Chapter Text
The Gods’ Suburbs, The Ghost King’s Garage
…
Chapter 1: How Many Martial Gods Does It Take to Unpack a U-Haul?
In between picking up the kids from school and making sure Matthew didn’t accidentally slice a toe off with his weed whacker, Camila was a busy woman. Too busy to notice that the “for sale” sign in front of the house next door had been taped over.
“Sold.”
At around noon, on a seemingly ordinary Saturday, with the kids gone to a friend’s house and Matthew working overtime, Camila had to occupy herself somehow. It felt strange. No dirty soccer cleats tracking mud all over what used to be a white, pristine carpet. No Matthew in the garage, feverishly waxing his prized blue Jeep. The make and model, Camila could never remember no matter how many times Matthew had told her.
Camila crouched on her knees, back bent, her old, beat-up sunhat hovering over her already sunburnt nose. She would have wiped the sweat from her forehead, but her gloves were covered in dirt. She continued digging.
Under the bright spring sun, next to her now empty house, it seemed like the perfect day to plant flowers. Camila had decided that this year, she wanted to fill her garden with blue bonnets. Her youngest son had just learned about blue bonnets in school. It only seemed right.
Camila straightened herself. She heard a distant clatter, then another – closer this time. She turned around, facing away from the front yard flowerbed.
The “Sold” sign hanging in front of the house next door creaked. The approaching U-Haul truck had produced the breeze which swung the sign back and forth along the wooden stand.
Camila was about to go back to her yard work, when the front door to the U-Haul opened. She saw a man. Strange. He could not have possibly been older than his early twenties. Tall, with long black hair. Pale. And an eyepatch. Strange.
Another man, also with long hair – still dark, but when light hit it at the right angle, it produced a brown halo effect – circled around the front of the vehicle. His face carried a gentle smile. Camila noticed that his hair had a top knot, and though not as deathly-looking as the other, he still was pale.
The smiling man stood in front of the man with the eye patch, moving closer so that they stood face to chest. He stood on his tippy toes, put his hands on the other man’s shoulders, and gave him a peck on the lips.
Camila fainty heard their conversation. It came to her in bits and pieces.
.
“My Gege is too good to me.”
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Oh, to be young, in love, and rich enough to afford a house here.
Unbeknownst to Camila, only two of the above three statements were true.
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“San Lang, why do you always tease me?”
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Camila, for a moment, found herself transfixed.
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“I’ve already told you. I’m always sincere to you.”
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Camila couldn’t even remember the last time Matthew had snaked his arm around her waist like that.
She went back to her flowers, only to jump with a startle. She looked behind her – again – to investigate the screaming.
Another car had pulled up, and the two people inside practically spilled out the driver’s and passenger’s seat.
“YOU TOLD ME TO TURN RIGHT, YOU PIGEON BRAIN!”
He didn’t even need to point the accusatory finger. The tone said it all.
“WELL, MAYBE IF YOU JUST LISTENED TO ME FOR ONCE IN YOUR GODFORSAKEN LIFE, WE WOULDN’T HAVE ENDED UP STUCK ON I-10 GOING IN CIRCLES!”
The two blabbering people looked to be in their twenties, perhaps thirties, but they sounded more like Dylan and Mattie fighting over who got to play on the X-Box.
“Now, now, you two.” The voice was so eerily calm. Camila wished to have that effect. She wished that she didn’t have to yell to get her two sons to settle down and stop bickering over the last popsicle. “Why are you two here?”
The two arguing men crossed their arms, turned away from each other, and simultaneously huffed, “To help you move.”
“Exactly. And where are we?”
More silence, before, “In a residential area.”
It came out as a question, but it sounded more like a command. “With?”
“Kids.”
“Who?”
“Shouldn’t hear or see us fighting.”
“Exactly. Now, would you be so kind as to help San Lang and I? We have a lot of moving to do, and I’d prefer if we got it done before sunset.”
Some grumbling, but the fighting had appeared to fizzle out.
…
Xie Lian would have tried making cookies for their new next-door neighbors. However, despite being alive for thousands of years, his cooking didn’t seem to get any better. For the sakes of their mortal stomachs, Xie Lian decided to just purchase the neighbors some chocolates and mooncakes.
He felt butterflies in his stomach. Much less pleasant than Hua Cheng’s. It’d been a while since he felt this way. He hadn’t missed it.
