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Xie Lian has learned to find beauty in the ugly, in-between things. It’s not about what the sun shines on, so much as it’s about the quality of the light: those late afternoons in early fall, when everything turns to liquid gold, and even the trash heaps shine more brightly than Xian Le did in its prime. Xie Lian sees rainbows in the oil slicks on the asphalt; he watches the little rivers that form on the sides of the road when it rains, and tries to guess whether the gum wrapper or the fallen leaf will make it to the storm drain first.
(He always guesses wrong; even in this, his luck betrays him. But there is a beauty in the guessing. Hope, even disappointed, is never wasted.)
There had been a time when Xie Lian could only see the rotten core of things. He had tried to break the world that had broken him, and only ended up more shattered for his pains. He thinks of a boy in a white mask, hears a voice in his head—a voice long-forgotten, but laced with devotion that Xie Lian will never forget.
It says, This place could be beautiful, right?
You could make this place beautiful.
The world is at least fifty percent terrible. Xie Lian finds hope in this.
For every dog pet, there is one kicked. For every penny given, one is taken. But surely, then, the reverse must also be true: if the world is fifty percent terrible, then the rest must be good.
Xie Lian mostly finds himself on the wrong side of this equation. But he likes to believe that, by absorbing more than his share of the bad, he’s sparing somebody else the pain. Surely it all balances itself out eventually, scales tilting to find some sort of queer equilibrium.
He holds onto this as a boot buries itself in his ribs. Somebody grabs him by the hair and yanks his head back. He finds himself staring at the graffiti on the concrete wall, and thinks about how many people came here over how many years, leaving their mark on the stone. The colors blur behind his eyes. He squeezes them shut.
The pain is a distant thing. He takes it all, so that somebody else won’t have to.
It has been many years since Xie Lian was considered beautiful.
He was beloved, once. He was adored. His hair fell like a chestnut curtain down to the backs of his knees, sleek, perfumed. His cheeks were rosy, his clothing adorned. People were kind to him, back when he was beautiful. People cared.
(And maybe that is why Xie Lian must find beauty in those ugly, in-between things: because surely if he can find so much to love in the moss between the sidewalk cracks, in the blinking neon street signs with their lights half gone out, then somebody can find something about him that’s worth loving.
Xie Lian has never considered himself vain. But he would like for somebody to touch him gently. To treat him kindly.
He thinks that he would like to be beautiful, to somebody’s eyes.)
Xie Lian keeps his hair short, these days—has since the lice found it, some years ago. His body is shriveled, his spine jutting from between his shoulder blades like a fin through water. He is bruised, most days. His eyes sting with an infection he does not have the money nor cultivation to treat—some days, he cannot bear to open them.
He has been in worse states. But then, for an undying creature, that’s not saying much.
On the days when his sight does not fail him, he stares at his own face in the sun-warped glass of a nearby high rise. He does not recognize himself. He watches his own reflection, trying to refamiliarize himself with the concave of his cheeks, the pallor of his skin. He stares until security chases him away.
He has good bones, he tells himself. Maybe there is something that can still be saved.
There had been a boy, once. Long, long ago.
He had been so small: wasted, withered from living on the streets, dirty bandages crusted brown, hair so greasy it looked wet. Ugly, he had cried, when Xie Lian asked to see beneath his bandages. Cursed. Ugly. Monster.
And Xie Lian had cooed at him. Not ugly, he soothed. You have good bones. Dirt, after all, could be washed. Hair could be combed. But the bones of something—those were hard to change.
He thinks about the boy as he picks through lost things, thrown-away things: broken clocks, chairs missing legs, stuffed toys without eyes or noses. He sells what he can, repurposes what he can’t. There’s always something to be made from the scraps of what was: three legs might not support a chair, but they can hold up a table; a broken clock, as they say, is right twice a day; and even the rattiest teddy bear makes a fine pillow, in a pinch. He looks for things with good bones: a chipped teapot, a stained tablecloth, a pair of socks with holes in the toes.
The boy must be long gone by now, his bones nothing but ash in the wind.
He finds the flower in the spring. It knocks the wind out of him.
