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Chapter Text

Mu Qing counts, then recounts his money, comparing the coins he has to the prices he’d written down. He divides them once more. A stack for grocery, a stack for His Highness’ family, and finally, a stack for himself. It’s similar to how Mu Qing divided their money before, only with less for grocery and finally more for his own mother. Mu Qing packs his share away, holding the small pouch to his chest. It’s just a little more than enough to buy his mother’s medicines. Just enough to buy some joss paper, too. 

But he won’t have anything left after that.

It’s okay, he reassures himself. It’s only been a few months since he’d left His Highness. It’s only reasonable that he wouldn’t yet be stable enough to save more of his money for himself. Once Mu Qing was able to make it so His Highness was more stable, once Mu Qing could afford to give them more and help them get there, then he would save more for himself. 

He can take care of everything. He always has. He only needed to be more patient.

He’ll take care of everything. 

“Qing’er,” his mother whispers, breaking Mu Qing from his thoughts. He hadn’t realized she had woken up already. 

Mu Qing looks at her as she shakily pushes herself up to rest on her elbow where she lays on the single mat they have.

It’s threadbare, nearly nothing against the hard ground, and Mu Qing adds it to his list of things that he needs to save for. 

It was already rather lengthy. The things on it, expensive. 

The first: Nicer robes for his mother. 

A variety of them, suited for all types of weather and her poor health. Ones that were comfortable, made of soft fabric like what he was able to wear as a junior official, and better fitting, more appropriate than what he could wrangle together for her out of the materials meant for his own robes. It wasn’t right, he thinks, as he watches the way his modified robes fit her, for her to be wearing his hand downs. His spares. 

Next, if he can, even as he finds himself comfortable (or rather, accustomed to) sitting cross-legged on the floor: A table and two chairs.

It was hard on his mother’s bones and her back to not have something supporting them, and she wouldn’t sit at a table alone, no matter how much Mu Qing tried to persuade her, not when she’s convinced herself Mu Qing’s labor earned him the comfort more than her attempts to help around their home earned her. 

Ridiculous. He scoffs just thinking about it. 

The third, now that Mu Qing had more access, more awareness of officials in heaven and their attitudes: A suitable offering for a Zhang Qiao Hui, the only medicinal official worth seeking. 

His mother stares at a space somewhere near him with sunken eyes, dulled even in the bright, early morning sun. Her face is hollow, no flesh between the space of her skin and bone, and this tentative fragility covers her body wholly. Every spot, every limb, breakable. Like this, she wouldn’t last much longer. 

Mu Qing amends his list, heart suddenly beating rapidly, panickedly. The offering shall come first. It had to. He didn’t have enough money yet but he could try to save more. He could eat less for a while and lessen their spending on groceries. He knows hunger. If there’s anything his time with His Highness had taught Mu Qing, it’s that he can still handle it. Can still work despite it. 

He rearranges his other piles of money. It’ll be fine. With his new position— 

(the thought is rancid, it makes him nauseous the way it feels like betrayal even if it was right and practical, sensible in all the ways the last few years had not been) 

— he earns more. 

Wryly, Mu Qing lets himself fixate on it, on the way he knows he may never be able to explain this choice to His Highness, and keeps the unpleasant feeling close knowing it wouldn’t let him calm enough to have an appetite. As it was, that wasn’t such a bad thing, not now. 

He just needed to save a bit more. It’ll only be for a little while longer. 

And once he has the offering taken care of, he can focus on their comforts. On the better mat and robes for his mother. On the table for both of them. 

His stomach aches around the thought, the emptiness already nestled there, and Mu Qing presses a hand against it. 

It was okay. Just a little bit longer. 

“Qing’er,” his mother whispers again and, this time, she cups a hand around his face. “My son, I know you are worried. I know you have a lot to save for….”

Immediately, Mu Qing turns his entire attention to her. He knows the sound of want in his mother’s voice, knows her hesitation like his own. 

He refuses to let her feel it at all. 

“Don’t worry about that,” Mu Qing says, cupping his own hand around hers. “What is it, Mama, what would you like?” 

She smiles at him sadly, her voice too soft. “Mu Qing…”

“Tell me,” he insists. “If you want something, I will get it.”

“I wish I could give you more,” her voice cracks. With it, one tear, another, more, they slide down her face until she trembles, her body curling over as she suddenly sobs. She presses a hand to her face desperately, hiding her face against Mu Qing’s shoulder until his skin grows damp. “I wish I ha-had g-given you m-more.” 

He can’t look at her like this, just as much as she can’t look at him, the lump in his throat unbearable. He struggles to speak, to breathe, and he chokes around it. 

“M-mama, d-don’t. You did enough, you did more than e-enough.” He pets her hair with shaking hands. “Come now, what is it you wanted? W-We’ll think about all this l-later, okay, when you’re better.” 

She shakes her head, no , over and over and it’s getting harder, impossible, to breathe. Mu Qing desperately finds something. 

“When you’re better, I want taiye chicken and drunken, spicy noodles. I still can’t make it like you do, you’ll have to make it for me.” 

The demand, barbed as it sounds, makes his mother huff out a laugh and the hand cupping his face suddenly pulls away to pinch his cheek. 

“A pomegranate,” she says finally, watery eyes gleaming fondly as she holds up a single, trembling finger. “Just one, Qing’er.” 

“Okay.” He brings her water to drink, helps her wipe her face with the same handkerchief she’d embroidered for him when he was to go on his first mission with His Highness. “I’ll go get it now.”

——————

She takes the pomegranate from him despite his protests when he returns, shaky hands swiping it away with the joss paper he’d bought, scolding, “Go sit down.” 

And Mu Qing watches, protests hidden behind his silent winces as his mother washes and cuts the fruit, her hands still somehow still sure in this. It’s rare that they get pomegranates, but not so surprising for his mother to ask for one today. 

He smiles against the warmth in his chest as she splits it in three— two quarters and a half— as she’s always done for as long as he could remember. One quarter is placed beside the joss paper Mu Qing had brought with the pomegranate, set aside for his father. The other quarter stays beside her. The half, she begins peeling, plucking out the red fruit, “their gems” as she once called them, and neatly pours them into the bowl she had set beside her.

When she’s done, her fingers are stained red as if she had been playing with some noble woman’s lip paint, but she doesn’t try to wipe or wash it off. Instead, she picks the bowl up in one hand and collects the other two pomegranate pieces and joss paper in the other. 

Mu Qing knows what she wants before she asks, and he stands to take the quarter pieces of fruit and joss paper from his mother. 

“Can we go see them, Qing’er?” 

“Of course.” 

She loops her arm around his and, carefully, he leads her through their home. There’s a small alcove in the nook of their home, a little hideaway of sorts that cannot be seen from the door. A wooden tablet for his father and siblings lay there, behind moth-eaten, tattered cloth. He collects them, ignoring the too-new feel of A-Fei’s tablet, before they leave their home to make their way past the unmarked graves set aside for the criminals executed under Xianle’s rule to the once-dried stream almost too far out of their reach. 

It’s still among the ruins, among the dreary slums where Mu Qing had been raised and where the rich would never go. The Yong’an don’t trespass here. 

Palace life had been kind in this; Mu Qing learned quickly where to hear all the things he needed to know. His father’s execution method— unlucky as it was— was one of the few. It wasn’t hard to determine then, where his father had been buried. Leaving His Highness had been kind like this; Mu Qing had had the time to find his father. 

“I placed him by his willow tree,” Mu Qing tells his mother.

In a world where nothing belonged to them, this spot, no matter the logic or reason, would always be his father’s spot. The place where he practiced his music and taught Mu Qing the same. The place his mother once washed laundry when she had his father to carry the clothes for her. 

The place his father had buried Mu Qing’s youngest siblings. 

It was easier to avoid prying eyes then.

It became impossible after his father died and they had to start using the village well. 

“Is it still empty?” His mother whispers, and her grip on Mu Qing tightens in trepidation. Some say the sound of heartbreak is that of shattered glass, but Mu Qing knows it differently. He knows it as a baby’s cry falling silent, the sound of a blade through flesh and bone. Knows it as bloodied gasps and a burbling stream becoming silent.

He shakes his head. “Nm. The stream finally has water again.” 

His mother smiles widely, and her steps hasten until she’s pulling Mu Qing along. 

“I haven’t come by the stream since you left,” she says breathlessly. “I don’t want to be late, Qing’er. Your father only liked being out here during the early morning hours. Let’s not make them wait.” 

