Archive of Our Own ^beta

November 13th, 2021
Xianle

Xie Lian is falling apart.

The day had started strong, he’ll give it that. He’s two weeks into his brand new job at the central library in Xianle, and for the first time in his life he can confidently say that he’s really enjoying this job.

Which is why this day feels inevitable.

He’d turned up to work on time, worked through all of his assigned tasks, and managed to lock up properly and everything!

And then he’d turned, away from the library doors, ready to make his way over to the crossing, when the taxi ran the red light and plowed into the man who was trying to cross the road.

Gone, just like that.

The last thing Xie Lian had needed was a lesson in how pathetically short life could be, how easy it is to snuff another life out with barely any forethought. This poor man, his story ending between one moment and the next with very little warning.

Xie Lian tried to help, had spent ten minutes with another bystander alternating on chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth, but the man’s head had hit the road first, the entire force of the taxi behind him, and it had been abundantly clear that the only thing CPR was doing was delaying the time on his death certificate by a few minutes.

He’d stayed in the hospital with the police for what felt like hours, relaying what he’d witnessed, his fingers shaking violently, his nails still stained with blood. His boss had understood when he’d texted him, asking for the next day off, though the thought of returning to his apartment in the city centre with all that noise made him ill.

He had witnessed the end of someone’s life, and there’s a horrible terror that grips at his heart, horror at what he’d witnessed. He thinks, at some point, they must have told him the poor man’s name, but Xie Lian has been unable to retain it, too haunted by the slick wet thud of bone hitting tarmac.

He knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that this day may haunt him for the rest of his life.

Xie Lian finds that the world continues on as normal, even if he struggles to do so as well.

The New Year is rung in with a subdued party at Shi Qingxuan’s, her husband He Xuan nowhere to be seen that night. When he asks, his answer is a sad look from his best friend, and he doesn’t pry further. He takes a different route into work, parks in the car park two blocks away from the library so he has no choice but to arrive from the back, where he cannot see the crossing or the traffic lights where he’d witnessed a life end so awfully.

His boss is sympathetic, letting him shift his desk so that he doesn’t have to look out the bright windows to the front of the street. He passes it several times when moving books and performing condition checks, but the normality of life passing by is both comforting and terrifying, and he finds he more often than not has to turn away.

And then spring arrives, and his parents die.

And Xie Lian falls to pieces.

He has little choice but to leave his job, though the kind head librarian tells him that whenever he is ready to return, she’ll ensure there’s a job for him. By the time he’s travelled up to the rural town where his parents lived and seen to their funerals, it’s already late April, and his landlord serves him an eviction notice upon his return.

Distraught, with nowhere to go, Shi Qingxuan steps in.

Shi Qingxuan hands him the key to a beach house the third morning he’s woken up on her couch, and tells him to get out and she’ll help him get his life back on track when he comes back. It had been incredibly difficult to accept it, and she’d had to drive him out here herself and then threaten to abandon him before he did accept it, but she had been right.

The six months in the beach house at Ghost Bay had helped immensely. He needed those six months, the warm summer sun and the salty-sea breeze, the smell of coconut suncream and nights sweating endlessly from the heat, the only worry in his mind being that of if he’d had enough water to drink to combat the sun exposure. He had needed the isolation, the quiet, and he’d fallen in love with the place, considered it the safest place he’d been to in years.

Xie Lian had felt refreshed.

Which leaves him here, now, devastated that he needs to leave it. Shi Qingxuan had told him he could stay as long as he liked, but six months really feels like long enough, and he really needs to get back to work. His old boss had phoned him a few days ago, offering him a job to come back to, and he’d finally felt ready to accept.

He’s got an apartment to view when he arrives in the city, only a short-term rental but it will do until he can find somewhere better. Everything is ready to go, it’s only him that remains.

Xie Lian takes a moment to enjoy the crashing of the waves on the shore below, the cawing of the sea birds and the cold windy scent of the air, and then he turns his back with little choice but to leave.

Before he goes, he leaves a cheesy Halloween card in the mailbox, asking that the next tenant is nice enough to forward on any mail he might receive.

October 31st, 2020
The Beach House

31st Oct 2022

To the next tenant of Puqi House,

Please forward any mail to the address listed at the bottom of this letter :) I hope you enjoy this house as much as I did! It really lifted my spirits and brought me some much needed peace, and I hope the house and the sea does the same for you, too. Also, the mismatched white painted paw prints were already on the porch when I got here a few months ago, so please don’t think it was me!

Xie Lian

Hua Cheng stares at the letter he found in the rusty mailbox in front of the dilapidated little house in the bluffs overlooking the ocean.

He bought this months ago, nothing more than a rotted wooden shell in desperate need of repair, but as an artist with the carpentry skills to match, he knows he’ll have it upgraded and looking lovely in a few months time. It might be falling to pieces now, but with its position above the beach, with nothing but the sea and the sand for miles around, it will be a nice, quiet place to live when he’s done with it.

Which is why the note in the mailbox makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

To start with, the house has been empty and left to rot for years now, so there is no previous tenant to speak of that could have left this letter. Second, it’s dated two years in the future! Combined with the fact that there is no porch to speak of, Hua Cheng has the feeling that someone is trying to prank him, and he doesn’t find it particularly funny.

Frowning, he thinks nothing more of it, and folds the letter into his jacket pocket.

Four days later, and the house is already beginning to look a lot better.

The first thing Hua Cheng had done was to build a porch, because there's no way he’s managing to take out the rotted interior if he can’t get out of the house safely. He spends his time on it, three whole days of painstaking wood-staining and designing the way he wants it to look. He decides on a standard porch with a wrap-around on the left hand side, big enough that he can put some chairs on there to look out over the ocean on a night. The steps are the last to go on, and he thinks to himself that he’ll start working on the porch roof in the next few days.

He’s admiring his handiwork when a black blur runs past, red collar jingling as she goes.

“E-Ming!” He darts forwards, but he’s already too late. The cat is up the steps and through the open door in seconds. “You stupid fucking cat, it’s dangerous-“ Hua Cheng cuts himself off, staring at the porch in horror.

At some point during his fitting of the porch, E-Ming appears to have become curious about the numerous cans of paint he’s stored in the back of his truck. Somehow, she’s managed to open the can of white wood paint and, because she’s an asshole, put three of her four paws into the paint.

Which leaves this.

