Chapter Text
“You can’t be serious,” Feng Xin hissed, pressing himself against the kitchen wall furthest from Hua Cheng, holding a plastic spatula up defensively. “Just because Jian Lan and I separated and you and I are… acquaintances or some shit, that doesn’t mean that I want to-to,” He swallowed roughly, choking a bit. “ Marry you.”
Pei Ming perked up, setting down the applesauce and spoon he’d been feeding Cuo Cuo from. “Oh ho, what’s this? I’m legally allowed to officiate marriages if you guys are looking for a minister.” He waggles his brows lecherously. “I can notarize this shit today and have you on your honeymoon by tonight.”
“That’s not...” Hua Cheng rubbed his brow. He shouldn’t have said anything, he shouldn’t have but he did. It was too late to go back now. “How did you even reach that conclusion?”
“You said you wanted someone to be a guardian to E-Ming!”
The little boy looks up from some stupid toy in his hands at the sound of his name, shuffling a little closer to Hua Cheng’s side. E-Ming gotten attached quickly even though they barely knew each other, the loss of their parents making him clingy.
Hua Cheng resists the urge to shove him away. “No one’s talking to you,” he spits. “Go sit on the couch.”
E-Ming flinches, gripping his toy tighter. “Gege…”
There’s a vulnerability to E-Ming’s voice that Hua Cheng doesn’t remember being allowed to have. A sense of trust and an unfair expectation of being treated well. Hua Cheng looks at E-Ming and he hates . Hates his mother, his father. Himself.
It makes him bitter; he wants to tear them all limb from limb, wants to dig his chipped black nail polish into their skin until there is no resemblance between him and E-Ming. Until they look as different as they were raised, as different as they were loved.
Hua Cheng can do nothing at all. Nothing that’d ever show. But he doesn’t have to put up with E-Ming.
“Go.” Hua Cheng steps away, glaring when E-Ming moves to get closer again. “Now!”
The little boy’s eye wells up, and he races to the living room. Hua Cheng turns to look back at Pei Ming and Feng Xin, their expressions conflicted and admonishing even though neither of them actually says anything. It doesn’t matter; Hua Cheng doesn’t care for their judgement or opinion, he just wants to sort his options out.
“ Yes, I want a guardian for E-Ming as in, someone to petition to be his guardian or foster parent and just watch him until I get back and figure shit out,” Hua Cheng said, talking slowly as if that would somehow get the words through Feng Xin’s thick skull a little easier.
Slowly, Feng Xin lowered the spatula. “Isn’t he already in your care? Why do you need someone else to keep him?”
The question makes Hua Cheng pause, the sudden onslaught of emotion desperate to burst out of him. He doesn’t want to explain, doesn’t care to….doesn’t even think he knows how. How do you tell someone your parents took one look at you and hated you? How do you tell them your little brother was somehow everything you weren’t and it’s only because of a twisted sense of responsibility that you didn’t want him to go through foster care, didn’t want him to hurt even though that’s what you’d spent your whole life doing?
He still doesn’t know why his parents put him in the will. Why they’d even think, after everything they put him through, that he’d even want to be anywhere around their brat.
“That’s none of your business,” Hua Cheng said, glancing at where Cuo Cuo was in his high chair, smearing applesauce all over the food tray with monstrous glee. There was applesauce dripping from his chin, rubbed into his clothes and on his face, and Hua Cheng valiantly tried not to let his disgust show. “Besides, I’m going to be deployed soon. It won’t matter if I want to keep him because I won’t be here to take care of him. The state would take him anyway.”
Feng Xin drops the spatula all together, tossing it aside onto the counter carelessly. “In that case, with all the legal hoops you’d have to jump through, wouldn’t it just be easier to renounce your guardianship rights?” he asked, casting a glance at his son and producing a soft napkin from seemingly nowhere, wiping the little boy’s face and hands clean.
Hua Cheng’s temper was well-hidden, as well as it could be, but it was starting to resurface. “I just said—“
“I know what you said!” Rather characteristically, Feng Xin scowls, brows furrowed deep. “But what the fuck happens if you die? He’d be taken away anyhow! And no one’s just going to be able to sign up for that shit, right Pei Ming?”
The man in question grimaced. “Right. They’d have to go through the state’s set of legalities to make sure they’d be adequate guardians. By that time, you’d already be deployed.”
