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“So, does everyone understand their roles?”
Looking around the table in Paradise Manor’s main hall, Yin Yu had to admit he was a bit concerned.
Xie Lian was paying the appropriate attention, of course, leaning forward in his chair with his golden-brown eyes adorably intense. Which, naturally, served as a distraction for Hua-chengzhu, who was currently staring at Xie Lian as if contemplating ways to attach them together permanently, in this life and all of their next ones.
Meanwhile, Feng Xin looked deeply distracted, randomly sending unreadable little sideways glances at Mu Qing. The martial god was ignoring the looks, his own gaze off into the distance. And, really, who knew what those two were thinking about at any given time?
Yin Yu gnawed at his lip nervously. Xie Lian gave him a kind, earnest smile, which settled his nerves. “We got it, don’t worry, Yin Yu! I promise we can do this. Right, San Lang?”
“Hm? Yes, of course, gege,” was Hua Cheng’s distracted reply. He dragged his gaze away from his husband to give Yin Yu a critical look. “Does this mean we can leave now?”
“San Lang…” Xie Lian sighed, looking equal parts exasperated and endeared. “Yin Yu, I can make sure everyone does their part.”
He nodded, trying not to cause himself unnecessary stress. They’d said to call them if he needed something, didn’t they? He should trust in his friends more. “Thank you, Dianxia. Then, you’re all free to leave.”
The four gods and ghosts filed out in pairs, leaving Yin Yu alone in his house, turning his plan over in his mind again and again.
Quan Yizhen’s birthday was fast approaching, their first birthday together since their last tragic mess of a birthday. Those memories still ate away at Yin Yu’s conscience, despite Quan Yizhen’s constant insistence that it was in the past and it no longer mattered. He desperately wanted to make up for what had happened, erasing memories awash in the dark drip of poison and rewriting something brighter and happier. Something akin to a perfect moment.
He’d been planning out this party for nearly a month (if you didn’t count the endless hours he’d dedicated to plotting in his mind) and it was time to set those gears in motion.
Yin Yu could only spend so long standing here, wracked with anxiety. He had his own plans to act upon, didn’t he?
With a thrill humming through his blood and excitement sending energy through his body, Yin Yu followed his friends out, already imagining the way the perfect party would play out.
⋆｡ ﾟ☼ ｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆
Of course, that meant everything had to go incredibly wrong.
Yin Yu stared in horror at the oddly mold-green and jet-black monstrosity of a cake.
“Yin Yu, I’m sorry…” Xie Lian looked genuinely apologetic, his hands clasped together earnestly. Behind him, Hua Cheng was glaring at Yin Yu as if daring him to say anything about the state of the cake.
“It’s alright, Dianxia.” It was difficult to keep the despair from his voice. “It looks… ahem, I’m sure we can… well.” There was really nothing for him to say.
“I’ll eat it, gege,” Hua Cheng informed Xie Lian. The martial god only gave him a small, hopeless smile.
“I just… wanted it to be personal. I didn’t imagine it would come out like… this.”
Yin Yu loved Xie Lian, he really did, but at the moment he wanted to ask: you really didn’t think the cake would get this messed up?
“No worries. Yizhen will appreciate the effort!” he replied, forcing false cheer into his voice.
Though hopefully not enough to actually eat it. Yin Yu suppressed a sigh, turning to Hua Cheng. “Did you get the decorations?”
“Of course,” Hua Cheng said with ease, showing Yin Yu a rough burlap bag before tossing it over. He caught it deftly, pulling it open to examine the contents.
“This is…” Yin Yu was, once again, at a loss of words.
The bag was full to the brim with different kinds of colored paper, ribbons, cardboard, and every other material Yin Yu could imagine. It was clearly some kind of spiritual object, because Yin Yu couldn’t see the bottom.
It would take him something like an eternity to sort through the materials and retrieve what he needed, not to mention the time he needed to turn those materials into decorations.
“You’re welcome,” Hua Cheng said, very pleased with himself.
“I… alright, this is fine. This is fine! I can figure something out.”
With those words, Yin Yu remembered that he’d left his own gift at his palace. He shook himself out of his mild despair and deposited the bag on the table they were using, making up his mind to think of something to do with it when he returned.
“You two… ahem. Just stay here. I’ll be back.”
Hua Cheng gave him a bored look, and Xie Lian nodded. “I’m sorry again, Yin Yu!”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it, Dianxia.”
