Archive of Our Own

autumn: rage

(words of fire ‒ but i don’t mean it, i promise)

They fight often, bitter words and centuries-old hurts thrown at each other until they both bleed, from both mottled bruises on their skin and deeper wounds on the inside ‒ Feng Xin doesn’t pull his punches, and Mu Qing doesn’t bother holding back his sharp tongue, but neither of them actually mean anything.

It’s different, this time.

“Please,” Xie Lian begs, “Don’t fight, don’t fight ‒”

“You think you’re so untouchable, don’t you?” Mu Qing laughs, high and cold, “You think you’re so righteous, the pinnacle of what us commoners should aspire to be ‒ you’re just as bad as me, you abandoned Dianxia too ‒”

Feng Xin overturns the table, flinging it straight at Mu Qing with a cry of “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”

“Can you not handle the truth?” Mu Qing’s smile dances across those handsome features, mocking him and all his fury, “You know this! You know that you abandoned him, that’s why you’re getting so mad, isn’t it, Feng Xin?” He catches the table with nimble fingers, throwing it right back at him.

“You two, please stop,” Xie Lian tries to get in between them, “Don’t fight, please don’t fight ‒”

“We both abandoned him! We both did, I get it, but you left! You left both of us!” Feng Xin slams his fists down onto the remains of the table, splinters of wood flying everywhere, “I wouldn’t have abandoned him, not if you were still there, but you fucking weren’t!”

“What beautiful words! What beautiful devotion! Is that what you want me to say?!” and Mu Qing fists his hands into Feng Xin’s collar, pulling him towards him, “Get it through your thick skull! You left him, you left him, so don’t act like you’re so much better than I am, because you’re not!”

Feng Xin tears himself away, fingers curling into fists, “Maybe I fucking am! Because at least I tried, at least I fucking tried ‒”

“And you failed!”

Instantly, Feng Xin lunges forwards, slamming his fist into Mu Qing’s face ‒ “I didn’t!”

Despite the bruise rapidly swelling on his face, Mu Qing howls with laughter. “You did! You did! All your efforts, and we still broke apart, what does that say about you? Admit it! You failed!”

And they clash again, a blur of punches and sharp words ‒ “Shut up!” Feng Xin screams, almost desperately, “You failed in everything, Xie Lian, Jian Lan, and me,” Mu Qing shouts back, and ‒

“I might’ve failed Dianxia,” Feng Xin’s face is twisted into a mixture of rage and terrible misery, “I might’ve failed Jian Lan, I might’ve failed everyone in the fucking Heavens but I didn’t fail you, you failed me!”

Mu Qing thinks, back to the horrible days that they’ve collectively agreed to push down, to forget ‒ he thinks about Feng Xin throwing the rice in his face, thinks about Feng Xin turning away, and yells ‒ and yells ‒ “You fucking did!”

Feng Xin sucks in a breath as if he’s been hit.

“The rice,” Mu Qing snarls, “You threw it in my face ‒ I had a mother, I had family to take care of, and you threw it in my fucking face ‒”

“You left me!” and Feng Xin is sobbing, both hands coming up to cover his eyes ‒ “You left Dianxia, sure, but you left me ‒ you left me, you left me alone ‒ you don’t understand how much you meant to me, you don’t understand how you left me alone ‒”

There are tears rolling down Feng Xin’s face ‒ Mu Qing falters, because they’ve never screamed to the point of tears, always ending up with bruised egos and nursing their wounded prides but never have they cried ‒

“Always about you, isn’t it?” because Mu Qing can’t think, not around the burning fury in his chest, “Always about you, never about anyone else ‒”

“You’re right! This was about Dianxia, wasn’t it?” and Feng Xin swipes at his eyes, turning his gaze to Xie Lian, who stands petrified by the intensity of their argument, “Then say it, Dianxia, who do you blame for this? Who do you blame for the way things are? Because it sure fucking wasn’t me ‒”

“So this is my fault, huh! It’s my fault for fucking everything that’s happened, my fault that Dianxia went ‒”

“Both of you!” Xie Lian screams, slamming his hands on the table with a bang and shocking them both, “Shut the fuck up!”