It’s tucked amongst a field of wildflowers, a riot of them growing on the side of the highway, in all different shapes and colors. He wasn’t expecting to find it there: no larger than his thumbnail, white and five-petaled. He knows this flower. He once ground this flower beneath the heel of his boot.
He picks it with shaking hands. He breathes in the sweet scent, and for the first time in a long time, he weeps. He lays it in his basket, alongside the rest of the flowers he’s plucked.
The rest, he’ll sell. But this one is his.
Later, he lays the flowers all out on a blanket, priced at ten cents apiece. It’s been weeks since Xie Lian ate anything that wasn’t fished out of the trash. For only a dollar, he could buy something hot, something fresh. But nobody takes a flower. Nobody even looks at him.
And then—
A jingle of silver. Sturdy black boots.
Long, thin fingers find a flower, unnerringly, amidst the mass of them. Their owner does not hesitate—he is drawn to it, as surely as if the red string around his finger was tied to the stem. It’s the one flower Xie Lian never meant to sell.
He looks up.
The man in red is looking down at the small white flower with black eyes that burn in his skull, and the look on his face is so open, so haunted, that it cuts Xie Lian right to the core. He’s beautiful: tall and slender, with a strong jaw and a straight nose, and a ponytail that’s crooked in the back. There are hints of shadows on the sides of his mouth—Xie Lian thinks he would have dimples, were he to smile.
“Thank you for your interest, sir.” Xie Lian bows his head. His heart thrashes wildly in his chest—he didn’t mean to lay that flower out with the rest. He needs it back, needs it back— “But that one isn’t for sale.”
To have no name makes one Wu Ming.
Xie Lian has been nameless for a long, long time.
The man looks down. His eyes meet Xie Lian’s, and widen. For a moment, he is frozen, hand caught in place between them, like a butterfly pinned to a board. His face trembles, crumples. He does not look away.
Everyone always looks away.
“You can have any of the others,” Xie Lian continues. The look in the man’s eyes unnerves him—it is one step past pity, like even the sight of him is too much to bear. (Xie Lian was beautiful, once.) “I’ll give you one free, for the inconvenience.”
The man in red opens his mouth. Closes it again. He looks like he’s seen a ghost.
“I see.” the man says. His voice is sweet and smooth, like water gliding over stone. It’s familiar, somehow, in a way that Xie Lian can’t place. He crouches down low to the ground, until he’s of a height with Xie Lian. “Then, which flowers are gege’s favorite?”
The familiar address pools warm and heavy in Xie Lian’s stomach. It’s been so long since anyone has called him anything other than scum, useless, trash—the Laughingstock of the Three Realms, Trash Immortal, God of Misfortune.
“Well,” Xie Lian says carefully. His voice cracks—he doesn’t have much reason to speak these days; he’s out of practice. “That depends what they’re for.”
The man’s mouth twists. His smile is higher on one side, Xie Lian notes faintly—it might have been mischievous, if it weren’t so terribly sad. “They’re for somebody special,” the man says. “A very beautiful person. Kind and warm.”
“I see.” Xie Lian folds his hands. “What kinds of flowers does she like?”
“I don’t know, Gege,” the man says, resting his elbow on one cocked knee. “I wonder—that is, maybe you could help me?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about these things.”
“Gege seems like a man with refined taste,” the man says. Xie Lian can’t tell if he’s joking. “He should pick some flowers that appeal to his taste. I’ll buy whatever he chooses.”
“Well, I suppose I could give it a go.” Xie Lian smiles. “Let’s see… what color are her eyes?”
The man’s pupils are blown wide. “Gold,” he breathes.
The bouquet, once finished, is pressed into Xie Lian’s waiting hands, along with several bills so large he gasps and tries to shove them back towards the man’s chest.
“Keep it,” the man says. “It’s my way of saying thank you.”
Xie Lian doesn't know what he’s being thanked for, but he’s too hungry to care. He manages to buy two buns at the corner before somebody beats him and takes the change.
At least he still has the flowers. The butterflies seem fond of them.
The man in red returns the next day. “Gege, Gege. I ordered some food but they gave me too much. Won’t you help me finish it?”
“Gege, I bought this, but it isn’t really my color. I think it would look nice on gege.”
“Gege, you dropped this—no, really. I don’t carry cash on me anyway.”