Mu Qing stays quiet, lips closed tight over his teeth so he wouldn’t accidentally reveal how he hadn’t seen his father’s spirit, how his father must have already moved on if his soul wasn’t already damned. 

How he’d seen his little brother and knew from the bloodstains and missing parts of his ghost that the war had trapped him. 

His mother walks faster and so does Mu Qing, lips sealed. 

When they arrive, his mother goes still, head tilted in waiting. The water just barely laps at the stream’s edges and she lets out a sob of relief. 

“Take me to them, Qing’er,” she urges, and Mu Qing takes his mother to the weeping willow, his father’s weeping willow, and sits her against the tree, only a few feet from where Mu Qing re-buried his father among his dead children. 

Mu Fei.

Mu Tian.

Mu Yao.

Mu Ning. 

Only Mu Qing and his mother were left. 

Once she’s settled, her fingers curling in the dirt over his father’s grave, Mu Qing quietly sets the tablets at the head of the graves. At his father’s grave, he puts the quarter piece of pomegranate in front of the tablet and lines the rest with kumquats he’d knocked along their way there. 

(His siblings never liked pomegranates, not like Mu Qing did.) 

With the little spiritual energy he has, Mu Qing lights the joss paper and sets it down, too. 

“Mu Xuan, husband, we’re here,” she says, patting her way forward to stroke a hand over the tablet. “M-my ch-children, we’re here.” 

She gets quiet for a moment as her hands brush over the carved strokes of Mu Qing’s father’s name. “It’s Qing’er’s birthday, husband. A-Fei, A-Tian.” She murmurs, stretching her hands to touch their tablets, to trace her hands along their names. “Yao-er, Ningning, let’s wish gege well, hm.”

His mother pulls back, taking the bowl of pomegranate seeds and turning to press it into Mu Qing’s hands. Mu Qing hands her the other quarter piece, and places a seed from the bowl on his tongue under his mother’s sightless stare. 

This little celebration was theirs, too. Routine. His mother knows it by the breaths of time where she can no longer know it by sight. 

“Are the gems rich, my little prince?” She says conspiratorially around a smile when Mu Qing swallows. “Are they bright and shiny?” 

“Are they to your taste?” Mu Qing can hear his father joke as his siblings squeal and play around like royalty, and he repeats it aloud just as his mother deepens her voice sillily and says the same. 

She huffs out a laugh, and Mu Qing moves to sit beside her, letting her rest her head against his shoulder while they finish their pomegranate seeds. “Happy birthday, Qing’e...”

Her voice becomes drowsy— she doesn’t quite finish his name, but Mu Qing still smiles and thanks her as the sun travels up along the sky, murmuring about the shapes of the clouds. 

They look like sweets, he tells her, or like the little animals he used to try and sneak into their home to keep. 

He describes the colors streaking across the growing blue expanse, tells her about the shades of blues and yellows, the reds and orange-golds that were like the clothes she used to mend, the ones she’d threaded and sewn that now dress up the sky. 

He twists the descriptions into stories, the tales he’s heard in the heavens and the people he’s come to meet until all the pomegranate seeds are done. And his mother hums, little laughs escaping her until she falls asleep. 

Still Mu Qing speaks, twining a fairy tale from the frayed edges he knew until the sun finally reached its highest point in the sky.  

Licking the rest of the juice from his fingers, he whispers, “Mama, we should get going.”

His mother doesn’t move. 

“Mama?”

She doesn’t wake up. 

——————

He takes her back home in a daze. 

There’s preparations to make. A bathing ceremony. They’ve no friends or family, so there’s no need to wait. No need to postpone the ceremony. 

He just has to get everything ready. 

They already have cheap incense sticks for prayers and Mu Qing spends the rest of his money, the coins for the groceries and his savings, the coins for His Highness, on a casket. He can’t afford candles. He’ll have to pick the wildflowers that have sprouted around the ruins of what was Xianle. 

He can’t afford candles. 

He can’t afford offerings. 

There’s not enough in their home for him to even make any. 

He has nothing. 

He has nothing. 

Mu Qing pauses. The handle of the shovel is riddled with splinters and uneven wood, digging bleeding lines into his hand. 

His mother never agreed. 

When he asked her to make him the taiye chicken and noodles, she didn’t agree. She didn’t promise. She always did. 

The rage of it chokes him. 

Mu Qing flings down the shovel, nearly falling when he stumbles out of the unfinished grave, the dirt of it staining his robes, his hands. He shoves his hair aside, wrenching it out of his eyes, and the dirt gets smeared there. 

He can’t see. He can’t breathe. 

He’s home before he’s aware of it, nearly throwing the door off its frame when he storms back inside. 

“You knew!” He accuses his mother’s corpse, body shaking as he stares at her. “You knew!” 

She doesn’t answer. 

Screaming, Mu Qing grabs the nearest thing and throws it across the house. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?!” He howls, and he thinks he’s loud enough that the walls shake, seconds from falling down around him. He doesn’t care. He wants to break everything. “Why didn’t you tell me?!” 

Mu Qing flings their things to the ground, to the walls, not even waiting to watch them shatter before picking up the next thing. He throws and kicks and breaks until his body hurts and there is nothing but ruin around him, around his mother’s corpse, and keeps going until there is nothing else to break. Nothing else to tear apart. 

He wants to tear through his skin, wants to bash his own head in, he wants- he wants-

“Mama, wake up!” He sobs through his next scream, falling down into the broken pieces beside her. His throat is raw, his body aches, and he keeps screaming, keeps pleading, even as the words and cries dig gouges through what’s left of him, tumbling past his lips almost insensibly. He’s speaking too fast. “Wake up, wake up, please. I’m working hard, Mama, please. I’ll take care of you, I’ll take care of everything! Mama, please, I’m not ready, I’m not ready, please. Mama, wake up, wake up.” 

She doesn’t answer. Her skin’s still cold. She still won’t move. There’s no pulse beneath her skin. Mu Qing shakes her. Surely that would upset her. Surely that would wake her up. 

“Mama, mama, please—” 

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t wake to scold him. 

It’s too late, he knows this as he begs. Knows he hadn’t spoken fast enough. 

——————

He buries her next to his father, and he laughs. 

Before, nothing had been the emptiness in his stomach, the haphazard roof around his head. It was doing everything and being unseen. Nothing had been him. That ever-dark path His Highness walked along where no light, no sound, ever disrupted no matter what Mu Qing did or how many times he spoke. In that place, Mu Qing had been given nothing. He had been nothing. 

But now, he had nothing. 

Not even a grave marker. 

Nothingness had dimensions and all Mu Qing has known was stagnation, cyclic repetition of being in the same place over and over and over— 

His mother deserves more. 

Mu Qing digs the palms of his hands into his eyes until it hurts, but he doesn't stop laughing. Won’t. Can’t. His father, his criminal father who hadn’t been long in his life, has this stream, this willow tree. Has the messily carved piece of scrap wood with his name on it sitting like a tombstone somewhere above his headless body. 

For his mother, Mu Qing doesn’t have enough to afford even that. 

There are no cherry trees in Xianle anymore, the groves long burned, decimated, from the war years ago. The wood he could salvage from other homes or even his own are tainted, marred with blood and bloody deaths, the screams of unsettled souls buried in every single grain. 

The next laugh gets caught somewhere between one breath and the next. It stabs through him, through his lungs and his heart, and Mu Qing gasps, his fingers digging into his chest. 

His mother deserves more. 

But all Mu Qing can give her is nothing. 

——————

He finds the instructions to make the taiye chicken and drunken noodles later as he’s packing his few things, tucked among the bandages and barely-there remnants of a healing ointment his mother once made and packed for him for his missions. Her handwriting was messier than what he remembers it being, the trembling unsteadiness that had plagued her hands and the poorness of her sight when she passed were unmistakable like this. She didn’t know much when it came to reading and writing, and it’s obvious in her instructions, the way they are much more disjointed than the way she had spoken. Unrefined in a way that all of heaven would look down upon. In the way that kept his mother from saying that he was her son, fearful that she would only embarrass him. 

Like this, Mu Qing thinks he should have expected his mother’s passing. 

She’d been waiting to see him again, holding on to the dredges of a life that was being denied to her with a stubbornness Mu Qing thinks he has, if only just to see him again, even as her illness grew and stayed insufferable. His return was more than she hoped for despite it. More than what Mu Qing thought he would be able to do, always too uncertain, always too hindered by obligation and expectation to do what felt right for everyone as opposed to what would be right for him. 