None of them speak, then.

The silence expands, crushing with its volume, broken only by Feng Xin’s quiet hiccups ‒ he’s crying, Mu Qing realizes. He’s actually crying, great tears dripping from his chin, out of place upon those noble features ‒ he’s crying.

“Feng Xin,” he starts, before realizing that he doesn’t know what to say.

What can he say? He won’t apologize, the feelings in his stomach too jumbled and sharp to even consider touching right now ‒ he can’t comfort him, because why would he ever ‒ what can he say? 

“Get out of my fucking sight!” and normally kind, sweet Dianxia is screaming at both of them, hair slipping from his normally elegant half-bun, eyes wide with painful memories ‒ “Both of you, go! Go! Get the fuck out ‒ get out!”

And Feng Xin leaves first, this time.

Mu Qing follows close behind.

-✩-

The first month comes and goes.

Apologies have never been his strong suit, sticking to his tongue ‒ Mu Qing has meant an apology exactly three times in his life, the first being when he apologized to his mother for staying out late, the second being when he apologized to Xie Lian for blocking him on that temple, and the third again to his mother, but on her deathbed, apologizing for being away for such a long while ‒

Feng Xin doesn’t quite ignore him, but there’s hesitation in every move he makes now. They both reach for the same scroll during a meeting, and Feng Xin jerks away as if he’s been burned.

(That stings, just a bit.)

-✩-

The second month since the fight. Mu Qing wonders when he became so pathetic, as to count every single day since they’ve blown up at each other.

(Thirty-eight days. Not that Mu Qing cares.)

He sees Xie Lian this time, and ‒ Xie Lian looks as if he wants to apologize, his face open and easy to read, but ‒ but ‒

It doesn’t feel right.

Xie Lian no doubt just feels guilty about yelling at them, wanting everything to just be smoothed over, to return to the stilted friendship they maintain ‒ it’s been so long since they’ve truly been in sync, all the way back to when they were still mortal, without the grief and suffering that have shaped them into who they are today. If he could go back, if only for a second, Mu Qing wouldn’t hesitate.

What does Mu Qing want?

He wants ‒ he wants to be able to smile at Xie Lian, without being reminded of rice scattering over the floor and the crushing guilt bearing down on his shoulders, wants to look at Feng Xin without the memories of eight-hundred years of constantly blaming each other for Xie Lian’s suffering ‒

Something needs to change.

-✩-

The third month.

Feng Xin almost drowns.

(Why, Mu Qing thinks, the calm voice in his head almost drowned out by the panic thrumming through his veins, why is he so fucking stupid?

He could refer to any one of them. In this situation, Feng Xin gets the title. Feng Xin is so fucking stupid that it makes him want to rip his hair out ‒ Feng Xin is so dumb, so fucking stupid, so fucking stupid ‒ Feng Xin, Feng Xin, Feng Xin.)

-✩-

winter: the long fall 

(and your heart is dropping down, down, down)

“Feng Xin,” and he must look like complete shit if Pei Ming is talking to him in that tone, kind and quiet. “Would you like to come with me?”

His palace is empty and cold, made warmer only by the soft glimmers of sunlight framing Pei Ming’s broad shoulders. 

“If you’re here about my duties, I swear that I’m going to get them done, I just need a little more time,” Feng Xin mumbles ‒ Pei Ming doesn’t normally come to check up on his work as the Lust God, but he’s probably been slacking, what with the guilt weighing heavy on his chest. “I just ‒ a little time, please.”

“No, no, it’s not about that. Let’s go on a little trip, shall we? Just you and me?”

“Where?” His voice sounds disgusting, croaky and barely louder than a rasp.

“I’ve always heard that a boat ride can lift one’s spirits, why don’t we start there?” Pei Ming gently tugs him upwards, wrapping strong arms around his shoulders and hauling him outside. “You could invite some of your friends, if you wanted, there’s room on the boat.”