White paw prints run up the steps, slightly mismatched, up the three steps and across the front of the porch, disappearing into the house.

Ignoring E-Ming completely, Hua Cheng turns and rushes over to his truck, half-hanging over the truck-bed and rooting around until he finds his discarded jacket.

The letter is poking out of the inner pocket, rumpled from all the moving around he’s been doing the last few days. He all but rips it out, staring at the final sentence with what he imagines is a comically wide-eyed look.

the mismatched white painted paw prints

Identical in description to what E-Ming has just done to his brand-fucking-new porch. Hua Cheng has no idea what is going on, or how the strange letter left in the mailbox of an abandoned house could predict what his batshit crazy cat would do to it only three days later.

It takes a moment of staring at the mailbox for an idea to form, and he fumbles around in his backpack for any scrap of paper he can find and a pen. His only success is a bright pink sticky note but, hell, it will do.

November 13th, 2022
Xianle

As the anniversary of the accident that he’d witnessed comes back around, Xie Lian feels the anxiety and the grief begin to well up in him again, threatening to choke him with its intensity.

He had seen the end of someone’s life, and the only thing he can think of to help with the awful terror in his chest is the beach house. He’s only just left it, been in his current apartment for such a short amount of time that half of his boxes haven’t even been unpacked yet.

He feels silly when he phones Shi Qingxuan and begs for the key to the beach house, just for the night, but she gives it to him without question.

There hasn’t been another tenant yet, she tells him, so it should be exactly how he left it.

And it is.

He huffs out a laugh as he arrives, stepping out of his car and heading towards the mailbox, ready to remove the silly little halloween card that he’d left behind. He feels brittle, and he’ll do anything to chase the feeling away, even if it’s just to laugh at his own actions.

When he opens the mailbox, however, it’s to find no halloween card, and a single pink sticky note.

How did you know about the paw prints? It asks, and Xie Lian frowns.

There’s no neighbours for miles this far out, so he has no idea who could have possibly left this note. It’s creepy and a little eerie, the idea that someone may have come this far out just to mess around with the mailbox.

Wanting to learn more, he writes on the back: Because I’m looking right at them.

He shuts the mailbox, ready to head up the porch steps, only to stop in horror when the flag of the mailbox lowers, only to creak upwards once more.

No, you’re not. I’m standing at my mailbox, but there’s no one else here.

Xie Lian stares at the new sticky note.

“What the…” He looks underneath, to see if there’s anything attached to the mailbox that might indicate this is some form of elaborate practical joke.

Well, he writes, I’m right here. What’s your name?

Xie Lian stares at the mailbox intently as he puts the sticky note back in, bending down a little to peek around the post as he does so. He runs his hands along the inside, but feels nothing suspicious, and when he closes the lid and turns the flag, he keeps his hands on the front and the back.

A few moments later, the flag lowers, then pops back up, all under his watchful eye. There’s nothing moving it that he can see.

This one is called San Lang. Is Xie Lian a gege or a jiejie?

Xie Lian can feel his ears go pink as he lifts his satchel off the ground to find his notepad, thinking that these sticky notes are just a waste of paper. He does put them in his satchel, though.

Gege, but how are you so sure I’m not your didi?

Because gege is ahead of me in time, therefore he must be a gege.

Xie Lian stares down at the paper. Ahead in time? What on earth does that mean? What kind of joke is this?

Why do you think I’m ahead of you in time?

The response is as swift as the others.

Because your note from Halloween was dated 2022. It’s currently 2020.

How utterly absurd! Xie Lian doesn’t know what to think. Before he can reply, however, the flag raises again.

Does gege want me to prove it?

He ponders the note for several minutes, not sure how he’s supposed to respond to that one. How can he even get San Lang to prove it?

I’m not sure how you can. You seem to have accepted this idea of a time-travelling mailbox very easily!

Tell me to carve something into the wood on the porch. I’ll do it.

Xie Lian stares at the little piece of paper in his hands, confused and uncertain if he wants to continue this charade. He walks up to the porch, finds a little nook between two joins of wood that are smooth and painted white. He sketches a little image of where it is, and sends it through with write anything here on it.

He rolls his eyes as he closes the mailbox and climbs the steps again, folding his arms and looking at the wood.

He nearly falls to the floor when he sees hello gege :) ! 13.11.20 carved into the space that was flawlessly untouched only seconds ago.

Running back down to the mailbox, he yanks it open and pulls out the paper.

Did gege get my message?

Xie Lian slams it shut and runs up into the house.

What in the fuck?

November 23rd, 2020
The Beach House

Hua Cheng is bored.

He has a bathroom ready to install in the house that he has no energy or willpower to actually start putting in, so to put it off he’s decided to spend some special time with E-Ming. It mostly consists of him pointing at the floor with a laser pointer and laughing at how stupid his cat is, but it’s entertaining enough.

A creaking noise catches their attention, and Hua Cheng looks up just in time to see the flag on the mailbox pop up.

Huh.

Since the day he’d carved a message into his (brand new, he might add!) porch, he hasn’t received anything from this mysterious Xie Lian. He figures that the man is understandably freaked out, but how else was he supposed to prove to him that this was all real?

Sure, he’d accepted the idea quickly enough, but only because he’d seen E-Ming put the paw prints on the porch, and he’d been the one to fix the mailbox when he arrived, so he knows there’s no trick involved.

And really, of all the things the mailbox could have turned into, this isn’t the weirdest. A temporary ability to send items to a man two years in the future is quite tame, really.

So yeah, he’d been a little disappointed when he stopped receiving messages that day, because he was so curious.

He reaches in, only to find a nicely folded piece of stationery, bordered with cute little cartoons of foxes.

I’m sorry for being so rude the other day! I was a little overwhelmed, but I feel awful for just running away and refusing to respond. I hope you can forgive me.

Why don’t we try and get to know each other?

I’ll start!

You already know my name, I guess? I work at the library in the city - though I suppose right now, when you’re reading, I’m finishing off my final year of my masters degree. I had to take a few years away, but I think I’d just gone back when you’re reading this.

I’ve just moved back into the beach house - my friend gave me the keys after I stayed here the last six months, and told me to stay as long as I needed. So I’m here to stay I guess! My friend also just gave me a cat, since she was becoming too much to look after! I haven’t named her yet, but she’s a cutie. She’s black and she only has one eye, but she’s so cuddly that I love her already.

