Work Text:
This is how Lunar New Year Eve goes for Feng Xin, with practically no deviation since he became an adult. He takes a shower, throws on a random outfit, and heads home for the reunion dinner; he just shows up and has a good time.
This year, there is no possibility that the evening will proceed that way. While Feng Xin knows that the key difference lies in the fact that he’s married now, he never expected the domino effect that it could trigger, never thought that so much could change despite seeing and living those shifts firsthand.
And the worst part? It looks like the night might shape up to be a horrible time, for him and Mu Qing both.
It’s 7 pm and they’re going to be late if they don’t leave now, which will only aggravate Mu Qing further. Well, further than Feng Xin has already pissed him off. He has to point out, though, for posterity or a court record or whatever, that it’s not his fault he didn’t notice earlier the strain Mu Qing was under. It always takes him some time to detect the fault lines, especially when Mu Qing hides so well the true reasons the cracks form.
“What’s wrong with your hair? It looks like some birds had a fight in there. Go fix it,” Mu Qing spits out.
Feng Xin inhales deeply, counting to ten so as not to lose his temper. But he can feel his control over his temper fraying, just as surely as he watches Mu Qing slowly come apart at the seams. Mu Qing is once again checking over his outfit, looking like he wants to remove every stray speck of dust or ball of lint that dares remain on the fabric—or perhaps change into something else and make Feng Xin do the same. Again.
Giving up on that fight, Feng Xin heads to the mirror to “fix” his hair, but Mu Qing stops him.
“No, wait. Let me do it. You’ll just make it worse.” Mu Qing, the love of his life, the person he pledged the rest of his days to, is by his side in a second. And when he gets there, he grabs a fistful of Feng Xin’s hair and yanks.
“Fuck, Mu Qing, get off!”
That seems to snap Mu Qing out of what has been possessing him. He softens from this soulless, sharp-edged creature to someone more reminiscent of the man Feng Xin married. But one no less close to breaking.
“I’m sorry,” he says, stroking Feng Xin’s cheek. “I’m sorry. I pulled too hard. Are you okay?” He kisses Feng Xin’s hair, his eyes sparkling with unshed tears Feng Xin still doesn’t understand the presence of.
“Let’s just go. Your hair’s as messy as it always is, but this whole thing is unsalvageable anyway.”
Mu Qing tries to slip away from Feng Xin, but Feng Xin pulls him into his arms. “No, hey, let’s talk about this?”
An inelegant snort escapes Mu Qing, and his whole face twists into a sneer. “Oh, yeah? You wanna talk about how I’ve been terrorizing you all day about pointless shit? Sure. Come on, lay it on me. Chew me out like you want to.”
His tone drips with derision, and it makes Feng Xin’s heart sting that his beloved can aim such unwavering criticisms at himself unhesitatingly.
“That’s not what I said.” Feng Xin lets out a half-amused huff. “Though you’re right that we hardly ever talk through our problems.” A flash of memory crosses Feng Xin’s mind then, a scattered jumble of smooth, firm flesh and ragged panting. He can’t help but drop his hands to circle Mu Qing’s trim waist, but holds himself back from going any further.
“There’s something bothering you.” And you’re taking it out on yourself.
Feng Xin could be mistaken, but he thinks he feels some dampness on the front of his shirt where Mu Qing’s buried his head. Whatever this is, it must be significant.
“I already said I’m sorry. What more do you want?” Mu Qing says belligerently. But after a beat, he adds in a whisper, “It’s not that I wanted to target you. You’re not the problem here.” The additional “I am” isn’t said but the words linger in the room beyond them.
Almost absentmindedly, Feng Xin starts soothing his hands up and down Mu Qing’s back.
“Hey, your passport’s still active, right? Let’s get out of here if this is stressing you out so much. Where do you wanna go?”
The grimace on Mu Qing’s face tells Feng Xin that he has the wrong idea, but at least his attempt at digging for something, anything to help illuminate the way to an answer is proving to be enough of a distraction to get Mu Qing out of his head.
“We can’t just disappear on a holiday last minute. We already said we’re attending your family’s reunion dinner. It would be rude to not show up,” Mu Qing says, almost in disgust.
Feng Xin isn’t all that big on tradition, and his family doesn’t really care what he does as long as he’s happy, so he doesn’t get the problem. They can get a flight ticket and be out of the country before the fireworks start, spend the new year in a hotel where they don’t even have to leave the bed, much less deal with any family. But the fire burning away the tears in Mu Qing’s eyes enforces the point he made before. For all that Mu Qing is upset about tonight’s event, he’s insistent on going regardless.
And for the love of all that is holy, Feng Xin cannot understand why. Why would Mu Qing be so determined to go when he also behaves like it’s going to be the worst thing ever for him?
“Give me your hand.”
Mu Qing rolls his eyes but doesn’t otherwise react. Exasperation etches itself deeper and deeper on his face.
