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“—and extra dumplings,” Hua Cheng finishes, pausing for a moment. “Like, a lot of it. A lot of extras.”
Readjusting his fingers where they rest on his temple, Hua Cheng sighs at the lack of response through the array.
“And make it quick. I’ll pay extra, I just want it now,” he barks at the shop owner with a frazzled, annoyed tone. “Uh, please,” he adds, remembering the constant scoldings about his piss poor social etiquette from Xie Lian.
With wide eyes and a polite smile, the old woman behind the counter hands Hua Cheng a tray of food.
“Thanks,” he offers. Only because she’s old.
Hua Cheng subtly speed walks through Puqi Village in a desperate attempt to make it back to the shrine with enough time to eat lunch with his husband. Xie Lian always ushers him back to Paradise Manor after he leaves his piles of work for the god's company for too long.
“Come on, come on, come on…”
Much like the last eight attempts, there's no answer. While every fiber of Hua Cheng’s being wants to rush into action, they’ve had one too many discussions about Xie Lian’s insecurities involving Hua Cheng not believing he is capable of handling himself in tough situations.
And maybe it’s a fair point, admittedly. It's radically untrue, but it's a fair point.
Besides, it’s not an emergency, and Hua Cheng knows exactly what’s going on.
Between the two of them, they’ve both had enough traumatic experiences in their lives to make everyday living a bit of a struggle. In the presence of one another, the struggle eases into something more soft and manageable, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sleep within the shadows of their village home, waiting for a moment to strike.
They both possess enough negative anniversaries to almost outweigh the single positive one they share.
Almost.
Xie Lian is home alone today, insisting on spending the afternoon mindlessly cleaning up around the shrine and tending to the crops— a terrible excuse, considering it is winter, but Hua Cheng lets it slide.
It's fine, Hua Cheng reminds himself again, despite his fingers nervously digging jagged holes into the crimson fabric of his scarf. He knows it’s fine. He knows Xie Lian’s mind and heart well enough to usually know exactly what he's feeling and what he’s doing— enough to know that he's likely not doing great, but he's probably not directly harming himself, which is just about all they can ask for on days like these.
Black hair flutters in the winter’s freezing wind as Hua Cheng moves, tilting his nose into his scarf to fend off some of the cold. He’s never worn scarves before, thinks them to be a bit gaudy, but Xie Lian has recently taken up knitting, so Hua Cheng would honestly wear a knitted thong if his husband has been the one to make it. His outer robes flip open in front of him, trailing behind him sort of like a cape; he was in too much of a rush to actually remember to tie it closed, which Xie Lian will definitely scold him harshly for.
Maybe not today, but on any other.
Hua Cheng wills his hands to stop their shaking, knowing it has little to do with the cold due to the sweet mittens that match his clumsy scarf. He leans his ear up against the front door of the shrine, listening closely for any sounds.
“Gege?” Hua Cheng hums, a bit quietly.
In response, he receives a face full of fabric, white dancing in every corner of his vision and creasing around him nervously.
“Hey there,” Hua Cheng whispers, leaning up to stroke the mangy bandage. While Xie Lian typically babies the damn thing almost as much as he does E-Ming, Hua Cheng’s admittedly not surprised that he locked it away from himself today.
“Yeah, I know. Not your fault,” he catches himself reassuring, despite his previous hatred for the bandage. Xie Lian loves it to death, and it has accompanied the man through dark times that Hua Cheng couldn’t, so he finds an ounce of kindness to spare it. “Just a bad day. You know the drill, stay out here. I’ve got him.”
It takes him more tries than he’d like to thrust open the door from its damaged hinges, and his panicked anger burns his chest after a couple failed tries until he can finally enter.
With a deep breath, he wills the anger away. That is not going to be helpful here.
The shrine is eerily still in its silence, not even the usual hum of the wind slinking through open windows fills the hollow room. Each footstep atop the old flooring wobbles the foundation below, sinking in a little below his feet with a sad droop and a war cry.
“Ah, it adds character, San Lang!” Xie Lian had argued upon rebuilding the shrine. “How lovely to think our home speaks back to us!”
Hua Cheng glances around the shrine, eyes locking on a figure hunched over in the corner.
Xie Lian sits naked on the ground, half-wrapped in a white towel while facing the wall to the left of the front door. His knees are drawn up tightly into his chest, nails clawing into his ankles with an animosity that leaves trails of red dribbling down onto the wood below. His long hair is damp and visibly tangled.
It's a familiar sight, but no matter how many times he sees him in this state, Hua Cheng will never quite get used to his eyes.
They’re wide and unseeing, a stark, bloodshot red against abnormally pale skin as he stares straight ahead at a portion of the ceiling with a lowered wooden rafter running slightly below.
Despite how macabre it may sound, Hua Cheng finds his whole body sagging with deep relief. They can work with this. They can handle this. Maybe it’s a bit worse than years prior, yes, but there's no amount of patience that he wouldn’t muster for Xie Lian.
Quietly, very quietly, Hua Cheng walks towards the kitchen. He walks backwards slowly, god knows he doesn’t want Xie Lian out of his sight right now, and works to grab some things he may need. Some water, wet washcloths, a cup of ice, his sketching equipment and a weighted blanket. Sends word to Yin Yu that he will not be returning today. Gets a wonderfully polite response. Good man.
As he collects his items, Ruoye attempts to sneak through the front door by slithering on the floor, desperate to see and comfort his owner, but Hua Cheng catches it with the ball of his foot, shoving it back under a bit too forcefully as if it were the sole reason for Xie Lian’s current state.
“Out,” he hisses, trying to remain quiet despite his frustration. “Ruoye, I need you out. You cannot be here right now.”
As if understanding his words, it settles down outside the doorway with a sad droop, staying out of sight while still staying near.