Anyway, enough about me! Please, I’d love to get to know you.

Xie Lian :)

There’s a tiny little smile forming on the corner of Hua Cheng’s lips, one that he wants to fight but can’t quite do so. The entire letter is curious, full of things that cause him to question what is happening. Details such as Xie Lian having rented the house for so long - was the friend Hua Cheng? Will he meet Xie Lian in the future? It certainly sounds like it, especially given that it seems as though the friend who gave him the keys also gave him a black, one-eyed cat.

He looks down at E-Ming, who is trying to extend her claws through the leather of his boots.

Perhaps it’s not him, since this cat is a feral asshole, and nothing about her is cuddly.

Grinning, Hua Cheng heads into his house, finding the cleanest bit of paper he has in there. He’ll get some decent stationary later when he heads back into the city for his groceries, but he doesn’t want to wait that long until he replies to Xie Lian.

Gege,

I don’t mind. This was hard for me to wrap my head around too. But I fixed the mailbox when I moved here, and no one was living here for a long time before I got here, so I knew it couldn’t have been a prank.

Your cat sounds great. I have a one-eyed cat too! Mine’s a bastard, though, so she doesn’t deserve to be talked about.

There’s not much to say about me, gege. I’m an artist now, but I haven’t always been. I worked in trades for a short while, and the beach house is a dilapidated wreck right now. I hope it’s nicer by the time you move in.

San Lang

There are so many questions he could ask, such as how has Xie Lian come into possession of his cat? Why has he spent so much money on this house only to rent it out after it’s completed?

Is Xie Lian’s cute cat his psychopathic bastard?

Unbeknownst to them both, the letters are the start of a short and easily trodden path to falling in love.

They start small, covering only one side of paper with their letters, sending roughly one every few days back and forth. Xie Lian doesn’t have a lot of time to write with his commute into the city, and Hua Cheng has too much renovation work to perform, but they make do.

And then the letters become longer, more familiar. Xie Lian must spend hours writing as small as he possibly can, before he gives in and buys more stationery. Hua Cheng doesn’t know if Xie Lian can read his handwriting, but his vague responses gradually become more personable, so he figures it must just take a few weeks.

One day, they realise they can send objects through to each other. One of Hua Cheng’s butterfly bracelets gets caught in the mailbox and is accidentally sent through, and it leads to an absurd evening where they both try to send each other utterly outrageous things. A coral earring, a crystal ring, Hua Cheng jokes about stuffing his cat in there and is rewarded with a stern don’t you dare touch that kitty, San Lang!

And then it evolves further. Xie Lian sends through his favourite recipe and encourages Hua Cheng to make it with him that evening. They both send through their respective attempts: Xie Lian bemoans how much better San Lang’s is compared to his own, and Hua Cheng tells Xie Lian that it’s nonsense, that Xie Lian’s soup was tastier, it just needed the noodles to be cooked for longer, whilst the chicken needed to come out a little sooner.

Xie Lian must start spritzing his letters with his cologne, because one day Hua Cheng opens the mailbox and nearly collapses at the sweet scent of flowers and citrus. It’s fresh, pleasant to inhale, and Hua Cheng spends five minutes admiring the scent before he realises that it’s not normal behaviour, and that there might be feelings behind this.

In March, they start sending each other detailed instructions of days out. Hua Cheng sends Xie Lian on a route along his favourite forest walk, which Xie Lian rewards with numerous cute photographs printed from his polaroid. None are of him, of course, but they’re lovely shots all the same.

And then, when April rolls around, Hua Cheng decides on something a little more romantic.

April 3rd, 2023
The Beach House

I have an idea, gege - head to the art store on the corner of the street where your library is, and ask for a package under your name. I’m hoping they listened to me. Let me know when you get back.

Your San Lang

Xie Lian had done as he asked, and has now returned to the beach house with the most curious set of supplies that he has ever procured. The proprietor of the store had known his name when he arrived, and had bundled a box of pre-paid paints and other items into his arms with a curious smile that Xie Lian provided no answers for.

It leaves him here, outside his beach house, with a selection of paints, an easel, a canvas stretcher but no canvas, a fancy pencil, and one of those little boards where paint can be mixed together.

He won’t lie, he’s undeniably curious.

He sends his next note through, eager for answers.

I’ve got the box of paint supplies, San Lang! :)

Within minutes, the flag snaps up again, and he opens it eagerly.

I’m glad that the guy who runs the art shop kept his word. Head down the path to the house for around twenty metres, and look for the stake in the ground on the left hand side. Come back when you’ve found it, gege.

Xie Lian does as he’s asked, clutching his little notepad in hand as he estimates the area San Lang is talking about. He finds the stake as promised, covered in mud and sand but visible just inside the grass bordering the dirt path.

Found it, San Lang! I set the easel up there. :)

This time, the response comes seconds later. Xie Lian opens the mailbox, and has to take a step back when a number of items burst out of it.

There’s a sheaf of notes, accompanied by a rolled up canvas tied with red string and the standard sticky note that San Lang writes their shorter correspondences on.

I’m hoping the art store remembered to give you a canvas stretcher, too. I’ve provided instructions here on how to place the canvas in the wood. Don’t worry about it being too tight, you just need it enough that you can paint on it without it moving beneath the brush.

I’ve enclosed the first lines of a watercolour I’ve been wanting to paint of the beach house and the ocean. Why don’t we paint it together, gege?

Oh. Xie Lian’s heart is going to burst with love at that proposition.

It’s so…weirdly romantic. They can’t sit and paint together, because of their time differences, but they can both sit in the same spot and contribute to the same painting, exchanging notes as they go. Xie Lian can only imagine that San Lang is sitting with the same shades of paint, to ensure as close a match as possible.

He almost cries at the consideration, and not for the first time wishes he had the confidence to ask to meet this amazing man.

He unrolls the canvas, and finds the early stages of a sketch of the beach house. Xie Lian smiles, taking the pencil out of the box, and begins to continue.

It takes them the better part of two days, since they both need to let their sections of paint dry before they can roll the canvas back up and send it through, but it’s a lovely two days.

There are little things, too, that really emphasise the difference between how they’re living. It’s slightly overcast for Xie Lian, but whenever San Lang sends the painting back through, there’s not a single cloud in the sky, and the sun shines brightly, peeking out just over the top of the house.

