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When Lang Qianqiu finds Qi Rong it is already late in the afternoon.
The first tell that something may be wrong is the empty bed. Qi Rong always sleeps well into his morning, making an event out of each time he is forced from his sleep earlier than he’d like. The second is his skipped breakfast. He never misses a meal, he even has several snacks throughout the day to supplement between each meal.
He is huddled in a burrow of blankets in Guzi’s old room, twirling a seashell about the size of his knuckle. The dark paint on his nails are chipped, revealing a pale pink that is a close match to the shell. There’s no reaction from him when Lang Qianqiu sits at the edge of the bed, only moves the tiny shell back and forth again. It takes setting his hand on Qi Rong’s shoulder to finally get him to look up.
Tired, red rimmed eyes meet his own; weeks worth of exhaustion piled there.
Guzi leaving the palace to be on his own was something they had expected. At one point Qi Rong had even pestered him to do so. Now a young adult with goals set on becoming a god he was excited for everything the world has to offer. The young man believed he needed to take it all in at once and set off to find himself an adventure along the road.
The first week didn’t seem to phase Qi Rong. He actually laughed in Lang Qianqiu’s face when he brought up his concern.
‘Good! Now I finally have some damn peace to myself!’
Towards the end of the first month Qi Rong began to withdraw. He no longer begged to play cards together and ignored even his regular hobbies. No woodcarving or puzzle games, not even sword practice. He slept, and when bored with his own boredom wandered the paths of the courtyard all the way to town as if he haunted the road. Despite this, he insisted he didn’t care.
‘Children leave, that’s how shit is, get over it’. Always said too sharply to be anything but a thought meant to convince oneself.
Now in the second month the last bit of that wall has broken apart to leave behind a soft and terrified inner. Sad and jellyfish-like, washed up on a shore exhausted.
Even after all the years of slowly built trust, when their tentative friendship became more intimate, when a messy vulnerability became companionship, even after all of that, this side is rarely exposed to the world. In all of this time he has only seen Qi Rong cry twice.
This will now be the third.
Lang Qianqiu moves his hand from the other's shoulder to his cheek. He gently brushes away tears as they free from his lashes. Qi Rong doesn’t cry sweet and forlornly. His face scrunches as he does, creased between his brows and nose flared, angry about it. Maybe crying isn’t ever as pretty as one might paint it to be, it’s a chaotic ordeal any time he has seen someone do so.
Qi Rong’s lips are pressed together in a strained attempt at control. Stopping any sounds of misery that only achieves in making the wobble around his chin more noticeable.
"My son is gone" The normal crackling bite of his voice now missing, scraped raw from tears.
"No, no he's just moved away for some time is all"
Qi Rong tightly shuts his eyes and shakes his head, almost irritated at having to speak again. The little shell moves along with him, tightly held in his fingertips.
"He's still fucking gone. This isn't his home anymore"
Lang Qianqiu pushes aside strands of ink black hair that have fallen into his eyes. A tight exhaustion resting under his eyelids.
Somewhat awkwardly he climbs over Qi Rong, shuffling across the bed to tuck himself under the blanket too. Still lined with its spring season sheets despite being well into the summer months now. He rubs the tensed muscles between Qi Rong's shoulder blades that shakes between each inhale. Allows him the courtesy to cry out the feeling in a choked sob that isn’t held back much at all anymore, only somewhat stifled by a sleeve pressed to his mouth.
The room hasn’t changed since Guzi left for the road. A desk against the far corner with precariously stacked books, notches along its edge where he carved little lines into the wood when bored, despite repeatedly being told not to. A chair that wobbles no matter how often he’d fix it, the tap tap of him moving with the wobble like a game as he studied. There’s a fairly reserved sized dresser that is neat on the outside but was jammed shut with unfolded clothes inside. The dresser is mostly empty now as Guzi brought several changes of clothing for his travels.
"Remember when he brought home that beetle?"
There's a gross, snot coated sniffle before Qi Rong answers.
"Chen… He'd carry that ugly thing everywhere in the case you gave him"
Lang Qianqiu laughs remembering it. That beetle, Chen, was as large as the boy's face when he was seven years old. Guzi cooed over it like it was a beloved pet dog rather than an insect that should’ve elicited fear from a child. Had actually made his own skin crawl when seeing it in the boy’s hands.
For weeks they had endured Chen being a part of their day. He was included with their meals, their trips into town, and every bedtime story. Eventually Chen escaped, flew back to the freedom of the forest and away from sticky children's hands.
They had spent hours searching through the twigs of that forsaken forest before finally giving up. It was a bad night, but he fondly remembers how Qi Rong rather roughly patted his son's back 'Chen is just going back to his bug family. Maybe one day you'll get to meet them all too hm?'. It was what finally stopped Guzi's tears.