When Hua Cheng returns to his side, Xie Lian remains unchanged.
They’ve talked about this a couple times— the occurrences of blanking out during random instances— it’s a similarity they both share, but in dramatically different ways. Where Hua Cheng will drop out for a couple moments at a time, blinking back quickly in a recoverable daze, Xie Lian will do the same for hours, fighting to exist amongst lingering disorientation for days. Where Hua Cheng can typically pry himself from the thick claws of dissociation, Xie Lian simply cannot.
Not that he hadn’t tried before— digging his sharp nails so deep, so desperate, into his forearms, ultimately resulting in a sobbing Hua Cheng and a new medication from Tong Wei.
Comically, it still didn't work. He was still groggy for four days after.
One exhausted night, when they’d been curled atop one another in their bedroom in Paradise Manor, Xie Lian revealed that, once, he’d been caught in the blankness for several days in a row. When Hua Cheng had worriedly inquired further, Xie Lian had laughed, shaking him off with a quiet, “ah, I’m being silly, I couldn’t possibly have known how long I’d truly been out,” which did absolutely nothing to ease the sympathetic ache in Hua Cheng’s shattered heart.
He doesn’t talk about it much, where he goes when he goes away, but from the shakiness of his voice and bloody cuticles in his mouth, Hua Cheng could piece together that it’s not pleasant. When asked about its origin, Xie Lian will smile softly, waving an unbothered hand while saying, “hm, I suppose I’m not too sure,” despite both of them knowing exactly when it started.
The same reason it’s happening today.
Items in tow, Hua Cheng tiptoes around to sit down on Xie Lian’s right side, keeping the path between Xie Lian and the shrine’s front door wide open. Hua Cheng would love nothing more than to reach out and pull Xie Lian tightly into his chest, and while the time for that will come, it’s not now.
“Gege,” he whispers, almost inaudibly, keeping his hands tangled in the heavy blanket on his lap just to keep them from touching Xie Lian.
He’s too deep for any touch to be perceived as grounding.
There’s no response or reaction from Xie Lian. After a couple more repeated whispers, Hua Cheng simply pulls out his sketchbook, almost silently humming the tune of some old song he doesn’t even remember the name of.
Inelegantly, Hua Cheng sprawls out onto his belly, flipping open the book and preparing a scroll of paper as he begins to doodle mindlessly alongside his humming. Gradually, he lets his voice increase in volume, until his throat no longer scratches with the hoarseness of whispering.
There's a lot to be said about the wordless presence of one another.
He can’t tell quite how firmly Xie Lian’s psyche has tucked itself away, so Hua Cheng tries to keep his eyes averted, giving Xie Lian the privacy and opportunity to deal with things on his own before Hua Cheng thrusts himself uninvited into situations that do not require a savior. If there's the potential for him to work through this himself, that's ideal. As much as it kills Hua Cheng.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you to be incredibly independent and capable of handling yourself,” Hua Cheng had finally whispered, a soothing hand on his lower back encouraging him to speak his true thoughts. “It’s that I don’t want you to have to.”
But there's an unspeakable confidence that derives from one’s independence, one’s ability to pick themselves back up, and Hua Cheng had 800 years to discover this for himself as well. So, he does his best to sit back, letting the background noises of sketching and singing ease Xie Lian back into gentle uptake of stimulation.
He controls his body language to portray a sense of calm. If Xie Lian happens to look this way, he needs to be a steady, reassuring force. He needs to be someone to gently guide him towards the surface with a delicate hand and a soft smile, despite the fact that his thoughts are wandering unleashed towards the what ifs— what if this beautiful person in front of him simply becomes a listless shell of the man he’d loved for so many years before— a rotting human carcass on their sleeping mat that gradually collects flies, vultures circling overhead and—
Hua Cheng would stay. Hua Cheng would be the biggest vulture of them all.
After a couple minutes of humming and sketching, there's the tiniest change; it’s nothing major, or even noticeable to most, but Xie Lian’s deep, sedated breaths become slightly more shallow. His eyes stay unchanged, reddening around the corners due to delayed blinks.
“Gege?” Hua Cheng tries again, allowing his voice to raise louder as he sits up to position himself into Xie Lian’s line of sight. He moves quietly, words soft in an attempt to circumvent the panic that will inevitably follow. “Hey, love. It’s okay.”
Xie Lian’s eyes stretch impossibly wider— a clear reaction to his voice. Hua Cheng takes this as permission to step in.
Gently, Hua Cheng tucks a single finger inside Xie Lian’s wrist, practically hovering above the skin to prevent noticeable contact. Pausing for a moment, Hua Cheng fumbles around for his pulse, gauging his actions based upon its speed.
Xie Lian has noted before that the dissociation, which comes from a deep, deep, desire to escape whatever situation he’s been thrusted into, isn’t the part he dislikes. He’s told Hua Cheng that it’s almost like an old, well-worn coat, sliding across his shoulders in a familiarly reassuring manner, as if to say ‘I’ll take it from here, you rest.’
No, the part he dislikes is coming out of it.
“Gege,” Hua Cheng tries again, noting how the acceleration of Xie Lian’s irregular heartbeat correlates with his sound of own voice.
“Okay, hey, hey. Everything’s fine,” Hua Cheng blindly reassures, a bit stunned by Xie Lian’s direct reaction so soon.
Xie Lian’s steady chest hitches. Deep, gentle breaths increasingly become shallow and harsh, leaving his pharynx with a wheeze. Despite the bodily change, his eyes stay exactly the same without losing their wide, haunted gaze toward the wall.
“Gege,” he hums again, resulting in another hitched breath. “It's okay, shh. You're okay,” Hua Cheng’s hands tighten painfully around the blanket as he fights his own soul to not fucking touch Xie Lian yet.
