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Song Lan’s ears feel like they’re full of cotton. His body is unnaturally stiff and reaching his arm out feels like he’s treading water. He’s had worse mornings, but they’re far enough in his past for this one to be an outlier.
He inhales sharply—eyes snapping open when damp morning dew earth hits his nose. He’s not in the temple. From the looks of the trees and untouched brush, he’s several miles away from the normal footpaths. Neither are good signs.
“Nice of you to wake up, Doazhang.” Song Lan recognizes the voice instantly. The same way he recognizes the hand that plays through his hair.
Xue Yang had taken to touching him often while he’d been staying at the temple. Recovering. Something Song Lan hadn’t expected, given the way the other man hissed when he was touched uninvited. He hadn’t thought to discourage the innocent lingering reminders that Xue Yang was there. They were harmless. Simple skinship from someone starved of affection.
A squeeze of the arm. A tug on his hair. A hand on his back.
Harmless.
Except for the thrill that started to run up Song Lan’s spine the longer he’d gotten to know the other man.
Maybe he should have given more thought to them. Maybe then Song Lan wouldn’t have woken up with his legs bound in immortal binding cables. Where had Xue Yang even found those? He didn’t have a penny to his name.
It is not uncharitable to acknowledge another's circumstances. As much as he might play a malevolent cultivator, Xue Yang is a street rat, born and bred. Song Lan can see it in the way he carries himself. In the way his eyes skirt around a room, lingering on quick exits.
Song Lan exhales slowly. “What are you doing?”
He’d half expected Xue Yang to steal something on his way out of the temple. They all did. But it wasn’t their way to convict someone of guilt before their actions. No matter how many hungry looks lingered in a room.
“You’ve got to take responsibility,” Xue Yang says, and it’s an order, bitingly sharp. The careful fingers running through his hair yank, and he’s met eye to eye with the man he’s spent the last three months nursing back to health.
Song Lan thinks’s he’s gotten used to these outbursts. Xue Yang has a quick temper, fast to ignite, and hard to fizzle out. Embarrassingly, Song Lan has always found that sort of act cute. It should not be, when the look on his face is borderline manic. “You have me at a loss.”
Xue Yang laughs, ugly. “I’ve lost my core Song-Doazhang, fighting to defend your farming village from a hungry river yao, surely you see what I am owed.”
Song Lan closes his eyes, briefly. Keeping them away from Xue Yang for too long is dangerous. No amount of fondness has ever dulled the lacerated edges of his constitution. And as much of him thrills at the prospect of a fight, Song Lan has enough fondness for the other man to not want to end up maiming him. Permanently. At least not yet. “I can see how that series of events would…entitle you.”
Xue Yang is prone to violence and poor decision making. Reckless, with an arrogance better suited to someone ten years his senior. It’s the kind of charisma that shouldn’t be charming.
Song Lan’s gaze, deliberate and lingering, settles on the cables around his legs. The cables hurt, in a way that clogs his meridians and makes his qi feel sticky. He’s heard of poisons that do irreparable damage like that. It would be poetic, for the man he’s spent so long returning to health to cripple him.
Symmetry.
“Rightous,” Xue Yang says with glee, “You’re always so righteous.” His pupils are blown wide. Feral. The edge that Song Lan had seen in brief glimpses left unchecked.
“You were unconscious for three days,” Song Lan says instead of rising to the bait. He knows Xue Yang wants a fight. He will not give him the satisfaction.
Xue Yang’s fingers trail down his face, reverent. It’s a strange contrast, gentleness from someone half crazed. “I know.”
“You would have died.”
“I know.”
“You lost your core.”
Xue Yang’s grip tightens on his chin, nails digging—just enough to sting.
“I know, Song Lan,” he snaps, something raw and wounded lingering around the edge. “I was there.”
Song Lan studies him, slower this time. “Then you also know I did not ask you to do that.”
