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The first time it happens, Xie Lian startles hard enough that the expensive cup in his hands hits the floor with a loud shattering noise and Yin Yu comes running in barely ten seconds later, pausing in the doorway to witness Xie Lian staring back at Hua Cheng, whose hand is outstretched and eyes wide, with an expression much like the shards at his feet.
It’s brushed off, mere seconds later. Xie Lian apologizes, Hua Cheng apologizes, they both keep going until Xie Lian makes the executive decision to stop this ridiculous game and coaxes Hua Cheng into joining him in the garden outside and sits with Hua Cheng’s head on his lap, listening to his beloved tell him all kinds of fascinating stories with an adoring smile.
The shattering of the cup rings in his ears for all three hours they spend in the garden. Hua Cheng’s eyes are sharp in the same way he gets when staring down a problem regarding Xie Lian that he has yet to get to the root of.
/
The second time it happens, it’s in Gambler’s Den and Xie Lian breaks a dice he’s picked up for the purpose of playing with the patrons for fun. Hua Cheng immediately withdraws, an apology on his tongue; Xie Lian responds by leaning up to kiss him lightly instead. He pulls back and asks, teasingly, won’t Hua-chengzhu join us tonight? Make the stakes more exciting?
He agrees. He keeps a careful distance between himself and Xie Lian the rest of the night.
/
The third time—
“What’s going on, gege?” Hua Cheng asks, softly, but his sleep-roughened voice is strained. Xie Lian suppresses a flinch, recognizing the thread of hurt in it. His San Lang is so quick to blame himself, he thinks furiously, and no wonder he’d think that, because Xie Lian’s reluctance to tell him is what’s making him think he’s done something to make his god not want his touch.
He can’t really think of many things he’s done to Hua Cheng that are worse than that.
He takes a breath and tries to figure out what to say, drawing his robe closer around himself and settling back down beside his husband. It’s not like it’s the first time Hua Cheng has woken him up by sleepily pawing at him through his clothes, dipping under his clothes. He has Xie Lian’s express permission to do that.
Just as softly, he says, “it’s okay, San Lang. I was just having one of those odd dreams again. I didn’t quite realize what was happening is all.” It’s not a lie, just like how it’s not really the truth either. Hua Cheng accepts it anyway, but Xie Lian knows he’ll have answers forced out of him sooner or later. Whichever sounds more appealing is beyond him to decide.
/
It’s not that Xie Lian doesn’t want his husband touching him. Of course he does. Of course he wants his husband’s hands on him. He thinks maybe he’s gotten less used to training those kinds of reactions out of himself, the more time he spends with Hua Cheng. The instinctual urge to— to lean away, to lash out, it’s never really been absent so much as—
Well, there’s an art to keeping oneself still and serene and unbothered. (He’s not very good at serene, but: point stands.)
/
Xie Lian does not usually have very bad dreams.
After eight hundred years of enduring things he would rather not speak about, his sleep is less about dreaming and drifting off to some place that is not here and more about resting his body. With the cursed shackles in place, he doesn’t quite function like a god, after all.
Really, the only difference is that sometimes he drowns, sometimes he falls from somewhere and breaks his neck, or he trips headfirst into a fire he’s starting in an attempt to warm up in cold winters, or hovers somewhere between life and death consistently with no real way to gauge what his state is because of hunger, or thirst, and often both— and survives all of it. Death is truly not a new concept for him.
Sensations he finds unpleasant are not new to him at all.
When he was first freed of the coffin, he had barely looked human at all. In fact, he’d run into a group of kids as he stumbled towards the nearest water source— a river— and they took off screaming about witnessing a ghost, something about death coming for them. Xie Lian had found it funny in the moment. Death? Coming for them? He’s closely acquainted with it; he’s not sure it really wants to part from him. It sticks to him like a trusty old friend.
(He couldn’t even see them. It was too bright outside. He was practically blind.)
The river water had been unbearably cold. So cold that his disused voice had cracked with the force of his startled yell, and it had been the height of summer, the sun shining down with such force. He’d gritted his teeth and bore it, knowing that this is just what happens when the only sensations he’d experienced for the past who-knows-how-long had been his blood congealing and rotting, starving to death constantly, and the sound of Ruoye’s flitting around getting quieter and quieter until it went entirely still.