Xie Lian paints a little cloud in the sky, and sends it back through with a note saying I hope you’re wearing sunscreen!

Another time, he sends the painting through after being bold enough to paint the door, finding the correct tin of paint in the basement and watering it down until he can use it on the canvas. San Lang sends it back painted a deep red, and Xie Lian is alarmed until he reads the note.

Who the hell desecrated my home and painted the door the shade of a fucking canary? I’m putting the tin of red paint in the cupboard in the basement - it had better still be there!

Xie Lian giggles to himself, sketching in the planters that have been fitted to the veranda, a silly smile on his face as he tries to picture San Lang’s face as he opened the canvas and saw the yellow door.

Whilst he’s waiting for San Lang to send it back, he finds the tin in the promised cupboard, and begins repainting the door. There’s a hot ten minutes where it looks like a brutally murdered canary flew into his door, a matte blood red overpainting a glossy bright yellow, and he rushes inside to grab his polaroid and take a photo from the foot of the porch. It’s slightly shaky from his giggles, but he hopes San Lang appreciates it.

When he sends it through later, after he’s painted some of the beach onto the canvas, he finds San Lang’s writing even more difficult to decipher. Presumably, it’s because he’s laughing at the the photo, but the note becomes more legible towards the end.

I like those planters, gege. They were made by me - but I hadn’t finalised the design yet. It’s nice to see how they look.

I hope you didn’t leave my front door looking like that!

He smiles, painting his initials in the lower corner of the canvas, and hugs the note to his chest.

April 10th, 2021
Paradise Manor Hotel

Hua Cheng is nervous.

Unbelievably nervous.

The last letter from Xie Lian, the one that had only just come through this morning, had told him fondly about the time he was the bridesman for his best friend’s wedding. Hua Cheng had been gathering his long mass of hair and trying to pin it up with a silver hairpin as he read the letter in his bedroom, when the name Shi Qingxuan had followed it.

He’d nearly fallen out of his fucking chair and gored himself on the hairpin.

Shi Qingxuan’s bridesman.

Shi fucking Qingxuan, the woman whose wedding he is attending today, as the groomsman of He Xuan.

He nearly has a full breakdown right there and then in his bedroom, staring at the paper in utter disbelief. Xie Lian is going to be at the wedding he attends today?

Xie Lian, who won’t have a clue who the hell he is?

He can’t tell Xie Lian who he is, he knows he can’t, and he couldn’t have anyway, because Xie Lian has never mentioned him, and he can’t imagine that he meets him and doesn’t come away utterly captivated and unable to let him go, not without good reason.

Which leaves him here, in the lobby of the hotel, dealing with a grumbling He Xuan who reties his bowtie and then begins glaring daggers at Hua Cheng’s.

“Whatever you want to ask, spit it out.” He eventually says, one eyebrow raised as he tightens his ponytail and adjusts the gold earrings in his ears. Hua Cheng bites back the urge to say something sarcastic, because he’s fit to burst.

“How big is the bridal party?”

He Xuan stares.

“You know these things tend to have the same numbers for each, right? Does it look like I have more than one of you?”

He Xuan pointedly looks around the lobby, giving the wedding guests tight smiles whenever any of them meet his gaze.

It returns to a scowl when he looks back at Hua Cheng.

“You couldn’t afford more than one of me.”

He Xuan rolls his eyes, and Hua Cheng stares around in surprise.

Fuck. Is he going to be expected to walk in with Xie Lian? If he is, why on earth have they never been introduced before?

Why the fuck does he not know more about this wedding? He must have agreed and then ignored every single fucking thing He Xuan told him about it afterwards.

He’d been expecting to be paired with some random bridesmaid, someone he could make polite conversation with whilst emphasising how very gay he is. Hua Cheng had not been expecting the only member of the bridal party to be the past version of the man he spent the previous weekend painting the beach house with, the one he thinks he might be in love with, who signs his letters off with a smiley face.

It occurs to him that he is fucked.

“You must be Hua Cheng?” The voice breaks through his thoughts as he’s stood at the entry to the reception room, ensuring all the guests have been seated and waiting for the ceremony proper to begin. He Xuan is at the front with the registrar, whilst he’s waiting for the bridal party.

Apparently, he is supposed to walk down to the front with Xie Lian, before they’ll separate and he’ll join He Xuan.

He turns, inhaling deeply, and…oh.

Oh yes, he is fucked.

It can only be Xie Lian, no one else would willingly arrive at this wedding dressed in a pale cream suit, only someone explicitly instructed to by the bride would even dare.

He is beautiful.

The pale cream suits his complexion, makes his skin look porcelain smooth. His hair is smartly chopped to his shoulders, with the front woven back to hold several little white flowers in a makeshift crown. He’s so pretty that Hua Cheng feels weak at the knees, and it takes far more effort than it should to keep a calm smile on his face.

“Xie Lian.”

And gods, the name rolls off his tongue, honey sweet and perfect. There must be something obvious in his tone, because Xie Lian turns a little pink and tucks a bit of his hair behind his ear.

“It’s nice to meet you! Qingxuan is on her way, her brother is just fixing her veil on properly.”

Hua Cheng nods, not really giving a shit about Shi Qingxuan. The sooner she arrives, the sooner he can take this man’s arm and be close to him for the first time since he received a letter.

It’s going to be torture.

It’s utter torture.

Xie Lian smiles at him from behind Shi Qingxuan, who Hua Cheng will admit looks lovely in her mint and white wedding dress.

But apart from the thirty seconds where they walked down the makeshift aisle, Hua Cheng hasn’t had a chance to speak to him yet. He’d been seated next to He Xuan for the meal, which hadn’t been awful really since it gave him a chance to catch up with Yin Yu, but Xie Lian had been placed on the other side of Shi Wudu. The opportunities for conversation were dastardly minimal.

But then finally, Shi Qingxuan had managed to drag her grumpy new husband outside to the dancing area in the hotel’s expansive gardens, all decked out for the wedding, and persuaded him to start the dancing.

As the only members of the wedding party, Xie Lian doesn’t hesitate when Hua Cheng finally musters the courage to ask him to dance. He follows Hua Cheng outside with his hand in the crook of his elbow, settling easily when Hua Cheng rests one hand in the small of his back and takes his hand in the other.

Just like in their letters, he is so easy to talk to. It feels as though they’ve known each other for years, chatting easily and dancing to every score played by the band, even when Shi Qingxuan is forced to head back inside to mingle with her guests.