It was rare for Feng Xin to make sense, rarer for anyone to agree with him, and, if Hua Cheng were honest, he wasn’t quite sure about the situation either. His deployment hadn’t yet settled in, the idea of dying hadn’t yet clicked. He was only twenty-one, for fuck’s sake, he hadn’t even thought he’d live this long and, without anywhere to go, the military had been his last option to getting his feet back on the ground.
But his parents threw one last curveball at him. After all this time, after they’d thrown him out, they still put E-Ming in Hua Cheng’s care should they be indisposed.
Hua Cheng scoffed. Indisposed. As if they hadn’t taken themselves to their graves with their refusal to get better, to stick to all those fucking rehabilitation programs for once instead of lapping up the next fix as soon as it came.
It was ridiculous. Insane . All Hua Cheng wanted was to get rid of E-Ming.
(All Hua Cheng wanted was for no one to go through what he did.)
Pei Ming spoke up again. “You could still help someone petition to have guardianship. There’s no one to object to it, so it shouldn’t be too difficult, but it’d be easier if it were someone already considered next of kin. A relative, maybe.” He glances at Feng Xin and waggles his brows again. “Or a spouse. That way, E-Ming would be able to stay with them while other aspects of guardianship are being worked out.”
Feng Xin scowls, albeit a bit belatedly, and punches Pei Ming in the arm. “Don’t look at me! I just got out of a messy marriage!”
“Would you stop yelling?!” Mu Qing suddenly appears from the living room, E-Ming settled on his hip and munching on a banana that Hua Cheng knew he didn’t give him. “When you said to come over to discuss work, I didn’t think you meant for us to try and work on your problems, Feng Xin.”
Feng Xin immediately goes off at this but Hua Cheng can’t pay attention, too busy looking at E-Ming to care. The little boy’s face, while blotchy, isn't tear-stained the way Hua Cheng thought they’d be, and his eyes are dry. Cuddled up in My Qing’s arms, E-Ming seems…comfortable.
The sight brings an image to mind that sticks with Hua Cheng even all these months later, the memory strong enough that he can still feel the chill of that early morning clinging to his skin when he’d stood outside the Feng household at three in the morning.
He’d been irritated, tired, but he’d gone because Gege had pleaded, calling Hua Cheng to explain that he was stuck at work and Feng Xin had called to freak out about Cuo Cuo’s fever and persistent crying.
Mu Qing had no such encouragement– Gege hadn’t thought Mu Qing would go, even if asked– but he’d been there before Hua Cheng had been even though he lived further, Cuo Cuo already lulling to sleep in his arms as he walked back and forth across Feng Xin’s house, humming something soothingly. He’d been exhausted, that much was obvious in the bags under his eyes, but he still held Cuo Cuo until the baby had fallen asleep and then spent another half hour nagging Feng Xin on what to do when a child was teething.
Hua Cheng should’ve remembered it sooner.
“You’re still sick, aren’t you?” Hua Cheng says, because he’s not used to asking for favors, he’s not used to needing anyone, and he falls into old habits of needing to be needed, needing to have the upperhand instead, his gaze fixating on Mu Qing.
In the bright afternoon sun, he can see the way the disease had been eating through Mu Qing’s body. Mu Qing had always been keen on his appearance, on the healthiness of his skin and hair, everything he put in and on his body to the point it nearly seemed obsessional. They hadn’t known then what the fixation and fear was, but it wasn’t hard to tell in hindsight.
Mu Qing’s hair was thin, his face sunken in and sallow from weight loss. He wasn’t the beauty he was once known to be.
But Hua Cheng couldn’t care less for the sight Mu Qing had been or currently was. It was his desperation, and not his feelings, that knew very little bounds.
The man immediately stiffens, mouth twisting to snarl, “Even you can’t be that stupid. I’m not contagious—”
Hua Cheng has little patience, less left than when he came to Feng Xin’s in the first place hoping to pawn off his brother to the only person he knew with a semi-functional child. He’d forgotten, in his haste, that Mu Qing had helped raise his siblings when his mother had been sick. That he was the reason Feng Xin knew how to take care of Cuo Cuo in the first damn place. But Mu Qing is here now and Hua Cheng can’t fault the convenience.
He cuts Mu Qing off, asking his next question though he already knows the answer. “Can you afford your treatments?”