It hurt, to clean himself off. His body was one thing, but his hair— his precious hair, that was another thing entirely. He’d been startled that that even mattered to him at all, at this point! He wasn’t the crown prince of Xianle anymore, what use did he have for a long sheet of gorgeous hair that fell past his knees? Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous, he knew it.
He’d had to cut it off, in the end, so short there was nothing left to tie even the tiniest bit. It was just too damaged and clumped with fluids he didn’t particularly want to think about. At least, he’d reasoned, his body tended to repair itself pretty fast, consistently. Being unable to die was like that.
And so, he’d wandered around in stolen clothes for a while like that. He healed faster than he’d expected, but for a few months, he could hardly walk. He resigned himself to becoming a beggar on the side of the street, really. At least it killed any remaining shame in him.
(But this is the thing. Xie Lian lies, because for the longest time— dreams, dreams of drowning in his own blood, dreams of screaming and screaming but no one could hear him. During the year he waited for Hua Cheng, he did not have a single night of particularly restful sleep.)
/
Touch is hard for Xie Lian. It’s something he craves so deeply, something he gravitates towards even unconsciously.
/
It’s like his own body is back to betraying him.
/
The fourth, or perhaps the sixth, time, Hua Cheng pins him in place with a desperate look, and Xie Lian tugs him back to him, and Hua Cheng accepts the silent plea to continue his action— to hug him as he’d intended to earlier.
He breathes. He can feel Hua Cheng’s chest heaving, even though Hua Cheng does not need to breathe. He breathes, careful and slow, and he says, “are you upset with yourself, San Lang?”
“Gege, stop trying to comfort me,” Hua Cheng says, incredulous. “This is hardly about how I feel.”
“It is,” Xie Lian protests, “it’s about how you feel like you…” he stops. Xie Lian has known for a very, very long time now that he’s just not really embarrassed by a lot of things. But when he thinks about it, it’s not even shame that’s closing his throat with bitter stickiness.
It’s fear.
(Jun Wu has not been a threat in— a long time, now. What is there to fear?)
(Himself?)
(Hua Cheng loves him anyway, loves him despite it, because of it. He feels—)
“Sometimes,” Xie Lian speaks slowly, “sometimes, when I am not actively trying to— to survive, or get things done, or focused on something else, I feel as if my body is not my own.” He’s not really sure how else to say it. How else to say that he enjoys the fine, lavish cloth that Hua Cheng finds to make his simple white robes out of, but his skin crawls and jitters in a way he can’t explain on some days unless he’s wearing the material he always wears.
There’s no good way to say that he’s the happiest he’s been in his entire life, and that is why letting his guard down brings the monsters in his head roaring back to life. They cannot kill him any more than they could when he was physically incapable of it, less than that, even, but they feel more— daunting, now that he doesn’t have other priorities.
Hua Cheng’s eye is looking at him pleadingly, so he tries again, “it’s hard to just. Forget everything.”
Qingxuan would probably be proud of him, he thinks distantly. She’s always encouraging him to speak his mind and be honest about his fears and insecurities, while conveniently saying nothing of the makeshift grave he knows she’d made for her brother.
Hua Cheng doesn’t ask him why he didn’t say something. Instead, he tightens his grip on Xie Lian as he draws him back into a hug— because he’s been trying, too, just as much if not harder than Xie Lian, to not put a wall between himself and even his simplest desires when his head is not in the right place— and he says, “then why do you apologize for it?”
“Why does San Lang apologize for hurting me even when you did nothing of the sort?” he counters.
“Gege,” Hua Cheng protests. “You’re deflecting.”
“I don’t know,” Xie Lian says. It’s at once like a weight lifts off his chest, and yet the frustration remains— the frustration of no good answer, the frustration that this is happening at all. And, just as quickly, it melds into resignation; acceptance that well, yes, this is just how it is. He supposes that life is just meant to be like that.
Hua Cheng leans back to look at him and seems to understand this just from the minute flickering of his expressions. “You’re upset at yourself?”
“Am I?” Hua Cheng looks at him with that same expression, and he relents. “Yes. I suppose.”
“Why?”
“I think,” he sighs, “you understand better than anyone else why.”
Which is true, and Hua Cheng doesn’t try to deny it. At the end of the day, this exact topic at hand has been something they’ve talked about, discussed extensively, though they spent most of their days at the start of their marriage sort of dancing around it all. Xie Lian can’t say it was their best decision, but he’s also certain that it doesn’t mean they should’ve done it differently. Surely, there’s nothing wrong with just wanting to enjoy your beloved’s presence after waiting for a year?
