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Mu Qing is nearly a hundred percent sure that his close encounter with lava has done something to alter the chemicals in his brain.
It was a near-death experience not anybody would have survived easily; the Martial God of the Southwest, prideful General Xuan Zhen even nearly fell to his doom if it weren’t for—help. Help from people he never thought would help him. While there is no contest to who the nicest god in the heavens is, Mu Qing is Mu Qing, and he has ignited enough animosity for everyone to hesitate helping him. But Xie Lian is Xie Lian, and where Xie Lian goes, Feng Xin almost always follows. Give him eight hundred years or more and you’d still find him at your beck and call.
Exactly because of that, there was barely any surprise on Mu Qing’s end when Feng Xin pointed out how evidently Xie Lian was fiddling with the ring he’s wearing as his necklace earlier.
“Ah,” Xie Lian gave them a smile that is well-practiced, but they both saw it did not reach his eyes. He temporarily let go of the silver ring in favor of placing both his hands on his tea cup. “Nothing, nothing.”
Mu Qing looked at Feng Xin. It shouldn’t be surprising that Feng Xin looked at him at the same time, but since Jun Wu’s fall and the reconstruction of the heavens, Mu Qing has tried to put thought—nice thoughts—behind the actions the closest people to him make, especially when he’s involved.
When Feng Xin raised an eyebrow at him—a question, he was asking for Mu Qing’s thoughts on the matter—Mu Qing rolled his eyes back. He looked back at Xie Lian as his finger traced the rim of his tea cup. “The skin around your fingernails are peeling off. There’s dried blood on your thumb—” Your Highness, he almost said. Xie Lian made both of them promise a few months back to stop calling him that. There was lava in Mu Qing’s mouth when he bit his tongue just in time.
“Mu Qing,” Feng Xin hissed at him as he slammed his fingers on the table hard enough to gently slosh the tea in their designated cups. “There is definitely a better way to let Your—Xie Lian, him, know that you’re fucking worried!”
Mu Qing glanced at the tea left in his cup before giving Feng Xin one of his signature glares. He tightened his hold on his cup. “Well, if you’re such an expert on this matter, why don’t you voice out your worries yourself, huh?”
“I didn’t—! That’s not—!” Feng Xin gestured wildly.
Mu Qing smirked. “Very eloquent, thank you.” He turned back to Xie Lian, who already had both of his hands off his cup in a placating manner. He’s insistent he shouldn’t be Your Highness anymore, but even he still unconsciously takes on the role of having to stop their squabbles before it damages the vicinity. “Xie Lian.”
Xie Lian’s hands froze, his fingers twitching in the slightest. Mu Qing swallowed the lava in his mouth and stood up. “... If you care about yourself, follow me to the heavens.”
“I think he’s going to take care of your nails, but he’s never been the best at being honest!” is all Mu Qing heard from Feng Xin before he ascended in his palace.
There is an entire conversation to be made about any of the three of them leaving. Leaving first, most especially. But the world has yet to be threatened—hopefully never again—by another calamity as sinister and cunning as White No Face, and the three of them are slowly rebuilding their—friendship along the reconstruction of the heavens. Mu Qing may have already ascended, but there is no way else but up for the three of them from here. From hesitant visits with poor disguises or excuses, to quick monthly check-ins, to their now bi-monthly hangouts, Mu Qing has been closer to living similarly to an actual teenager than the seventeen-year old Mu Qing living in Xianle.
So here they are: Xie Lian in one of Mu Qing’s finest robes, wet hair dripping all over his carpeted bedroom floor, Feng Xin sticking his nose in everything interesting he sees in Mu Qing’s bedroom and trying to not knock anything over—he has not developed a sense of taste for the fine luxuries in life since they were seventeen despite being born in an upper middle class family and has spent the better years of his human life in a castle, Mu Qing has no hope for him now—and Mu Qing tries not to get an aneurysm because of it all.
Everything feels—just right, is what it is. There is lava at the back of his throat, sliding down until they make a home at the pit of Mu Qing’s stomach. Being exposed to lava in close proximity was not this warm.