“I’m right here, gege. I’ve got you. Hang on, let me—”
They’ve talked about this before too, over a comically overcooked bowl of congee after a late night of farm work. In order to pull Xie Lian from his mind, Hua Cheng has to enact some sort of change to the environment around him, forcefully stimulating and causing immediate distress to a heartbreakingly raw and unaware brain— it's not unlike grinding long bones together without the fibrinous synovial barrier.
Xie Lian had described it as best he could, which, as expected, was equal parts exceptional and disturbing, while showing little-to-no pity towards his own strife.
“I guess it feels like all my nerves are on fire. Like, um,” he’d hesitated, curling his ankles tighter around Hua Cheng’s from where they rested atop one another on the divan. An encouraging hand curled his hair behind his ear. “Like, since I left, or, ah, blanked out—”
“Dissociated,” Hua Cheng intervened, refusing to belittle his experience.
“—Yes, that , um. It feels like, well, like the world has suddenly become too big and too scary in my absence for me to come back to. Like, it’s no longer something I’m able to exist in. It’s no longer something I’m equipped to handle. It’s just— ah, San Lang, I guess it’s just really overwhelming,” he’d concluded, eyes flicking towards a horrified Hua Cheng.
So, Hua Cheng knows. He knows the process of grounding his husband, by design, has to get a lot worse before it gets better.
And he has to be the one to do it.
It’s necessary, sure, but that doesn’t mean the guilt doesn’t burn a cigarette hole into his large intestine.
But that’s the beautiful thing about burning, he thinks. Nerves and tissues become charred, curling and melting at the edges as they eliminate any semblance of pain or feeling. It becomes numbness, and Hua Cheng thinks that may be the most paralyzing part of it all.
Lifting the blanket from his lap, with a deep, steadying breath, he carefully wraps its heavy edges around Xie Lian’s shoulders and convinces himself not to feel.
In response to the increase in pressure, Xie Lian begins to vibrate.
Xie Lian’s breaths speed up, chest heaving as his throat chokes against the stagnant saliva that had collected in his mouth without being swallowed for hours. He curls into himself impossibly further, scooting his heels against the backs of his thighs as though any physical reaction would protect him from his own mind.
“Shh, fuck, I—” Hua Cheng moans in physical pain, clutching his own stomach in nausea at the sight of his husband. Of being the one who did this to his husband. He knows it's necessary, but goddamn—
“It’s okay. Hey, here, look at me, gege,” he murmurs, and he could chuckle indefinitely at the thought of being able to feign indifference towards this. He could die at the concept of not feeling every ounce of this— this is pain that will never be clouded by numbness.
He aligns his body further into Xie Lian’s line of sight. “Gege. Eyes on me,” he says, voice firm.
Eyes are notably not on him, but instead, they're resolutely fixed against that same wall in horror. Hua Cheng suddenly gets an idea, and a cold shiver runs through his body at the thought.
“Do you see something?” He asks, voice breaking a bit in desperation as his eye flitters frantically across Xie Lian's lovely face, trying to read his expression as though reaching the final plot twist of a novel. “Is there something there, gege?”
Xie Lian chokes on a sob, then—
“M’m,” he whimpers incomprehensibly, tongue completely useless in his mouth.
Hua Cheng latches onto it. “Hi,” he breathes heavily, shocked that his words were even comprehended enough for a response. "Hi there."
“Hi, gege,” he croons, subconsciously moving closer to Xie Lian’s face. “Hi, my gege. I love you. I love you, it’s okay.”
Tears well in Xie Lian’s fixated eyes as he continues to fight through unsteady breaths. “M’m” Xie Lian heaves in a terrified exhale.
Hua Cheng would like to pride himself on the concept that he does, in fact, know how to deal with this. He knows how to ground someone, how to guide them down gently without invoking another round of trauma onto an already vulnerable, shattered brain. He’s done it for Xie Lian countless times (though no occurrence has gone quite like this), and, to his own surprise, he’s done it for that asshole He Xuan at one point. He’s even done it for himself.
But this is much different. He can’t pretend he’s put together this time— he can’t bury his own feelings here.
Not when it’s Xie Lian, who is not usually this unabashedly emotional.
“Don’t cry. Oh, gege, please please don’t cry.” Hua Cheng murmurs gently, feeling his own throat tighten. “Can I touch you?” and it’s too early for that, he knows it's too early for that, but— “Can I hold you— or j-just your hands?
Xie Lian continues to breathe harshly, hyperventilating through harsh tears. At the question, he shakes his head frantically, ducking his nose in between his knees and beginning to rock himself back and forth. His damp, deeply matted hair drapes over his sides to completely block any view of his beautiful face. Hua Cheng’s heart breaks for the millionth time.
“Okay, that’s okay. You can tell me no,” he nods quickly, ignoring his own blurring vision. “You can tell me no, gege.”
Xie Lian sobs through a long whine, “Mom,” he mewls. “I w’nt my m’m.”
“Oh," he says, feeling his face go numb. "Oh, baby,” Hua Cheng’s heart drops into his stomach. Without thought, driven by total neanderthalian instinct to protect and soothe in reaction to his person’s pain, Hua Cheng places a soothing hand on the small of Xie Lian’s back. "I—"
Xie Lian flinches.
Xie Lian flinches so hard he falls over.
When Xie Lian cries, it’s typically quiet. It’s certainly not a common occurrence, but when he does, it’s a soft release of emotions, as though they were releasing steadily from his chest like delicate wisps floating from a dandelion.
Collapsing onto his left side with a concerning thud, Xie Lian curls into himself further, hands lifting to floppily grip around his neck, and gutturally screams.
His nose presses into the ground, as though he’s trying to escape both whatever he had seen earlier, and whatever had touched him now.
Hua Cheng, impossibly weak to Xie Lian’s suffering, simply falls next to his husband, his own fragile psyche breaking down with the thought of causing this reaction.