The sky darkens overhead, and the lights in the gardens finally flicker on, bathing the area in a warm glow just as they’re talking about how long they’ve both lived in in Xianle and how much they yearn to get away.

“And how about you, Hua Cheng?”

He tightens his hold on Xie Lian’s hand.

“I’ve always wanted to travel, gege.”

“Mn, I understand. I dream of leaving too, sometimes. I don’t know why I haven’t, to be honest. What’s keeping you here?”

There’s a smirk curling at Hua Cheng’s lips, one he knows will be visible even in the low light of the garden. The fairy lights are at that low level where everything looks enchanting, and Hua Cheng doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything as captivating as Xie Lian. The flowers in his hair match Shi Qingxuan’s bouquet, making him look fae-like in the warm yellow light.

He leans in, hears Xie Lian’s hitched breath as he does so, feels the hand on his shoulder tighten. “Because I have someone in this city that I’m waiting for.”

He thinks he can see the flicker of disappointment in Xie Lian’s face, quickly bitten back but almost certainly present for a moment. It makes him smile, hoping that in the future he’ll have a chance with this man. He’ll probably have to wait until after any date that Xie Lian agrees to meet, since it wouldn’t be fair for Xie Lian to be left without the memories of their interactions, their little dates and activities that they’ve sent each other on.

But one thing is painfully clear to Hua Cheng, even more so after he’s finally met Xie Lian: he is absolutely, irrevocably in love with this man.

Later, when the band had stopped playing and the first of the guests begin to leave, Hua Cheng figures it’s probably better for him to leave too, lest he leave too much of an impression on Xie Lian. They’ve spent most of the night together, dancing in the garden or exploring the maze, sharing stories as Hua Cheng ensures he gives very little away about himself. It feels naughty, but thrilling, knowing Xie Lian without him knowing Hua Cheng.

Xie Lian walks with him back into the hotel, happy to wave him off. Hua Cheng doesn’t say goodbye to He Xuan - the bastard probably doesn’t expect it anyway, and he needs some revenge for He Xuan having known Xie Lian for so long and never introducing them.

“Do you think - could we keep in touch?” Xie Lian asks hesitantly, as though he’s terrified of the answer, of seeing upset or disgust on Hua Cheng’s face.

Hua Cheng stares down at him, a little stunned, and for the first time this evening he hesitates.

He could tell him, could let him know that through some cosmic miracle he’s been interacting with a future version of Xie Lian. He could share secrets that Xie Lian has told him, to prove it. He could have him, now, rather than wait so long for the chance to see him again.

He could tell him, and have Xie Lian refuse to believe him, shatter his trust in Shi Qingxuan if he assumes all of his secrets were leaked through her. He could never see him again.

“I’m sorry, gege.” Hua Cheng feels his heart aching at the refusal, especially when Xie Lian looks a little despondent at his answer. He reaches out, plucking one of the white flowers from Xie Lian’s hair and replacing it with the red rose from his boutonniere.

And because he is cheeky, and loathe to leave him, he tucks Xie Lian’s hair behind his ear, eager for one last touch.

“It wouldn’t be respectful to my beloved.”

Xie Lian nods, disappointed, and when he smiles it is a delicate, sad thing.

“I understand, Hua Cheng. It was really nice meeting you.”

Hua Cheng wants to reach out, to grab him and wrap him in his arms, just so he can know the feel of being wrapped up in an embrace with him. He thinks Xie Lian might even let him, might return it just as tightly.

He doesn’t.

Instead he smiles, and turns to look down onto the street.

“You too, gege."

When he returns home that night, the first thing he does is sketch out a plan of all the possible things he and Xie Lian can do when separated by time. Walks through parks, drives to nearby areas of interest, city tours guided by his own handwritten notes. Xie Lian does the same, and the summer passes in a flurry of constant exchanges of notes and silly grins, feelings that bubble beneath the surface of his skin and beg to be spoken.

It’s lovely. He never wants it to stop.

He needs it to stop, because that would mean that he had finally met Xie Lian and no longer needs to rely on paper notes.

1st September, 2021
The Beach House

I have another date idea for you, San Lang. I’ve attached a map here of all the interesting places in Xianle that I’d consider my favourites. I’ve checked and all of them were free to enter in 2021, so you should have no problem trying to find them! :)

Hua Cheng looks down at the paper with what is probably the stupidest grin he’s ever worn in his life.

Another date idea. Which means Xie Lian has considered all their earlier solo trips as orchestrated dates. The thought of it alone is enough to make him feel all warm and lovely, the feeling rushing in with little fanfare. These are dates.

Which implies an element of romance.

The notepad in his hand is filled for the first ten pages, and on every page Xie Lian has written about the places he’s sent Hua Cheng, covering their history and explaining why he likes them so much.

He’s never visited so many cultural venues with such enthusiasm before.

But he knows it’s going to be fun when he follows the directions to Xie Lian’s favourite painting, tucked away in the Xianle Art Gallery. It takes him a while to find it, but when he does he thinks he falls a little further in love at the silliness of it.

There, in a huge gallery of watercolours, displayed with the aim of getting as many on the wall as possible, is one of the tiniest watercolours he’s ever seen in person. It hangs on the far right of the wall, tucked away between a few well known ones, no bigger than fifteen centimetres across and ten high.

On it, three cows are standing in a green field, and the label below helpfully identifies it as Some Cows.

I just think it’s a little funny Xie Lian’s explanation states, and Hua Cheng bursts into laughter in the gallery like some kind of deranged fool.

31st October, 2023
Xianle

Xie Lian had thought he would be nervous, but as it is, he’s excited.

It feels as though it has been long enough, after all. When he first told San Lang that he’d like to meet, he’d worried that he would be rejected, that perhaps San Lang would say he had changed his mind, that he didn’t think it was worth trying. After all, any meeting between them would be a whole two years away for San Lang.

But instead, San Lang had responded positively, even if he had unnecessarily worried to Xie Lian about his looks.

What if I’m an ugly beast, gege? Will you wish you’d never met me in person then?

Xie Lian had never responded so quickly.

I won’t think you’re an ugly beast, San Lang. Your letters to me show that you’re a beautiful person, so no matter what you look like, I will find you beautiful.

He’d been beet-red when he’d sent that through, comforted only by the knowledge that San Lang would likely forget the particulars of that comment by the time two years had come around.