The god was sitting in the sparsely furnished, box-filled living room, legs crossed against the cool tile floor. He would have to change out of his robes soon. The robes had become pajamas to him – only worn in the comfort of his own home.
As time moved on, the robes he found familiar to wear became more of an eyesore against modern pants and blouses. He could have worn his robes without the questioning eyes up in heaven, but Xie Lian preferred spending his time away from there if possible. Despite everything that had happened, he still couldn’t shake his reputation for bringing forth bad luck and misfortune.
They still hadn’t stopped getting onto his case about being the god of scrap collecting, of all things. Xie Lian simply called it niche.
Xie Lian sat on the cold, tile floor. He was neatly wrapping the mooncakes and chocolates. Ruoye was trying to help. Trying to. Xie Lian fought the temptation to swipe it away like he would with an annoying cat.
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Xie Lian still didn’t like his neck for some reason.
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He still kept Ruoye wrapped around him, like a security blanket. He found himself wearing sweaters, even at the height of summer.
…
Xie Lian stood behind the neighbors’ front door, a head shorter than Hua Cheng, gift basket in his hands. He held the present as if it were heavy.
“No need to be nervous, Gege.”
Xie Lian didn’t say anything.
Why was he so scared? It had been his own idea to move. He remembered, clearly, telling San Lang that it would be nice to take a little vacation from Ghost City, just to see what living as a human was like now.
Just a little, sixty-year vacation, and they’d be back. Feng Xin and Mu Qing even promised to drop by every once in a while to check up on them. And of course, there would probably still be ghosts to fight and heavenly squabbles to settle, just as always. Xie Lian could already imagine Ling Wen’s tired, unamused gaze on the other side of the communication array.
“Does Gege need me to ring the doorbell?”
Xie Lian nodded.
Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong.
Xie Lian noticed that the woman who greeted them was the same one from two days ago, planting the blue bonnets which now surrounded his feet.
“Ah, hello. You must be the new neighbors! My name is Camila!”
Xie Lian nodded. He smiled.
“Xie Lian. And this is my husband.”
“San Lang.”
“We… just moved in.” Duh. Say something smarter.
“From where?”
Heaven?
Ghost City?
Xie Lian hadn’t thought about this conversation too hard beforehand. How regretful. What answer could he give that sounded remotely sane and normal?
Luckily, San Lang saved the day once again.
“From China.”
“Oh, how lovely! Come in, come in!”
They entered. Xie Lian felt self-conscious again. It didn’t help that nowadays, people were somehow more homophobic than they were thousands of years ago.
Unfortunately, Xie Lian and Hua Cheng didn’t realize that moving to Texas of all places wasn’t the best of ideas, all things considered.
Camila led Xie Lian and Hua Cheng through the home. The woman walked so fast. The only detail Xie Lian had time to notice was the crystal chandelier that dangled in front of the main hallway. The trio stepped through the threshold of another door, into the backyard, where a tall man with a pot belly stood at the grill. He was cooking steak, as well as some other cuts of meat. Xie Lian was not sure exactly what was being grilled, but it smelled good. It smelled like cumin, perhaps? And smokey, too.
Xie Lian felt about seven pairs of eyes stare at both him and San Lang.
“Matthew, we have more company! It’s the neighbors, they just moved in! And they got us these lovely chocolates! And… what’s that? Oh, yes, thank-you Sand Leng, mooncakes!” Camila didn’t pronounce San Lang’s name quite right, but so long as she tried her best. To be fair, Xie Lian was still trying to get used to the Texan drawl typical of people from the state.
“The more the merrier!” said the pot-bellied man. He wore a baseball hat, sunglasses, and a black apron, with a short graying beard over his chin.
“Well, introduce yourselves!” Camila insisted.
“U-um, r-right. Hello. I’m Xie Lian, and this is my husband.” Xie Lian gestured towards the Ghost King.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is San Lang.” San Lang, for some reason, put a lot of emphasis on his name, though Xie Lian felt sure that no one else noticed against San Lang’s smooth, low voice.
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“What happened to your eye?”
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“Mattie! Sand Leng, I’m so sorry,” Camila apologized. Her face contorted through the smile. She squinted, and she drew her elbows closer to the core of her body, her hands going up and down in what Xie Lian assumed to be a nervous wave. “Mattie, it’s rude to ask questions like that!”
Xie Lian just smiled.
San Lang didn’t miss a beat. Xie Lian raised an eyebrow at him. San Lang looked to be on the verge of snickering, but he refrained himself. “You could say I lost it. In a cave.” Xie Lian chuckled. “I found it. Though.” Hua Cheng gave no more context.