“Sit down,” Mu Qing tries not to let his eye twitch as he sees more droplets dripping down Xie Lian’s back. “I’ll comb your hair.”
“Wait a minute—”
“What is up with you and acting like—like an attendant again?” Mu Qing turns his head and sees Feng Xin holding two of his perfumes. He doesn’t try to hide his eye twitch this time. “You hate it so much when people remind you, and when people throw a broom at you, but look at you!” He points at Mu Qing, equally accusing and confused.
Mu Qing grits his teeth. He really wants to try being nice and kind and to not yell at this buffoon of a martial god in his palace right now. He’s already had his heavenly tribulation, yet somehow this is even more of a challenge.
“Is combing another’s hair only a sign of subservience to you?” Mu Qing grabs a wide tooth comb, gripping the handle tight enough to remind him that it is his comb, and they’re in his palace, and he would be the one cleaning up the mess if they start throwing punches now. He points back at Feng Xin, like the comb is his zhanmadao. “But what else did I expect from you? You haven’t been cared for like this, so you wouldn’t understand!”
“Ah, ah!” Xie Lian immediately waves his hands in Mu Qing’s peripheral vision. “We shouldn’t make a mountain out of a molehill! Come, come—here,” He’s shifting to sit in front of Mu Qing’s vanity, swift and graceful despite his days of royalty being long gone. And Feng Xin is—not completely wrong, unfortunately; Mu Qing is not so different from acting as Xie Lian’s personal attendant with the way he is acting, but he isn’t doing this because it is a service required of him. “Here, I’m sitting! You, ah, you wanted to comb my hair, right? So I would stop dripping all over your carpet?”
Mu Qing hardens his glare at Feng Xin before turning to Xie Lian, now situated in front of the mirror. He’s back to fiddling with his fingers.
Mu Qing wants to—pamper Xie Lian, is all. As his friend. It may be the least he can do for him now, especially now that Crimson Rain is off to take care of ghost king business somewhere.
He starts by separating the strands, combing through the tangles with both his comb and his bare hand. It’s work that’s familiar, despite Mu Qing not combing anybody’s hair in nearly a millennium. Up and down, breathe in and out. Xie Lian is mostly still; his fingers are still picking on the in around his nails, and his feet are swinging back and forth in a slow manner. It’s all mindless work when Mu Qing grabs his oils and moisturizers, wheatgrass and camellia and bamboo extract and fo-ti, switching from a comb to one of his brushes in the midst of it all.
“This is nice,” Xie Lian breaks the silence. Mu Qing looks up and sees Xie Lian’s reflection in his mirror, smiling at him. Mu Qing immediately looks back down as he massages the oil in his hand on Xie Lian’s scalp. “Do you do this every time you wash your hair, Mu Qing?”
Mu Qing shakes his head. When takes a step back, he hears Feng Xin approaching them. “You guys smell like the ground after rain around here.”
“I think it smells lovely.” Xie Lian clasps his hands together.
“Oh—! Your fingers do look like they’ve been mauled, Xie Lian,” Feng Xin kneels on one knee, firmly grabbing one of Xie Lian’s hands and examining them under the light. When Xie Lian tries to pull it back, Feng Xin places it on the vanity table. “No offense! No offense.”
“None taken,” Xie Lian immediately sighs. Mu Qing wouldn’t easily admit the truth, but he knows Xie Lian is stronger than him and Feng Xin. He could’ve pulled his hand away easily—there’s also the matter of Feng Xin simply letting Xie Lian pull away if he could tell Xie Lian wanted to—but it remains on the table. Mu Qing glances at it before focusing again on Xie Lian’s hair. “I also do work at Puqi Shrine, you know, so it’s natural if it’s like this…”
Feng Xin makes a face. Mu Qing has seen that exact face during meetings, especially when he’s not in the mood of taking any of Pei Ming’s words and advice. “Xie Lian, no offense again, but Crimson Rain would rather eat shit than let you work so intensely that it ends up ruining your nails and skin.”
At the mention of Crimson Rain, Xie Lian’s shoulders slump. “Ah… well, I don’t think he would eat something like that.”
