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If you asked Xia Fei how long he had been like this, he wouldn’t really know what to tell you. He hadn’t really thought to keep a timeline or a journal as a kid, and memory is a fickle thing especially when exact dates start getting involved. All he knew is that one day the other one, Felix as he liked to be called, showed up out of nowhere. After that, his life–THEIR life, as it would become–got a lot more complicated.
It wasn’t all bad, of course. They each had their own strengths that they could play into. Felix was good with people, outgoing, cheerful, the life of the party. He handled social events and modelling shoots when they started doing that song and dance. Xia Fei was more reserved, but better when it came to things like physical altercations and understanding people on a deeper level. He was the more level-headed of the two, calculating, paid attention to the small details. It didn’t necessarily start that way, not fully at least. They took a while to figure out the coordination involved in living together, two minds in the same body. In the beginning, they didn’t even realize what was happening. Xia Fei recalled moments of telling his teachers that he sometimes felt like a completely different person, that sometimes his memories were hazy, that sometimes he acted strangely. The adults around him didn’t understand what he was getting at–fortunately, perhaps. Looking back, he thought, they probably thought he was just talking about having big emotions like children sometimes do. Either way, no one intervened, and that was probably for the best given the circumstances.
“We’re lucky you didn’t get thrown in some psych ward, honestly. Can you imagine?” The voice of Felix rang loud and clear in his mind, distinct from his own train of thought. Both of them could see it though, hear it. Apparently some people like them–“systems”, “plurals”, however you wanted to say it–couldn’t just talk to each other in their minds like this. Sometimes Xia Fei wished he had that kind of privacy, even if it would make both of their lives harder.
“I’d rather not. Are you gonna say anything helpful, or is this decision fully on my shoulders?” The train of thought Felix was commenting on surfaced in their mind because of their current predicament–they were trying to decide if they should tell Vein about this. About them.
They’d been waffling on it for weeks, maybe more than a full month at this point. Both of them had been kept up at night imagining all of the ways it could go wrong. They only started thinking about this because, despite having each other as constant companions, their existence was lonely. They had friends, they had their lǎobǎn, but they didn’t feel truly seen by anyone. Not fully.
Vein was the closest person to them. They hadn’t had an official conversation about it yet but they were basically dating. Felix and Vein. Xia Fei wanted to be there too. Enough to make him physically sick when he thought about it, but he couldn’t switch when Felix and Vein were together. It felt wrong, without him knowing. But they had no idea how to approach the conversation. Never mind the nebulous “it’s-kinda-polyamory” part or the “sorta dating two of the same person” thing–just the idea of broaching baseline plurality with literally anyone was enough to send both of them into anxiety spirals. This wasn’t something normal people talked about casually. In fact, if anyone ever brought it up it was usually as some kind of shock-factor ‘can you believe how crazy this guy is?’ kind of thing. Yet despite that, their desire to be seen and heard and understood was wrestling with their sense of self-preservation.
Every fiber of their beings wanted to tell him, to be truly seen by the person they both loved the most. Felix wanted Xia Fei to feel seen, to be present. Xia Fei wanted Felix to be happy. But what if he thought they were crazy? Scorned them? Shunned them? Neither of them knew what they would do without their lǎobǎn. They couldn’t stomach the thought.
“It’s just. Not normal, you know? That’s what worries me,” Xia Fei muttered out loud as he absentmindedly lifted one of his hands and inspected it like it might give him some new insight into the situation. He was lying on their bed, in their room, in the dark. Overthinking this again. Like he had been for weeks.
“I mean–Vein isn’t what most people would call normal either, you know? If you’re gonna try to justify not telling him, you gotta think of something more convincing.” Felix was in favor of telling Vein tonight, it seemed. He wasn’t always. And Xia Fei wasn’t always against it. That was the big issue.
“We’re never gonna make a decision if we keep doing this. You know what I’m talking about,” Xia Fei let his hand go limp and fall onto his forehead, creating a dull sort of smack.
“I know. It’s just hard to make that leap. It’s hard to think about any of this for too long.”
“I just wanna be done with it at this point. I could be solving other shit for us with all the brainpower I’ve given to this issue. And so could you, honestly.”
“Then why don’t we just tell him? Otherwise we will just keep doing this forever.”