And Xie Lian would be suspicious—should be suspicious, if his years on the streets have taught him anything. He chides him, once, for being insincere.
“Gege,” the man says. He is smiling, but Xie Lian knows enough of grief to see it in his eyes. “You will not find another person who is more sincere than me in this world.”
And really, San Lang—for that’s what he tells Xie Lian to call him—seems to want nothing more than the company. He will come and sit by Xie Lian for hours, listening to stories of kingdoms long toppled. Xie Lian always collects more coin on those days—surely because San Lang is so handsome, and not because of the glares he seems to turn against anyone but Xie Lian.
They have known each other just a week when San Lang asks him about the flowers. “You would not sell me the white one. Why?”
Xie Lian scratches at his cheek with chipped, dirty nails, a bit bashful at the memory of his behavior. “Ah, I’m sorry, San Lang—that must have seemed rude.”
“Not at all, Gege.” San Lang drapes one arm across his folded knee. The other stretches straight out in front of him, a tripping hazard to anyone who walks past. His posture is easy and languid, that of a youth, not a man—but then, sometimes Xie Lian looks into his beetle-black eyes and feels the weight of his years within them. “I just want to know more about you, that’s all.”
“To be honest with you, they remind me of someone.”
“A friend?”
Xie Lian makes a thoughtful noise. “I was not a friend to him, although he was always a friend to me. I was different in those days.” The old grief tastes sour on the back of his tongue. “I think I might have loved him.”
San Lang chokes.
“Ah, San Lang, San Lang.” Xie Lian grins, letting his head loll against one shoulder. “Don’t be so scandalized. Haven’t you ever been in love?”
San Lang’s eyes are so dark it’s difficult to distinguish iris from pupil—but Xie Lian can see that they’re blown wide, like he’s drunk or dazed. “Yes,” he breathes.
“Then surely you understand,” Xie Lian says, and turns back to counting out his spare change.
“What did he—that is, this friend.” San Lang fiddles with flyaway hair in a way that seems uncharacteristically bashful. “What did Gege love about him?”
“Well, if I’m being honest, we didn’t know each other for very long. And I don’t know much about love. But with this person, I didn’t have to be anything other than what I was, no matter how beastly. He was the only one who stayed. In my weaker moments, I think he might have…” Xie Lian sucks in a breath, then lets it out again. Remembering Wu Ming hurts, but it’s a clean sort of ache, like lancing a boil so the infection can drain. “Ah, but it’s been a long time since then. Maybe I’m remembering something that wasn’t there, like chasing water that rises from the pavement. But the feeling that I get when I think of him… I can’t call it anything other than love.”
San Lang has gone quiet. Xie Lian chances a glance over at him, only to find him staring into the street, eyes far away. Neither of them says anything for a long, long time.
Xie Lian had loved the rain, back when he had somewhere to hide from it. He used to sit in the palace and watch the water pour down from the eaves, and wonder what made the Heavens weep.
It’s harder to love the storm, he’s found, when one is in the middle of it. He still tries, and for the most part succeeds—he loves watching the thunder, counting the seconds between the flash and the boom, loves the feeling of the rain hitting his skin and washing off the filth.
But, well. There are nights when it’s harder to pretend that weathering a storm under the overpass is anything but terrible. Half the time, he freezes to death—but he walks it off by morning. It’s so cold his bones ache, and he’s shivering so hard his teeth rattle in his skull. His clothes are so sodden they’ve long since given up on providing him any warmth to speak of.
(Xie Lian has been sick for years now—not one disease as much as a continuous stream of them, latching onto an already-weakened immune system. He never quite stops coughing.)
But Xie Lian has been through worse. He’s been stabbed a thousand times, buried for a hundred years. He’s fallen so far that it would be hard to sink much lower. So long as he doesn’t wake up in the morgue again—then they really would haul him off to be studied, and who knows how long it would take before he managed to escape?
But here, it’s fine. Even if he winds up as a body on the side of the road, no one will care enough to notice. He’ll wake up in a couple of hours, lips blue from the cold, and find a patch of sunlight to dry himself in.
It’s true what they say—freezing to death really is peaceful. It’s his favorite way to die, more like going to sleep than anything. On a night like tonight, he almost craves it: craves the release that dreams won’t bring, the few hours of emptiness, when the cold and the hunger can’t reach him.