Letting out a tsk in annoyance, Feng Xin grabs Mu Qing’s hand and twists the wedding ring off his finger. Then, he slips his own off as well. He angles them so that the engraving on both can be seen.
“You picked this. You didn’t want a heart, a date, or our names. Remember how you made us both swear to talk shit out if we have a problem? Well, I’m calling it now. We have a problem.”
Feng Xin places the rings into Mu Qing’s palm, clearly communicating that the ball is now in Mu Qing’s court.
Mu Qing runs his thumb over the inside of one of the bands, as if touching the characters will help him as he contemplates them.
永结同心: forever of one mind.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that, either. It’s just a wish people say to couples at weddings in the hopes that they will be united and live a sweet life together. By no means is it a phrase that applies to them. After all, during their three months of wedded life, half decade of dating, and years more of their acquaintance, their interactions have always been punctuated with verbal and physical tussles. Still, it’s something Mu Qing wanted for them both to keep in their hearts proceeding with their marriage.
Funny how it’s coming in handy now.
With his head bowed, Mu Qing mumbles something, acting very much like a sullen child being forced to own up to his wrongdoings. It makes Feng Xin’s heart melt just a little bit more.
“Didn’t catch that, baobei. Come again?” he teases, tilting Mu Qing’s face up with a finger under his chin. He can’t help the burst of laughter when he finds the glare that greets him. “Tell your laogong what’s wrong.”
The intensity of the glare ramps up as Mu Qing elucida, “It’s our first new year’s as a married couple!”
Feng Xin scratches his head as he puzzles this out. The statement is as plain and true as “the sky is blue,” so Feng Xin really can’t draw the line between that and why Mu Qing is so frazzled about it.
If Feng Xin didn’t have a decent amount of self-esteem himself, he might have thought that he was simply too dense to make the connections that seem so clear to Mu Qing. It had taken time and a lot of exposure to learn that it wasn’t—and indeed still isn’t—just him. No one else can see through that dark morass in Mu Qing’s head, either.
But unlike most people, Feng Xin doesn’t (and in fact shouldn’t and can’t) just call it a mess and give it up. He knows that, when it comes to Mu Qing, there’s always a line from A to B linking everything together. It’s just that, for Feng Xin, what’s another chain in an intricate web might as well be a ball of squiggles.
Which Feng Xin needs to detangle.
He pulls Mu Qing with him to the bed, patting the mattress next to him after he sits. “Tell me.”
To Feng Xin’s relief, Mu Qing does as he’s bid. His nose wrinkles and his eyebrows knit as he fights whatever monster inside him convinces him that his views won’t be listened to, much less taken into account. As he works to accept that Feng Xin cares enough to want to understand.
They’ve known each other for ages now, so Feng Xin has an idea of what Mu Qing thinks of himself. He never expects anyone to try, too used to being thought of badly by default. Feng Xin used to think that Mu Qing does himself no favours there, not sharing the unique logic behind his opinions and decisions. But now, he can see that Mu Qing is trying.
So Feng Xin stays quiet to help Mu Qing gather his words and his courage, to let those thoughts out into the world to be shared.
Mu Qing sighs softly before he speaks, sounding almost resigned. “You know the idiom 丑媳妇总得见公婆?”
Now, it’s Feng Xin’s turn to look troubled. The ugly daughter-in-law will have to face her parents-in-law sooner or later? As with what Mu Qing said before, Feng Xin does not understand this explanation either. He wonders when the way Mu Qing thinks in such unfathomable ways as a strategy for self-preservation became ingrained into a quirk of his personality. Either way, it’s ironic how true Feng Xin’s past taunt of Mu Qing is, that he thinks like a scorned concubine.
“Qing’er,” Feng Xin begins, sounding a bit desperate now. “You’re not a woman. Ugly is the last word I’d put on the same continent with you. And this won’t be the first time you’re meeting. You’ve met hundreds of times—They were at our wedding!”
“That wasn’t meant to be literal,” Mu Qing says snidely. But the way he bites his lip for the fraction of a second tells Feng Xin otherwise. “The ugly truth will be exposed eventually, and I…I feel like that ugly truth. Like I will see them tonight, and they’ll realise I’m not right for you, that I’m not good enough for you, and they’ll make sure I know it.”
Thinking back on what Mu Qing said before about them being married now, Feng Xin is beginning to understand. “You think the goalposts have shifted now that we’re not just dating anymore.”
Mu Qing nods solemnly. He doesn’t meet Feng Xin’s gaze as he states, “This will be my first new year’s celebrating with a family again.”
Pain pulses through Feng Xin’s body with every beat of his heart. Mu Qing had lost his mother when he was a teenager. It doesn’t matter that he’s been invited to family events by Feng Xin and Xie Lian both on countless occasions throughout the years, that Feng Xin’s parents had welcomed him into their fold with open arms. True family is always different.