Mu Qing forgets making a face at Xie Lian’s comment and favors directing a face at Feng Xin instead, who is still kneeling by their side. “You call me out for acting as I did when I was still a servant now, and yet you kneel like you have not moved on from being a personal bodyguard,” Before Feng Xin could do more than yell Hey! at him, Mu Qing turns to look at Xie Lian’s reflection. He’s not meeting Mu Qing’s eyes, instead looking at the reflection of his silver ring necklace. “I’ll clean your nails,” He swallows what seems an eternity of lava, before continuing. “Xie Lian.”
Xie Lian’s eyes once again meet the reflection of Mu Qing’s eyes. “You don’t need to! Really!”
“I have to,” Mu Qing glares at him, leaning more towards a deadpan stare. He drops his voice to a near-whisper as he breaks eye contact as he brushes the ends of Xie Lian’s hair again. “I want to.”
“I think you should let him,” Feng Xin grins, nodding at Xie Lian. “Or else he’ll think you hate him when you refuse.” In an obnoxious, sarcastic whisper, he leans closer in Xie Lian’s space and pretends as if Mu Qing isn’t present in the room. “He’s always had a sensitive heart, that General Xuan Zhen!”
Mu Qing can only give Feng Xin’s kneeling leg a swift kick. Said heart is—beating faster and louder in his chest. The fact that Feng Xin acknowledges he has one, joke or not, makes the lava in his chest even warmer. It’s not scalding his skin and it doesn’t terrify Mu Qing as much as he assumed it would.
He hears his heart beat twice, thrice, before he kicks Feng Xin—who was just regaining his balance—again, and kicks him another time for good measure. Xie Lian is laughing, his hands once again clasped by his chest. Mu Qing wouldn’t mind hanging out with Feng Xin and Crimson Rain at Puqi Shrine if it meant he gets to make Xie Lian laugh like there’s nothing else in the world that matters.
“Can we,” Xie Lian catches his breath as Feng Xin hisses out expletives and punching Mu Qing’s calf. “Can we color our nails? You have ones that aren’t just clear, don’t you, Mu Qing?” He turns to face Mu Qing, wiping a stray tear as he smiles at him. “You should let us do your nails too. We can do each other’s nails, with Feng Xin!”
Mu Qing barely has the heart to tell Xie Lian he already took care of his own nails a week ago. He barely has a heart, he thinks, but that’s neither here nor there. He sighs, looking back at his own bed. “... We should do this there, then.”
Xie Lian claps, and Mu Qing sighs again, this time with a slight upward quirk of his lips.
“No offense, again,” Feng Xin says as he stands up, dusting off his legs. He’s as careful as to not accidentally offend Xie Lian as when he was seventeen. Fourteen, even. Maybe even earlier. “But I don’t think I suit colored nails.”
“You’re leaving?” Xie Lian asks as he stands up as well, walking to where Mu Qing’s bed is. His cream robes appear tailor-made for him specifically, even when Mu Qing has made it five centuries ago, after an uneventful secret search for wherever Xie Lian might’ve been. Letting his eyes rake at the different shades of red seams adorning the robe and a vibrant red belt that reminds Mu Qing of what Crown Prince Xie Lian once owned, it would be foolish of him to completely ignore the impact of him being Xie Lian’s attendant. “You don’t have anything urgent for tonight and tomorrow, do you?”
When Xie Lian sits on the bed, looking up to both Mu Qing and Feng Xin, Mu Qing’s chest aches. It is all so familiar but also so different. Their faces may have not looked a day past seventeen, but they’ve gone through so much already, and now they’re here. Not in Xianle, not in Xie Lian’s palace, but instead personal attendant Mu Qing’s palace—but he knows he’s more than that to them now, especially to Xie Lian.
He turns to his vanity to grab his nail kit and his dedicated pouch for nail polish before he does anything embarrassing especially with Feng Xin standing near him, like tearing up or saying anything before his brain catches up to his mouth. “... Go take a bath, Feng Xin. You’re not leaving for the night, whether you like it or not.”
“What the—! I’m clean! You’re insufferable!” Feng Xin throws his hands up, his eyebrows scrunched as usual.