Feng Xin swallows. “No, I don’t ‒ I don’t think they’d want to come.”

“Ah.”

They walk in silence, descending from the Heavens and into the North, on a winding mountain trail. The people bow as they walk by, two martial gods on a strange outing ‒ they must be on some official business, the people must think, but in reality it’s just Pei Ming dragging him along.

The boat rocks on the pier, Pei Ming helping him into a seat.

It’s strange, he thinks, how picturesque the whole scene is ‒ Feng Xin never really thought of the North as being this pretty, because while Pei Ming boasts about his region’s grandeur, Pei Ming is usually always exaggerating ‒ but as they slowly begin to move down the river, gods. It’s gorgeous. 

“Do you like the view?” They float down the stream, leaves spiralling down into the gentle waves around them. “I used to come here, whenever I was upset. In the summer, the lotuses will bloom ‒ I’ll bring you again, when we can see the flowers.”

Feng Xin nods tiredly, slumping against the side of the boat.

“Is there anything you’d like to tell me?” Pei Ming sounds so ‒ so kind, and Feng Xin hasn’t spoken to Mu Qing or Xie Lian in literal months ‒ he hasn’t spoken to anyone in weeks, and ‒ and ‒

“I fought with them,” Feng Xin whispers. “Mu Qing, and Dianxia.”

Pei Ming hums, the sound of his oars against the water soothing to his ears. “A fight?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that why you didn’t invite them along?”

“Mu Qing never likes these things,” Feng Xin mumbles, carefully dipping his fingers into the clear river’s water. “And ‒ and Dianxia probably wouldn’t have come, anyway.”

Pei Ming nods, soft and understanding.

“I think I asked Mu Qing to, a couple years ago.” His tongue runs loose, the muted atmosphere of the bubbling river and fresh bamboo forcing the words from his throat. “I swallowed my pride, I asked him to join me on ‒ on a boat ride, but maybe it was too soon ‒ Mu Qing laughed in my face. Maybe he thought I was mocking him, but …”

He laughs, the sound hollow. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask again.”

Now that he’s begun to speak, he can’t stop. “It was the stupidest of things,” he murmurs, “Just ‒ we were having such a good time, and then ‒ I don’t even know what it was, but before I knew it we were screaming. And ‒ and ‒ Mu Qing hates me.”

The river bubbles merrily, ruining the somber tone of his voice.

“He told me that I failed them all,” Feng Xin mumbles wetly, pressing the heel of his palm to his eyes, “So I thought about it, and I think ‒ I think I really did. Mu Qing must have thought that I’d understand, leaving to take care of family, but I ‒ I drove him away too. And I left Dianxia right after, and ‒ aren’t I the worst kind of person?”

Pei Ming sighs.

“Feng Xin,” Pei Ming pulls the oars through the water, a soft gurgling sound as they continue down the stream. “You aren’t a bad person.”

“Aren’t I, though?”

“You’re just far too loyal,” Pei Ming continues. “You stay by Xie Lian’s side, even though you’re not his bodyguard anymore. You stay by Mu Qing’s side, even though it’s been years since either of you have really needed to be together.”

“You didn’t fail,” Pei Ming says, and Feng Xin wants to believe it so fucking badly, but ‒

“I did,” Feng Xin slides down the front of his bench, burying his face in his palms, “I did, Mu Qing was right, I left Dianxia right after he did ‒ I really did that, I really left ‒ I told him he was heartless for leaving, but then I left right after ‒”

“You are not indebted to Xie Lian,” Pei Ming snaps, losing a bit of patience, probably because of how pathetic of a sight Feng Xin makes when curled up on the bottom of the boat. “It was a bad move to call Mu Qing heartless, sure, but ‒ neither of you had to stay. You didn’t fail.”