But she held on, held on like Mu Qing hoped she would but dared not to believe until he’d seen her again, and when Mu Qing finally returned…

It had been enough. 

His father’s death anniversary must’ve felt fitting. His mother had said it more than once. Mu Qing’s father wasn’t a good man, not by most people’s standards. He didn’t know how to be, but he’d learned to become a good husband, a good father, and Mu Qing’s mother came to love him more than she loved anyone else. 

“Except you, Qing’er, and your siblings,” she’d whisper, stroking back his bangs. She’d make a face at him, too teasing to be scolding, but still nothing less. “But you make me worry the most.” 

Because they didn’t say “I love you”. They didn’t make lengthy, poetic declarations. 

But they always said enough. 

You make me worry the most. 

Mu Qing could fill in the blanks. 

There’s humor in the irony, but he has no breath to laugh. 

His mother loved him the most, something she never told the others and nothing Mu Qing would ever mention, but she took this day, the day she got him, as her own. Bookmarked her life within the pages of Mu Qing’s own, and let her own life, her own story, only exist within that singular chapter that Mu Qing was alive for. His birthday— this wretched, god-forsaken, damnable day— 

“That was the first time I believed there were gods,” his father once whispered, intoxication making his words lisp past his lips as he patted Mu Qing’s hair. “The first time I believed they listened.”

His parents thought it was a blessing. Blessed because of him. His birth, his supposed use and worth to their family. 

A belief he never earned. 

His mother had spent her life wrangling fate with her unlucky hands. Giving all that she could even when nothing was given to her. Making the most of their nothings. And she had taught Mu Qing the same tenacity with blood-pricked needles and the pride of hard work, until the color of coins and blood beads painted their largest dream. 

“For this life to be yours to lead, it has to be in your control,” she’d lecture. “So whether you hold tight, Qing’er, or whether you don’t, this is the choice you make about where your life will go.” 

No matter the times her fingers slipped, she would reach again, try again, holding tighter each time while she prayed for something better. Pushing Mu Qing to all that was better. 

Blessing. She’d never think of Mu Qing as anything else. 

And Mu Qing knows too much about ghosts and too little about luck. Knows that dying on auspicious days can mean nothing when you weren’t meant for anything so forgiving as a peaceful end, but, as he swallows down another mouthful of alcohol he shouldn’t have, he hopes it worked. 

Mu Qing holds the recipe to his chest and tells himself this is the last time, the very last time, that he’ll fall apart on his mother’s grave, and he prays:

Whatever my mother wanted from the end of this wretched life, whoever is listening, whoever wants me in their debt, then fine . I will be. Just let it finally, finally become hers. 

Mu Qing knows the sound of heartbreak as a baby’s cry falling silent, the sound of a blade through flesh and bone. Knows it as bloodied gasps and a burbling stream becoming silent.

And now he knows it as a birthday wish only barely complete. 

Chapter Text

Even after 800 years, after fighting and separating, celebrating His Highness’ birthday is as easy as doing something of routine. It’s not so different to turn offerings to a fallen god into gifts to give Xie Lian in person even after the Crimson Bastard returns and attempts to monopolize Xie Lian’s birthday celebrations. 

It’s fine. Mu Qing doesn’t care much. Xie Lian isn't his to celebrate and even thinking of doing something of the sort still makes him feel a little sick in the stomach. 

(How can he not when Xie Lian’s celebrations during their youth were at the expense of Mu Qing and people like Mu Qing? 

When, now, it was just as much a reminder of all the prince had lost as it was an attempt to give it back to him?

Xie Lian accepts Hua Cheng’s efforts with grace, joy. But he lives in Puqi Shrine more often than Paradise Manor and that says enough.)

He tries to keep his gifts simple. Thoughtful. Useful, because he can’t imagine gifts of sentiment or of excess just because it was there and he could. They need purpose, meaning, even if it were just his time for a cup of tea or a stupid adventure Xie Lian wished to go on. 

They need to say two things each and every time: 

‘I know you’ and ‘I care’. 

Otherwise, he might as well not give anything at all. 

He’s given Xie Lian robes that wouldn’t tear and pots that wouldn’t burn. He’s given him steamed buns that tasted of royal kitchens of Xianle— the ones Xie Lian doesn’t know that Mu Qing woke earlier than he had to just to make them with his own hands so the palace cooks wouldn’t have another dish among dozens to worry after— and traveling food containers marked with spells that would keep the contents fresh and warm. 

Mu Qing doesn’t run out of ideas— over the eight hundred years that Xie Lian was gone, his habits had changed and his wants as well, but there were still too many things that Xie Lian needed and forgot about even though Crimson Rain was now there to provide for them. Things even Crimson Rain— ever-observant— would not think of, the mechanizations of thriving in a humble life being far too different from the battle to survive. Mu Qing knew it well, even if others didn’t know, always seeing him and his actions as if every aspect of his life was meant to be just another stepping stone to heaven. 

There’s a begrudging respect that Hua Cheng has towards him, something still mottled with hate and a false indifference, when Xie Lian smiles at him every time, crescent-eyed. Mu Qing doesn’t care for Hua Cheng’s regard but Xie Lian’s regard feels heady in a way Mu Qing doesn’t expect, comforting in a way Mu Qing had hoped friendship would be even if he never had it, and he thinks the message— ‘I know you and I care’— finally comes across. That it’s enough. 

He lets Xie Lian wrap him in grateful words and grateful hugs, appreciative rather than expectant, and Mu Qing feels like he’s finally, finally, given enough to be seen. 

—————

They help Xie Lian celebrate Hua Cheng’s birthday every year, Feng Xin and he. 

Their first gift, like each and every one that follows, is a gift they give together but one Mu Qing ultimately chooses. 

“Why can’t you choose?” Mu Qing griped even while he looked over the wares spread out across some market stalls they had found themselves strolling through. There are things made of porcelain and metal, embroidered fabrics and elegant leatherworks. Mu Qing’s eye gets caught on the liuli glassworks. “He hates you less.” 

For a long moment, Feng Xin says nothing, just strokes a thumb along the crafts. “But I hate him more.” 

Feng Xin doesn’t answer when Mu Qing asks him why, doesn’t protest or offer other ideas to the appropriately expensive glasswork that Mu Qing decides on, only giving it a cursory glance. Mu Qing frowns, eyeing the artwork critically. There are butterflies sprouting up from the flowering petals of the peach blossoms dotting along an elegant branch. The base is clear, the flowers an opaque white, but the butterflies are multicolored, a flurry of blues, greens, yellows, and reds. He likes it enough. 

“You don’t like it?” Mu Qing demands.

But Feng Xin doesn’t meet Mu Qing’s annoyance with his own, shrugging and saying far too simply, “It’s nicer than what I would get him.”

That has Mu Qing falling silent. It’s not like Feng Xin to hold anything against anyone, he understands that now, but he doesn’t think he’s imagining the.. the spite in Feng Xin’s voice. The callousness. So he doesn’t say anything else, just makes the purchase quietly. 

Despite it, despite the bombshell that is Feng Xin apparently holding resentment towards Hua Cheng, Feng Xin tags along every year.

And, if it could be said that Feng Xin isn’t anything too invested, then Mu Qing doesn’t care about it at all. 

(He’s reminded of a grubby kid too scared and then bright in awe. Of tears and hunger pangs and accusations of ghosts and pains that shouldn’t have been Hong’er’s fault, shouldn’t have belonged to him. 

He’s reminded of the street kids he gave food to, always handing them a little more when he asked them to look for that bandaged child who didn’t know what it was like to have enough to share or matter enough for others to want to share with. Reminded of throwing Hong’er from the military while his own hands and clothes were still warm and sticky with the blood of a Yong’an child soldier. 

But, most of all, Mu Qing is reminded that no matter what he does or how he helps, no matter what he gives, nothing would ever say ‘I know you’ and ‘I care’ to a man who hates him as much as Hua Cheng does.

Mu Qing doesn't think he wants them to.)

But he still lets this become part of his routine. Let himself give gifts even to Hua Cheng that makes sense. Let Feng Xin take more part in deciding once he slowly starts coming around.

It’s artworks and art supplies, disgusting love stories and tickets to performances that seem to fit the ghost king and Xie Lian’s taste. It’s slipping recipes and poems that Xie Lian had loved among Hua Cheng’s things because he cared for nothing more than Xie Lian. 