Mu Qing slowly turns his head at him, glaring as he did at him earlier. “You need to take a fucking bath before I’ll even fucking allow you to sit on my bedsheets.”
“Who is the potty mouth now?” Feng Xin has the audacity to place his hands on his hips before smirking. “Such a beacon of good manners and right conduct, General.”
“You just wish you could scrub the ugliness off your face, even with all the products I own.” Mu Qing, in a rare mood of playfulness, sticks his tongue out at Feng Xin before he turns to walk towards his bed. “Just go get in the shower, for gods’ sake, or do you not know how to take a bath?”
Feng Xin groans, stomping his feet on the way to Mu Qing’s bathroom. “You’re so immature!” He calls out before slamming Mu Qing’s door shut.
Mu Qing’s eye twitches yet again. He turns his head to the general direction of his bathroom before sitting on his bed. “You are nothing but a brainless brute!”
Xie Lian laughs, fist by his mouth. “Both of you are never growing out of the unnecessary arguments, aren’t you?”
“You should’ve known better than to let us recite all those idioms back then.” Mu Qing says as he lays out everything in his kit on the bed, shuffling and placing the nail polish with care.
Xie Lian laughs again, this time quieter. “It was fun, seeing you two scramble to win while forgetting why you even argued in the first place.”
“I won more than he ever did.” Mu Qing says as he picks up his nipper.
“You did, yes.” Xie Lian whispers as he hands Mu Qing his right hand. Mu Qing smirks, filing away his validation in case he needs something to win against an argument with Feng Xin some other day.
He starts nipping around the nails, carefully avoiding the open wounds. He hears nothing but his’ and Xie Lian’s breathing and the running of his water in the background. He hasn’t been this relaxed since—since ever, especially not with Xie Lian and Feng Xin around.
As he cleans Xie Lian’s right thumb, he sighs. “It is useless worrying about Crimson Rain, Xie Lian. You know he will do anything to come back to you as soon as he can,” He looks up, and is not surprised that Xie Lian has resorted to chewing on his lip. “He’s already done it once, he’ll do it again if he has to, but he doesn’t have to anymore. He’s better and stronger than whatever is keeping him apart from you now. He is not so weak that he’ll let something like a wrath or two lay a finger on him.”
Xie Lian’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes again. “... That’s the nicest thing you have said about San Lang, actually.”
“Don’t expect it from me again.” Mu Qing rolls his eyes. Xie Lian laughs, trying his best not to let his hand shake too much. “But I meant it. He is powerful, and cocky, and is the greatest menace that still exists to torment the rest of the heavens. If he is this much of a bother to us, then he for sure can stand his ground just fine. He’ll be back before you know it.”
Xie Lian sighs. “I know.”
Mu Qing looks up, an eyebrow raised. “Do you really?”
“I do, I do. It’s just…” Xie Lian looks down at all the nail polish laid down. “It’s natural. To worry, I mean.”
“Even when I say that Crimson Rain is the second strongest guy I know?” Mu Qing tightens his grip on Xie Lian’s hand.
“Just the second?” He feels Xie Lian smiling at him. Mu Qing dares not look up and continues to clean Xie Lian’s left hand.
“For a guy who refuses to be called Your Highness anymore, you sure can be demanding and petty.” Mu Qing scoffs.
“Come on now, Mu Qing,” And Xie Lian laughs again. It comes to him so easily, like being happy is the simplest thing in the world. He’ll die before he’ll thank Crimson Rain for anything, but he’ll give it to him just this once. He was the one beside Xie Lian for the most part, after all.
“I have a color in mind,” Mu Qing says while shaving Xie Lian’s nails into the perfect shape. “But because I’m not demanding and petty like Your Highness—”
“Mu Qing!” Xie Lian squeezes Mu Qing’s hand once.
“—I’ll let you choose from what I have here.” Mu Qing gestures to his nail polish collection, but his hand slowly rests near the red one.
“No, no, surely the one with a collection knows better than to let this lowly and ignorant one pick,” Xie Lian rubs his nose, grinning at Mu Qing. Mu Qing rolls his eyes, a small smile forming on his lips. “Please, pick whatever is—” He looks at where Mu Qing’s hand is, grinning even wider. “Whatever is closest to your hand right now.”