“Gege,” he gasps through breaths, throat singing maliciously in a high-pitched jingle with every inhalation. Xie Lian continues to scream lowly, like the world is resting on his chest, suffocating his ribcage by forcing each individual exhale out with a overwhelmed, panicked moan.
He distantly thinks the two of them would make a pretty gnarly choir, with Hua Cheng wheezing the sopranic melody while Xie Lian bellows a hardy baritone.
“Please, please, please, I—” Hua Cheng chokes on his tears, wanting so badly to reach out and cling. That’s all his filthy hands have ever been good for.
“I’m so sorry. I’m—” a gasp, “I’m so sorry Xie Lian. I love you, I love you, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
Sucking more air into his lungs, Xie Lian continues to scream. In hindsight, Hua Cheng could note that it was never really a scream of fear; Xie Lian’s genuinely fear-filled screams are high-pitched and quick, like an alarm rattling off danger— this was entirely something else.
This was animalistic.
This was a sudden, cataclysmic response to a traumatized person experiencing too great a stimulus too soon. A desperate attempt to self soothe, a desperate attempt to override. A psychological reboot drenched in water.
From his chest, low-pitched, groan-like screams continue to erupt, ripping his throat to ribbons as they claw their way out. From this angle, mirroring his position several feet away from Xie Lian’s face, Hua Cheng can see that his eyes are still open, blinking through the fortress of his tangled hair as he screams his heart and soul onto the floor below. The sound bounces harshly off the wooden panels, harsh acoustics echoing around the room one after another in an unforgettably taunting harmony.
Eventually, he quiets down, though by no intention of his own; Xie Lian screams himself so hoarse that his throat no longer allows even the tiniest of sounds to come out.
His chest continues to heave with silent screams, as though his mind hadn’t caught up to the silence. And maybe that was the point, Hua Cheng thinks, feeling his own useless tears dribble down his temple onto the floor beneath him. Maybe the silence had simply begun to burn.
Xie Lian silently gasps for air, finally relinquishing his efforts. His eyes stare straight ahead, though with something else behind them. They’re dreadfully teary and shell-shocked with abrupt overstimulation.
Wiping his nose on his sleeve, Hua Cheng sits up and adjusts the weighted blanket that had fallen from Xie Lian’s shoulders so that it completely covers his curled up body. He does so carefully, so delicately that it would have been impossible to discern if human touch had been there, but Xie Lian does not flinch— does not even acknowledge the touch in the slightest.
His eyes look fucking exhausted.
Hua Cheng lays back down, scooting a bit closer to Xie Lian. When there's no reaction, he scoots a little closer, and then a little closer, until their noses are almost pressed together, sharing frenzied puffs of air.
Lifting his hand, Hua Cheng reaches upward, gently taking the hands that grip ruthlessly over Xie Lian’s neck. Pulling them downwards with little resistance, he squeezes them tighter, rubbing little circles into the palms.
“Xie Lian,” Hua Cheng starts, voice cracking painfully with a wince. “It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m—” his breath hitches, “I’m so sorry. You’re okay. I promise.”
When Hua Cheng glances back up at Xie Lian’s face, his wide, frightened eyes are focused directly on him.
“Oh,” he breathes. He continues rubbing circles into the smooth hands resting within his own. “Hi, gege.”
Xie Lian blinks slowly. Hua Cheng could kiss him.
“Hi,” he gasps, trying to keep his excitement under control out of fear of scaring him again. “Hi, gege. It’s okay. We’re at the shrine. We’re just at home. Just us,” he pauses. “Gege and San Lang.”
At this, Xie Lian blinks more resolutely.
“S’L’ng?” Xie Lian mouths groggily around the words, almost incomprehensible between the combination of his shaky disorientation and completely obliterated voice.
“Yes!” Hua Cheng whispers happily, placing both of Xie Lian’s hands in one of his own with a kiss so he can reach up and smooth the hair from Xie Lian’s temple. “It’s San Lang. It’s just your San Lang. It’s me, gege.”
Hua Cheng lets a bout of silence pan out between them, thinking Xie Lian might need a moment of comprehension.
Xie Lian takes a long gulp of air into his lungs. “You ‘kay?” he croaks.
Wiping the tears and snot from his face with a frazzled giggle, Hua Cheng continues to pet the side of Xie Lian’s head, trying to continuously ground him through both words and actions. “I’m— yes. I am fine, gege. We’re all good. We’re at home.”
Xie Lian nods once.
“How are you feeling? Hua Cheng whispers softly, running his thumb underneath Xie Lian’s bloodshot eyes.
“M—” Xie Lian tries, tongue still heavy in his mouth as he’s interrupted by an unproductive cough stemming from his destroyed vocal chords.
Hua Cheng initially rushes to sit his husband upright to allow him to cough more productively, but decides against it in favor of moving at Xie Lian's pace. He settles back down by his side.
“M’okay. Not…” Xie Lian drifts off for a moment, staring at the same wall for a long while. Hua Cheng squeezes his hands gently and he comes back.
He comes back, Hua Cheng thinks with a child-like giddiness.
“Not r’lly…” he tries again, the hoarse outline of his voice fumbling over words and speaking through a deep breath. “N’t here yet. M’... floaty. Don’t… like it,” he sighs shakily. “S’Lang…”
“I know,” Hua Cheng scooches closer, finally giving in to his unbridled desire to comfort. “I know, gege. It’s okay, we’ll fix it. We’ve done it before. I’m right here with you.” He sits upright, reaching for the items he’d brought in early as a burst of excitement runs through his veins at the newfound potential to be helpful. “I’ve got a couple options.”
“Ice?” Xie Lian asks.
