbeat was on its own. No second rhythm beating in his chest to accompany his own steady, rarely elevated heart. He didn’t mind it most of the time, why burden someone else with his immortal weight and unsteady memory. Some moments, though.
In some moments, weakness creeps into his thoughts and he wonders what it would be like, to feel another heart beat in his chest, to know there is someone who matches him, someone who would care. But the years pass and pass and the memories fade and the people he remembers are forgotten, their smiles and happiness and soulmates fading into oblivion and he remains.
The concept of a soulmate for himself has long since been ingrained as impossible, when on no special day (so special though, exceedingly special now) a flutter invades his chest. Zhang Qiling grabs at his chest bone, wondering if he overlooked a poison or trap in the last tomb and is now paying for it, but nothing else happens. Just the hummingbird wings of a fluttering rhythm beating along his slow, steady heart.
It does not go away or fade. It stays. For days and weeks, then months.
He can not describe the absolute wonder at the sensation once it registers what this actually is and means. A soulmate. His soulmates heart just began beating! It’s such a foreign sensation he almost wants to rub it away, but he also never wants to miss this again. His hand settles over the two beats in his chest, mind still reeling. He almost feels like dying, or like breathing for the first time, or maybe as if he sees the world in full color instead of pastels.
It’s horrible and wonderful and terrifying.
(And he dreads the day when he’ll forget this moment even existed.)
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When he is born, Wu Xie’s parents are at once delighted and subdued. Delighted at their healthy little baby boy, who already has two rhythms in his chest one his own and the other of his soulmate. Subdued because as the days go on, the second rhythm never changes, steady, slow and strong but unchanging, as if asleep… or more likely, comatose.
This sorrow is soon pushed to the back of their minds as business and child-rearing continues to occupy them for most of the day and as the years go by, more business than child-rearing. Wu Xie runs around his Nai Nai and Ye Ye, his Ershu and Sanshu and questions everything and listens to their stories and learns to love mysteries and history and discovering hidden stories in the distant past.
He is over the moon when he learns that the steady beat beside his heart is the heartbeat of his soulmate, that there is a person out there to care for, to love unconditionally, to protect and hold on to. A person who will not leave him behind for anything. It almost overshadows the news that he is going to start school soon, which is also exciting, but in a different way.
The other kids, the ones who also have a second beat, talk about their heartbeats when it changes, when it speeds up unexpectedly or slows down into rest, open and unrestrained about a topic adults don't talk about, and Wu Xie remains silent. Because his soulmate's heart doesn't. It doesn't speed up, or slows down and for the first time in his life, he worries if something is wrong with him.
Arriving home after school he seeks out his Nai Nai and finds her reading by the pond, a teapot and cup by her side. She looks up as he walks up to her, delight growing into concern as she sees his expression.
She puts away her book and opens her arms for him and he crawls into her lap and embrace.
"What happened, my Xiao Xie? Why are you so sad?" She asks and strokes one of her hands up and down his back.
"Nai Nai," Wu Xie sniffs. "why does my second heart never change?"
His Nai Nai hums. "We don't know why, my dear. Your soulmate's heart is a sleeping one."
Wu Xie's brows draw into a frown. Sleeping? Always?
"Like that movie you watched with the pretty man? A … coma?" He thinks hard about what he remembers from that movie, it wasn't very exciting, no adventure or monsters, just people. Talking, the doctor in the movie said talking helps.
His Nai Nai hums in agreement. "Could be, yes. But we don't know until you meet them."
He nods. Okay.
He starts talking to his soulmate just before bed, with his hand over their hearts he tells them about his day, about the stories he's been told, what he learnt and the adventures he got up to with his friends.
And the steady, strong heartbeat besides his never changes.
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The fluttering heart besides his grows stronger, steadier but never steady. It remains fast and changeable, only really slowing down in sleep. Besides his slow rhythm it sometimes seems unbearably young. (And it is, isn’t it? It practically just started beating, even if a couple of years have gone by since that day.)
Sometimes it grows thready, as if weakened and that terrifies him, but it always recovers and grows strong again in a few days.