They’re both silent for a moment or several. Hua Cheng sort of rocks them back and forth, a soothing movement that, somehow, manages to calm Xie Lian’s mind.
“I don’t want this to be a determining factor in— in my relationship with you,” Xie Lian finally says.
“I don’t think either of us can do anything about that, gege. You are you, as you are.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he frowns.
“I know,” Hua Cheng tells him, placing a kiss (or several) on his forehead. “But if it’s something that bothers you in any way, it’s going to affect you, and our relationship. That’s fine.” He smiles against Xie Lian’s forehead, in the way he always does when he remembers the things Xie Lian does for him. It makes Xie Lian’s heart clench sweetly. “That’s what you keep insisting on, and you never let me pretend like my words don’t apply to me, so you can’t do that either, gege.”
“I’d rather not jump away from you every time you try to touch me,” Xie Lian insists.
“It’s not every time.”
“San Lang,” he scolds. Hua Cheng smiles at him, unrepentant; for as long as Xie Lian has known him, he’s never been one to be anything but the sincerest with his feelings and devotion towards Xie Lian. He likes teasing his San Lang, likes accusing him of insincerity for his shameless flirting and forwardness, his love for teasing Xie Lian right back in more-than-equal measure.
That’s how they work. It’s why he feels like he’s still a naive prince in some ways— even though he’s far too old for that, even though his old royal manners and countenance are all but faded memories in the back of his mind that he’d have to struggle to call on to perform.
Is it the association with kindness and comfort that does it? Xie Lian is not so stupid that he is unable to recognize his own shortcomings. He also is not so eloquent that he can easily say all this to Hua Cheng. Anyone at all, really.
(It was almost easier when all he could do was ramble mindlessly to Ruoye. Almost.)
Standing here pondering isn’t doing him any good, so he says, “we can either stand here exchanging apologies for the next hour, or we can just go to bed now, San Lang.”
Hua Cheng looks at him. “Are you sure?”
“More than.” And so, they go, and Xie Lian smiles against Hua Cheng’s back in bed. He thinks they’re getting better at this, balancing between pushing when one of them needs to say something and letting a matter lie still for the time being.
He’s not looking for perfection, regardless.
/
The seventh through ninth times, Xie Lian doesn’t break anything, but he does sit in the garden and think about how to tell Hua Cheng that sudden touch at times feels like burning, illogically. In the end, he clumsily manages something about fire and shock and a relaxed fight-or-flight response, and Hua Cheng doesn’t ask him to explain further.
The eleventh time, he somehow finds it in himself to acknowledge the night of the temple with Bai Wuxiang verbally for perhaps the second or third time ever in his life. He says, an unexpected touch sometimes feels like I’ll be run through with a sword again. It almost feels ridiculous, because he has been, multiple times— he’s been staked through the heart for damn near a century, really.
He tries to make light of it, and Hua Cheng refuses to let him. He’s silently grateful for that.
At some point, Hua Cheng asks him about the inconsistency of his sudden bouts of aversion to touch, and Xie Lian snorts. He asks, “San Lang, did you not choose those boots of yours for a reason?” while gesturing downward at Hua Cheng’s feet. “You know what they say in heaven? The sound of that tinkling is—”
“—heralding your doom, I know,” Hua Cheng finishes, sheepish. “I truly forgot they make so much noise, though…”
Xie Lian, for some inexplicable reason, finds this absolutely adorable, and doubles over laughing. Hua Cheng complains and accuses his gege of being cruel to this poor maligned San Lang, and Xie Lian shuts him up with a kiss. It’s one of the nicer ends to these conversations.
/
“I mean, it makes sense,” Mu Qing says when Xie Lian admits to him and Feng Xin that all this had been happening. “You’re not exactly living on the streets now.”
“What does that have anything to do with anything?” Feng Xin asks. Mu Qing glares at him.
“Obviously, he’s not under some form of stress all the time now,” he says impatiently. “It’s like processing trauma, or whatever. Obviously.”
“Ohhh.” Feng Xin nods, absorbing that. He looks at Xie Lian sort of guiltily, like he tends to do quite often— less so these days, but he hasn’t quite kicked the gut instinct yet. Xie Lian tends to placidly smile back at him, almost like daring him to say something he knows Xie Lian will probably have words to say about, though today he pointedly raises an eyebrow instead. Message received, Feng Xin redirects with, “wait, how do you know that?”