“You wanna tell him? Should we text him right now?” Xia Fei turned to glance at the digital alarm clock resting on the table beside their bed. It was just past 2 am. It didn’t really matter. Vein would answer if Felix called or texted him. He always did. “I feel like it kinda has to be you anyway. You’re his boyfriend.”
He felt Felix steel himself in his mind. Always an odd sensation, getting glimpses into the other’s emotions. “Fine, fine! I’ll do it. Let me switch up.” Xia Fei let out a deep sigh and relaxed himself, feeling his consciousness take the back seat as the world grew hazy. They were lucky they could usually switch at will like this, though it wasn’t always quite so easy. Over the years they’d managed to experiment and find what worked for them, and things had gotten a little easier.
Felix bolted upright on their bed and put his face in his hand in frustration. He gripped the bedsheet with his other hand like it was some kind of lifeline. “Man. I wish this wasn’t so fucking hard.” He felt Xia Fei shrug in the back of his mind, but he didn’t say anything. There wasn’t really much to add to that comment anyway. It was just hard, and there wasn’t anything they could do about that except try. Felix dragged his hand down his face and looked down at their phone lying on the bedside table. Now or never. He’d said he would handle this, and he knew the longer he stalled the more likely he was to just go into the fridge and grab a beer or roll a joint or something. And as much as he wanted to take back his words and fish the grinder out of the drawer, it wouldn’t be fair to Xia Fei, or to himself for that matter.
“Here goes nothing I guess,” he said as he picked up the phone. It felt like a block of lead in his hand as he put in their passcode and slowly navigated to the texting app. His hands started shaking. Or maybe they already had been? How long had they–It didn’t matter. He was stalling, on purpose. Grasping at other things to try to avoid typing. He felt Xia Fei watching him expectantly. “Can you, like, chill while I do this please?”
No words as a response, but a feeling. Something like “Ok, jeez, calm down.” and a release of that feeling. Just a little bit. Neither one was ever fully gone from front, but they didn’t have to metaphorically stare down each other’s necks. Despite that, he forgave it this time. Felix knew exactly what Xia Fei was feeling, after all.
His hands sweating, he began to type out a text. Then he deleted it. Then he retyped it. Then he deleted it again. Typed, edited, deleted, repeat. For what felt like hours. At 2:56am, his screen read, “Can we talk?” and nothing else. He took a deep breath, held it, hit send. Then he dropped the phone on the bed immediately and flopped down forcefully, covering his face with his hands. Then he turned onto his stomach and screamed into his pillow. Then he heard his text tone ring out, stark in the otherwise silent apartment. He didn’t want to look at it. He hoped it was some stupid spam text, maybe one of the ones about a car’s extended warranty or something.
After what felt like forever, he slowly sat up. Held his breath again, picked up the phone. No such luck. A text from ㅤꨄ︎LǍOBǍNꨄ︎ reading, “Be there in five♡” He took a deep breath and put the phone back down on the bed and put his face in his hands again. Maybe he could make up something else, some other problem that would be crazy enough for him to text Vein at 3 in the goddamn morning about it. He felt Xia Fei metaphorically cough in the background. God, he was going to have to deal with this at some point, huh? What if a sinkhole opened up underneath his apartment and swallowed him whole? Maybe that would be easier to deal with.
In less than five minutes, he heard a knock at the door. Even if it hadn’t been close to 3 am he would have known who it was. He didn’t know anybody else who knocked on doors with a metal fan. Felix took his face out of his hands and took another deep breath, tried to steel himself, maybe look a little less anxious. He slowly got up and shuffled over to the door. Undid the latch. Took a second before actually opening it. Sure enough, there was Vein, looking picture-perfect somehow despite the hour in his usual business attire.
“What did you need to talk about, sweetie?” he gave Felix an easy smile, fan resting almost on his lip as he spoke. “May I come in?” Felix realized he’d spent a little longer than normal just kind of staring at Vein, his expression not masking his turbulent feelings at all. “Y-yeah, please do! Sorry I’ve been uh– kinda…” he trailed off and looked at a random spot on the floor. He wasn’t sure how he was going to handle this. It suddenly felt like the weight of the whole world had been dropped onto his shoulders. He was good with people in a general sense, sure, but serious conversations about something as heavy as this weren’t really his forte. He kind of wished Xia Fei could handle this for him, but they’d already agreed it had to be him. God damnit.