He’s halfway there by the time San Lang comes careening around the corner, his eyes wide and frantic, hair plastered to the planes of his face. He draws up short when he sees Xie Lian.
“Gege,” he chokes out, and crashes to his knees.
There’s hands on him, then, cupping his face, smoothing his hair back. In any other circumstance, they’d feel cold—but Xie Lian’s skin is so icy that they feel warm to him instead. He leans into the touch.
“Gege, stay with me,” San Lang begs, tugging his own coat off his shoulders one sleeve at a time. “Gege.”
“It’s okay, San Lang.” Xie Lian can barely lift his head. He does his best to smile, but judging from the way San Lang’s expression gutters, he doesn’t quite manage it. “I’m just tired. I’ll be alright.”
“Gege, no. Don’t go to sleep.” He wraps his coat around Xie Lian’s shoulders. It was dripping only a few seconds ago, but it’s warm and dry now. Xie Lian doesn’t have the presence of mind to question it. He cuddles into it instead, tucking his face into the collar. San Lang makes a quiet, distressed noise.
Xie Lian wants to tell San Lang not to be afraid—he can fall asleep now, and come back tomorrow to hurt all over again. He’ll come back, and back, and back, and none of it will ever really end him, no matter how badly he wants it to. He’s been this world’s chew toy for so long that he doesn't really know any other way to be.
Xie Lian only realizes that his head is drooping against his chest when San Lang keens, a sound so desperate and wretched it sounds like it came from an animal and not a person. He taps gently against Xie Lian’s cheek, then harder when he doesn’t stir.
Xie Lian uses his last dregs of energy to force his head up. How rude of him to start drifting off in the middle of a conversation, especially with someone who’s never been anything but kind to him. He readies the apology on his tongue.
But San Lang doesn’t look angry. He looks like his world is ending.
“Come home with me,” San Lang blurts, seemingly before he can think better of the words. His hand has gentled against Xie Lian’s face—stroking now rather than tapping, seemingly content that Xie Lian isn’t going to die on him at any moment.
Xie Lian should say no.
Objectively, it’s a terrible idea. Most of what Xie Lian knows regarding street smarts has been learned through trial and error. Needless to say, he has become wary of strange men and secondary locations.
San Lang must know this, or at least suspect—Xie Lian gets the peculiar sense that he’s been holding back from begging Xie Lian to come with him since their very first meeting. And if Xie Lian was smarter, he’d refuse even now. There’s no reason for him to trust this man, with his velvet eyes and cheshire smile. Xie Lian has been hurt so many times.
The world is at least fifty percent bad. Sometimes he thinks that’s a conservative estimate. For every dog pet, there is one kicked. For every penny given, one is taken. Xie Lian is not a gambling man.
But that’s the thing about halves: there’s always a flip side. Maybe if Xie Lian flips the coin enough times, some day it’ll land right side facing up. Forever might mean infinite disappointment, but it also means infinite chances—every time Xie Lian makes a bad gamble, there will always be a next time, and a next, and a next.
And Xie Lian is cold. He’s so tired from watching the rain from inside the storm. He wants to curl up in something soft and listen to it rage around him, rather than letting it chew him up and spit him out.
(He thinks that he would like to be beautiful, to somebody’s eyes.
He thinks that he would like to be saved.)
San Lang is kneeling before him, begging to bring him home, and Xie Lian doesn’t have it in him to say no.
Maybe he’ll regret it. Maybe he’ll become another statistic, one more corpse that trusted the wrong person. Maybe San Lang will do worse to him, and leave him lying broken and used on the side of the road, right back where he started. Maybe it will hurt more than the gentle death the rain offers him.
But he stares up into San Lang’s earnest, panicked eyes, and he says—
“Alright.”
San Lang’s shoulders sag. He closes his eyes briefly, then opens them again, that frantic, desperate energy fading into something focused, resolute.
His throat works. “Gege,” he says. “May I carry you?”
“Ahaha, there’s no need, San Lang, I can walk…” Xie Lian says, even though it’s not even remotely true. But San Lang has already been so kind to him—has brought him food, and clothes, and flowers. He has called Xie Lian kindly, has treated him like he’s something more than garbage somebody forgot to throw away. He’s so beautiful. Xie Lian will ruin him.