Mu Qing rolls his eyes again for good measure. General Xuan Zhen’s palace does not seem so cold and bleak anymore.
Red is Xie Lian’s color, despite the same white cultivator robes he continues to wear. Red is also Crimson Rain’s color, and who is he to not acknowledge that Crimson Rain is held so closely in Xie Lian’s heart? At the first stroke, the red already matches the seams of the robe he’s wearing. Mu Qing relaxes his shoulders as he does the same brushing motion for the rest of the nails.
When he hears the running water stop, Mu Qing also hears Xie Lian sigh again. “I can’t help it, you know. Not worrying for my San Lang.”
Mu Qing hums but doesn’t say anything. Xie Lian takes this as an opportunity to continue. “He can be the strongest immortal in the world, untouchable and unkillable,” He fiddles with his silver ring necklace with his free hand. “But I care for him. The worrying comes naturally with the care you have for somebody. We’re not so better than humans when it comes to this.”
Mu Qing hums again as he gestures for Xie Lian to give him his other hand. “Don’t smear the nail polish on your robes.”
“I won’t,” Xie Lian waves him off with his hand before setting it down on his lap. “And… It goes out for you and Feng Xin too.”
Mu Qing pauses, the nail polish brush barely touching Xie Lian’s nail. “What does?”
“My care.” Xie Lian smiles. Mu Qing looks down and gets back to brushing as the heat in his chest starts to move to his face and ears. “Even if it were you, or Feng Xin, I would worry too.” He sighs. “It’s a bit useless to try and not to worry. It would be like not caring for either of you. I hope you remember that, Mu Qing.”
“Alright, alright, I get it…”
Xie Lian laughs again. “But thank you, still. For reassuring me, and for,” He wiggles his fingers on his lap subtly. “For taking care of me.”
“Of course,” The Your Highness sits on the tip of his tongue again. He swallows it down in favor of keeping the heat forming on his cheeks at bay. He offered friendship to Xie Lian—and in extension, Feng Xin—who has always been his friend, before he even realized things were such. The Mu Qing who jumped thinking he was not going to survive the lava would have never dreamed that things would turn out like this, not in this lifetime. “You always have me. And Feng Xin, unfortunately.”
“You leave for a while and scrub yourself off of every dirt so some guy doesn’t pop his vein yelling at you,” Feng Xin grumbles, wrapping a robe around him. “And yet you’d still find him dragging your name when you come back. People these days are so ungrateful, I swear!”
Mu Qing rolls his eyes as Xie Lian chuckles. “And here I thought I was the dramatic one.”
“You are!” Feng Xin throws his hands up. When he sees Xie Lian’s nails, Mu Qing is sure he sees him gulp. “Please don’t tell me you’re putting red on my fucking nails.”
Mu Qing waves the nail polish, not even trying to hide a smirk. “You scared?”
“No! I just don’t think it fucking suits me!” He messes up his hair—it’s his turn to drip all over Mu Qing’s carpet, and Mu Qing would be lying if he says he’s infuriated—as he walks closer to the bed. “Pick something else—hell, maybe even black would be better!”
“Stop being such a baby.” Mu Qing continues to torment him, waving the nail polish closer to his face.
“You’re annoying!” Feng Xin says as he grabs Mu Qing’s wrist. Mu Qing pulls it back, and they end up playing a game of tug-of-war by Mu Qing’s bed.
Xie Lian doesn’t bother separating them anymore, leaning back to smile at the two of them. “We should do this more often!”
“No, we shouldn’t!” They yell at him in unison, and Xie Lian only laughs and claps, knowing full well that they’re lying. They could never say no to him; not in this lifetime, not in the next.
It is warm where the three of them are. Mu Qing is now a hundred percent sure that the lava didn’t ruin anything in this room—save for his hair, but even that is repairing itself well—and that they were always meant to meet and be like this. In his bedroom, surrounded by the two people who know him more than anybody ever would, smiling and laughing like they were always meant to.