Work Text:
When you remember me, you will remember you, finally.
Silent, wrapped in his yellow jacket, hands hidden in his pockets, Wu Xie watched as the steam from his warm breath turned white as it mixed with the freezing air, misting the view in front of his face for a moment. Under a moonless sky, he was standing on the roof of the building, uninterested in the view of the city. The distant lights in windows, doors, billboards and neon signs forming multilayered mosaics in the urbanscape.
Pains that had already passed in his present life had suddenly become paltry. Regardless of how intensely he lived this short human life up until a few months ago, the feelings of it were subsiding. He had said many times that this very Wu Xie was indubitably who he was, yet sometimes he wondered the extent of that. How uncertain it was to be solely an ordinary person, when his mind betrayed him times that not even the gods of now could remember.
He used to repeat to Shen Wei "you are still too young" , although six thousand years had passed and he still said that nonetheless. Shen Wei was still so young.
He couldn't tell how old he himself was. He didn't know how to count the time before the world he stood in now existed. There was just a lapse, a short, strange glimpse, and then the still void for a moment - and that moment perhaps lasted thousands and thousands of years.
Albeit he remembered the sound. The jarring collapse that disturbed that stillness. The shattering of flesh and bones thundered between chaos and form.
And suddenly he was there, in the middle of the field, among tall grass and wildflowers. Under trees, under rain. Breathing for the first time in that unfamiliar air. Ancient body remodeling itself from the inside to recognize the new world.
One day he saw Shennong, for the first time, yet there he wondered why someone so young wore the appearance of an old being. Millennia ahead, he would understand: by the standards of the new world, Shennong was old.
Wu Xie had never lived in accordance with any standards. Zhurong's own existence did not correspond to what he himself had learned about the workings of the world and its beings.
He closed his eyes, allowing himself to enjoy the crisp air on his face, fluttering the strands of his hair - now short, so short compared to what it had been before, although never as long as the Ghost King's.
He could smell the city below, immersed in night, as if all the urban hubbub were a single entity. An entity who slept and woke up unaware of its own inner world, ignorant of the outside world. His senses were sharpening, like a sword forged slowly, immersed in fire and water and polished on stone and then again, until the blade was perfect. Until the day he reunited with Shen Wei, he was a shapeless piece of metal, the remains of what had once been a sword. Currently, he was immersed in the fire again, trying to understand the heat around him.
There was, however, no vestige of resemblance between what he remembered of the present world and what he could not remember, although he felt , of what was uncertain to call a world , but had once existed. Maybe it was still there.
Many had spoken of this world above and beyond, in murals of temples, in buried sacred places. This Wu Xie had looked with fascination at it all, with no guarantees that anything could be more substantial than mere imagination. Zhurong , nevertheless, absorbed it distinctly. Granted now he felt the distance of his present persona from his real self, in resemblant allusion to the fire that consumed this broken piece of metal that was nothing more than an insinuation to the absolute of ancient dawns.
He had already admitted to Shen Wei that he knew something was left, more than he said when he disdained himself to repeat that he was no god. That no fire was left.
Everything of meaning had remained if the Ghost King and the Mountain God were still there. He simply needed to re-learn how to reach it. That which dwelt inseparably from himself.
The wind that used to whisper music to him now only warned him that it would soon start snowing, swinging his clothes around his slender body, sibilant and freezing.
Or was it just the familiar presence of the Mountain God, in everlasting snow and fresh bamboo. Even though Zhao Yunlan no longer emanated that. Wu Xie still felt the divine his soul carried, in that way, in the sensation that had been lost in the past, being revived in his nostalgic heart.
The same quiet and steady steps, fearless evocation of a lost heaven. Wu Xie followed the sounds and the feeling, the growing emotion that had always filled his chest when he was about to meet his dearest again, even though he had seen him countless times in the same day and only a moment had passed since he had left him. He had never fallen in love as a man, so he didn't know if people felt that way, if men's love eagerly anticipated every second in the presence of their loved one. He felt this way twice as much, as he was bound by equal devotion to both the Ghost King and the Mountain God.
Arms circled Wu Xie's waist and cold hands joined his hands inside the jacket pockets, while a soft mouth, still warm despite the air there, kissed the shell of his ear.
"Found you," Zhao Yunlan's voice was gently playful, as if Wu Xie was hiding from him in a game. The remembrance that they had indeed played with each other like that in days of long-lost grace was a sweet wound.
Despite the few layers of clothing, Wu Xie still felt the warmth of the other body, leaning over to rest his back on Zhao Yunlan's chest, who rested the chin on his shoulder.
"It's your right to claim a prize for this, Zhao-chu," Wu Xie smiled, turning his face to nuzzle his partner. Once it had been that way, sublime when they were together, above the world, on top of the mountain, untouchable by the ravages of existence or the evils of mortals. Now it was a fragment, still fragile, slowly building itself like an imperfect pearl inside the wounded oyster.
Above the city, on top of the SID building. Breakable, though resilient. Them both, forgotten gods, existing in temporal vessels.
"What could I want?" Zhao Yunlan muttered against Wu Xie's mouth, their breaths kissing before they touched.
“Would this useless Wu Xie be to your liking?” No response was required when Wu Xie's lips and the tip of his tongue were brushing against Zhao Yunlan's mouth leisurely.
With his eyes closed, Wu Xie only felt; the kiss that welcomed him, the presence that flooded him, in a love that existed beyond memory.
A gust of icy wind distracted them, in a tighter hug, in a small laugh on each other's lips.
"Can I drive you home?" Zhao Yunlan asked, between pecks.
Wu Xie felt Zhao Yunlan's hands on his getting warmer, as their faces grew flushed from the cold. He wanted to go home, but for a moment, not for the first time, he regretted that in order to return to Shen Wei, he could not take Zhao Yunlan with him. That he couldn't see the two he adored so much together again.
He nibbled on Zhao Yunlan's mouth before responding, distracting himself from the discomfort in his chest. "I’m well aware of your exploits, Yunlan. You say 'drive me home', but what you mean is, by accepting, I agree that you will be my owner until dawn," he smiled, thinking about how it was still the same tricks, old acquaintances so fondly familiar.
“I won’t say this is not a suitable translation,” Zhao Yunlan smirked. “Five minutes?”
“It’s never five minutes.” It should be forever, in days that had already passed, in days that might never come.
When you love me as much as you loved me in those days, you will remember. You will remember me. And you will remember yourself.
Past will become the present. Even if it’s only for a moment.
…