But San Lang only stares at him with wide, sad eyes. “Ah, but Gege, it’s very cold out, you see. Gege is hearty, but this San Lang has a weak constitution. I need the body heat to keep warm.”
Xie Lian wants to roll his eyes, but finds a smile tugging at the corners of his lips instead. “Surely I will do you no good, then. I’m all wet.”
“All the more reason that Gege should be carried.” San Lang is tentative at first when he reaches for him, only to grow bolder when Xie Lian doesn’t pull away. He slides one arm beneath Xie Lian’s knees, another behind his shoulders, pulling him into the cradle of his body. Xie Lian’s head slumps against San Lang’s shoulder.
Xie Lian is sure he can’t be comfortable to carry. He doesn’t weigh much, but the brittle bones jutting through his skin must dig in terribly, and he can’t remember the last time he had a bath. He imagines that holding him must feel like hugging a sack full of rocks.
But San Lang only pulls him closer. He’s trembling slightly—maybe he really is cold—and presses Xie Lian’s head closer to his chest, resting his cheek against Xie Lian’s sodden hair.
Part of Xie Lian wants to pull away. He’s ugly, and filthy—he’ll leave a stain behind on San Lang’s beautiful clothes. But it’s been so long since anyone has touched him gently, and San Lang is holding him like he’s something precious, like he wants to pull Xie Lian into the space behind his ribcage and keep him there forever.
“Close your eyes, Gege,” he murmurs.
Xie Lian presses his face further into San Lang’s shoulder and does as he’s told.
There’s the sound of something clattering, and a feeling like falling—like the bottom has dropped out from Xie Lian’s stomach, and up has become down, and down has become up again. Then the moment ends, and Xie Lian’s organs settle back into their rightful places, though his heart remains caught in his throat. He opens his eyes.
They’re not beneath the overpass anymore. San Lang has begun walking, carrying him hurriedly through one of the most lavish hallways Xie Lian has seen in decades. It’s odd to look at, a peculiar mishmash of old and new: vases that must be centuries old proudly displayed on shelves lit from below with LED light strips, ancient artwork hung between sconces straight out of an architecture magazine. It’s charming in its strangeness—Xie Lian recognizes a fellow collector’s eye in the strange mishmash, though the pieces are far finer than what Xie Lian ever finds in his own possession.
His understanding of San Lang recalibrates in an instant. No wonder San Lang’s coat had seemed to dry so quickly. The question, then, becomes why. What does a wealthy, powerful immortal—which surely San Lang must be—want with a washed up old scrap collector?
Ah, but his questions will have to wait. Xie Lian doesn’t feel cold anymore. His head lolls, so heavy that he can’t quite find the strength to lift it.
“San Lang,” he forces out through teeth that are no longer chattering. “Who are you really?”
San Lang’s eyes flare with panic. “Gege—”
Xie Lian doesn’t hear much more than that.
Xie Lian wakes up.
He didn’t expect to. Coming back after dying is a gruesome, ugly process, and frequently involves lying there half-conscious and suffocating while his heart tries to quickstart itself again. He can always feel it as his soul squirms around, trying to remember where exactly it’s supposed to go, and he’s agonizingly conscious of the cold clutch of his own flesh.
But this is… nice. Peaceful. He’s not cold. His head is pillowed on something soft. For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t hurt. His eyes blink open.
Everything that’s happened comes back to him in a rush: San Lang finding him, holding him, bringing him home. If the rest of the house is a bizarre patchwork of the last two millenia, this is a room frozen in time. Xie Lian has never seen a bed so large, nor so finely appointed—he has a feeling those sheets, if sold, could feed him for a month.
He is suddenly, achingly homesick. As cities rise and kingdoms fall, the whole of the world stretching up toward the Heavens like reaching fingers of metal and glass, Xie Lian remains the same, a relic of a time long gone. But this place feels familiar somehow—it’s in the arches over the windows, in the rich colors, the painted ceiling. It feels like Xianle.
Xie Lian turns his head. San Lang is sitting by the bed, reading a book. He hasn’t noticed Xie Lian stirring. There’s a tray on the bedside table, a teapot and a covered bowl, with a warming talisman tucked carefully over the lid. It’s been so long since he has seen one that it takes him a moment to recognize it. He turns over on his side to get a better look.