San Lang doesn’t give him much notice, clearly eager to meet. The next note tells him that San Lang has booked a table at the restaurant in the Paradise Manor Hotel for the next day. Sure, it’s two years ahead for San Lang, but Xie Lian barely has twenty-four hours notice.

It helps, because it gives him no time to panic. He’s forced to spend more time panicking about what to wear, and by the time he’s picked it out and gotten ready, it’s almost time to leave.

Before he does, he sends one last note through.

I can’t wait to finally meet you.

When he makes it to the restaurant, he’s seated by a waiter who seems curious, and Xie Lian discovers the reason when he brings out a bottle of red wine, paid for when the booking was made two years earlier. It’s an expensive bottle, probably costing more than he makes in a day, but he’s assured it has already been paid for.

And it is a luxurious wine.

He waits, excited, nervous, and happy.

31st October, 2021
The Beach House

Hua Cheng is on edge the entire evening.

Today is the day, two years from now, when he will finally finally meet Xie Lian. He spends most of the night imagining how it is going, jealous of his future self for the opportunity that he now has to wait two whole years for.

But it will come. That’s the most important thing. Hua Cheng just needs to be patient, and he has that in abundance when it comes to Xie Lian.

Nevertheless, he spends all night by the mailbox, shivering under a blanket, staring at it and waiting for any other notice.

Perhaps he won’t get anything. He knows that when it comes to it, he’ll likely spend the entire night keeping Xie Lian at the forefront of his attention, never giving him a chance to slip away to tell his past self how the date is going. He clamps down on the utterly irrational jealousy that surges at that fact, knowing it is absurd to be jealous of his future self.

He hopes he’ll get something, even if it’s in the morning. He wants to know how it goes, if it went well, if Xie Lian had met him and not found him wanting.

Finally, finally, near midnight, the flag goes up.

Hua Cheng hauls himself at the mailbox and yanks it open, unfolding the paper with zeal.

It’s…awfully short.

You weren’t there, San Lang. I don’t know if you’ve maybe forgotten, I know two years is a long time to remember a date, but it was ah, a little embarrassing. Not the worst thing I’ve ever had to sit through, but it wasn’t easy.

Sorry, I’m feeling a bit - ah. Never mind. I hope you are having a good evening, at least.

Thank you for the wine - it was lovely.

Hua Cheng stares at the letter in disbelief.

There’s a little smudge near the word easy, as though it had been wetted with a tear that had been cleaned away, and the thought of that breaks his heart.

What on earth happened? He couldn’t have forgotten about the date, absolutely not, there’s no way. He’s so sickeningly gone for this man that he’s only ever met once, there’s nothing in the world that could have prevented him from making it to the restaurant at the Paradise Manor Hotel short of the hotel collapsing in the next two years, which it can’t have done if Xie Lian was there.

So where the fuck was he?!

He grips at his hair hard enough to pull a few strands, but the pain might be the only thing that stops him from freaking out. Two years, he has another two fucking years still to wait until he can find Xie Lian again. Until he can, he has to let himself survive on the brief interaction they had at He Xuan’s wedding.

He could wait eight hundred years if he has to, but there has to be a way to avoid this, to change what is happening. He sends a brief letter back, apologising profusely and begging forgiveness.

Xie Lian’s reply is subdued, friendly, but there’s a hint of distance in there, as though he’s pulling away. It could be out of embarrassment, it could be because he doesn’t think this is worth continuing, since he believes Hua Cheng stood him up.

Hua Cheng sends back another response, trying to arrange a different day, a different location, anything to try and create another opportunity for them to meet. He is constantly aware that the longer it takes to organise, the longer it will be until they meet.

He sits in front of the mail box for several days. Every day, he puts a letter in, hopes that Xie Lian will finally read them, and send him one back in return.

Nothing comes through.

It’s on the thirteenth day that he cracks, having stared at the little metal flag for what feels like an eternity, trying to think if there is a way he can get around this whole charade and just meet Xie Lian.

Startled, he rushes to his feet when the thought finally occurs to him.

Does he say fuck it to the workings of fate, and try to meet Xie Lian on the first day they exchanged letters? Xie Lian had witnessed some sort of accident, so if Hua Cheng can get there earlier, intercept him on his way out of work perhaps? He can rid Xie Lian of the memory of the accident, and start their relationship now.

All he knows is that he has to try. If something happens that prevents him from making it do his date with Xie Lian, then he needs to change it, to meet him long before that ever even becomes a possibility. He knows through their letters that Xie Lian had started his new job at the library right around now, so if he can just get to the city and find him, maybe introduce himself?

All he can do is try, because nothing in this world will make him give up on his gege.

What could possibly go wrong?

November 13th, 2023
Xianle

Xie Lian arrives early at Shi Qingxuan’s apartment, still a little upset and devastated at how things had turned out with San Lang.

It has been an awful few days. He hadn’t realised how much he had become emotionally attached to San Lang until he’d stopped sending the letters. It had been the highlight of some of his evenings, sitting down and recounting his day to San Lang, to hear in return how San Lang had spent his day.

In every letter he’d disclose something about how he built the house, and Xie Lian would find it, the nick in the kitchen counter where he’d dropped it on the floor, the smiley face he had carved in the underside of the staircase, a scratch on the bathroom door from where his cat had tried to paw it open.

He knows San Lang has been sending more letters. He sees every morning when the little red flag falls and then raises again, but he hasn’t dared to open it. There’s no point, he tells himself sadly. San Lang will forget him, so what point is there in prolonging this pain?

It had become too much, staying in the beach house with San Lang’s stamp on every inch of it, and he’d asked Shi Qingxuan if he could stay with her for a few nights. She’d agreed, and once he turns up at her door she opens it with a smile and a whisk in her hand, with the scent of cookies wafting through the apartment.

“Come in! I’m making you hundreds of cookies to make you feel better.” She drags him in, directing him to the coat rack as she rushes back into the kitchen, where he can hear a mixer working on another batch of cookie dough.

He doesn’t think on why she’d be holding a whisk if she’s using a mixer. She probably doesn’t even know either.

The place is similar to how it was last time he was here, when he’d swung by for the key to the Beach House a whole year ago. She’s repainted a few rooms, hung a few more paintings, and Xie Lian looks around whilst she makes noise in the kitchen, enjoying the new paintings.