“I— well, yes.” Hua Cheng hesitantly relents, subconsciously rushing through his sentences in his adrenaline. “Yeah, I have some ice— I, uh, I know it works best, but I’d really rather try things that don’t hurt gege first, if that’s okay with him?”
Xie Lian simply blinks, cheek still pressed against the ground. “C’n you…” he wiggles a bit under the blanket. “Can you 'peat that? S’rry, I—”
“Shh, shh,” Hua Cheng reassures, placing a hand on his husband’s side. “No apologies. My fault, I talked too fast.”
Hua Cheng lays back on the ground, rolling onto his side with Xie Lian and holding the man’s freezing hands. “I know the ice works, but it hurts. I don't want gege to hurt.”
Xie Lian squints. “But…”
“I know. If we have to, we will. But there's other things we can try.”
With a deep breath, Xie Lian nods, eyes staring off into the distance.
Hua Cheng sits up, grabbing the washcloth that has since gone dry. “Shit,” he mumbles to himself, resulting in the abrupt tensing in Xie Lian’s shoulders from the ground.
“S’Lang? Is ev—”
“It’s okay, it’s okay, we’re good,” he flops himself back onto the ground, suddenly remembering to narrate his actions. “So. I had a wet wash rag to wipe your face with, but it’s gone dry. Will you be okay here if I run to the lake and get it wet again?”
Xie Lian stares at Hua Cheng, biting his lip after a while. “I was… um, for that long…?” He asks, nonexistent voice somehow cracking more in fear.
“No! Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Hua Cheng rubs his thumb between the fearful crease in his husband’s eyebrows, barely reacting to the nonsequitur. “No, hey, it wasn’t that wet to begin with.”
Xie Lian stares ahead again, squinting as if it’s gradually becoming more difficult to stay present. If he floats away again–
“Gege,” Hua Cheng says, firmly and gently. “Will you be okay if I—”
“No,” Xie Lian says, and it’s the clearest word he’s been able to form all day. “No. Won’t, m’ already going,” he looks down at himself, a bit self-consciously. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no, thank you for being honest. I’m not going anywhere.”
Sitting up again, Hua Cheng has a stroke of genius and uses the water to dampen the small cloth.
“Okay,” he breathes, laying back down. “Gonna wipe your face if that's okay, gege?”
Xie Lian doesn’t respond, dropping out again in the short time without conversation.
Gently, Hua Cheng presses the rag around Xie Lian’s tear-crusted eyes, and he instinctively closes them in response. Blindly, Xie Lian fumbles a hand towards Hua Cheng, which causes him to abruptly stop and pull back, clasping the hand between both of his own.
“Gege?”
Xie Lian doesn’t open his eyes, but bites his lip in what Hua Cheng knows is a desperate attempt to ground himself. He keeps his eye on it, but doesn’t have the heart to tell him to stop when he's this far gone.
“Hand?” He asks, words steadfastly slurring. “Sorry,” he adds.
“No apologies. This husband would love to hold your hand,” Hua Cheng soothes. “Do you need me to stop? Pause? Is it too much?”
Xie Lian shakes his head. “I’m gross.”
Hua Cheng giggles, noticing the sound seems to bring out something else from behind the listlessness in Xie Lian eyes. “You couldn’t possibly be. Never ever, not my gege,” he confirms passionately, finishing the statement with a kiss against his husband’s nose before continuing to wipe his face. He's rewarded with an adorable crinkle of Xie Lian’s nose.
Hua Cheng continues to chat to himself, knowing he’ll have to force Xie Lian to form more words at some point, but his own idle conversation seems to be calming them both. For now, their bodies wind around each other on an unforgiving wooden floor, and it’s equally as therapeutic to Hua Cheng as it is to Xie Lian.
“Hey,” Hua Cheng whispers, bringing Xie Lian back into the conversation. It takes a bit of hand squeezing and repetition to evoke a response.
“Mm?”
“Can you tell me a couple things you can see?” Hua Cheng asks, knowing Xie Lian will pick up on the blatant grounding attempt.
“S’Lang…” Xie Lian argues pitifully. He’s not able to verbalize the origin of his discomfort, but Hua Cheng knows.
“It’s okay,” he reassures. “We’ll just bring you back a little, then a little more, and a little more. We’ll go slow.”
Xie Lian’s lip wobbles. “But…”
“I’m right here,” Hua Cheng murmurs, placing their foreheads against each other. “It’s safe here. It's safe to be here.”
With a deep sigh, Xie Lian relents, grasping one of Hua Cheng’s hands for dear life.
“You,” he whispers, lips cracking in a slight smile.
“Good, gege. A couple more, please?”
“Floor. B-blanket, um…” Xie Lian trails off, shivering violently in place. "P-pillow..."
“That’s okay for now,” Hua Cheng acquiesces. “Easy, gege, you’re doing so good. That’s okay for now.”
After a long moment, Xie Lian’s shivering slows.
“Can I sit you up?” Hua Cheng asks. “I’ll just hold you for a while after, until you’re ready for anything else. There's no rush, and you can say no, but I think it might help pull you back a bit.”
Xie Lian shudders. “I don’t—” he tries, shaking his head in frustration. “Sorry, floaty. G’tting bad again…”
“Okay,” Hua Cheng responds in a low-pitched croon, attempting to sound both reassuring and unconcerned. “It’s okay. How about we try it, and see how it goes. If it’s too much at once, we come right back down.”
“I’m s’rry.”
“Ge—”
“M’ so st’pid,” Xie Lian slurs angrily, reaching up to scrub harshly at the tears in his eyes. “I’m— I’m fine, nothing’s wrong with…” he tapers off with breaths hitching in his chest.
“No. Gege, no. We aren’t doing that.” Hua Cheng resolves, rubbing a hand up and down Xie Lian’s arm. “That’s not fair and you know it. I don’t think we’re ready to talk about this, not quite yet, but I am not going to let you belittle this,” he finishes firmly.
