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Xie Lian trusted Hua Cheng from the bottom of his heart.
Hua Cheng was the definition of safety. His haven. His home. They had been married for half a decade now, but the absolute faith in his husband had been present long before that. Merely weeks after meeting the Ghost King—days even—Xie Lian had somehow already known that Hua Cheng would always have his best welfares in heart, that he could trust Hua Cheng with his life, that Hua Cheng would never hide anything from him, be it big or small.
Which was why Xie Lian found his husband’s recent behaviors bewildering.
Lately, more often than not Xie Lian had found himself left alone at home waiting during Hua Cheng’s outings as certain Ghost City business needed to be taken care of. This alone didn’t call for attention, except when Xie Lian asked to come along to help he was often answered with “Gege shouldn’t trouble himself”, which raised a red flag as Hua Cheng would usually jump at every chance to have him by his side and to spend more time with him.
And then there were those couple of times when Xie Lian ran into Hua Cheng holding various boxes after his excursion. He swore it wasn’t his imagination that the Ghost King’s shoulders tensed up and panic flashed across his face before it was promptly smoothed away, the various containers gone with a flick of fingers. Not to mention the sneaky whispers frequently exchanged with Yin Yu in the corridor of Paradise Manor just out of Xie Lian’s hearing range, and then Hua Cheng waving the Waning Moon Officer away when he noticed Xie Lian’s presence.
Instead of voicing his wondering, Xie Lian pondered on the possible reasons behind his husband’s curious demeanor. Could Hua Cheng be dealing with and hiding dangerous threats and enemies that he didn’t want to concern Xie Lian with? But Xie Lian hasn’t heard anything of the sort in the prayers nor were there suspicious reports from the heavenly realm. There was no blood or injury on Hua Cheng either, his mood pleasant and his smile sweet as always when he came back home to Xie Lian, so it was safe to rule out the possibilities of anything bad happening that could explain his husband’s sporadic absence and furtiveness.
Could Hua Cheng be preparing a surprise for his next birthday? Normally this would be the most plausible reasoning, but his birthday was just two months ago. And after all the craziness of sorting through the dozens of presents Hua Cheng showered him with that overcrowded their bed chamber, Xie Lian had given his doting husband a mild but mostly infatuated chiding, making him promise with an adorable pout to not gift Xie Lian anything or do any extravagant celebrations for at least the following two years. Therefore, it simply wouldn’t make sense to be another birthday surprise for him.
Xie Lian sighed, racking his brain to come up with a conclusion. Surely he could ask Hua Cheng directly about what really was going on. With a penchant for surprises and mysteries, he might skirt around the truth a bit, but he wouldn’t outright lie to Xie Lian, that was for sure. A little bit of gentle pushing and pleading eyes were probably all it needs to coax out the truth of Hua Cheng. Still, he didn’t want to pressure his husband into revealing anything he was not ready to. Eventually Hua Cheng would tell him when the time came…or not at all, and that was completely fine. It wasn’t like Xie Lian must be informed of everything his husband did—he was not a control freak and he trusted Hua Cheng completely. He was allowed to have a secret hobby or two and if he didn’t want Xie Lian to know. His wish shall be respected.
With that settled, Xie Lian put everything behind his mind and went to the kitchen to prepare dinner and waited for his beloved’s return.
In the following week Xie Lian has mostly forgotten about the matter as he was preoccupied with a sudden surge of prayers and Heaven’s duties. His assistance with a mission was requested by fellow heavenly officials one day, which would supposedly take him away from Ghost City for a couple of days. But eager to return to his beloved, Xia Lian managed to promptly wrap everything up and return to Paradise Manor that same night. He didn’t reach out to Hua Cheng to tell him about his early return like he usually would though, wanting to give him a pleasant surprise by showing up unannounced.