The framed one on the wall of the living room makes him stop in horror.

“Ah, where did you get that from?” It’s a beautiful watercolour of the beach house at dusk, in all of its glory, pretty and very detailed down to each individual plank of wood. It’s clear each plank has been painted properly, rather than the artist using a wash of a single colour. It’s lovely, devotion in every painstaking detail.

He knows how much love went into painting it, because it’s the one that he and San Lang painted back in April. What on earth is it doing here?

Shi Qingxuan comes in from the kitchen, wiping at her hands with a tea towel.

“From He Xuan’s friend, Hua Cheng. He’s the one who used to own the beach house.”

Xie Lian is hit by a sudden, powerful wave of nausea. He looks closer, in the bottom right corner. The name of the painting and the year is almost undecipherable, but the two pairs of signatures are not.

XL in one section beneath a bit of grass on the bluff and, beneath, a nearly impossible to decipher SL. The date is given as April 3rd, 2021. He’d never seen the final version, but along the beach there are two tiny figures, so small that the detail in them is restricted to hair shape and the clothes on their bodies. One has impossibly long black hair, dressed in red and black, and the other has chestnut hair cropped to his shoulders, wearing white with blue pants.

It’s obvious that it’s meant to be him and San Lang, and it causes tears to prick at the corner of his eyes.

“Does your friend Hua Cheng go by another name?” He asks, uncertain if he truly wants an answer.  Shi Qingxuan nods, tapping her teeth with the ends of her nails.

“San Lang, I think? He was the third son and there was something going on with his older brothers? He Xuan knows more. He doesn’t like to talk about him, though.”

Xie Lian can see why - he has the overwhelming urge to find the bathroom and vomit up everything he’s ever eaten in his entire life.

Was, she said. He Xuan doesn’t like to talk about him. Well, there has to be a reason for that, and Xie Lian is beginning to see the threads he has missed this entire time.

“Why not, Qingxuan. Why doesn’t he like to talk about it?”

She looks at him then, her eyes wide, and Xie Lian feels his breath catch in his throat, because he knows.

“Xie Lian, did you not - didn’t you know?”

“Qingxuan…-“ He wants to know, needs to know, already knows. The name, Hua Cheng, familiar only because it’s linked to one of the most traumatic memories in his entire life, his San Lang-

“He died in an accident two years ago, it was right outside the library. I thought you knew him, since you seemed to get along with him at our wedding.”

Those words kick him with all the force of a hammer to his chest. He doesn’t need any more information, he knows, but why, why had San Lang been at the library?

He wracks his brain, trying to find the answers.

His last letter that he sent through the mailbox had to have arrived exactly two weeks before the accident that would claim Hua Cheng’s life. If San Lang and Hua Cheng are the same person, had San Lang arrived in the city to try and find him? Had he searched for Xie Lian, knowing he would have just started his new job, in the hope of changing their lives?

Had he, upon finding out from Xie Lian that he would not appear for their date two years into his future, decided he would change that future himself?

Putting him directly outside the library, on the day Xie Lian witnessed a taxi striking down a pedestrian.

The horror dawns slowly at first, a chill that starts at the back of his neck and then flares out over his skin, making the hair on his arms rise. He begins to sweat, feels the cold chill of it even as his face reddens with warmth.

“Xie Lian, are you -“

What day is it? What day was the accident?

Today. November 13th, 2021.

He pulls out his phone, fingers trembling and fumbling to unlock it. He types Hua Cheng’s name into the search engine, the first time he’s ever been able to do so knowing San Lang’s real name, and -

Renowned Artist Killed in Horror Smash

Traffic Accident Outside Public Library Kills Local Artist

Two Years On, The Loss of Xianle Artist To Be Memorialised

Xie Lian is going to be sick. He clicks the last article in the news section, and the first image is one of Hua Cheng, and Xie Lian feels the air ripped from his lungs.

It’s a professional photo of a handsome man in a crimson suit, standing over a table covered in numerous different paintings. He’s not looking at the camera, but the angle makes it easy to see the dark leather eye patch, the high cheekbones and sharp jawline. Long black hair tumbles over his back, falling behind his arm to curl on the table.

He is strikingly familiar, in a memory that is burned into Xie Lian in more ways than one. He’s seen that long hair, matted with blood on a tarmac road. He’s seen those cheekbones, one side shredded and sunken in from the impact with asphalt.

He’s had his hands on those broad shoulders, dancing in a fairy-light lit room at Shi Qingxuan’s wedding, when those lips had curled into a secretive smirk and he had whispered I have someone in this city that I’m waiting for.

“I have to go. I’m sorry, I-“

Xie Lian turns and all but flees Shi Qingxuan’s apartment, not even bothering to grab his coat or scarf on the way out. He tears across the city in his little car, his lights on bright and the urgency clear in the ridiculous speed he’s travelling at, but he needs to go.

The forty minute drive back to his home is torturous, and every beat of his heart thuds against his breastbone. The sound of the road beneath his tyres is loud, so loud, almost hypnotising in its steadiness, as the city scenery disappears and fades to the sight of the fields outside Xianle, gradually morphing into the grassy dunes and rocky cliffs of the ocean. It’s a fight not to send his car careening off the edge of the cliff when he takes the road down to the bluffs, and he barely remembers to put his handbrake on when he screeches to a halt in front of the house.

He doesn’t even spare a glance to E-Ming when he bursts through the front door, running towards his desk in search of a notepad and a pen. Xie Lian is in a complete frenzy, choking on his own snot and tears, dread pooling in his belly as he prays to any and every god out there that he is able to send the message through in time.

Sprawled on the floor in front of the mailbox, he writes.

San Lang,

I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for not sending anything through these last few days. I had an awful realisation this morning, that the man who I -

Please, I know you’re planning on coming to see me on this day in 2021, but I’m begging you, wait. Wait the two years. I know why you didn’t make it to our date two weeks ago - the accident I saw two years ago, it was you. Wait for me, San Lang, I’ll still be here.

Please, don’t try to find me until then. I love you too much to lose you.

I love you, I love you. Please, wait for me.

He glances down at it, hates how his writing is nearly unintelligible with the speed at which he’s put words to paper. The ink is smudged a little, from his hand brushing against it and from the tears that he can’t stop, and it’s messy, but he hopes it conveys the urgency.

Usually, he scents the paper and carefully folds it, hoping the care with which he’s written conveys all the feelings he has never dared to write down.