Years pass and pass and he forgets and remembers fractures and he always remembers that day, when this fluttering hummingbird settled in his chest. (He at least thinks he does, was it really like dying, like breathing, like living for the first time?)
He gets hired and dismissed, searches for his own past, gets locked up in an asylum, escapes and forgets and remembers fractures.
And sometimes, when he actually settles down to sleep after days of naps or meditation, he feels a strange, wonderful warmth seemingly radiating in his chest, like a miniature sun blooming and spreading light. These moments become something he looks forward to, they feel like what he imagines a hug feels like.
(They’re so young though, aren’t they, how many years has it been? He’s forgotten so many, he’s not sure anymore. What year was that day? It happened, is that not the most important thing? Will he ever find them? How would he even search? He can’t remember the year, what age is he even looking for?)
He gets hired by Wu Sanxing again, this time he’ll bring his nephew along. So one more person to watch and make sure doesn’t kill himself in the tomb. Wu Sanxing knows how to handle himself in tombs, though, so hopefully he instilled some of that knowledge in his nephew.
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Wu Xie has finished his studies in historical architecture and archeology and bores himself to death in the little antiquity shop his uncles have given him to put him in a safe space. Boring!
So he spends his days talking at the one uncle he knows he can convince otherwise every opportunity he gets until finally, his Sanshu gives in and takes him on an adventure! (If it involved a little blackmail, no one has to know. Uncle could just have listened to him in the first place, and thus avoided the whole thing.)
(Did he spend over a year in university searching for a coma patient that has been so since his birth until now? Did he find no one, because all of the patients of that year or before were either awake now or dead? Maybe. Or no. No, he didn’t. He still talks to them sometimes before he sleeps, though. Out of habit and not out of hope. (With so much hope, he sometimes burns with it.))
They’re on their way to the meet up, when he notices it and almost stops breathing.
The unchanging heartbeat in his chest… quickens. It quickens and his own slows down. The rhythms beneath his ribs start to align. Which, which, which, which can only mean one thing.
His soulmate is close by and getting closer.
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He is checking the equipment, when he feels the rhythm beneath his ribs change, his own speeding up and the hummingbird wings slowing down. His breath catches and he searches the surroundings with dark eyes. He's not ready, a shiver of adrenaline rushing through him, he won't run away, though. His soulmate is near and coming nearer.
A car grumbles in the distance and he forces himself not to look up as his heart still speeds up. He gives in and lifts his gaze. He's allowed to have this. His soulmate, he's allowed to at least look.
The car comes to a halt and the only person not familiar is what he assumes is Wu Sanxing's nephew. Their eyes meet and their hearts skip a beat, absolutely in sync now.
Big, warm eyes in a face still a little round with youth, a soft jumper covering broadening shoulders, a sparkling gaze full of life and mischief. He turns around, away. No.
No. His baggage, his weight. He can't drag his soulmate down with him.
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Wu Xie.
Wu Xie.
His soulmate is a stubborn one. He should have known, because he'd need to be. He barely resisted for a few days.
"Xiao-ge." Wu Xie calls and what else is he to do but turn around? He's like a flower caught in the radiance of the sun when his turn is met with a crinkling smile. "Can I hug you?"
Their hearts have resumed their own rhythms again, so he can't blame the almost violent thud of it on his soulmate, though Wu Xie's own heart has sped up from its usual rhythm as well.
He nods and waits and wants and then Wu Xie's arms are around him and his body is pressed against soft wool and warmth and soft hair tickles at his ear and he needs a moment before he can catch his thoughts again and manage to get his own arms to move.
Holding Wu Xie is … better than he had imagined holding his soulmate would feel like. It's strong and warm and something within him just settles with content so foreign, he has no idea how to describe it.
When Wu Xie moves to back away, he just tightens his arms and makes the other man laugh with delight, a young heart dancing besides his own steady one.
"Okay." He says and snuggles even closer. "We can stay like this for a moment more." Smiling lips are pressed against the junction of his neck and shoulder. And Xiao-ge, he hides his smile in sun warmed hair.
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The End