It’s not an olive branch or an apology. It’s not anything Hua Cheng thanks him for, nothing Mu Qing wants to be thanked for.

And it never would be. 

—————

It takes a few years after Crimson Rain’s return for Xie Lian to remember Feng Xin’s birthday. 

Mu Qing cares about this a little more. 

It isn’t routine. 

Routine was lying to Feng Xin about some false mission they needed to tend to, either in Mu Qing’s territory or, inconveniently, Pei Ming’s. 

(The God of Love was not discreet, far too inclined to let Mu Qing use whatever pretense in his name if it meant spending time with Feng Xin outside of the heavenly realm. He knows what Pei Ming thinks and knows it’s wrong. But still, for eight hundred years, Mu Qing used it at every and any opportunity he could.) 

Routine was riding out to a mountainside, the lakes, or the wide, open steppes when the sun only started to rise, like Feng Xin used to do with his mother before she left him. It was finding out when the mortals were putting on some comedic play and conveniently stumbling across them. 

It was doing whatever it took to say, ‘I know you’ and ‘I care ’ to someone who never heard Mu Qing or understood his words. 

It wasn’t this. 

“So picky. Are you jealous, Xuan Zhen?” Hua Cheng drawls after Mu Qing had picked at all the flaws of Xie Lian’s fourteenth idea.  

Hua Cheng isn’t angry about it and it’s weird. He isn’t angry and, for once, he isn’t fixated on Xie Lian, his sharp eye trying to see through Mu Qing instead. 

Mu Qing almost sneers at Hua Cheng to keep his demonic gaze to himself, but even the thought of that careless insult makes him feel a little nauseous.

(That grubby little child hasn’t erased itself from his mind, and the image of that little brat of a child not yet an adult who Mu Qing tried to save is even worse.)

“I’m not jealous,” he snaps.

He’s not. He’s not.

(But for 800 years, Feng Xin’s birthday was celebrated between him and Mu Qing and just them. Alone. He didn’t have to- to compete for Feng Xin’s time. He didn’t have to sit around discussing plans or options or coordinating schedules and intentions.)

Xie Lian’s ideas are good, Mu Qing wouldn’t deny that. But they’re good for days that aren’t birthdays, good for Feng Xin on a regular outing. Archery, sparring, high class parlors….these were things Feng Xin liked, but they weren’t out of ordinary. Weren’t anything a stranger wouldn’t know of him, let alone a friend. 

It was anything that meant anything, and still nothing at all. Nothing that said ‘I know you’ and ‘I care’.

Mu Qing had accepted it the first time. The second, too. Feng Xin was happy just having His Highness’ company, even if it meant Crimson Rain was there, but Mu Qing’s patience always ran out by the number three. 

At least this time they agreed to begin planning it early. 

“I’m just saying we could try something he doesn’t do regularly,” Mu Qing continues, more a harsh critique rather than an explanation when he doesn’t mean it to be, and he bites back a wince. 

Beside them, Xie Lian doesn't, visibly wincing at what Mu Qing said. “Ah. I hadn’t considered that.” 

Hua Cheng glares at Mu Qing before turning to simper at Xie Lian, somehow just testily enough to be a warning to Mu Qing without making Xie Lian any more willing to outwardly say anything about it. “I’m sure Nan Yang is grateful for your company, Gege. He’s aware that your time is valuable.” 

Mu Qing rolls his eyes, but smiles sweetly, acid along the lines of his lips, coating his tongue. “Are you sure you’re not the jealous one, Crimson Rain? Don’t worry, I’m sure Xie Lian will still have time for you no matter what we plan.” Then he drops the mockery, scoffing, “It’s not as if company is any sort of hindrance for the two of you.” 

White blurs between him and the ghost king at that, and suddenly Xie Lian stands there, cheeks stained pink and expression awkward. He clears his throat. “I shouldn’t have presumed. You wanted to start planning early, I should’ve realized you have something in mind, Mu Qing.” 

“I’m not disagreeing because I want us to do what I had in mind!” Mu Qing protests indignantly. If that were the case, he would’ve done his own damn thing and then tagged along with whatever Xie Lian planned. He didn’t need their fucking agreement or whatever it was Xie Lian thought was going on. 

His temper’s there, throbbing at his temple, but he won’t, can’t, lose his temper over something ridiculous as birthday plans. Mu Qing clenches his fists. “I was just saying whatever we do should be—“

And then Mu Qing cuts himself off, suddenly embarrassed and flustered. He isn’t sure how to finish that sentence, but Xie Lian looks at him as if he were a puzzle that the prince had just put together, his pretty, irritating head tilted slightly in consideration. 

“Should be…” Xie Lian waits for Mu Qing to finish, goads him towards it, really, and Mu Qing tries in vain to keep tight-lipped about it. “Should be…unique? Special?”

“It should mean something,” Mu Qing grits out. Xie Lian stares at him patiently, as if Mu Qing were a child he was humoring, and the frustration loosens Mu Qing’s tongue. “What good is a gift if it has no value or use? What use is an outing if nothing we do even seems like it is meant for him?” 

Feng Xin’s birthday isn’t meant to be treated as just another day. Another passage of time where Feng Xin settles back to allow the happiness of others mean more than his own. He’s done that enough, has done that for over eight hundred years. 

He’d still do it today in a heartbeat. 

Celebration, grand gestures, none of that meant anything to Feng Xin. No matter how minuscule, even the faintest kind sentiment, the most passing good wish, was good enough for Feng Xin. And, alongside Xie Lian and Hua Cheng, at times, that was all the two lovers could offer, too transfixed on their own world, the space existing between them, to care for the people building the outside world up around them, hovering just out of orbit to matter. 

Even if Feng Xin wasn’t, Mu Qing was tired of it. 

Xie Lian eyes him curiously, as if he were trying to pick apart the pieces he saw of Mu Qing to fit together into a completed picture, and Mu Qing grit his teeth, sweeping his sleeves together. “Whatever. Do what you want. He’ll be happy with it.” 

———

Mu Qing is always tired. Always. There wasn’t a time he knew himself not to be and his godhood only immortalized his fatigue. Missions made it worse, paperwork and meetings drained him, but it’s the celebration planning, the trials of fucking friendship that has Mu Qing asleep so deeply that he doesn’t hear his bedroom door open. At least, that’s what he tells himself. Admitting a Savage ghost and cleaning up the spirits did this, took this much energy from him, was just embarrassing. 

(It was underreported, the amount of people who’d been killed and their spirits still lingered. The homeless, the orphaned, the runaways, all of them forgotten by those around them and not making its way to a single prayer.) 

A hand strokes through his hair, slightly familiar— Mu Qing thinks he’s felt it a few times— and a soft spiritual energy infuses into him with every gentle touch. He’s a little delirious, the ache of claws through his skin sharp with every movement, and he leans into the touch.  

“-eng Xin?” Mu Qing wrinkled his nose. Usually when they visited each other after an injury to share spiritual energy, they brought each other food. But, for the first time, in eight hundred years, Mu Qing can’t smell anything. 

The hand in his hair paused slightly, and then it skittered down, fingers combing back Mu Qing’s hair away from his face and tucking it behind his ear. “Ah, that is exactly who I wanted to speak to you about.” 

Mu Qing nearly shrieks, suddenly very, very awake, and he throws the pillow he had cuddled to his chest away from him, jerking upwards to turn to look at the person behind him. In his panic, his movements are frenzied, without realization of boundary, and he almost all but ends up in Xie Lian’s lap, the older god is so close. Xie Lian slips his arms around Mu Qing, holding him steady as if keeping Mu Qing curled up against him was something of the norm for them—

They’ve done this before, Mu Qing can’t deny that. While Crimson Rain was gone and Xie Lian had fallen sick, burrowing himself in Mu Qing’s arms as if that old habit had never died even though they both knew it had, had died for 800 years, only returning once they’ve made some amends. They’ve done this a few times even after Hua Cheng returned, years after, without reason of illness or anguish. A subconscious gravitation, finding themselves in each other’s space as if they didn’t know how to be outside the realms of it. 

But it still isn’t normal. That doesn’t stop Xie Lian from acting like it is. 

Xie Lian smiles down at Mu Qing, unbothered. He was fond of his liberties, of this Mu Qing knew, growing comfortable with them anew. At first it was the teasing. Even when they weren’t on good terms, even when they had been certain of each other’s hatred, Xie Lian didn’t hesitate to take his jabs. 