Today, he yanks open the mailbox and shoves it in, lifting the flag with enough force that the metal shrieks and smacks into place.

He can only hope that it is enough.

Still tearful, and frankly hopelessly unable to stop, he shifts around until his back is leaning against the mailbox post, bringing his knees up to his chest as he stares at the dirt road, desperate to hear the distinctive sound of tyres on sandy dirt.

He waits.

And waits.

Tears come in hot waves, stinging his cheeks and soaking his sweater. He waits until the bones in his legs begin to ache on the floor, until his ass is numb and his limbs nearly locked in place because of the cold weather. He waits until he has little choice but to head back inside for a blanket, choking on his sobs.

He’s too late. Hua Cheng would have arrived by now, would have come to him.

Xie Lian pushes open the door to the house, reaching out for the blanket he keeps on the chair in the hallway, and pauses, his heart in his throat.

There, hanging in the hallway above the chair, is the watercolour painting of the beach house that he had seen this morning in Shi Qingxuan’s apartment. With trembling fingers he pulls it off the wall, hugging it to his chest like it’s a plushie, trying to understand what it means that it’s here now in the beach house.

Can he hope? Did the message get through in time?

There’s a part of him that doesn’t dare hope, that wants to hide under his blanket and curl into a ball, the grief so strong that it crushes him. It feels as though someone has cracked him open and squeezed his heart in his chest, because he is so very scared, and he has no way of knowing if he’s been successful.

Wiping at his tears, Xie Lian puts the painting on the chair, and tries to calm himself down. The sun has set now, leaving the sky a slowly-dimming wash of red and oranges that are darkening to blue. It’s bright enough that he can still see the mailbox for now, but with every moment that the time crawls towards midnight, he’s aware of how it signals his failure.

Unwilling to stop his vigil, Xie Lian opens the front door, blanket around his shoulders, and -

-and the world comes to a halt.

The world falls quiet, as Xie Lian becomes incapable of hearing the waves on the ocean, the gulls above the rocks, the wind lazily rushing through the trees. He’s incapable of hearing anything but his own heartbeat, stunned into silence as he comes face to face with the man who is frozen on his porch, ascending the last step and staring down at Xie Lian as though he’s looking at a god come to life.

“Gege…” He breathes, breathes, here, on his porch, the smile curling at his lip unfolding into a brilliant grin, a glint in his eyes that is so breathtakingly alive.

Xie Lian moves first, slams into him, heedless of any propriety or personal boundaries, winding his arms tight around his waist and burying his face in his chest. Hua Cheng reacts immediately, holding him so tight that it’s hard to breathe, but he does not, cannot ask him to stop. He needs it, the hand in his hair running through his short tresses, the one around his ribs crushing him to Hua Cheng.

The blanket flutters to the floor, long forgotten. Xie Lian releases his hold around Hua Cheng’s waist, leaning back just a little until he can reach up to cradle his face in his hands.

“You’re here.”

Hua Cheng’s hands, rough and warm, cover his own. “I’m here.”

Xie Lian stifles a sob, pulling Hua Cheng down into a desperate kiss. It’s messy, wetter than it should be from the tears streaming down his face, and clumsy due to their combined desperation, but Hua Cheng lowers his hands to Xie Lian’s hips and grips them tightly as if he expects to open his eyes and find Xie Lian has faded away.

There’s the swipe of a tongue along his lower lip, and Xie Lian opens beneath him, lets Hua Cheng lick into his mouth, shivering at the brush of their tongues and letting his arms wind around his neck, holding him up as they kiss and kiss and kiss. It aches, hollows him out and fills him up with a love he knows exists but hasn’t seen acknowledged in return. There can be no doubt about it now, when Hua Cheng pulls away and rests his forehead against Xie Lian’s, breathing slow and heavy. Their combined breaths make Xie Lian dizzy with want, but he can’t give into it because there is so much to say.

“The wedding.” He starts, his voice wet and hesitant. “Did you - had we already sent the letters? Did you already know me?”

Because he does need to know. Hua Cheng had told him at Shi Qingxuan’s wedding that he had a beloved he was waiting for... is it - could it possibly be him?

“I did. Gege, I didn’t want to have any memories of us that you wouldn’t have shared. I couldn’t tell you.”

Xie Lian honestly couldn’t care about that. Hua Cheng must have had his reasons - Xie Lian will believe it. “San Lang, who is your beloved?”

Hua Cheng stares down at him, a little wide-eyed, as though the question honestly shocks him, as though the answer should be obvious.

Xie Lian is backed into the wall, his face cradled in Hua Cheng’s hands.

“As if,” he says, punctuating his words with a deep kiss, “it could ever be anyone but you.”

Xie Lian feels relief and happiness surge through him, so powerful that his knees nearly buckle beneath him. It’s overwhelming, his emotions so intense he thinks he could faint. His San Lang is here, healthy, alive, and with him.

He’s had it lucky - Hua Cheng has had to wait three whole years to finally meet him. Xie Lian has only had to wait less than half of that, hoping that Hua Cheng would not forget him, praying that he could love him enough to wait for him.

“I love you San Lang.” The words are choked, torn from the well of emotions bubbling up inside him, so strong that he’s fit to burst. “I love you, so much.”

Hua Cheng’s grin falters for a moment, overwhelmed in the face of such honest emotion. He loves Xie Lian, has waited so long precisely because the strength of his love is all-consuming, but to hear it back is…

Well, it’s only his own self-restraint that stops him from sobbing right then and there, so full of love and scarcely able to believe that it is reciprocated.

So he kisses Xie Lian again, harder, hotter, pressing his body fully into him and feeling the way Xie Lian arches up into him, hands tightening in the fabric of his clothes. When he leans back, Xie Lian’s pupils are glassy with unshed tears of happiness.

“I love you too, gege.”

Xie Lian smiles, allows the tears to fall out the corner of his eyes when he blinks, and he drags Hua Cheng back down into another kiss as he fumbles behind him for the doorknob.

There is so much still to talk about, stories to get straight with their friends, timelines to iron out, paradoxes to understand, but for now there is only the heavy weight of Xie Lian’s grief turned into love and happiness. For tonight, at least, he wants to feel nothing but Hua Cheng, in him and around him and all over him, whispering vows of love between kisses and bedsheets.

The heavy conversations can come in the morning.

For now, they’ve waited long enough.