He left the pair to their own devices and sprinted out of the Palace of Qi Ying, aiming for his own palace.
Yin Yu wasn’t a particular fan of spending a lot of time in the Heavenly Capital. After so many years, he almost preferred the relative peace of living in Paradise Manor. Sometimes he left things in his palace, however, so he flung the door open and headed for a side room to search in earnest.
As he often did when he walked through the eerily familiar layout of his palace, Yin Yu felt a sharp chill. It stung, stabbing at his spine, sending pinching needles of guilt spiraling all throughout his body.
He shoved aside the feeling. The last thing he wanted to do today was to remember what had happened the last time he and Quan Yizhen had spent a birthday together.
His palace was fairly empty, so it wasn’t difficult for him to locate the small box, ensure the safety of its contents with a quick glance, secure it in his pocket, and hurry back out.
Once Yin Yu left the palace, he felt the pressure on his chest ease and he took a deep breath. The sun was warm, chasing his shivers away, replacing them with a bright flame of hope.
Yin Yu dashed back to the Palace of Qi Ying, and the day instantly got better.
Mu Qing and Feng Xin had arrived, clearly more prepared than Xie Lian and Hua Cheng had been. When Yin Yu walked in, Mu Qing was placing a slightly lopsided cake on the table, newly covered in a cheerful golden tablecloth. Feng Xin was busy hanging small moon and sun paper lanterns on the ceilings and the walls, washing the room with a bright burnt-gold light. Even as he balanced on a chair to attach a moon lantern above the table, he and Mu Qing were bickering.
“It’s crooked. I’m telling you, I promise,” Mu Qing insisted.
“Shut up! It’s perfectly straight!” Feng Xin barked back.
“Yeah, about as straight as you are,” Mu Qing shot back.
Hua Cheng snorted and Feng Xin’s ears turned bright red. He glared impressively down at Mu Qing, who ignored him as he stuck candles into the blue-frosted cake. Once Feng Xin had ascertained that the martial god of the Southwest wasn’t watching, he adjusted the lantern to hang straight.
“You guys…” Yin Yu didn’t know what to say.
Xie Lian sat up from where he’d been sitting on the floor, wrapping presents, promptly hitting his head on the table above him. Hua Cheng started to reach out for him, then stopped when he saw that he was alright. “Yin Yu! You’re back! Look at what Qing’er and A’Xin brought!”
“Where did you guys get that cake?”
“Mu Qing made it,” Feng Xin declared with a distinctly proud voice. Mu Qing shot him a sharp look, then stood up straighter.
“My baking isn’t great, but I figured Taizi Dianxia would also be attempting a cake and… well. I thought you might need a backup.” Xie Lian seemed to not take offense to this comment.
“And the lanterns?” Yin Yu asked, gesturing with awe. Their craftsmanship isn’t perfect by any means, but fairly neat. He could almost sense the effort that had gone into making each one.
“Feng Xin bought some supplies yesterday and spent all night turning them into lanterns. It was so annoying. I didn’t get any sleep,” Mu Qing informed Yin Yu, but he could see the way the man was smiling faintly.
“We got Yizhen a gift, too,” Feng Xin goes on, pointing at the slender package Xie Lian had tied a neat bow around. “We weren’t sure what he might like, so we found a staff. We thought he might like learning a new weapon and some new moves. According to the vendor, it glows gold with spiritual power.”
“San Lang and I got something, too!” Xie Lian said excitedly, standing up and holding out the present he’d finished wrapping. “They’re some diagrams from old styles of martial arts that I used to practice. San Lang drew the images, and I wrote the descriptions.”
Tears prickled in Yin Yu’s vision. “Thank you so much, all of you. I-”
“Shixiong?”
Something about that title in that voice, combined with the questioning lilt at the end of the word, made Yin Yu’s throat constrict. He turned slowly, memories rushing up, threatening to swallow him whole.
The face that greeted him was surprised, but it wasn’t the same blood-covered, bewildered face from back then. He was confused, but the delight was clear on his face. Yin Yu felt his heart lifting.
“Yizhen!” He placed the present on the table beside him then darted to throw his arms around Quan Yizhen, hugging him close.
“Shixiong! What… What's all this for?” Quan Yizhen caught him with one arm, grinning at him.