Distantly, Feng Xin is aware of what Mu Qing means. There is a power dynamic here, between them, made manifest by the difference in their class, their background. For all that he went to an elite school, is a professional now, and has achieved all those goals he set for himself as a youth, Mu Qing hasn’t walked out from the shadows of where he came from. And to him, this translates into something else after their marriage.
If Mu Qing was a woman, he would be expected to serve his parents-in-law in much the way a servant would. To cook and clean, to stay home as a housewife, especially since Feng Xin’s family is wealthy.
“You are family, Qing’er. Maybe I didn’t show it too well before, but you mean the world to me, even if I didn’t show it well enough in the past.”
Feng Xin feels like he’s walking into a minefield, the very same one that Mu Qing is stuck in, and Feng Xin needs to lead him out of it. He just needs to be very careful about it.
Once, before they got together, Mu Qing dated some other guy. It had been good for him (and terrible for Feng Xin) until it crashed and burned, leaving Mu Qing to pick up the pieces of his heart while Feng Xin could do nothing but spout pointless platitudes.
In a moment of what Mu Qing considered weakness, he had broken down and cried in front of Feng Xin. He confessed the cruel things his ex had said, that he was tired of bending over backwards to satisfy Mu Qing when Mu Qing kept conjuring paranoid scenarios where everyone has an agenda against him, that he will never be happy because he refuses to let himself be happy.
As much as Feng Xin despised that man and continues to despise him now, he sees truth in some of it, in the way Mu Qing’s mind twists reality out of shape. But his caution was never unfounded, and Mu Qing does this out of self-defence. It turned out, after all, that there had been a conspiracy to get Mu Qing kicked out of their private school back then, and that ex had been neglecting Mu Qing besides, keeping their relationship secret, picking him up and tossing him aside according to his whims, and never stood up for Mu Qing for anything.
So now, it is imperative that Feng Xin tread carefully. He cannot invalidate Mu Qing’s feelings, even though he knows the ghosts Mu Qing is afraid of are just badly hung sheets in poor lighting.
He takes Mu Qing’s hands in his and catches his gaze. “Mu Qing, we’re partners. Whatever happens tonight, tomorrow, and all throughout the holiday, I’ll be right there with you. You can be the general, and I’ll be your soldier. Just tell me who to fight, and I will. Been wanting to wipe that smug look off the face of Xiaomei’s boyfriend.”
Unfortunately, that doesn’t incite much of anything positive from Mu Qing, only the thinning of his lips. “This isn’t a joke, Feng Xin.”
Oh, does Feng Xin know that it isn’t a joke. He’s gone through too much today to even dream otherwise.
“I have never seen you prepare for something the way you have for this Lunar New Year. Mu Qing, you made desserts for the reunion dinner even though we’re literally having the event catered. You have our outfits coordinated and colour-matched from tomorrow until the fifth day of the new year.” Which is overkill if anyone asks Feng Xin, and he does not plan on stepping out of the house after the third day.
“You’ve made detailed visiting plans and interrogated me for every single relative we might meet and how we’re related. You have red packets with different designs to help you remember how much is in there and based on a tier system according to how closely the recipient is related. You have everything covered, Qing’er. Even if someone tries to accuse you of not doing enough, you will be beyond reproach.”
Feng Xin dares to push it just a tiny bit further. He caresses Mu Qing’s cheek, then smushes Mu Qing’s face between his palms. Almost immediately, the claws come out, and he’s slammed onto his back with Mu Qing above him.
“If you were trying to be sweet or whatever, you ruined it,” Mu Qing drawls. Nevertheless, he lifts his arm from where it had been pressing against Feng Xin’s neck.
Taking Mu Qing’s hand, Feng Xin levers himself up. Finally, there’s a sliver of a smile on Mu Qing’s face. “So we’re okay? We can still book a trip to Bali, if you want.”
“No, let’s go to the dinner.” Mu Qing starts finger-combing Feng Xin’s hair.
Once Mu Qing lets him go, Feng Xin goes for the car keys. “And I meant what I said, you know. You can tell me if you suffer any grievances. Though, I’m not going to lie. I’m probably just going to turn around and tattle on them to my parents. They love you more than they do me.”
Mu Qing lets out a derisive snort. “If that’s the case, I have a complaint to log. You made us late.”
The expression on Feng Xin’s face becomes one of pure astonishment. What the fuck? He’d spent this time trying to comfort his husband! He grumbles a bit as they climb into the car, but settles down when Mu Qing puts his hand on his thigh and leans over.
“Thank you,” Mu Qing whispers, right before placing a soft kiss on Feng Xin’s cheek.
Feng Xin beams back at him and resists kissing him back. He’ll get another complaint if he messes up Mu Qing’s makeup. “You never have to thank me, Qing’er.”