He’s even more free with them now that he knows Mu Qing cares for him. 

“Y-Your Highness!” Mu Qing complains. 

Xie Lian makes himself comfortable among Mu Qing’s pillows and blankets, resting against the headboard with his arms still around Mu Qing. “You never said what your idea was. I came to find out.” 

“Is this how you ask questions?! If your Crimson Rain tries to kill me because of this, I will curse your worshippers so they all have your bad cooking skills,” Mu Qing laments, but he doesn’t move, too comfortable and happily (he won’t admit it, he’d never admit it) still warm in his post-sleep daze. Covertly, he shrugs the blankets up higher, making sure it was covering both of them. “Besides, I told you I don’t have a plan.” 

Xie Lian hums just as Mu Qing’s bedroom door swings open, Hua Cheng sauntering inside with a tray laden with food and a fancy tea set Mu Qing is positive does not belong to him. 

“Wha—?!”

The ghost king kicks the door shut behind him, striding across the room and easing himself into Mu Qing’s bed as if it was his own, settling beside the two gods. A horde of silver butterflies appear before Hua Cheng’s fully on the bed, their wraith wings moving lazily as they slip between his hands to cradle the food tray and keep it hovering in the middle of the three of them. 

“Slacking, are we, General?” Hua Cheng drawls. He pours out a cup of tea, handing it off to another little flock of wraith butterflies, before adding more tea leaves into the pot. Mu Qing watches in trepidation as the butterflies gently flutter towards him. Watches Hua Cheng from the corner of his eye, and watches the way Hua Cheng watches him back, not looking away even as the ghost king twirls a strawberry lazily, sticking the red fruit between his teeth. White sinks into red, a pink tongue swipes it clean. “As picky as you are, you haven’t thought of a single idea?” 

This is newer, but not entirely foreign. Common courtesy is the least they can give each other, if only to keep Xie Lian happy. 

Mu Qing is still a bit hesitant when he shimmies himself up, carefully taking the cup from the butterflies. He takes a slow sip. It’s not his own tea, not even a flavor he’s altogether familiar with, fruitier than he’s accustomed to with a natural sweetness, and Mu Qing finds himself humming lightly, pleased despite himself and who gave it to him. 

He’s not entirely fond of the robust teas Xie Lian was raised with, the aromatic flavors that left their taste on your tongue long after you swallowed. The poor never had so many tea leaves, could never afford the richer blends. Even ascending to heaven, even after having made a point of trying all of them, Mu Qing found himself returning to the white teas he grew up with– watered down, almost tasteless– or the lighter flavored tea blends he’d come across in his hundreds of years. 

“Gege came up with fourteen ideas, Xuan Zhen, surely you aren’t so small-brained you cannot come up with one?” Hua Cheng continues goading, taking the opportunity to scoop some food in his chopsticks and slipping it up to Xie Lian’s lips. Once Xie Lian takes the food from it, happily chewing away, Hua Cheng brings the chopsticks down, jutting it out towards Mu Qing as if in threat. “Unless you intend to take credit for a gift you really had no part in?”

Mu Qing takes a few sips more before meeting Hua Cheng’s gaze levelly, thinking of the answer that would be the most annoying. “I tried thinking like you this time.” He smirks, before widening his eyes as if surprised. “But then my mind went empty.”

Hua Cheng throws a strawberry at him.

Chapter Text

The traders and travelers are not constant, and their skill sets were unpredictable. It should be a surprise then, when Hua Cheng finds some bow craftsmen, but really, Mu Qing has grown accustomed to Hua Cheng’s unpredictability and odd abilities to do what seemed impossible. 

He and Xie Lian were perhaps a good match that way. 

Mu Qing is caught between being mildly impressed and being mildly horrified. Mostly because Hua Cheng— Hua Cheng— has an alarmingly large tent pitched up for them in a mountainside prairie that Mu Qing had mentioned offhandedly that Feng Xin was fond of. It’s open on one end, letting it fill with the morning sunlight, and thick cushions and blankets cover the grass. Placed atop some of them are work tables with tools and materials neatly set out and there’s another empty table a little off to the side. 

“You can put the snacks or whatever you made over there,” Hua Cheng half-orders when Mu Qing steps inside, gesturing to the empty table. 

Mu Qing rolls his eyes, tempted for a moment to leave the food elsewhere, but begrudgingly gives in to rationality and moves towards the table, setting his things down beside Xie Lian as he goes. 

There are perks to being a god , Mu Qing thinks, as he traces an array onto the table’s surface, and perks when people don't pay attention. 

The craftsmen don’t notice as Mu Qing creates a space where there previously was none, too engrossed with their tools and the conversation among themselves to bother looking up from the work tables. The array is a clever one and one Mu Qing used often— it’s the same convenient spell that let Mu Qing store his saber while he was in disguise— and, even empty of his saber as it was currently, it comes in handy now. From it, Mu Qing takes out a tea set— the kettle already filled with hot tea— a wok filled with steaming venison stir fry, a large pot of rice, and a variety of other side dishes. He has bowls and chopsticks, neatly cut fruit, and a large pot of peppered soup. 

It’s more than enough to feed all of them and the craftsmen but quantity is not the reason Mu Qing keeps the steamed buns and desserts hidden away. He casts a furtive glance at the other two immortals who slowly gravitate towards the table. No, it wasn’t because of quantity at all. 

“Don’t even think about it,” Mu Qing says. He keeps a fan folded up in his sleeve— it was too hot and sunny not to— and his fingers find it, ready to brandish it as a weapon to keep sticky fingers off the food. “Feng Xin’s not even here yet!”

“You made all of this?” Xie Lian peeks over, eyes wide and hopeful. Mu Qing can practically see the drool by Xie Lian’s lips and he sighs, opening the space again to fetch a steamed bun to push into Xie Lian’s hands. 

“Eat this and do not touch anything else until Feng Xin gets here,” Mu Qing commands. Then he pauses, considering. “You can have some tea. I have more leaves packed away. But nothing else, Xie Lian, not yet!” 

Xie Lian isn’t even listening, teeth already sinking into the steamed bun with gusto. “I know I’ve had more of your cooking lately but—” he says around mouthfuls, barely pausing between bites. He smiles up at Mu Qing, cheeks puffed and eyes in crescents, like a child delighted. “It’s so good— I’ve really missed it.” 

Staring at Xie Lian, Mu Qing can’t help the knot that shoves itself into his throat, and he hastily opens the space again, taking another bun and pushing that into Xie Lian’s still-full hands as well. 

“If you want me to cook for you more, just ask!” He snaps, harsher than he wants to be, than he means to be, because he doesn’t want to cry, not for this. Not for something that wasn’t his fault, something that couldn’t be fixed. 

But Xie Lian is unfazed, maybe too knowing, and just takes another big bite, humming happily. “I will!” 

Mu Qing just scoffs. 

(But he half-heartedly keeps his eyes averted and allows Hua Cheng to retrace the array behind his back, “sneaking” a hand to snag some cookies before the ghost king could start moping about like a woeful waif). 

—————

Feng Xin thankfully joins them before Hua Cheng and Xie Lian make a considerable dent in the snacks that Mu Qing had made, warm brown eyes going wide when he sees the layout. 

“What’s going on?” He asks, turning first to Mu Qing then Xie Lian and back to Mu Qing with increasing panic, his brows furrowing deeply. “Did I forget something?” 

“Your birthday??” Mu Qing responds, incredulous. “You can’t be serious.” 

At Mu Qing’s response, Feng Xin immediately relaxes, and his eyes look almost dopey with how immediately they go from worried to excited. “This is for me?” 

Mu Qing blinks. For over 800 years, he has been doing something for Feng Xin’s birthday. 

Over. Eight. H undred years. 

The fucking audacity—

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!” An almost garbled noise of incomprehensible rage escapes Mu Qing’s mouth. “We’ve been doing something for your birthday for over 800 years!” 

Feng Xin blinks. Mu Qing glares. 

“…We have?” 

Hua Cheng bursts out laughing just as Mu Qing lunges for Feng Xin’s stupid face. 

“No, no—” Xie Lian throws his arms around Mu Qing, and grounds himself so that he can’t be budged no matter how much Mu Qing struggles. 

“Dianxia. Dianxia, let go,” Mu Qing grits out. “I will murder him, we’ll never have to worry about one of his birthdays again.” 