Xie Lian sniffs, evidently collecting more from Hua Cheng’s tone than his words.
“Are you mad at me?”
Hua Cheng physically recoils, hands lifting from where they soothed Xie Lian’s skin to hover in the air with his panic, like a prey animal freezing at the sight of a predator.
His eye flickers between both Xie Lian’s. “No,” he warbles, truly out of his depth. ”No, no. No, gege, I’m so sorry. No, I would— could never be mad at you. I’m not. I’m so sorry.”
Instead of his usual reassurances and careless laughter in the face of Hua Cheng’s disproportionately heavy guilt, Xie Lian simply blinks slowly, eventually mustering the energy for a lethargic nod.
Biting his lip in self-hatred, Hua Cheng readjusts a bit, settling one arm underneath Xie Lian’s side and the other under his bent knees. “I’m gonna sit us up, okay?”
Xie Lian nods faintly, a nervous whine slipping through his jaw.
As they sit upright, Xie Lian takes in a sharp, stuttering breath, immediately collapsing his face into the crook of Hua Cheng’s neck the moment they’re settled. He takes deep, gasping breaths, periodically squeezing and releasing his hands– one tucked frantically into Hua Cheng’s palm and the other tangled within the fabric of his shirt. Hua Cheng readjusts the weighted blanket to curl around his husband’s still-naked body.
“Breathe, gege,” he whispers directly into Xie Lian’s ear, the sudden closeness doing wonders for comfort. “Breathe slower, you’re okay. I’ve got you.”
Hua Cheng sits with legs crossed, resting Xie Lian in the slot between. It's not unlike a mother holding her baby; he squeezes his eye tightly at the thought, focusing on rubbing a soothing hand across his husband’s back in the rhythm of a breathing pattern.
Judging by the hitch of his breath, Xie Lian’s thoughts must have taken the same turn. “San Lang…” he whispers, his whole being trembling.
“I know,” he murmurs, leaning down to shove his nose into Xie Lian’s temple, breathing him in deeply as Xie Lian lets out a long whine that progresses into a light sob.
Hua Cheng begins to rock them back and forth slowly, and Xie Lian sobs harder at the action.
“I miss my mom,” Xie Lian cries, hands grasping the fabric of Hua Cheng’s shirt on his sides. “I just miss my mom. I—" his voice breaks, breaths stuttering into a sob. “I miss my mom, San Lang. It's been so long, and I miss her so—” he cuts himself off through his own uncontrollable heaves.
Happy to get to the root of the issue, despite his aching chest, Hua Cheng listens closely, but intervenes when Xie Lian works himself up to a dangerous extent.
“Take some deep breaths with me, gege,” he tries, grimacing at the wheezes whistling through Xie Lian’s chest. “Shh, I know, I know it’s hard, but we gotta slow it down. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”
Xie Lian nods tearfully, scratching and tearing at his own chest violently as he tries to control his hyperventilating. Hua Cheng slides his own hand underneath his, effectively loosening its grip against Xie Lian’s skin when it becomes too aggressive, leaving angry red claw marks in its wake.
After a while, Xie Lian’s frantic breaths begin to slow, and Hua Cheng feels like he’s holding glass between his sweaty palms. His hand delicately cradles the back of his husband’s head, swaying them back and forth with the occasional kiss to the temple.
“Can you take a sip of water for me?” Hua Cheng asks, lifting the cup towards Xie Lian, who nods apathetically.
Hua Cheng struggles with this specific anniversary. Not because of the early loss of his own mother– which is a can of worms they’re both not quite sure how or when to open– but because this specific loss is a hole he simply cannot fill with his unwavering love and devotion. He will never be able to hold Xie Lian the way his mother did. He will never bring the same comfort, will never bring the same safety— and, secretly, that fucks with him a little.
There’s a hole he simply cannot fill, despite dying thrice and living again.
Repositioning himself in Hua Cheng’s tight hold, Xie Lian tucks his head beneath his husband’s chin. Hua Cheng responds in tandem, protectively resting his chin above his head.
After a moment, Xie Lian speaks. His voice is still painfully hoarse, almost nonexistent in his throat, but it's coherent. For the first time today, he’s fully there.
“I’m sorry.”
“Hey, no, gege—”
“No, I—” he pauses. “I’m sorry I made you do work today.”
And, oh. That’s not exactly what he had been expecting.
They’d fought about it for a long time this morning. Hua Cheng has a supernatural ability to detect and feel out Xie Lian’s mental or physical wellbeing, which pisses Xie Lian off a little more than he’d like to admit due to his own habitual desire to ignore those exact things. Thankfully, Xie Lian had decided not to go to the Heavens today— he’d decided this several months ago, without hesitation— but told Hua Cheng he should play it by ear.
This morning Hua Cheng knew, deep in his gut— there was something cold and dark and entirely familiar about the way Xie Lian looked at him— that today wouldn’t work. He’d tried to argue it, not wanting Xie Lian to have to deal with these things alone, but he’d been forcefully ushered off.
“No,” Hua Cheng argues. “Gege, it’s your decision if you want me around when you’re hurting—”
“No.” Xie Lian interrupts forcefully. “No, that’s not—” he pauses, taking a moment to carefully collect his words through the almost postictal disorientation that will surely last the rest of the week.
Hua Cheng would usually never have this conversation this soon, but with Xie Lian starting it, there's obviously something urgent that needs to be addressed.
“This was never, ever about not wanting you around, I just—” Xie Lian pauses. “I just hate knowing I need it.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to feel like a burden that’s dragging you down,” he says, hands nervously twiddling with Hua Cheng’s calloused fingers “I don’t want to be something that holds you back.”
Hua Cheng feels like the ground has dropped out from beneath him. “I— gege,” he breathes, quickly readjusting their positions so that Xie Lian’s face is cradled in his hands, noses inches apart.
