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It was raining.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
Xie Lian couldn’t tell. Everything in his chest sounded like thunder anyway—loud, cracking, cruel.
The walls were too close. The room too quiet.
His own heartbeat too loud.
He stood in the centre of the hall like a marionette with his strings severed.
His shoulders trembled. His mouth was twisted open in a sob that had nowhere to go.
A sound clawed in his throat, but he wouldn’t let it out.
He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.
Behind him, Hua Cheng took a careful step forward.
“Gege—”
“Don’t touch me!” Xie Lian snapped, voice raw like broken glass.
“Don’t—don’t come near me—!”
Hua Cheng froze, his hands still half-lifted.
“I said don’t—” Xie Lian shouted, turning, his voice splintering. His breath came in short, wild bursts.
“Don’t pretend it’s okay. Don’t try to fix it. You can’t fix it! You can’t make it better, San Lang!”
His words were sharp and awful and laced with something more bitter than blame. He was shaking.
Violently. His fingers had drawn against his palms, leaving faint bloody crescents. His eyes were wide, wild, gleaming with tears he refused to wipe away.
Hua Cheng didn’t speak. He didn’t move.
Xie Lian kept going.
“I’m so tired. I’m so—so tired! I—I can’t breathe—I can’t breathe and everyone keeps looking at me like I’m supposed to smile like nothing happened—like I didn’t let it happen—”
His voice cracked. It cracked horribly.
He doubled over, arms wrapped around his own chest like he could hold himself together with sheer will, sobbing in great, helpless gasps.
“I thought I was stronger than this” he choked. “I thought—I thought—”
He fell to his knees.
“It’s not fair. It’s not fair!”
He slammed his fists into the floor. “Why—why me? Why again? Why—why do I keep surviving if I’m not—if I’m not whole anymore? If I’m not wanted—”
His voice dissolved into sobs, each one louder, messier, more desperate.
He heard Hua Cheng shift—just the smallest step—and he screamed, “Don’t!”
Silence.
Xie Lian curled in on himself, sobbing so hard his lungs felt like they were burning.
His hand moved to wrap tightly around his own leg like a useless tether, a poor anchor for a god undone.
Hua Cheng said nothing. He stayed where he was—aching, breaking, helpless to do anything but wait in the storm.
The rain, real or imagined, kept falling.
And Xie Lian cried like he had no more heavens left to fall from.
…
The storm inside Xie Lian showed no signs of passing.
He stayed crumpled on the floor, spine heaving, knuckles white where they pressed to the cold stone tiles.
His sobs had dulled to ragged breathing, but they hadn’t stopped.
Not truly.
They came in waves now—silent shudders, choked gasps, hiccupped whimpers he bit down on like they were sins.
And still, Hua Cheng stood back.
Still, he waited.
And Xie Lian hated him for it.
“Why are you just standing there?” Xie Lian spat, lifting his face at last, streaked and snot-slick and ruined.
“Why don’t you yell at me?! Say something! Say I’m awful! Say I broke everything!”
He slammed his fist down again, too hard. His wrist gave a sickening jolt. He didn’t even flinch.
Hua Cheng opened his mouth, then closed it again. His eye shimmered faintly.
But still—still—he didn’t step forward. He didn’t speak.
Xie Lian’s voice dropped to something softer. More dangerous.
“Say I ruined it all” he whispered. “That you hate me. That you’re done.”
Nothing.
Xie Lian laughed.
A cracked, strangled sound that had nothing of joy in it.
He rocked slightly where he sat, his arms limp beside him, half-folded like wilting petals.
“You won’t even do that” he said hoarsely.
“You won’t even get angry. Just like always. You just… wait. Like I’m going to come back to you. Like I always do.”
He looked up, blinking tears away. “But what if I don’t, Hua Cheng? What if I’m not coming back this time? What if I broke so badly I can’t be fixed?”
Still nothing.
And then—softly, so softly it could’ve been imagined—Hua Cheng answered.
“Then I’ll sit here” he murmured, “and break with you.”
Xie Lian’s breath hitched.
“You’re not alone, Gege” Hua Cheng said, his voice calm but full of something ragged underneath.
“Even when you feel like you are. Even when you push me away. I’ll be here. Until the pieces stop cutting. Until the night ends.”
He still didn’t reach for him. Didn’t touch him.
But he sat down. On the cold floor. Across from Xie Lian, close—but not close enough to startle.
His coat pooled around him. His eye shimmered like a distant star.
His silence wrapped around Xie Lian like something warm that didn’t need to be held to be felt.
Xie Lian sobbed again.
But it sounded different this time. No less broken—but softer at the edges. Less like falling, more like grieving.
And Hua Cheng, ever-patient, ever-devoted, kept sitting.
Waiting.
For Xie Lian to choose to come back. Or not.
Because either way, he’d be there.
And love, even shattered, had not left.
….It took a long time.
The kind of silence that settled wasn’t peaceful. It was exhausted. Hollowed out.
The echo of everything Xie Lian had screamed still lingered, quiet but sharp, like ash after a wildfire.
His breath came in soft, wet hiccups now, his forehead pressed to the crook of his arm.
He hadn’t moved in a while.
And Hua Cheng hadn’t either.
He remained on the floor, still and watchful, every inch of him aching to cross that small distance, to fold his arms around his beloved, to make any of it better—but he didn’t. Not until he was asked.
Not until it was safe.
The rain had stopped, or maybe the world had just stopped noticing.
Xie Lian lifted his head, just slightly. His cheeks were blotched and red, lashes damp, voice so hoarse it barely counted as sound.
“…San Lang…”
Hua Cheng straightened instantly. “I’m here.”
A long pause. Xie Lian blinked once, then twice, like he was afraid even his own words might shatter the moment.
“Can I…”
A breath.
A swallow.
“Can you hold me?”
He looked so small when he said it. So tired. So breakable.
And Hua Cheng was moving before he even meant to, crossing the space quickly and kneeling before him like he was drawing near an altar.
He didn’t speak. He simply opened his arms.
Xie Lian hesitated only a second—then he folded into him.
Silently. Desperately. Like he’d been drowning all along and had only just realised the air was warm.
Hua Cheng held him like the world could go ahead and burn.
One arm tight around his back, the other cradling the back of his head.
Xie Lian pressed his face to Hua Cheng’s chest and shuddered—not from crying, but from relief.
“I’m sorry” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to— I just— I didn’t—”
“You don’t have to explain” Hua Cheng murmured, rocking them slowly. “You were hurting. That’s all.”
Xie Lian clung tighter, nails curling in crimson silk.
And for the first time that night, he let himself rest. Truly rest.
Not because the pain was gone—but because he wasn’t alone in it anymore.
Hua Cheng didn’t say it’s okay.
He didn’t say it’s over.
He only said, quietly, into Xie Lian’s hair:
“I’ve got you.”
And this time, Xie Lian let himself believe it.