“May I touch you?” Vein’s question snapped him out of whatever spiral he was headed into. He appreciated that Vein always asked first when it mattered, always respected his boundaries. It had been such an unfortunately rare thing in his life. He looked into the other’s eyes for a brief moment, then looked away again, hugging himself with one arm. “Yeah, sure.” Vein put a hand gently on Felix’s shoulder, and he felt himself relax just a little bit, just for a second. “Man, you’re tense. Why don’t we go sit down?” Vein gestured not to the couch indoors, but to the chairs on the small balcony outside. Felix met his gaze again briefly and nodded, unable to even hold eye contact with Vein for too long. The genuine concern he’d seen on Vein’s face, so rarely without a smile, just made the weight on Felix’s shoulders feel heavier. As the two of them walked towards the balcony, Vein pulled out a small tin from his pocket and produced a very neatly-rolled joint from within. “Would this help, or no?” he lowered the object into Felix’s field of vision.
“Not right now. Maybe later.”
“Alright. Just let me know.”
“Thanks. Yeah.” The two of them sat down on the balcony, and the cool night breeze washed over Felix. It didn’t lift the weight, but it was pleasantly distracting. “Nice weather tonight, huh? It’s finally starting to cool down a bit.” He tried to sound nonchalant, but his voice was shaking. He knew he wouldn’t fool Vein either way, and there wouldn’t even be a point to it if he could, but he was stalling again. He knew he was. Vein leaned back comfortably in the other chair and fixed his gaze on Felix. The concern seemed to disappear from his face as he seemed to relax into his usual calm, smug smile again. “About time, huh? Crazy heatwaves this summer.”
Felix felt himself relax ever so slightly. This was Vein’s way of giving him space, not pushing him to talk about it. It made him feel seen. Even when he was at his most fragile, it seemed like Vein instinctively knew how to handle him. How to keep him from falling apart.
There was a long silence, heavy. Vein didn’t seem to flinch, but Felix felt like someone was piling cinderblocks on top of him. He could not think of a single good way to segue into this topic, but he had to get this show on the road somehow before he lost composure completely. He looked at Vein briefly, then fixed his gaze on a random architectural feature across the street and blurted out the first half-workshopped line that he could grab from his racing mind. “Have you ever heard of someone having multiple personalities?” He immediately screamed loudly in his mind. He could not believe he was talking about this. Every fiber of his being wanted to take those words right back out of the air. He tensed up again, and stole a glance at Vein for a brief moment.
“I’ve heard of it before, yeah. Why?” Vein had his ankles resting on the balcony guardrail and the chair tipped back almost to the wall, balanced on the back legs. Felix had no idea how he found that comfortable, but he always did that when they sat out here together. It was reassuring that he wasn’t tense at all.
Felix thought that maybe once he’d started talking about this that maybe it would get easier, but if that was going to happen at all it sure as hell wasn’t going to happen immediately. But he’d already passed the point of no return, for better or worse. “I’m– we’m–WE’RE uh…” he trailed off, gaze falling to the floor for a moment. We’m? Really?? Xia Fei made some nebulous comment about having to speak understandably in order to have this conversation, but Felix barely heard him. It wasn’t a big mistake, really, but Felix was already on edge enough that it didn’t really matter. His gaze shot back up to Vein, a mortified look on his face.
Vein was looking at him, still smiling. He rocked the chair back a little farther, until it was resting against the wall, and cocked his head a bit at Felix. “We’m, huh?” Felix immediately put his head in his hands, feeling himself beginning to blush fiercely. “Fuck you! Look, that’s me! That’s us! We’re– plural or something I dunno! I’m not the one who reads the forum shit.” Xia Fei had spent enough time over the years lurking on various forums that they both had a good chunk of up-to-date terminology memorized, but Felix hated using it. Especially if he didn’t know if the person he was talking to was going to understand what he meant.
He heard Vein chuckle lightly, and peeked out at the other man from behind his hand-armor. He was smiling fondly at Felix, still perched oddly in his chair. “Thanks for trusting me enough to tell me, love.” A look of slight confusion twisted his smile slightly. “Loves? How would you like me to handle this?” As calm as ever, like Felix had just told him he had decided he didn’t like a certain food anymore or wanted him to use a different pet name for him. Felix felt the tension leave his body, felt his shoulders drop completely for the first time that night. He took a deep breath and stuttered for a moment, trying to find words. “I uh–we. Uh–” As Felix verbally stumbled through his emotions, he noticed Vein take the small tin back out of his coat pocket. He took a joint from the case, offered it to Felix with a small flourish, and gave him a look. Felix nodded, and Vein produced a lighter from a different pocket. He played with the flame for a moment before lighting the joint and taking a small drag from it, then offered it to Felix. He took it gratefully and took a drag himself, just enough to calm his nerves. He passed it back to Vein.