“What do you think I was doing in my free time back then?” Mu Qing asks.
“Uh—? Depends on what exactly you mean by back then—”
“The war with Yong’an and the aftermath?” Xie Lian asks. It’s kind of freeing to be able to say those words in their presence and not watch Mu Qing bristle like a threatened porcupine and Feng Xin attempt to curl up a little bit like a pill-bug. Mu Qing makes a noise of confirmation.
“It’s common with people who are just now learning to relax and not be on alert to fight something every day,” Mu Qing says. Almost defensively, “it was like that for me, too. Though there’s not much to relax around in the Heavenly Court.”
Xie Lian considers that. He supposes that makes sense— it feels distinctly different from being fresh off war and still expecting people to jump out at you, swords swinging and arrows nocked.
“I guess I can believe that,” he says, mind half wandering back to Hua Cheng, like it often does, wondering if Hua Cheng generally is less jittery than Xie Lian is about similar things because he wasn’t strictly alone in the way Xie Lian was for a very long time. If so, then Xie Lian is glad for it. He seems less wound-up these days than he did during those six months when they first met, too, though he guesses that much is to be expected anyway.
“You’re thinking about him again,” Feng Xin immediately notices. Mu Qing sighs and drops his head against his palm. It’s an improvement from several months ago, when they were still fighting at the drop of the hat, or even a few weeks ago, when anything could inspire a vicious argument. Feng Xin glares at Mu Qing, saying, “what? You noticed before I did!”
“Have some tact,” Mu Qing says tiredly. “And anyway, if I were to point it out every single time, that’d be the conversation topic at hand for the whole day.”
“Hey,” Xie Lian protests, “what happened to tact?”
He’s laughing, though, and Feng Xin can’t help but snicker, too. Mu Qing sighs deeply for probably the nth time since they met up at Puqi Shrine, which somehow makes it all even funnier. Mu Qing looks away as the other two continue laughing harder and harder, determinedly pretending like the corners of his mouth aren’t twitching with amusement.
/
Later, Feng Xin tells him, “what Mu Qing said earlier— I felt like that for a long time, too. I mean, we’re probably twitchier on account of being, well, martial gods and all that, but.” He flushes a bit. Xie Lian almost tells him he’s being very brave, just because he can’t resist teasing sometimes, but refrains. It’s an important moment! “I dunno. Guess I just wanted to say that I’m glad you, uh. Told us that.”
It’s sweet that Feng Xin is trying to say this much, trying to reassure him and let him know he’s not alone— clearly still fighting off guilt, despite the fact that Xie Lian has not felt resentment about it for centuries— so Xie Lian lets him off with only minimal jabs.
He does feel better about it, and that’s what is important.
/
He dreams—
Screams, why can’t I die, why can’t I die—
A cold hand on his face. Low, honey-sweet words, meant to ensnare—
/
“It’s strange, not carrying a sword around,” Xie Lian confesses to Hua Cheng one day. It’s not really directly because of a certain event— he doesn’t like reminding Hua Cheng of it, doesn’t like reminding him of such a horrible event he witnessed— but it may have been indirectly related, he would say if pressed about it.
Instead of reminding Xie Lian that he has a fully-stocked armory just down the hall, Hua Cheng glances up from his book and says, “I prefer that it’s stuck down there with Bai Wuxiang.”
It’s not just the casualness of it that makes Xie Lian’s throat go tight, a little bit; he hadn’t quite been expecting to be caught out like that. “I could’ve been saying I want to go sparring for a bit,” he says weakly.
“But you didn’t,” Hua Cheng says. Xie Lian fights the urge to pout at Hua Cheng, determined to maintain at least some of his dignity. But at the same time— “Shall we, though?” Hua Cheng asks, and it’s a genuine offer, eyes bright with eagerness. Xie Lian snorts.
“Oh, sure. Fine.” His silly ghost.
/
Xie Lian’s body likes to betray him, often and without warning. It’s just part of being himself, really; he’s no stranger to sudden bouts of shaking, or his limbs weakening, or more recently, the inexplicable aversion to touch, phantoms and demons always lurking in the corner to prey upon his moment of serenity.
Perhaps he’s lucky that his husband, his beloved, is a ghost king, then, the only ghost king born of love. No, he knows he is.
He could never be anything but.