Feng Xin has always admired Pei Ming, for his straightforward demeanor ‒ if you were fucking up, making a bad decision, he’d tell you. He remembers, watching god after god attack Pei Ming for hearing the inconvenient truth, thinking why are they so angry for hearing what they need to hear?

And now, when Pei Ming is telling him what he’s known but never really thought about ‒

The anger that surges through him is white-hot, curling around the pit of his stomach ‒ how dare he, how dare he ‒ “You wouldn’t fucking understand,” he hisses, “I failed him, maybe things would be different if I hadn’t left ‒”

“You don’t know what would happen! You can’t go back in time, you can’t change what you’ve already done ‒”

“I know that I was weak! I know that I ‒ I wanted to leave, and when Dianxia gave me the opportunity I took it ‒ I was supposed to stay by his side, I was supposed to stay by his side!”

“You didn’t fail him! He drove you away ‒”

Feng Xin is aflame with his rage ‒ “I failed him! Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

“You don’t want to listen to me, do you? You’ve carried this guilt for eight-hundred years, and you can’t bear to give it up ‒ what the fuck kind of logic is that?”

“Shut up!” Feng Xin slams both hands over his ears ‒ he won’t cry, he won’t cry, not in front of fucking Pei Ming, “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”

“Hit me.” Pei Ming’s face is too close, too close ‒ “Go ahead, hit me, vent your frustrations ‒ you know I’m right ‒”

Feng Xin stands, the boat swaying dangerously, and then ‒ judging by the look on Pei Ming’s face, he doesn’t expect him to actually do it ‒ punches Pei Ming right in the jaw, knocking them both to the floor of the boat. He unslings his bow from his shoulder, slamming it down on his stupid fucking ponytail.

“You just hit me,” Pei Ming says dumbly.

“You just told me to,” Feng Xin replies.

Pei Ming touches the bruise on his face, staring at him blankly, before laughing ‒ bright and manic ‒ and drawing his sword. “Good! A good fight always cheers me up, let’s do this!”

And they meet in the middle ‒ maybe they shouldn’t fight on the boat, the walls tipping from side to side with the force of their blows, but there’s an unsteady rage boiling in his stomach ‒ Feng Xin hits Pei Ming in the eye with the end of his bow, fitting the bow over Pei Ming’s head and pulling ‒

For all of his kindness earlier, Pei Ming doesn’t hold back. In a way, that’s also a kind of kindness, Feng Xin realizes. Even when Feng Xin is at his lowest, Pei Ming still thinks he can hold his own.

(A swell of fondness rises to his throat. Pei Ming might not be the perfect martial god with his hundreds of lovers, but he’s noble to the end.)

The entire boat shakes as they move from the stream to a vast lake, the sunlight reflecting off of the water’s surface and blinding him.

He stumbles, bringing his bow up to block one of Pei Ming’s strikes, and he flips it the wrong way. Instead of the steel harmlessly hitting the grip and glancing off, Pei Ming’s sword cuts straight into his bowstring ‒

Oh, fuck.

Pei Ming is stronger, after all, and his bowstring snaps.

There is a moment, where they lock eyes, Pei Ming’s eyes wide with horror..

This ordinarily wouldn’t be a problem, he muses in the seconds before the disaster, watching in dull acceptance as the string begins to fray. If it were any of his other bows, the explosion would ‒ well, it wouldn’t be small, but it wouldn’t be devastating. But this bow, the Wind God’s Bow, blessed by Jun Wu, holds so much fucking destructive power in such a small object that it’s terrifying.

The problem is made worse since he always keeps his bow wound tight, tighter than most. He's gotten used to the comforting weight of the string digging into his fingers, and of course that spells disaster when it breaks.

“Move!” he screams, tackling Pei Ming to the bottom of the boat, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCKING MOVE ‒”

He flings the bow away, the impact of hitting the water the final straw ‒

The sound it makes is unreal, a deafening explosion of spiritual energy and sound ‒ the string hits the lake’s surface with a slap, water going up so high that it must reach the Heavens. Their boat shoots downwards, slipping further and further towards the epicenter of the explosion, and Pei Ming is shouting something but it’s impossible to hear over the roaring of the waves ‒ the spray of the water blocks out most of the light, plunging them into darkness, water beginning to come crashing down on them ‒

It’s a miracle they’re both still on the boat.