“We’re pretty separate, he and I. Xia Fei and Felix.” He was still looking mostly at the floor as he spoke, but he felt less apprehensive. He dared to look up into Vein’s eyes. He was blowing smoke rings at him. Felix smiled slightly and waved one away as he continued. “He’s more reserved than me. Better in a fight. Not as outgoing. I’m the model. The social guy.” Vein nodded and offered Felix the joint again. “So that’s what that’s about.”
“What what’s about?” Felix took another drag and felt himself relax more.
“I’ve noticed the difference, is all I mean. Didn’t know what to make of it exactly, but I figured if it was important enough you might tell me about it eventually.” Vein gave him another smile, more on the sly end this time. It shouldn’t have been a shock that Vein of all people had paid enough attention to them to notice a difference, but it was a pleasant surprise to Felix all the same. He felt seen in a way he never had before, just from that. Felix blushed bright red and looked away.
“Y–yeah. It is.”
“So, two separate people then?”
“Kinda. It’s complicated. But basically? It’s hard to explain.”
“That’s fine. It doesn’t have to be easy.”
They sat in silence for a moment, enjoying the night breeze and riding their high. Felix looked up at the stars, still with a pensive look on his face. “He wants to be in our relationship too–Xia Fei. We weren’t sure if that would be weird for you.”
Vein finished the last of the joint and dropped the spent roach in an ashtray on a nearby side-table. He looked up at Felix, eyes slightly red. “Two boyfriends in one? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s like hitting some kind of queer jackpot.” Felix turned to Vein, jaw wide for a moment. Then he smiled, brighter than he ever had in his life. “For real?” Vein giggled uncontrollably at Felix, clearly pretty damn high. “Of course! What the hell. Guy takes me out to a restaurant and asks me if I want two juicy steaks instead of one. And he thinks I’m not gonna go for that shit!” He laughed at his own joke, smiling giddily. Felix felt like he might float away, especially after all of the tension he’d been holding onto. He laughed with Vein, feeling completely carefree for the first time in a long while. He felt Xia Fei laughing along with them.
After they settled down a little, Vein spoke up again. “Hey. Can you call him up here or something?” Felix nodded, “I mean–Xia Fei? Yeah, sure. Give me a second.” It took him a few moments longer than usual to let himself fall back to the foggy background of their mind. Any excitement made it more difficult for both of them, but not impossible. The weed probably helped, honestly. Either way, in a few moments, it was Xia Fei gazing back at Vein instead of Felix. He looked at the other man and blushed intensely, then coughed and looked away. He’d been present for the entire conversation, but switching back to front was a different story. More personal. Like watching a live feed of an event versus being at the event yourself. He managed to squeak out a hoarse “Hi” and nothing else.
Vein leaned towards Xia Fei, sly smile on his face. He put his elbows on his legs and framed his face with his hands. “Hi sweetie~ Heard you wanted to join the party?” Vein was doing that voice he knew Felix liked. Suave, a bit of vocal fry, a certain something that neither of them could ever place–Xia Fei liked it too. His whole face was probably bright red at this point. He glanced over at Vein and caught sight of the other man’s expression–one of unfettered delight. “Y–yeah. For a while now, honestly. I–Thanks. For being cool with all of this.”
“Like I said, two boyfriends in one sounds like a great deal to me. You know I don’t care if shit gets a little freaky.” He was still doing the voice. He knew what he was doing. Xia Fei looked at him, still bright red. “If you’re gonna keep doing that, can you just kiss me and g–” Vein closed the distance between them before Xia Fei could finish his sentence, his face inches away from Xia Fei’s, and his hands hovering over Xia Fei’s wrists. “You want me to?” His voice was a whisper now, dripping with theatrical bloodlust–exactly what he knew Felix liked. And they might be different people but damn if Felix and Xia Fei didn’t have the same taste in men. Xia Fei answered, barely audible, voice shaking. “Please.”