“You are my everything. You could never be something that holds me back because you’re the reason I exist in the first place. I want to help you, I want to hold you and kiss you and rock you back and forth when you’re frightened. That’s— fuck. That’s what I live for. That's what I'm alive for.”
“You deserve better than that,” Xie Lian spits, uncharacteristically coldly. It’s not foreign, but it is certainly nostalgic. "Your existence shouldn't revolve around mine. You deserve more than that."
Truthfully, Hua Cheng kind of likes this version of Xie Lian: this cold, apathetic being that sometimes peeks through the tightly closed blinds of Xie Lian’s kind eyes. Sure, he’s seen it before, many, many years ago, but he likes the honesty of it. This isn’t a face he pretends not to don, but simply him.
And Hua Cheng loves him.
“You are better. You are everything good in the world, and, Xie Lian,” golden eyes widen at the address, “I cannot listen to you say you aren’t. That’s not for your sake, that’s for mine. I can’t hear it. Please don’t talk like that.”
Noticing the hands on his cheeks have begun to tremble, Xie Lian places his own palms over them. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, San Lang.” He relents, but he doesn’t truly understand.
Hua Cheng turns his head, pressing his nose into their hands as he’s unable to look Xie Lian in the eye with the harsh words about to leave his mouth.
“What if it were me?”
Xie Lian looks a little thrown off, tilting his head in confusion. “Hm?
“What if it were me?” He speaks softly to gentle the blow. “If I felt the way you felt today? If I had pushed you out?”
Abruptly, Xie Lian straightens, turning a little green. “I…”
Hua Cheng presses impossibly closer, pressing their foreheads together. “Gege, what if it were me suffering alone. How would you feel?”
Xie Lian pants softly as though he might throw up. The hand over his mouth solidifies this concern. “I’m… fuck.”
He’s got it now.
Easing up, Hua Cheng pulls Xie Lian back into his shoulder, continuing to rock him through the influx of emotions.
“It’s okay,” he says, smoothing down Xie Lian’s hair with the hand cradling his head. “We’re okay. I just want you to understand what you are to me. We can talk more about it later, when things come easier.”
Xie Lian pauses, obviously not wanting to leave an argument unresolved, but unable to deny himself struggling to form comprehensible sentences through his lingering brain fog.
“Are we okay?”
Hua Cheng keeps rocking, pulling the blanket a little tighter around Xie Lian. “Yes. We’re okay. I promise you. This isn’t— it’s alright. We’re okay. This can wait,” he says, speaking the words into Xie Lian’s temple. “Do you need to talk about today?”
Xie Lian sighs. “I— I don’t think there's much to talk about. You saw it coming before I did,” he spits in a self-hating tone. “Just— you know. Anniversaries. Remembering it all.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s… I guess it’s just hard.”
“Yeah,” Hua Cheng sighs, squeezing his husband tighter. “I know.”
“I thought I saw…” Xie Lian trails off, becoming concerningly still and limp.
“Xie Lian,” Hua Cheng murmurs softly, directly into his ear. He squeezes the body in his arms. “Hey, stay here.”
“S-s…”
Keeping one hand curled around his husband's still-quivering frame, Hua Cheng grabs the wet washcloth once again, running the rag up and down his husband’s arms. After untucking Xie Lian’s unmoving face from his shoulder, cradling his head in the palm of his hand, he dabs the rag smoothly across his pale cheeks. “Shh. You’re alright,” he mumbles, continuing to rock slowly.
When the washcloth shows no signs of success, Hua Cheng sighs deeply, reluctantly grabbing a melted piece of ice and sliding it into Xie Lian’s limp palm. He closes his hand around Xie Lian’s, allowing the sensation to sink in.
With a deep breath, it works like a charm, to Hua Cheng’s continuous distress. Xie Lian blinks harshly, his newly-reddened hands drop the ice cube to knead his knuckles into his eyelids with a shutter.
Hua Cheng kisses his nose. “Gege, hey. Come back to me, you’re okay. San Lang’s right here.”
Somehow even more effective than the ice, the statement leads to Xie Lian heavily blinking open bleary eyes. He attempts to rest his forehead against Hua Cheng’s own, but his incoordination leads to him colliding them harshly.
Neither of them acknowledge it.
Hua Cheng places his hands over Xie Lian’s ears, attempting to block out non-essential stimulation as his brain reboots again. “Just breathe for a sec, I’ve got you.”
Closing his eyes with a nod, Xie Lian shivers. “Sorry, I just— I thought I was fine, but—”
“Shh. Hey, none of that,” Hua Cheng pulls back, pressing another kiss to his nose. “You are fine. A couple blips doesn’t change that. I’m here, right here, I won’t let you go anywhere I can’t follow.”
“Love you,” Xie Lian hiccups through a cough. “I love you.”
Hua Cheng takes the man back into his arms, squeezing thrice in response. “Did you want to finish? You want to try again?”
“I do, I just— I don’t want to, y’know.”
“I won’t let you. As many times as we need to pull you out we will.”
There’s a long pause, then:
“I saw them,” Xie Lian breathes out abruptly, forcing words out through his throat at a speed that makes it almost miraculous they don’t jumble. “Or I— I guess I thought I did? I know they weren’t, um. There, but—”
“But that doesn’t make it any less real,” Hua Cheng finishes, leaning back to slide his hands down Xie Lian’s arms until they clasp his hands gently. He rubs his thumbs over dry knuckles.
“Yeah, I, yeah,” he relents. “I thought… I thought they were both… just...”
“I know,” Hua Cheng murmurs. “I know, it’s okay. I understand.”