Feng Xin looks at Mu Qing as if he did manage to get his hands around him and suplexed him into Ghost City. And then he smiles, slow and wide and unfairly charming, getting closer to Mu Qing without any regard for his safety. 

“All those missions—?”

“ Yes, you—”

“You really do have a mind more twisted than a concubine,” Feng Xin says and how dare he say that as if he were fond?! 

Mu Qing shot his leg out, almost catching Feng Xin in the knee with his boot, but Xie Lian quickly twines his leg around Mu Qing’s, forcing it back down. Feng Xin doesn’t even have the decency to act fazed or move back out of Mu Qing’s striking range, too fucking assured with Xie Lian holding Mu Qing back. And then he shrugs!  

Mu Qing was going to scream. 

“I thought it was just Pei Ming giving us his work to do,” Feng Xin says, and he frowns suddenly, brows furrowing. 

“And give up his chance to meet women?!” Mu Qing demanded. “Are you insa—?”

His voice falters as Feng Xin suddenly reaches forward, fingers gently catching Mu Qing’s bangs and carefully pushing them behind his ear. Feng Xin lets the strands twist around his fingers as if playing with them— never pulling, never tangling— before peeking at Mu Qing with a weird, sappy smile similar to the one Mu Qing had seen once or twice when he was playing with Cuo Cuo and the child wasn’t being a rabid demon spirit.  

But it was even fonder than that.

Faintly, Mu Qing can hear Hua Cheng fake gagging to the side but his focus is too caught up in the stretch of Feng Xin’s lips, staring at him more warmly than Mu Qing ever remembers him doing. 

That mouth had screamed insults at him. 

That mouth had been busted more than once beneath Mu Qing’s fist. 

That mouth was smiling at him, saying, “What do you have planned for today?” as if it trusted whatever Mu Qing decided, as if it was excited. 

“Wh— I didn’t plan it alone!” Mu Qing awkwardly refutes. “Crimson Rain found the craftsmen—!”

“You can thank me now, Nan Yang,” Hua Cheng drawls. 

“And Xie Lian…” Mu Qing wants to continue as if Hua Cheng said nothing, but he can’t help pausing, glancing at the man who was still holding him back. Xie Lian smiles at him encouragingly, unhelpfully, because Mu Qing still has no fucking clue what Xie Lian did other than make Hua Cheng compliant with everything. “…He’s probably the one that convinced them to be here because no one would go with Hua Cheng .” Mu Qing thinks on that for barely a moment, quickly amending. “ Willingly .”

“I do—” Xie Lian protests. 

“As if that doesn’t say everything, Xie Lian,” Mu Qing huffs, and Feng Xin casts a pained look at Xie Lian in reluctant agreement. 

“It says everything, Dianxia.” 

There’s a glint of silver and then they yelp in tandem as E-Ming swipes past, still sheathed, and smacks them both. 

———

“This is a horn bow,” Feng Xin murmurs as he carved the wood into shape. “It’s highly reflexed— when it’s fully made, you’ll see. When it’s unstrung, the two ends would almost touch.” 

Mu Qing bites his lip against the smile that threatens to stretch across his face. Feng Xin doesn’t usually talk much, not unless he’s pissed off and ranting, but Mu Qing learned over the years that the other man’s more open like this, when the topic is one that Feng Xin usually quietly adored. 

Once you gave him the chance, he’d never stop talking about it. 

Mu Qing jerks his hand back suddenly with a hiss, and scowls. Embedded under his nail was a long piece of splintered wood. He drags it out carefully, watching the blood well up over his thumb. 

“Oh, Mu Qing! Are you okay?” Xie Lian lurches forward, his bandaged hands from his own countless splinters waving frantically. “Do you want San Lang to heal you? 

Mu Qing rolled his eyes. There are some things about Xie Lian he doesn’t think he’d ever understand— 

(But he does get this. He gets Xie Lian’s worry for him now . He thought once that it was no different than how Xie Lian felt for any other common person, self-sacrificial to a fault. Now Mu Qing can’t believe how he let Xie Lian hide his clinginess so well.) 

“Wonderful, your luck is wiping off on me,” Mu Qing complained, pressing a hand to Xie Lian’s chest to keep the distance between them. 

Xie Lian lets his weight slump against Mu Qing’s hand. “Ah, Mu Qing…”

Realization dawned on Mu Qing then. “You—! Don’t you even, Dianxia, why the hell have you been having us bandage your hands when Crimson Rain could heal them?!” 

Mu Qing’s not even sure how it had slipped his mind, somehow still too used to, too comfortable with taking Xie Lian’s hands in his own and cleaning his wounds. 

His own worry made him lose brain function. 

Hua Cheng mopes against the cushions, sullen as he stared up at his husband. “Dianxia would not allow me.” 

Xie Lian flushes slightly. “It’s not so serious! And besides,” he glances between Feng Xin and Mu Qing, eyes wide. It’s not quite the winning pleading eyes he often donned when they were children— too old, too used to genuine pleas to be as compelling— but it’s close enough. It tugs at Mu Qing’s chest just enough. “It’s common to do this, isn’t it? The two of you help bandage each other.” 

It’s almost petulant— perhaps a trace of that child that had been spoiled, or a trace of desperation to not be parted from the ones he cared for once more— and Mu Qing blushes helplessly. This idiot! Saying and acting so boldly! 

He scoffs, but he doesn’t keep fighting, doesn’t keep his hand between them and lets Xie Lian all but fall against him. He still nags though, “How are you even putting this bow toge—”

Feng Xin suddenly catches his hand, barely murmuring a “This might sting,” before pressing a pad of wet gauze to Mu Qing’s bleeding thumb.  

Mu Qing goes rigidly still, eyes wide as he takes in Feng Xin’s hyper focus as he cleans and dresses the ridiculously minor wound. 

“You know what I just fucking realized,” Feng Xin says softly, leaning back to survey his work. 

“That it’s weird to just kidnap someone’s hand?” Mu Qing replies incredulously. 

He knows the reaction before it happens, glancing to where Feng Xin’s brows wrinkle, scowl scrunching his forehead and watching it settle in place. 

“No, you—!” He falls silent for a moment, jaw working as if he was testing the words in his mouth before saying them. “We’re celebrating my birthday. We’ve celebrated Dianxia’s birthday—”

Mu Qing pales, starting to pull his hand away. He didn’t like where this was going. Didn’t like where this could end up. From where he’d practically been sprawled in Mu Qing’s lap, Xie Lian slowly rose up, humor gone and eyes fixed like Mu Qing were a puzzle with an unpleasant outcome if not quickly solved. 

Don’t ask, don’t ask , Mu Qing wants to say. 

“Yes, and these craftsmen are probably ready to leave so we should finish with this already—”

Feng Xin fixes his grip and keeps Mu Qing in place. “We’ve even celebrated Hua Cheng’s birthday and I hated him until recently.” 

“Yes, well, you can’t expect Dianxia to do this on his own—”

Mu Qing moves to try and put more space between them, to try and leave, but Hua Cheng sits up just as Mu Qing goes to move, his dark eye piercing. Hua Cheng doesn’t come closer, doesn’t fucking need to. His gaze is enough. Their relation is different, the effect they had on one another different, and, under the man’s critical stare, Mu Qing’s kept pinned in place. 

“Mu Qing…” Xie Lian says, head tilted slightly in confusion. In concern. He squeezes Mu Qing’s free hand gently. “Do you not want us to know your birthday?” 

It’s been five years since they began celebrating Feng Xin’s, eight since Crimson Rain’s, and nine for Xie Lian. They hadn’t remembered Mu Qing’s birthday once. It’s not even something that bothers him— he doesn’t celebrate it nor did he care to. It was just a fact. Nine years, and Mu Qing can’t help but wonder why now . 

Mu Qing blinks. He thinks he’s starting to shake. “What does it matter? I don’t celebrate it.” 

Xie Lian smiles carefully, holding Mu Qing’s hand closer to himself. “I didn’t either during my banishment, but it’s different now.” 

“Different for who?” Mu Qing tilts his head, confused and desperate in a way that makes him sound irritated even though he’s not. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to think about it. “Dianxia, we’ve celebrated your birthday in Xianle. Feng Xin’s is celebrated in the heavens. Hua Cheng’s is celebrated between us and Ghost City. But I’ve never celebrated my birthday with any of you or anywhere. Nothing has changed.” 

He doesn’t want them to. Doesn’t want to go back to remembering this day without pomegranate seeds like an open wound. It took him so long to learn to breathe, to move on , and leave all of that behind. 

