Chapter Text
Joy is... uncomfortable, at first.
Not some squirming, wriggling discomfort that makes it difficult to sit still, rather something genuinely disconcerting. It feels like the ghost of the hands that hold him down, dragging him back into the earth as if to say you belong here, stay, stay, as he shakes his head and trembles with denial. It feels like the regal velvet that hugged his body so tenderly until it blistered and rotted under decades upon decades of his own filth.
Xie Lian did not welcome joy.
It did not have a home with him.
So for the longest time, Xie Lian weaponises his despair.
Hua Cheng is the first to notice this, of course, as he often is the only one who really took the time to observe Xie Lian as his own person. Ironic, given the fact that Xie Lian is more than just a person in the eyes of the Ghost King.
In the corner of his smiles there is a wateriness that drips I am undeserving of this happiness, in the echo of his laughter there is a metallic hollowness that anticipates grief around every corner, in the whisper of their kisses there is a hesitation that quietly tears Hua Cheng apart.
Again, it takes hurting Hua Cheng for Xie Lian to understand that he can't keep hurting himself.
Unlike the invisible ghost of hands, Hua Cheng's ghosting hands help free Xie Lian from the grave he's buried himself into. And their plush bed, ornate velvet and far too decadent, is Xie Lian's favourite place to wake up.
It takes time, but time is what they both have.
Like watching the seconds between a sapling's growth, or the swarthy ink of calligraphy drying, Xie Lian's acceptance of joy is a bit of an intangible, minute process.
Joy, he realises after a long, long time, might be the absence of his sorrow.
It was the rejection of his rumination, and the abandonment of the voice that said he must remember lest he forget,
he must remember lest he forget,
he must--
Joy was how Xie Lian's eyes crinkled with mirth as he stroked his husband's inky hair, and really, truly smiled.