"Or when he first made dinner for us"
Qi Rong can't help himself from choking out a laugh at the memory despite it bringing more tears "it was such shit"
"It really, really was"
Guzi had cooked for them before leaving too, now as an adult he has had plenty of time to hone his craft. Lang Qianqiu feels his eyes heat at the memory but wills the tears away until he can at least ease Qi Rong's.
"We're always going to be a home to Guzi. He'll travel and he'll stop to visit us and complain about the road. Maybe it will be awhile but he'll always come back at some point"
Qi Rong rolls onto his back and doesn't answer, but his tears have finally stopped. He tucks his chin to his chest, still holding the shell close as he follows the grooves with a nail.
Over the years, Guzi had given Qi Rong so many little stones, shells, feathers, and leaves. Really anything he picked up along a walk or while out playing. The first time Lang Qianqiu had seen him do so he found it incredibly amusing. The concentrated look on the then toddler's face as he pressed a pebble into his father's palm. At the time Qi Rong had patted him on the head then shooed him to continue playing. It wasn't until much later that Lang Qianqiu realized Qi Rong kept each gift. A collection of uniformly placed items displayed like prized trinkets along his bookshelves.
"This was the last piece of junk Guzi had given me” Qi Rong says to the pale shell “When he was twelve. I didn't even notice it was the last one... not til years later"
Lang Qianqiu sucks in a tight breath, trying to think of what to say to that. Raising a child came with so many firsts, he knew that. But he didn't know about the lasts. The last time he was shaken awake too early in the morning. The last time he needed help reading or to correct a stance. The last time he held his child's hand.
"Hey! You can't cry too you damn crybaby. It's my turn!"
Lang Qianqiu scrubs at his face with his sleeve and tries to laugh it off but that only tightens his chest with more tears until he is overwhelmed with them. He turns on his side and pulls Qi Rong into a hug, allowing himself to be a little selfish in doing so. Counting Qi Rong’s tears is a simple feat, but his own is endless. He’s always been a fair amount softer in this way, quick to tears in most situations.
"I miss him too" he admits as he burrows his face into Qi Rong's neck.
Qi Rong is quiet but he moves his fingers through Lang Qianqiu’s hair, a circle pattern traced around the crown of his head to the back of his neck. A smooth, practiced repetition.
"When the hell did you become so boring and old huh? Crying over such a cheap little son" it’s voiced in a scoff, but not clear which of the two of them he’s talking about.
Lang Qianqiu huffs a laugh and nods, happy to have it said out loud in its plainness, both of their tears a little ridiculous.
"I feel like I've aged more in the sixteen years spent raising the boy than I have in all the hundreds of years I've lived before"
Qi Rong hums in response.
They lay wrapped around each other and Lang Qianqiu remembers when they were first in such a way. In his bed obsessing over the accident he had allowed. The guilt clawing at his stomach. Under his palms, the notches of Qi Rong’s spine. Downcast eyes looking at him with something guarded, pin pricked by a sharp grin.
That is gone now, or rather changed. Qi Rong’s spine is no longer easily sought out, it is smooth in a gentle curve that takes up space and has strength. The bed, now both of theirs, with its embroidered edges and soft furs atop a carved wood frame. And the fearful guilt eased, a complicated and messy past tucked into the folds between them that makes home with their current nature.
Qi Rong pulls away to roughly rub his palms into his eyes, scrubbing away dried tear tracks in a hurry as he stands up from the bed.
“I can’t sit here any longer its making me fucking crazy” his voice is still hoarse from crying but he clears his throat to hide it. A sensitivity exposed for much longer than he is accustomed to.
Lang Qianqiu stands too. Tired of the lingering grief in his chest without anything to actually grieve. Even still, when Qi Rong turns to leave he threads their fingers together. He’s determined to give some sort of encouragement, but cannot find the words.
Qi Rong puffs out an irritated breath, easing the pressure of the task.
“Just get it out. I can see your brain vibrating from here”
He wants to take his thumb and smooth out the tired furrow between his brows, the tightness that pinches around his eyes. Kiss the spaces and edges of him til they are eased. Allow the prickly man to melt against him. He thinks of saying ‘I’m not leaving you know?’, that Guzi leaving to travel isn’t going to cause a ripple between them. But Qi Rong is not a man so easy to relent over something as natural to others as affection or promises.
“When you’re feeling like that again, tell me”
Qi Rong laughs spitefully but it quickly becomes a grumble. Unable to hide under flippant responses when his face is brushed red from tears; he still fights against the impulse to treat every concern with poison.
“Alright. Alright fine”
He tucks the small pink shell into his pocket, careful with the treasure as he does as if it may shatter if squeezed tight.
He doesn’t unclasp their hands though. Rather Qi Rong tightens the hold they have on each other, the tips of his claws making their home as little pin pricks in his palm.