“Don’t mind him, he likes to tease,” Xie Lian interjected.
“I’m always sincere to you, Gege.” San lang bent down a bit so that he and Xie Lian could look each other eye to eye. Xie Lian smiled again.
“That you are,” Xie Lian said.
Xie Lian looked over his shoulder. As Camila had said, Xie Lian and Hua Cheng were not the family’s only company. He winced. An older woman, with curly gray hair and green rimmed glasses, seemed to stare right through his soul. A young man, along with a young woman, also stared. Xie Lian could not quite make out what the stare meant.
“And how rude of me! I forgot, Sand Leng, Shea Lea, some of our relatives are also here!” Camila jumped in just in time. “Just the in laws and some of my siblings!”
The introductions were made, but Xie Lian admitted to being bad at names.
San Lang’s jaw seemed to clench every time someone mispronounced Xie Lian as Shea Lea or Xe Lan or Sea Ian. Every time he tried to correct them, however, Xie Lian shook his head awkwardly.
“Better not to make a fuss,” he whispered soothingly as he gently rubbed his husband’s arm.
“We better get going,” Xie Lian said as he deposited the desserts onto the outdoor table, in front of Camila’s family. “Wouldn’t want to be a bother.”
“Oh, don’t say that! Stay for dinner!” Camila looked up at him, then at her husband. “Matthew’s grilling so much meat, I won’t even know what to do with the leftovers! Come, come, have a seat! Have a seat! A drink, perhaps?”
“There’s beer in the cooler.” Matthew pointed to his left with the spatula. “Help yourself!”
“I-I apologize, but I don’t drink alcohol,” Xie Lian tried to explain in the politest way possible.
“If you insist.” Xie Lian turned his attention to San Lang, who sauntered over to the cooler. He opened the box, and with the grace expected of a king, gently lifted a can from the ice. Water dripped from the silver can, onto the grass, as San Lang came back to the martial god. Silly as it sounded, it felt relieving – perhaps – to have Hua Cheng back by his side. It felt better that way. It felt right.
San Lang clicked open the tab of the can, and he drank. He grimaced, but Xie Lian gave him a look, and San Lang took that little bit longer to think about what to say.
“Say, in our next meeting, would you like us to bring a bottle of plum wine?” San Lang asked. He sounded polite, but it was likely code for, “Why would anyone in the three realms drink this so-called beer?”
“Plum wine, you say?” asked Camila as she scrambled back and forth, trying to juggle her children – who ran around with reckless abandon – and pouring the non-drinkers cups from large, two-liter plastic bottles. “Oh, Shea Lea, would you like something to drink? I have Pepsi, Fanta, Sprite, and there’s water inside the cooler if you don’t want any of that!”
“N-no need to trouble yourself-” before Xie Lian could even finish, Camila shoved a cup filled with a mysterious brown liquid into his hand. “T-thank-you very much.” He took a sip, and he nearly choked on the sweetness. He smiled, out of politeness. Later, he secretly dumped the vile, fizzy, overly sweet concoction into the grass, behind his back so that no one would notice.
“It appears that people’s taste in drinks has declined,” San Lang whispered to him. He sounded so snarky.
“No need to bad mouth our kind hosts,” Xie Lian replied, “Sand Leng.”
San Lang’s face fell, and Xie Lian chuckled quietly to himself. San Lang pouted as his pointer finger stroked the edge of his beer can.
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“Oh, thank-you.” Xie Lian looked down on the paper plate Camila had just served him. The plate seemed to hold three small, round, extremely flat breads, with meat, onions, and herbs on top. “What is it called? I apologize, but I don’t think I’ve ever eaten this before.”
“Just some tacos,” Camila replied, still smiling. “Matthew grilled some pork shoulder. Try it, it’s really good!”
Xie Lian bit into the taco, and he smiled back at Camila. He was right. There was cumin. He chuckled. “It’s much better than my cooking. Thank-you.”
“San Lang disagrees with Gege.” San Lang crossed one leg over the other, planted his elbow on the arm of the metal chair, and leaned the side of his head against his knuckle. “I think that your cooking is marvelous.”
“He’s just trying to humor me,” Xie Lian corrected. “Any human who eats my cooking tends to get food poisoning.”