Mu Qing doesn’t want to go back to it. 

“Why the fuck are you being so weird about it?” Feng Xin scowls harder. “It’s not big of a deal! When’s your fucking birthday?” 

And Mu Qing can’t lie to the people he cares for. He never could. 

He tries to keep his expression blank. His voice blank. 

But his eyes go a bit wide trying not to cry, and his voice, when he speaks, shakes ever, ever so slightly. Enough to make them all look at him in surprise. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Mu Qing agreed. He swallows, he thinks he tries a stupid, reassuring smile. “It’s just the day my parents died.” 

————

The winter solstice lands on his birthday. 

It’s not uncommon. In the eight hundred plus years that Mu Qing had been alive, his birthday and the Dongzhi Festival coincided more often than he could bother to count. So he rarely celebrates it. 

He knows the other three had plans to go see the human festivities, but he isn’t ready to change this habit of his own yet. It’s not the same without his parents, it shouldn’t be. Marked instead with their deaths the way few were unlucky to be, it was little cause for celebration. 

So why should he honor his birthday, another year to his life, when it was another his parents wouldn’t see? 

It was just another day, one wretched enough to warrant a certain negligence among many. 

After his admission, the others had let the conversation drop. That wasn’t the surprising thing. The pains of their pasts were held like secrets as if, even though they learned to put bandages on each other, they would never know what wound they were trying to heal.   

No, the surprising thing was that they still spoke to him. That they did not bring it up again or hold it against him. 

They had accepted him. 

But he couldn’t handle it today. 

Mu Qing sighs. There’s disappointment built in his veins and even as he understands himself, he hates that this loneliness, this depression on this day, never changed. Even now, it ruined him. 

He quickly sends a message to the trio telling them not to bother expecting him and goes to change his robes into something even more modest. They weren’t hidden exactly, but he’d tucked these fabrics away behind his usual robes. These ones that were more similar to what his mother would remember him in. No decorations. Few layers. 

The only difference was the quality of the textile and fabric, a silky soft material that they could never afford. 

Mu Qing tucks his handkerchief in his sleeve, the embroidery familiar against his skin, and forgoes the guan in exchange of a simple ribbon. He gathers the joss paper, the incense. 

The single pomegranate he’d bought days before. 

It was as he was about to leave— not yet in sight of the palace doors— that he heard the commotion. 

“Ah, General, Your Highness! I’m afraid now is not a good time—“

“I’m not trying to fucking bother him,” a familiar voice snapped. “I just want to leave these here—”

“I am unsure— gods and buddhas, Lord Crimson Rain?! You cannot just waltz into the Palace of Xuan Zhen—”

Mu Qing sighed, squeezing his eyes shut for a long moment and praying for patience. Today wasn’t a good day for this. He’d told them. “What do you think you’re—”

He freezes. In front of him, with baskets piled high with pomegranates, Mu Qing sees his three idiots trying to walk towards his kitchen. 

“Mu Qing?!” If Mu Qing didn’t know better, he’d have said Feng Xin squeaked. “We weren’t trying to fucking bother you, yeah? We just wanted to drop these off—”

“…Why did fuck did you bring so many pomegranates to my palace?!” There are baskets outside his door, large mountains of the red fruit nearly blocking the entryway. 

He’s so stunned, he cannot even sound upset. 

“You always get pomegranates this time of year,” Feng Xin shrugged, settling his basket on one of Mu Qing’s decorative vases. “I wanted to bring you some since you said you wouldn’t be joining us for Dongzhi— I wanted to get you the tree, but it’s so fucking cold the roots would die.” 

“It was very sweet,” Xie Lian pipes up while walking back and forth, putting the baskets on pomegranates wherever he could find to set them, much to Mu Qing’s officials’ dismay. The god laughs a bit. “But I think the pomegranate orchard is mostly empty now.” 

“It’s completely empty, gege,” Hua Cheng says, gleefully helping Xie Lian in his endeavor of crowding Mu Qing’s palace with fruit. “So excessive.”

“You’re one to talk,” Feng Xin retorts. He walks over to Mu Qing quickly as if storming into battle, reaching into his pouch to take out yet another pomegranate, this one with a string wrapped around the circumference. Unstringing it, he holds the two halves out in offering. 

“This was the best one,” Feng Xin insists in a low voice, pushing the two halves into Mu Qing’s hands. “So I cut it for you.” 

The seeds had already been removed, only kept in the pomegranate shell as if the pom were a container. 

Xie Lian comes closer, all of the pomegranates inside, large columns of the red fruit scattered about in outrageous display. He smiles, “We would’ve brought you sweets, but we wanted to make sure we saw you before we left.”

“I didn’t,” Hua Cheng helpfully clarifies. He’d taken to packing the pomegranates along Mu Qing’s furniture, stacking them in questionable ways even as Mu Qing’s officials tried in vain to deter him. 

“San Lang,” Xie Lian gently rebukes, but he hands his husband another fruit. He shoots Mu Qing a mischievous look before turning at the ghost king again. “Mu Qing would appreciate knowing how helpful you were in helping Feng Xin pick the pomegranates.”

Hua Cheng goes still. “Gege…”

But Mu Qing doesn’t hear the rest of his complaint. They’d all, all three of them, had done this for him. 

They stared at Mu Qing, waiting for some response as if they hadn’t tilted Mu Qing’s world onto some ridiculous axis. 

He looks back down at the fruit in his hands. “My parents used to do this for me,” he whispers and his voice still cracks. He doesn’t look up at them. He thinks he might not be able to. “For my birthday.” 

When he looks up, they’re staring at him in muted surprise. 

“Today’s my birthday,” and he pulls the fruit closer to himself. “Today’s the day my parents died.” 

Chapter Text

“Why pomegranates?” Xie Lian asks softly, running his hands through Mu Qing’s hair. He’d taken the ribbon out, setting it aside and letting Mu Qing’s hair fall freely. 

Mu Qing doesn’t know how they ended up like this, huddled up between his divans together, but he doesn’t make any effort to move. Feng Xin sits close, elbow against the divan and his other hand placed lightly on Mu Qing’s thigh as he watches Mu Qing dazedly fidget with the pomegranate seeds with his sad, brown eyes. Behind him, Mu Qing knows Xie Lian is probably watching him with the same sorrowful gaze from where he sits on the divan, his legs on either side of Mu Qing. Even Hua Cheng stays close, sitting across from Mu Qing and just to the side so their legs are parallel with each other. His hand curls around Mu Qing’s ankle. 

There’s hot tea on the table that they haven’t touched, and Mu Qing watches the steam. 

“It’s what was in season,” he shrugs. 

And that’s all there is to it. There is no greater reason. Even though he likes it, it’s not his favorite fruit— Mu Qing doesn’t have one, doesn’t know if he’d ever liked anything for the sake of liking it so much to declare anything a favorite of his. It’s not representative of some good omen or some fanciful thing. 

He knows what others saw, what they thought of it. A convenience, he knew that. Available. Affordable. A poor man’s delight in poor celebration. Something to be mocked over. 

But Mu Qing cherished it. 

His parents bought it for him knowing he liked it. They cut and peeled it every year, no matter how tired they were, no matter how blistered his father’s hands became from work, no matter how poor his mother’s eyesight became. 

“They…they really tried to do a lot for me,” Mu Qing whispers. 

“Were you going to go see them?” Hua Cheng suddenly asks. 

Mu Qing falters. It shouldn’t surprise him that the ghost king noticed— it wasn’t as if he had thought to set the joss paper and incense aside when they’d come into his palace, and it sits on a low table not far from them. Hua Cheng’s eye is dark when Mu Qing meets them, all too knowing when he asks: 

“Would you like to go now?” 

Mu Qing swallows roughly. He does. 

—————

He doesn’t expect the deference the others greet his parents with as if they were of such importance. As if their corpses hadn’t long disappeared, dust in a casket, dust in the sheets his family had wrapped them in because they couldn’t afford caskets, not for his father, not for his siblings. 

They were praying only to the tablets that Mu Qing had painstakingly made and protected. 

“I thank you for lending me your son’s companionship,” Xie Lian is the first to kneel beside Mu Qing, and his hands are folded. Mu Qing turns rigid beside him, eyes burning. 

“You don’t have to— Dianxia—”

His voice cracks but Xie Lian only continues, murmuring, “I want, I need to thank you for allowing me to have Mu Qing in my life. He’s my dear friend. I thank you for letting me have his love and letting me love him.” 