“Happy birthday, shidi,” Yin Yu replied, breathing in Yizhen’s scent and the feeling of being so close to him.
“Oh! It’s my birthday! I didn’t even realize.”
“Really? But you usually never forget…” Yin Yu said, drawing back to look his partner in the eye.
Quan Yizhen gave him a sheepish look. “I haven’t… celebrated it in a long time.”
Yin Yu’s heart stuttered. He didn’t know where to look. “Well… that’s part of the reason why I did this. I wanted… I wanted to make up for what happened last time. I’m so, so sor-”
He was cut off mid-apology by a bright laugh. Quan Yizhen didn’t stop, throwing his arms around Yin Yu’s body. Startled, he returned the embrace.
“Yizhen?”
The god paused his laughter finally. He was still beaming when he asked, “Why are you apologizing?”
“You told me you haven’t celebrated your birthday since that last birthday we spent together. I thought…”
“That’s because there was no reason for me to. The only thing I ever wanted on my birthday was to be with you!”
Yin Yu wasn’t sure what to say to that, his joy expanding to fill his chest and push outwards, outwards, the feeling growing until he thought his body might burst. “Yizhen…”
His voice was serious now, eyes loving and tender. “Thank you for coming back to me.”
Yin Yu could only smile in response.
“Alright, alright, break it up!” Mu Qing called teasingly, and Yin Yu snapped back into the moment. Embarrassed, he turned around.
His four friends were all smiling broadly at the pair. Xie Lian gave them a thumbs up and Feng Xin hid his smile behind one hand.
“Ahem. I-”
“Never mind, never mind,” Mu Qing said back, saving Yin Yu the humiliation. “Let’s just cut the cake, okay? I’m hungry.”
⋆｡ ﾟ☼ ｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆
The cake was incredible, to the surprise of absolutely nobody. Quan Yizhen’s eyes lit up as he took bite after bite, and the cake was soon gone. Yizhen’s eyes began to stray towards the cake Xie Lian had made, still balanced at the far end of the table, but informing him who its creator was quickly warned him off.
He opened the staff first, all of his features glowing with light that had nothing to do with the staff’s unique magical properties. Quan Yizhen shot the gift givers an appraising look, as if they might not be as bad as he’d thought.
The scroll was second. His entire face changed when he saw it, excitement increasing tenfold as he looked at the graceful, detailed drawings. He was poring over one of the descriptions when Xie Lian nudged him lightly. Quan Yizhen looked up, startled, and caught sight of the small box he was pushing towards the star of the birthday party.
Yin Yu was half-hoping it would go unnoticed and he could give his gift to Yizhen later, when they were alone. In comparison to his other gifts, it seemed dull, and he didn’t want to disappoint his shidi.
Too late, Quan Yizhen scooped up the box, taking a moment to examine the box.
“Is this your gift, shixiong?” he asked, tracing the small sun and moon carvings on the top of the black wooden box.
“Yes. It’s nothing much, not like your other gifts, anyways,” Yin Yu told him as he pulled open the lid.
Quan Yizhen held up the contents of the box for the others to see. His face was doing the thing that Yin Yu always found thoroughly captivating; just when you thought it couldn’t hold any more joy and excitement, his happiness tripled, radiating from his every feature. It was incredibly intoxicating yet painful to watch, and Yin Yu couldn’t look away.
“Are these… for us?”
In Yizhen’s hands glittered a matching set of earrings. Two silver crescent moons twinkled softly in the light alongside two tiny gold suns.
“If you want to match, yes. They are.”
Quan Yizhen gestured for Yin Yu to come closer, setting the jewelry down. He did as his partner requested, leaning closer.
He attached one sun earring to Yin Yu’s left ear, then a moon on the right. Still smiling, he held the other two out for Yin Yu to do the same.
Yin Yu had bought them intending for each to have a complete set, two moons and two suns. But watching the way Quan Yizhen flicked the moon earring with one finger, setting it spinning in the dim light of the Palace reassured him that this was the way it was supposed to be. Two halves of the same whole, two mismatched sets composed of a single whole.
“Thank you so much, shixiong,” Yizhen said earnestly. “This is the best gift I’ve ever gotten!”
“You’re the best gift I’ve ever gotten,” Yin Yu muttered and, before he could dwell on the cheesiness of his own statement, pulled Quan Yizhen close to kiss him. He tasted frosting on soft lips and grinned.
“Happy birthday, my love.”