Drawing up a distance-shortening array, it took Xie Lian mere seconds to arrive back at Paradise Manor, only to find no one there. Nor in the Gambler Den, Qiandeng Temple and Cave of Ten Thousand Gods. Bewildered and yearning for his husband, Xie Lian followed the tug of the red thread tied to his middle finger, which to his surprise pointed back to Paradise Manor; more precisely, a backroom hidden behind one of the book shelves in their library.
Xie Lian gently pushed open the door and stepped into the room, unsure of what to expect to find inside. More books, treasures, weapons, paintings and statues of Xie Lian’s, maybe even a prisoner? Anything but this—a certain Ghost King, sans his eye patch and in his red sleeping robe, snoozing softly among a sea of dolls, plush toys and figurines of all styles and sizes, all sporting faces eerily similar to Xie Lian’s. Snuggled in his hands was...was that a stuffed stoat dressed in white robes!?
“……”
Hua Cheng must have sensed his presence as he suddenly jolted awake, blinking several times before whipping his head to where Xie Lian stood frozen in place, mouth slightly gaping.
“G-Gege, you’re back early!” Xie Lian was pretty sure he had never seen this kind of panicky expression on Hua Cheng, much like a child caught with his hand inside a candy jar. Seeing his husband in such a state snaped him out of his stupor. He awkwardly cleared his throat.
“Ah yes…I wanted to come back as soon as possible so I put in extra effort to finish the work…” he said as Hua Cheng quickly smoothed out his expression into a smile that seemed tenser than usual, before hurrying up to give him a chaste kiss and a hug, both of which would normally be enough to distract Xie Lian from anything, but the elephant…scratch that, dozens of elephants in the room were simply too hard to dismiss right now.
“Gege must be exhausted then. Why don’t you go relax in a bath while San Lang prepares your meal?” Without waiting for a reply, Hua Cheng turned Xie Lian around and pushed him toward the door with a hint of urgency.
“Wait! San Lang, um, what’s all these…?” The hands on his shoulders twitched and stopped. Xie Lian turned around to face his husband, once again met with that adorable deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression. “Did you make them? Is this what you’ve been doing lately?”
“…No, I didn’t make them. They are procured from the mortal realm.” Averting his gaze, Hua Cheng continued in a small voice, “I’m sorry, your highness. This one doesn’t mean to disrespect you or hide things from you. I was worried your highness might find them…unsettling.”
Xie Lian let out a fond sigh. “It’s fine, San Lang, I don’t mind…but why are you collecting them in the first place?”
His husband’s face turned uncharacteristically rosy. “B-Because they are…”
Unable to catch the last word said in a low murmur, Xie Lian leaned forward and prompted, “They are what, San Lang?”
“They are…a-adorable.” He mumbled, the flush on his cheeks deepening and the tips of his ears beet red. “A few months ago I came across a pair of our dolls being sold at some stall in a human village. More appear as gege gets more well-loved by the mortals. They come in all sorts of designs and sizes and before I knew it, I’ve started collecting them...”
Xia Lian huffed a laugh, amused. “So that’s what Yin Yu has been helping you with.”
“U-Un, he has been scouting around under my order, bringing back whatever dolls of gege he can find.” Hua Cheng swallowed. “Mini-sized gege is simply too lovely for San Lang to resist. I want to own every version of gege.”
“San Lang ah…” By then Hua Cheng’s head was tipped down as if to hide in shame. Smiling, Xie Lian took his husband’s hand and led him to where he was lying down moments ago and picked up one of the dolls from the bunch. The forearm-sized toy who was supposed to be Xie Lian had big doe eyes, its cheeks pink and puffy, even accentuated with a pair of white stoat ears on top of its head. Hua Cheng was right. This was adorable.
“San Lang?”
“…Yes, dianxia?” Hua Cheng wouldn’t meet Xie Lian’s eyes, his head still lowered like a child in the wrong awaiting his punishment. It reminded Xie Lian of that day in the Cave of Ten Thousand Gods all those years ago, when Hua Cheng thought his feeling was going to be rejected because Xie Lian would find it too overwhelming. Which was ridiculous and the furthest thing from the truth; How could Xie Lian feel anything but fondness and affection when his most devoted follower, his dearest husband loved him like this?