“I guess I was just frozen,” Xie Lian continues with a nod. “I don’t know. I, ah, I keep thinking that after all these years— y’know at some point in time it’ll get a little easier. Like, like these things will ease with time. They’re supposed to, I thought. But it doesn’t, San Lang,” his voice wobbles pitifully. “It doesn't. I've been alive for almost a millennium. It doesn't ease, and— and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.”
Hua Cheng wants to burn everything. He thinks of all those who have ever spoken negatively of Xie Lian— the auditorium echoes of his past hecklers giggling torturously over his overwhelming misfortune, and how they now bring fruit baskets to his feet, filled to the brim with shame.
He wants to burn everything that has ever interfered with this poor, beautiful boy’s ability to sit quietly and simply grieve.
“You aren’t— gege, no. There's nothing else you need to be doing,” he insists, running his fingers through Xie Lian’s matted hair in a fruitless attempt to separate the tangles. He places a stray hand over Xie Lian’s chest. “You feel what you feel. And it’ll suck, but we’ll just— we’ll just sit through it together, and we'll try to keep breathing.” He rubs his hand in a delicate circle, voice lowering into a murmur. “As long as you’re still breathing, you’ve done everything beautifully, beloved.”
Sniffing through a new round of tears, Xie Lian curls up tighter in Hua Cheng’s lap.
“Besides, I don't think you really got the time to process it all when it happened.”
“Why does that matter?”
Hua Cheng bites his lip in consideration, taking a moment to collect his thoughts.
“I think it’s like a broken bone,” Hua Cheng starts, fingers grazing shapes across Xie Lian’s back. “Grief, I mean. But it's one that never really heals correctly. Warped, even. So, one has to continuously break that bone every year, or every month, or, gods, sometimes everyday,” he sighs, thinking of a lost lullaby he could never recall the words to.
“You have to rebreak that bone over and over as the rest of your body desperately tries to regrow it in the wrong shape. So, it always aches, I think. You broke it a lot, right? But, sometimes,” he lowers his voice. “Sometimes it aches a little less. Sometimes, like when we walk through the shops of Ghost City, or when we work in the garden or, hell, when we have sex— actually definitely then,” Hua Cheng steadily ignores the pretty pink hue that crawls up Xie Lian's neck followed by a slap on his arm. “So, sometimes that persistent ache sinks to the back of your mind, and I think that might be all we can ask for.”
Silently, Ruoye flutters into the room, causing Hua Cheng to tense severely. In a burst of protectiveness, Hua Cheng shoves Xie Lian’s face deeper into his shoulder, blocking the bandage from view.
“Away,” Hua Cheng hisses quietly. “Get away.”
In response, Ruoye droops pitifully, curling up in the other corner of the room to keep its distance.
Xie Lian finally looks up, and to Hua Cheng’s surprise, his eyes crease into those darling crescents as a soft smile lifts his cheeks. “Ah, my sweet Ruoye. Come here, lovely.”
As if waiting for those words, Ruoye darts across the room, doing loops around his body and eventually curling up in Xie Lian’s lap.
“It’s okay, sweet thing,” he apologizes, running a gentle hand down the surface. Looking down at himself, he realizes his own nakedness.
“Um,” he says. “Umm.”
Hua Cheng snorts, wrapping Xie Lian’s hair around his ear. “I’m guessing you had just bathed? Maybe just collapsed before you could get dressed?”
At the achingly solemn look that accompanies Xie Lian’s frail nod, Hua Cheng adds: “Not that I’m complaining…”
As predicted, this fixes the problem. “I— San Lang!” He attempts to scold, but laughs. Xie Lian glances back down at the bandage. The weapon behind it all.
"I’m sorry for how I treated you this morning, Ruoye,” he says, and Hua Cheng's heart bleeds at the apology. He wants to kiss it better. “I’m afraid I lost myself today. I just—”
Now, Hua Cheng does kiss it better, leaving a smooch at his temple at the pause. “It understands, gege.”
Xie Lian looks back down at the device, who peers up at him sweetly, making gentle fluttering movements atop his blanketed legs. He hums noncommittally. Hua Cheng knows they’ll discuss this later— the endless guilt that burns brightly from Xie Lian’s trauma-based regression to a self he despises.
After a moment’s pause, Hua Cheng interjects. “Do you think you’re ready to get up?” He asks, no pressure behind the words. “We can get you dressed if you'd like. I brought food earlier, but it might be cold now.”
At the mention of food, Xie Lian’s stomach growls loudly, breaking them both into giggles.
“San Lang!” Xie Lian whines playfully, a glorious disconnect from his earlier sounds. “Don’t laugh. It’s not that funny,” he argues through snorts of his own.
“It’s so funny, gege,” he responds, pressing his lips against Xie Lian’s. "My hungry gege."
Taking a moment to hold his husband tightly against himself, he begins to sing tauntingly. “I love my gege,” he hums, ignoring Xie Lian’s overdramatic groan at the familiar display. He's been making up more songs about Xie Lian recently, thinks it to be one of his many talents. “Let me fix that frown, I love my gege, especially when he goes down—”
“SAN LANG!" Xie Lian shrieks, using one hand to cover Hua Cheng’s mouth and the other to cover his own face in embarrassment. “Stop that right now,” he attempts to scold, but Hua Cheng can see how his shoulders bounce with concealed laughter. “I’m serious!”
Feeling cheeky, Hua Cheng removes the hand covering his lips, placing a hand on the back of Xie Lian’s neck and another under his jaw to ease him into a chaste kiss.
He goes without complaint.
“How about that?” Hua Cheng breathes loftily, quirking an eyebrow. "Is that better?
Completely giving up on the game, Xie Lian huffs fondly.
“Love you,” Xie Lian murmurs into his mouth, resting their foreheads together after tapping noses. “You’re an absolute pill,” he complains, shaking his head and kissing Hua Cheng again despite himself. “Love you. Goodness, I love you.”