San Lang’s head shoots up at the motion. He has swapped his black jeans and red coat for robes so fine they could feed Xie Lian for a year.
“Dianxia,” San Lang breathes.
Xie Lian’s fingers curl in the sheets that swaddle him. It’s been so long since he’s been in a proper bed that he almost drifts right off to sleep again. “Ah, it seems like San Lang knows who I am, but I’m afraid I don’t know how to address you.” He thinks for a moment. “My lord?”
San Lang’s shoulders tighten. “This one would prefer if Gege kept calling him San Lang.”
“Alright, then.” Xie Lian smiles. He feels out of sorts, off-balance, but not afraid—he finds he trusts San Lang more than he should. “May this one ask how San Lang recognized me? Certainly not from any statues—I find myself much changed.”
San Lang draws a breath into lungs that do not need the air—for surely, he is a ghost; Xie Lian feels stupid for not having recognized it before—and, in a movement so practiced he must have done it many times, rises from his chair to sink onto one knee. Before Xie Lian can beg him not to kneel in his own house, San Lang draws from behind his back a white, five-petalled flower.
San Lang won’t meet his eyes. The words are quiet when he speaks, like they’ve been bottled up inside him for so many years that he hardly dares speak them aloud. “I found you, Dianxia,” San Lang says. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”
Xie Lian bursts into tears.
It takes weeks before Hua Cheng is willing to show Xie Lian his true form.
Xie Lian asks, but does not press him. He thinks, secretly, that there’s no face San Lang could show him that Xie Lian would not love.
They are on a walk when it happens. The gardens of Paradise Manor feel like a place frozen in time. Outside the perimeter, he can hear the clatter of Ghost City—like the house, it’s an odd mishmash between the old and the new. Stalls selling tanghulu operate alongside food trucks advertising street food made with questionable meat; a piper player with a neck as long as Xie Lian’s arm plays along to a half-broken boom box.
But here, it is quiet. The flowers remind Xie Lian of the first time he met his San Lang—or the third, or the fifth, depending on what version of the story he decides to tell. He thinks of a bouquet passed to him under a gray sky, the first act of kindness he had experienced in so long.
Xie Lian looks away, and back again.
And then, all of a sudden, there he is. Wu Ming. Hua Cheng. San Lang.
Hua Cheng seems studiously determined not to mention it. His grin is lazy, his single eye glittering. But Xie Lian can see the tension in the line of his shoulders, and the way his fingers curl and uncurl in his robes.
Xie Lian lets out a breath, then sucks it in again. The air is so cold it burns.
Hua Cheng is beautiful.
He would not have always thought so. Hua Cheng’s features are sharp, from his aquiline nose to his deep-set eyes, like the sculptor who crafted him was too heavy-handed with the chisel. His cupid’s bow is uneven, higher on one side than the other; his skin is so pale it’s almost grey. Xie Lian has no doubt that, underneath his robes, Hua Cheng’s bones press against his skin. There is something hungry about Hua Cheng, something raw and rangy.
Xie Lian falls in love all over again. Hua Cheng is so imperfect; there is so much about him to love.
He tackles Hua Cheng to the ground and kisses him senseless.
Xie Lian doesn’t need an apartment. He doesn’t need much, really: he’s gone so long without that even this—a two hundred square foot studio in a bad part of town, a bathroom sink with a leaky faucet, floors that shriek like the restless dead—feels like the height of luxury.
Hua Cheng wanted to buy him a better place, but Xie Lian insisted. He wants something of his own: something he worked for, something he earned. When he moves in with Hua Cheng, it will be because he wants to, not because he has nowhere else to go. The apartment has a fire escape where he can sit and watch the early-autumn sun; he can hear the rain like little rivers in the gutters. It’s terrible. It’s perfect.
The real estate agent, when she shows him the single, sad room with its cracks in the ceiling, sells the place like a palace. It has good bones, she tells him.
And Xie Lian looks around the space—the bars on the windows, like wrought-iron filigree, the heart scratched into the peeling paint a generation past—and he thinks to himself, This place could be beautiful, right?
You could make this place beautiful.