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When they are starting out, when the thing between them is good and green and new as spring for all that it’s made of 800 years of ash and blood and devotion, Xie Lian is, of course, gege. Hua Cheng visibly, obviously cannot get enough of it—is addicted to the indulgence of it, the privilege. He says it like it’s his favorite word, like the two syllables alone could sustain him when he has no need for even air or water, and he’s even right. Xie Lian, who once spent his endless, empty days in endless, empty silence, finds himself equally rapacious for it, if occasionally unprepared for the force behind that possessive sweetness.
Indeed, Xie Lian spends all of his days happier than he knows how to hold, now. Case in point, scene: god and ghost intertwined, Hua Cheng’s strong arms wrapped around Xie Lian like iron braces, the air charged and heavy with the heat of their desire and rhythm of their joining. Pleasure has long since rendered Xie Lian incoherent, and his helpless whimpers play counterpoint to Hua Cheng’s steady, unrelenting orisons.
“Gege,” Hua Cheng is chanting, “gege, gege—”
It’s almost amusing, how desperately Hua Cheng calls him gege in moments like these, as if the word isn’t one end of a leash he’d need tug only once for Xie Lian to come back to him. As if Xie Lian would stand to be parted from him to begin with ever again.
San Lang, don’t you know? Xie Lian wonders even as Hua Cheng bites down while doing something clever with his hips to force a ragged keen from his lips. There’s no need to say it like that. I love to stand by your side. I want nothing more than to stay.
But between the two of them, he’s the one who actually needs to breathe, and so it’s all he can do to gasp out an answering San Lang between helpless, unintelligible whimpers. It pierces Hua Cheng more powerfully than a blade could have; with a sound more like a growl than anything human, Hua Cheng heaves Xie Lian up and flips him before reentering him, and Xie Lian is left to cry out at the sweet slide, the inexorable drag, the delicious, jolting thrill of being filled.
“Xie Lian,” Hua Cheng moans, and spills into him in a flood of white heat that sparks through Xie Lian’s whole body and makes him overflow in turn.
For a moment, there’s only the uneven sound of Xie Lian’s panting and the light, mindless smacking of Hua Cheng’s lips on Xie Lian’s neck, as if he’s trying to lick away the sweat plastering hair to skin. There’s always a long, languid second of silence after they both come, but Hua Cheng, ever attuned to his god, takes only a moment longer to realize that Xie Lian’s breath is hitching more than it should be.
“Gege?” Hua Cheng doesn’t sound alarmed yet—this isn’t uncommon between the two of them, either. He withdraws carefully and sets about rearranging Xie Lian within his hold so they can be face to face. It’s only when Hua Cheng is met with Xie Lian’s expression that he begins to panic. Xie Lian knows, because Hua Cheng’s gaze skips from the tear tracks carving their way down his face to the bunching of his eyebrows, the too-wide grimace his lips have pulled back into. “Gege, what’s wrong?”
“San Lang,” Xie Lian warbles, feeling his face pull even more taut and ugly with euphoric tears, and reaches forward to pull Hua Cheng into a hug that would squeeze the life from Hua Cheng had he any life to steal. “You called me my name.”
He can feel Hua Cheng freeze up in the circle of his arms and squeezes even tighter to dispel his reflexive fear. This ghost of his—how can he be so shameless and still so uncertain?
Xie Lian spends all of his days happier than he knows how to hold. He tries to accept his joy as it comes, untrusting as he is of his own clumsy hands, and so he hadn’t even imagined he could be even happier than he already is. How very like his sweet, solicitous San Lang—always gifting Xie Lian what he wants before he even knows he wants it.
When their togetherness was especially coltish and new, Hua Cheng would fall back to dianxia often—in conversation, in jest, in bed. He still does. Xie Lian will always marvel at the way that Hua Cheng breathes impossible life into a title Xie Lian himself had long discarded and ground into the dirt. Hua Cheng manages to bestow it every time like an honor, suffusing it with sincere reverence on days when Xie Lian still feels like a thing of mud and ill-fortune and with gentle, glittering mischief on days when Xie Lian is rubbed raw by the ocean-tide of his awe at knowing that Hua Cheng is his, his, his.
It’s just that, even in Hua Cheng’s beloved voice, prince is an address Xie Lian is happier not answering to, these days. Even the heights of Hua Cheng’s esteem cannot make a royal title fit like a crown upon a head that’s grown so accustomed to ducking self-deprecatingly. It’s just that, sometimes, Hua Cheng resorts to Your Highness as one would an umbrella or a saber: a shield against the strength of his own feelings; a desperate defense against his fear that he, even now, is too lowly and filthy to touch his own husband.