Song Lan’s temple hadn’t been affected by the spirit. He’d found Xue Yang washed up five miles down stream, and ten miles east of where the notice had been posted.
There were doubts on his intentions. On how a wandering cultivator could know that this river fed through a looping system of streams or why he would demand half the payment upfront. They were nasty rumors, yes, but the longer Song Lan has spent in Xue Yang’s company the less unfounded they seem.
Xue Yang laughs again, and it cracks hollowly in the middle. “You flatter yourself.”
“Oh?”
Xue Yang’s hand slides down the back of his neck, fingers brushing the nape in a way that’s almost absent-minded. Habitual. Shamelessly bold. “I want something back.”
Song Lan does not pull away. The part of him that grew up lonely, that sees his worst self reflected in what Xue Yang lets himself be unhindered, can not physically move.
“What,” he asks, “could I possibly give you that would be equal to a golden core?”
Xue Yang grins. “Yours”
The word lands softly. A gentle kitten whisper.
Song Lan’s expression does not change—his back is straight, he started too stiff to stiffen more. “Explain.”
“I already did.” Xue Yang shrugs, like this is obvious. Song Lan might be distracted, might be dizzy and light headed, and concussed, but he can’t be blamed for not keeping up with the insanity going on here. “You take responsibility. You stay with me. Problem solved.”
Shifting his leg—just slightly makes the cable bite into his qi, leaching the stuttering bits of strength Song Lan can muster up. Pain sparks, sharp and unpleasant around the loss of circulation. Surprisingly, he has not been properly bound. Song Lan could escape, it would take effort, but he could.
“That doesn’t restore your core.” Very few things would. Song Lan doubts even Xue Yang’s thieving abilities would let him access resources only the emperor himself has at the ready.
“Sure does.” Xue Yang is in front of him in a blink, letting Song Lan’s head fall back—hard—againt the tree he’s been semi-propped up on. The contrast is sharp. “Haven’t you heard spouses can share golden cores? What did they teach you back in that temple.”
“Dual cultivation doesn’t—.” Song Lan snaps, face bright red, “you can’t not—shameless!”
“Can’t I?” Xue Yang tugs lightly at the cable around his legs, the action sending pins and needles up his hip.
“Looks like I’m doing pretty good at the whole bridenapping thing. What do you say? I’ll even let you pick the ceremony.”
Song Lan stares at him. Stares through him. To the barest hint of a courtship and the fumbling flirtations he’d basked in the attention of. Xue Yang is painfully pretty, for all his awful traits, and Song Lan is vain.
For a long, quiet moment, the only sound in the forest is the faint rustle of leaves and the uneven rhythm of Xue Yang’s breathing—too fast, too sharp. Big heaving gulps, desperate to escape his chest.
“You will let me pick,” Song Lan repeats. It’s crazy to consider.
Xue Yang lifts his chin, defiantly. “Generous, right Doazhang?”
Despite himself, Song Lan considers it. There’s a multitude of reasons why whatever this could be ends in disaster. Why molding himself around the brittle gaping maw of Xue Yang that craves any sort of attachment and going along with his half thought out scheme is setting a fire and waiting for them both to burn.
They have no money between them. On the purely practical side of things they’re likely to starve or freeze to death before snow coats the ground in earnest.
He’s always felt stifled. Constricted by the life he’s lead—locked away like a precious maiden in the temple. Bound by duty and an inability to act.
Song Lan will never know what could be if he doesn’t take a chance. A chance with Xue Yang, a chance to see the world, a chance to make a real difference as a wandering cultivator. None of it will be glamorous. He’s under no illusions.
But most brides only ever meet their groom on their wedding day, and he’s had three months to get an idea of what sort of person Xue Yang is.
Song Lan exhales. He bites out a laugh. He can see himself growing to like Xue Yang, past the blooming bits of attraction he’s nursed. He thinks he could even love him. “This is the worst proposal ever.”