Feng Xin follows rather quickly, settling on Mu Qing’s other side. “Mu Qing and I didn’t always get along,” he blurts out. “Fuck, I mean, we didn’t understand each other for a long time. But he’s been my rival and friend for 800 years and he’s important to me even though he didn’t fucking realize it. I really…I trust him the most. So uh thanks. For him. I don’t know how much it must’ve hurt letting him be with us, but I’m grateful you did because I can’t imagine living without him.” 

He’s more graceless, less eloquent, but it aches just the same. More really , and Mu Qing finds himself keeling over, his head nearly touching the soil with a wretched sob. 

His mother had tried to hide her tears when Mu Qing had left to work at the Royal Temple, had fallen to the ground when Mu Qing told her of His Highness’ ascension and how His Highness wanted him to follow. 

She’d cried every night of the war and every year that followed even though Mu Qing tried, really fucking tried, to be there for her. 

But she never stopped him. 

She wished him well, wished His Highness and Feng Xin well. She let him go thinking it would be the best thing for him. 

“Oh, Mu Qing…”

Xie Lian’s hand cups the back of his head and Mu Qing thinks he might be crying, crying like Mu Qing couldn’t help himself when he’d found out about the king and queen’s deaths, about how Dianxia had to lay them to rest on his own. Feng Xin’s hand rubs at his back. 

“Mu Qing…Qing’er,” he whispers. His voice is choked, but he and Xie Lian both use their free hands to try and wipe at Mu Qing’s tears. Feng Xin’s is unsteady, it trembles as if he were sobbing, whole body shaking even as it’s silent. “We’re here now.” 

He doesn’t say it’s okay or not to cry. He knows nothing ever will make it okay. That even now, after 800 years before Mu Qing’s had anyone else with him, it still isn’t too late to be here because Mu Qing will maybe never stop hurting over all he’d lost with his parents. There’s too many regrets and lost chances to ever let him rest so easily. But it helps now. 

It’s this realization, bleary and with his head foggy, that Mu Qing wonders how he never noticed Feng Xin hurt more over Mu Qing’s hurts than Mu Qing ever allowed himself to feel. How he thought no one would ever hurt for him and that he wasn’t allowed to hurt for himself. 

He can, he does, and they let him. 

Hands, unfamiliar to him, wrap around his ribs, a silent presence. Mu Qing almost startles against Hua Cheng’s touch, nearly stops crying as adrenaline wants to send him to his feet, but he forces it down, and lets the ghost king hold him. 

“Do you remember how they look?” Hua Cheng asks softly. 

He nods, breath hiccuping. Tells Hua Cheng, tells all of them of the mother he resembled save for her light brown hair and brighter eyes, his father who he gets his dark hair and grey-black gaze from with his harsher appearance. Tell them about all his siblings, of A-Ning who had only been a baby and her features were still undefined— 

He tells them of the painting a soldier in Xianle had once done the closest to immortalizing Mu Qing’s family into something permanent in thanks for Mu Qing saving his life. He sobs through each description until he’s weak, until he can’t speak. They hold him until his face is dry, until he’s cried himself tired, dehydrated and head pounding with it. 

He leans somewhere, eyes slipping shut, and falls asleep. 

—————

He wakes in his room. It’s not the most surprising thing. What is is waking to Xie Lian buried against his chest, breath steady against Mu Qing’s collarbones and his hair surprisingly not choking Mu Qing. His own arms are tight around the other man, clinging in the only way Mu Qing really knew how to sleep— cuddling. 

There’s a hand on his waist, a body pressed to his back, but, when Mu Qing blinks his eyes into focus, he sees Feng Xin’s messy brown hair behind Xie Lian, his sleepy face, and Mu Qing isn’t so unfamiliar in this place, this position, to not recognize that, while Xie Lian’s head lay on the pillow, Mu Qing’s resting his head on Feng Xin’s arm. Which meant Hua Cheng was laying behind him. 

The hand tightens slightly on his hip. “When they wake, we have something to show you,” he murmurs, ever so softly that neither Xie Lian or Feng Xin stir. Mu Qing tries to turn around, curious, but Hua Cheng doesn’t let him budge, humming lightly in negation. “It’s early still. Try to get more sleep.” 

He doesn’t want to listen, not to Hua Cheng , but he can see that his room is still dark. He needs the sleep, Mu Qing reasons. 

—————

“Wh…” Mu Qing’s eyes go wide. 

Inside Paradise Manor, delicate construction of what looked like a hundred ghosts and deputies— even some of his own!—  were taking place. The work is intricate, neat, meant to be created in separate and assembled elsewhere. The tall columns, six of them, are carved with cherry blossoms of pink and white while another two are shaped in the curling body of a dragon, painted in bright colors and accented with the same pinks and whites. There’s a moon gate, doorless, but with a decorative border that’s reminiscent of the styles of Xianle. Long sheets of silk are hung from banisters, turned away from Mu Qing’s sight. 

Candles and dozens of lanterns are on the floor, not lit, and they lay beside a sign not yet marked with characters. 

“Did you bring me here to show me another temple you’re building for Xie Lian?” Mu Qing asks. 

“Ahaha, Mu Qing…” Xie Lian blushes. He gets distracted quickly though, leaning over to instruct a worker on how to paint something nicer. 

“As if I’d want your opinion for that,” Hua Cheng murmurs, finishing Xie Lian’s statement easily, but he rolls his eyes and takes Mu Qing’s hand, dragging him towards the lengthy silks, like he has some sort of right to. 

“What are you—”

“This is for you.” Hua Cheng says, stopping before they can view the front of the silks. “This shrine…gege and Feng Xin want to build it around your family’s graves.” 

When Mu Qing turns in surprise to Feng Xin, the man rubs his neck awkwardly. “All of us wanted to! You said the tree and the river is important to them, so it would build around the tree and open towards the river—”

Mu Qing goes still, his free hand suddenly gripping Hua Cheng’s arm. He’s starting to see, now that he’s looking closer, the carving of the columns made in Feng Xin’s hands, the painting of the decorative border, and the designs so obviously touched by Xie Lian’s elegance. The silks…

“Are those paintings?” He asks roughly. 

Hua Cheng nods. 

Sucking in a breath, Mu Qing lets go, all but running to see the front of the silks. His father plays the flute on one while his mother sews. His siblings are playing, baby A-Ning in between them. There’s a painting of all of them in their ramshackle home but they look happy, happier in that way Mu Qing knows they’d once been but still struggles to remember them being. 

“You…”

“I found that painting. Is this…” Hua Cheng’s voice falters for a moment, stunned silent when Mu Qing turns to him with wet, red-rimmed eyes. Mu Qing gasps, touching his hands to the fabric. 

Feng Xin comes around, catching Mu Qing just as his legs give out. He wraps his arms around Mu Qing, holds him carefully, as Xie Lian and Hua Cheng step closer, gentle thumbs stroking under his eyes. 

“You…you drew them perfectly,” Mu Qing chokes out. “You…” 

A tentative hand curls around his, tentative as his reply, “Good.” 

Mu Qing can’t stop looking at the silks, at all the work going on around them. No ghost or deputy seems to see his weakness, no item meant for the shrine seemed inappropriate or anything that Mu Qing wouldn’t want for them. 

“How… why? ” 

Why would they do this for him? Why would they want to do anything for people so long gone…

Xie Lian’s hands cradle Mu Qing’s face and Feng Xin’s head dips into the crook of Mu Qing’s neck, and suddenly both of them have wrapped him between their arms. 

“Why not? We’re your friends as you are ours...” 

You tried to be there for me, I’ve tried to be there for you, and we couldn’t, not then. But…let’s keep trying. Can’t we…let’s be there for each other. 

Mu Qing can hear it in Xie Lian’s voice, that confession from years ago when Hua Cheng wasn’t there to stave away Xie Lian’s loneliness, the newer nightmares, and he and Feng Xin had spent the night. He doesn’t forget the hands that clung to his robes, the tears that wet them. 

We’re friends, Xie Lian says. 

“It’s more like you can’t get rid of me,” Hua Cheng drawls, but his hand’s become tight around Mu Qing and Mu Qing thinks this…this is the closest they’ll ever be to friends. 

He squeezes back. Grouses a, “Shut up,” quietly. 

And Feng Xin’s hold tightens around them— Mu Qing thinks he might even be holding Hua Cheng between them. We’re friends, he seems to agree. 

“Qing’er, we’re here now.”