But oh—today, he called him Xie Lian.
“San Lang,” Xie Lian says, drawing in a snotty breath. He would wipe away his tears—he knows it distresses Hua Cheng so to see them—but right now it’s unimaginable to be doing anything but touching his beloved. He untucks himself from the cradle of Hua Cheng’s wiry shoulder and unknots his arms so he can frame Hua Cheng’s dear, dear face between his hands. Hua Cheng’s eye, bright and deep as the ocean at night, goes moon-round.
“I am so happy to be your god,” Xie Lian says tremulously. He wonders if his voice sounds anything like a prince’s. It’s shaking and wet, a newborn butterfly trying to fly. “I am so, so happy that my existence is good for you. It means the world to me that me being who I am makes you stronger. But my love, I am even happier to be yours.”
And oh, oh, there is the updraft, there is the valiant waterlogged wingbeat. Hua Cheng’s mouth parts like clouds clearing after rain, gaze kindling like the dawn with realization. “Gege…” he gapes, endearingly airless. It comes out a little muddled because of how hard Xie Lian is clinging to him.
Xie Lian laughs, and cries, and loves. “San Lang, call me my name again.” Hua Cheng’s whole face twitches under his palms, and Xie Lian knows he’s understood.
“Xie Lian,” Hua Cheng whispers, fragile in the way of an autumn leaf falling upon the ground to nourish it as the earth once nourished it. Xie Lian feels it quake through him, and Hua Cheng’s expression tears open at whatever Xie Lian’s reveals. “Gege, my god, you really—”
Hua Cheng shudders, and gently, he wraps his hands around Xie Lian’s wrists to pry his hands from his face. Xie Lian allows it, breathless before the way Hua Cheng’s expression has shifted from something raw and overcome to fiercely intent—the kind of fierceness that makes it so very clear that Hua Cheng has slain gods before.
“There is no god but you.” Hua Cheng swears it like an oath, and Xie Lian feels it pulse through him honey-bright and golden-sweet. “There is no one worthy of this ghost’s gaze but you. If the seas boiled away and the sky fell to dust, gege would still be king of all, in this one’s heart. Gege has been my savior and my friend, and I would know his face if my other eye was lost, would know his touch if my limbs were ripped from their sockets.” He lets go of Xie Lian so he can wipe at the tender skin below his eyes, and even more wetness spills over to replace what Hua Cheng had brushed away. “Gege, Xie Lian, I—”
Xie Lian hiccups. Loudly.
He’s been weeping all this while, listening to Hua Cheng’s litany of love, and the sound is so sudden that he jolts with it. His hands fly to his mouth as if to shove the noise back into his lungs, but it’s too late. Even Hua Cheng falls silent, momentum arrested, and Xie Lian can feel himself turning redder and redder.
“Um,” he squeaks into the silence. “You can keep going?”
Hua Cheng only stares, face curiously blank. All the ferocity has drained from him, like a teacup tipped over, leaving behind only a liquid warmth in his gaze. Then his lip twitches.
“San Lang—” Xie Lian begins, half warning and half pleading. That’s all it takes. Hua Cheng starts roaring with laughter, and his hand falls from Xie Lian’s face to clutch at Xie Lian’s as if it’s the only thing tethering him to earth. “San Lang!” Xie Lian shrills. Hua Cheng just laughs harder, and Xie Lian feels an absurd giggle slip from his own mouth even as more tears spill from him. “San Lang, you—!”
Hua Cheng lurches forward, still shaking with the force of his laughter, and smothers every last inch of Xie Lian’s face with kisses. It’s a messy, clumsy affair, given that Xie Lian is still tearstained and every press of Hua Cheng’s lips only makes the two of them laugh harder, but they manage it.
Here is the truth: Hua Cheng has been so many people, played so many roles, through Xie Lian’s life. Xie Lian has been Hua Cheng’s soul for just as long. Names are nothing, before that. There isn’t even a need for words. There is only this, this, this: the sound of Xie Lian’s giggling pealing out into the space between them, and Hua Cheng’s sharp features turned soft and tender with wonder, and the future spinning out joyously and endlessly before them, like a spool of red thread dropping to the floor and creating an entire tapestry of love.