Matthew, still manning the grill, laughed loudly. The aforementioned relatives ate in silence. They chewed intently, slowly… threateningly? They were still staring right into Xie Lian’s very soul. Hua Cheng shot them a look, but Xie Lian tugged his sleeve to tell him that now wasn’t the time to make trouble. Hua Cheng hesitantly backed down.
Just then, a crash, loud as thunder. The basketball hoop, which had been nailed to a high wall, sat on the ground, the previously circular rim having caved in on impact. A basketball floated in the pool.
Camila’s two children froze, then pointed at each other, staring wide-eyed at their mother.
“He did it!”
Xie Lian chuckled to himself. They were so much like Feng Xin and Mu Qing.
Camila sighed to herself.
Xie Lian decided to intervene before either boy got in trouble. “Honestly, I don’t think it’s either of your faults. You see, I just have very bad luck. Misfortune and accidents seem to follow me wherever I go. Whenever I doll rice, I always get snake eyes. Sometimes, I wonder why this one decided to marry me, considering all the chaos I bring to others.” He pointed casually at San Lang, trying to make a joke of it. He tried chuckling.
San Lang took his arm. He stared intently into his eyes. He looked to be trying not to frown, but his lip curled. “No, Gege, don’t speak that way of yourself. I wouldn’t care if you had lost all the luck in the world. I feel like the luckiest being in existence every time I lay eyes on you.”
Before Xie Lian could turn completely red and admonish San Lang for being so sappy in front of polite company, a bang interrupted them.
Everyone turned their heads towards the window to find that somehow, a bookshelf within the second story of Camila’s house had tipped over and smashed through the glass. From the inside. The shelf leaned precariously against the edge of the window.
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“MY COMIC BOOK COLLECTION!”
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It was a miracle that San Lang could cancel out even a little bit of Xie Lian’s bad luck.
…
That night, Xie Lian lied in bed, curled up next to San Lang. It didn’t really matter that sleep was practically a recreational activity for immortals and ghosts alike. He and Sang Lang liked doing it, and that was what mattered. They liked sleeping in each other’s arms.
Xie Lian stroked San Lang’s exposed chest. Somehow, even though his chest was cold, and San Lang had no heartbeat, Xie Lian found comfort in it all the same. He felt so safe.
His neck tickled. It’d been doing that all day. Ruoye somehow sensed his distress. It slithered, like a snake, up to Xie Lian’s face, and it nuzzled the tip of its silk against Xie Lian’s nose. Xie Lian bumped his nose right back, and he smiled.
E-Ming, with its eye closed, vibrated impatiently on the nightstand. It’d been forever since Hua Cheng had used it. It seemed that San Lang was getting into less fights as of recent. Heaven cowered before San Lang all the same, and a mischievous part of Xie Lian found that amusing.
Oh, to be scared of dainty little butterflies. Xie Lian couldn’t relate.
Sometimes Xie Lian used his fingernail to scratch at his neck until it drew blood. He didn’t know why. Not tonight, but some nights he wasn’t as strong. Some nights, he wasn’t strong enough to resist the urge. He didn’t think it’d be worth bothering San Lang about it.
Just a phantom on his neck.
It itched all the same.
It’d been thousands of years, but it itched all the same.
Xie Lian tried to think about Feng Xin and Mu Qing bickering. Thinking about something different helped. The two generals fought that entire afternoon as they carried boxes up and down stairs. They had argued about who should carry what box, how many boxes each god had carried so far, where to put the boxes, even who had stacked the boxes better once everything had been removed from the moving truck.
All the while, the two workers hired by the moving company stood outside, gaping, at how the group of three gods and one ghost king could so easily lift one, two, three, four boxes at a time, carry them out of the truck, and effortlessly plod up the stairs, as if they were carrying Christmas ornaments rather than an entire bedframe.
Xie Lian had given the movers a generous tip regardless, a token of thanks for putting up with his two – eccentric – companions.
His neck started itching again. He wanted winter to come already so that he had an excuse to wear a scarf, to hide away his neck as much as he possibly could. Place as many barriers between the skin and the outside world as possible.
Xie Lian resisted the urge to scratch by focusing back on thumbing Hua Cheng’s chest. Hua Cheng held Xie Lian closer, hugged him tighter. Xie Lian wanted San Lang to squeeze him as hard as he possibly could.
Safer. Safer. Safer.
It felt safer this way. In Hua Cheng’s arms, in the crook of his neck, against his chest, cold lips brushing against the top of his head, for Xie Lian, he felt safer all the same.