“Beloved, I promise I’m not upset. If anything, I’m honored you collected all these because of me. Yes, I’m overwhelmed, but only in a good way. So San Lang, would you look at me please?”
Softly, he cradled Hua Cheng’s face with his hands, gently stroking his cheeks. It had the desire effect as Hua Cheng finally raise his head to meet his gaze, expression loosening instantly and leaning into Xie Lian’s soft touch when he saw there was nothing but love in his eyes. Xie Lian took that opportunity to press kisses to his husband’s cheek, the corner of his mouth and then on his lips, to which Hua Cheng reciprocated with affection, looping his arms around Xie Lian’s back into a tight embrace. They kissed for a while, and when their lips parted, Hua Cheng’s worried expression had eased into fondness reserved solely for him.
“San Lang, I only have one question to ask. Please answer honestly?”
“Certainly, your highness. This one will never lie to you.”
Xie Lian gave him another kiss before continuing, “All these dolls and figurines of mine must come with one of yours too. Where are they now?”
“Oh. I have them as well. I couldn’t bear the thought of separating them.”
His eyes lit up immediately. “Can I see them?”
“If…gege is sure.”
Hua Cheng brought him to the back of the room where a large red curtain was hung from the ceiling. When his husband glanced back at him with a slightly uncertain look, Xie Lian smiled and nodded encouragingly. Then, with a flick of Hua Cheng’s fingers, the curtain was lifted to reveal a horde of stuffed toys and dolls with the face of the Ghost King.
Xie Lian grinned, his joy almost comparable to when Hua Cheng first showed him his armory. The next sichen was spent with Xie Lian sitting amid a sea of mini-Hua Chengs, picking them up one by one to admire them up close. They couldn’t compare to the real Ghost King’s handsome features, that was for sure, but some of them bore a high degree of resemblance to the de-aged Hua Cheng under Mount Tonglu’s effect back in the day. Pinching their cheeks and squeezing their butts from time to time, Xie Lian thought now he understood Hua Cheng’s obsession with hoarding his dolls.
Hua Cheng, on the other hand, simply stayed close and watched Xie Lian cooing and awwing with a fond smile. But after a while, Xie Lian caught with the corner of his eyes that a pout had appeared on his husband’s face.
“San Lang, is something wrong?”
Hua Cheng lamented with a dramatic sigh, “Now that gege has found a legion of clones of me, he doesn’t even deign to spare a glance at this humble servant.”
Xie Lian had to bite down on his lower lip to stifle his laugh. How cute of Hua Cheng to be jealous of his own toys! “I thought it was San Lang who brought all these dolls home to replace this lonely one.”
“Never.” The Ghost King pushed away everything in the way to hug him from the side and buried his face into his neck. “Gege is the one and only. None of them could ever be compared to you.”
“San Lang too. You are my one and only, my handsome Ghost King, my sweet beloved, my dear husband.” He accentuated each title with a chaste kiss, effectively turning Hua Cheng back to the happiest man in all three realms. “Now, would my husband like to come to bed with me? Or does he prefer to spend the night here?”
“Bed with gege sounds wonderful.”
They were stepping out of the room hand in hand when Xie Lian glanced back at the sea of white and red.
“Gege?”
“Ah…I’m just thinking, it might be a waste to just keep all of them in here…”
At that, Hua Cheng’s smile turned immensely doting. “Let’s bring a pair of them to bed with us tonight. Then tomorrow morning we can think of somewhere else to put the rest.”
“Un.”
If Xie Lian and Hua Cheng had slept with a pair of bedside dolls sporting their own faces that night and numerous nights after that, and if their bed chamber had come to be filled with stuffed toys and figurines of all sizes ever since, no one but only the couple would know (except maybe one long-suffering employee).