Marriage wasn't what he was planning, not at first, but Pei Ming's right and Hua Cheng is ready to rid himself of the ever-present headache he's had since E-Ming landed on his doorstep, even if it's only by unconventionality. Hua Cheng doesn’t take his eyes off of Mu Qing as he waits for a response and, for a while, the older man remains unbothered, not even glancing at Hua Cheng as he maneuvers around the kitchen as if there weren’t anyone else in it. Mu Qing takes his time, taking the banana peel from E-Ming and dropping it into the trash before filling a small plastic cup a quarter way up with some water. It’s when he finally hands it to E-Ming, gently helping him drink from it, that he rolls his eyes and snaps, “How is that any of your business?!”
Hua Cheng can’t stand him. Hua Cheng kind of needs him.
“We should talk,” he says, voice tight, and he looks at E-Ming pointedly. “Privately.”
He’s used to turning and just walking away with the expectation that people will follow, a habit from his teenage years of running with trouble, leading them, but he can’t do that with Mu Qing. Unlike others who feared Hua Cheng’s temper and strength, Mu Qing didn’t care. He’d take a beating and still mouth off, still try to fight back even if he stood no chance. Being sick likely changed nothing.
So Hua Cheng waits, already exasperated.
“We have work to do,” Mu Qing said airily. “Whatever you’re worked up about—”
He yelps when Hua Cheng catches his wrist, pulling him closer and coaxing E-Ming from his arms and onto the floor.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” Mu Qing’s feet skid against the tile as he tries to prevent Hua Cheng from pulling him along. Hua Cheng half drags him outside, shutting the door behind them. “Seriously, what the hell?!”
“I have a proposition—”
“So do I! One that involves my fist meeting your face!” Mu Qing snaps, trying to move around Hua Cheng to get back inside. “Repeatedly!”
Hua Cheng doesn’t budge, using his arms to bracket Mu Qing in place. They’re of a height, Hua Cheng standing just a bit taller, but, like this, Mu Qing seems small. Fragile. Hua Cheng loosens his grip a bit, even though he doesn’t let go.
“E-Ming needs a guardian while I’m gone,” Hua Cheng says. “The easiest way is through marriage. You’ll get my benefits, my healthcare, and my pay. We can divide that in three so none of your money is being spent on E-Ming—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Mu Qing presses his hands against Hua Cheng’s chest and tries to push away. He’s flustered and it almost makes him look electrified, as if any moment his hair would stand on end. Hua Cheng bites back a snort as Mu Qing continues ranting. “Slow down! I— marriage?! Who’s talking about marriage? Are you out of your mind?”
“Yes,” Hua Cheng snaps. “You think I would marry you otherwise? I’m out of my fucking mind because my parents left their kid in my care–”
Mu Qing is staring over Hua Cheng’s shoulder and Hua Cheng turns to see where he’s looking. The glass on the door shows right to the living room where E-Ming is playing with Cuo Cuo, the two little boys passing toy cars back and forth to each other. When Hua Cheng pulls his eyes back, Mu Qing is already staring at him.
“Why do you even want to do this? With me?” He raised a brow, expression incredulous, bordering amused. “I get that you’re desperate, but you have actual friends, don’t you? You can’t be that miserably alone.”
Hua Cheng scowls. He gets it, he does. They’d spent all of high school not really getting along, getting into scuffles for no real reason, marking each other with their violence because that was the only thing they really understood, the only thing they’d been taught.
It’s the only thing they know and the only thing they can’t use, not in this.
“Don’t misunderstand. This is less a marriage than it is that I need someone to watch the kid. He needs a fake parent while I’m gone. You’re good with kids, my friends–” and Hua Cheng really has to consider if that’s the right word to describe the less-than-pleasant working relationship he had with He Xuan and Yin Yu. He thinks about Xie Lian and his propensity for trouble even when he isn’t seeking it, his childhood filled with nannies and employees but not with his parents. It wouldn’t be good for E-Ming, Hua Cheng thinks, and that’s what he has to put first. “They’re not, and I can’t let him go to foster care.”
He swallows, forcing himself to breathe. Hua Cheng isn’t used to pleading his case, hates relying on anyone, but time was moving too quickly for him to keep up.
“I just- I just need this favor until I get back and then we can get divorced.”
Mu Qing stares at him for a long moment. Then he swears through a laugh under his breath, running his hands through his hair. “You’ll pay for my health treatments, medications, everything?”
It’s no surprise that’s what the man focuses on, but Hua Cheng nods. He has no place to be picky.
Mu Qing mimics the motion, that same disbelieving laugh escaping him. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he mutters.
Hua Cheng nearly agrees but he bites his tongue just in time to hear Mu Qing finish with a grimace:
“You’re lucky I need the help.”