Feng Xin grabs Pei Ming by the wrist, pulling ‒ “Get us out of here!” he howls, flinging an arm out and covering them both with a makeshift shield of spiritual energy, water sliding right off of the rippling surface.

“What the fuck did you do?!” Pei Ming screams back.

“Me?! I’m not the one who ‒” Feng Xin tightens his grip, hair whipping around his face wildly, and pulls them both off of the boat a second before the wood splinters ‒ they would’ve been broken like twigs if they had stayed on ‒ “Pei Ming ‒”

They slip below the surface and he chokes on a mouthful of water, struggling for air.

“Pei Ming!” He shouts, barely managing to stay afloat ‒ the waves are ruthless, buffeting them back and forth, residual spiritual energy seeping into the water and making it seem almost alive ‒ his bow does not take kindly being broken, and it shrieks its displeasure, anger radiating from where it floats in the lake.

Another wave, another round of screams. His bow howls with pain, the handle beginning to crack with the magnitude of each pulse of qi, and that pumps the lake with more and more charged energy ‒

They have just seconds before the lake blows up from the strain.

Another powerful wave pulls him under and he flails, Pei Ming dragging him upwards with a “Do you not know how to swim?”

“I never fucking learned!” Feng Xin clings almost shamefully to Pei Ming’s side, body still heaving with forceful coughs, “I don’t fucking know! I never had to know, I wasn’t born near water in the first place and ‒”

“You came on this fucking boat and you don’t know how to fucking swim?!” Pei Ming fists his fingers in his collar, giving him an uncharacteristically serious look ‒ of course, Feng Xin thinks deliriously, he knows the dangers of the water more than anyone, with Shi Wudu as his sworn brother ‒ and shouts, “We don’t have time ‒ whatever happens, don’t fucking let go!”

They brace for the wave.

And gods.

The blast takes them from the center of the lake to the bottom, his fingers cramping from how tightly he has Pei Ming’s robes in his grip, dragging them lower and lower beneath the water ‒ the air is knocked right out of his chest from the blow, bubbles spiralling upwards and he gags, trying not to inhale the water but his lungs burn with the need to breathe.

Pei Ming pulls him upwards with powerful strokes, swimming furiously away from the center of the lake. His vision begins to blur, and he can’t see anything besides a murky blue expanse, brightly colored fish streaking past him ‒ “Pei Ming,” he tries to say, water flooding into his mouth and beginning to choke him.

Light bursts in his eyes, them breaking the surface with a splash.

Feng Xin breaks off into coughing, squeezing his eyes shut against the sun’s piercing rays ‒ “No,” he croaks, spitting mouthful after mouthful of water out of his lungs, “I can’t ‒”

“Are you okay? Are you okay?” Pei Ming is frantic with worry, dragging him closer, “Feng Xin, are you ‒”

The water drags them under once again, and Pei Ming is wrenched out of his grasp as the surf rips them apart ‒ Feng Xin makes the mistake of trying to breathe, water instead of air filling his lungs, and he struggles as hard as he can ‒ “Pei Ming!” he screams, the sound lost to the crashing of the lake.

“Feng Xin!” Pei Ming’s voice echoes across the violently tossing lake, absolutely dripping with desperation, “Get the fuck out! If you didn’t know how to swim then why the fuck did you get into the boat ‒”

The waves shove him around and he reaches desperately for anything to hang on to ‒ I didn’t fucking think we’d get shipwrecked when I got on, he thinks poisonously. The currents, wild with rage, drag him under and bubbles cloud his vision ‒ he can’t see around the flurry of white, and he thrashes in vain against the power of the water.

“Feng Xin! Don’t fucking drown, do you have any idea how embarrassing that would be for you?!” Switching tactics, Feng Xin laughs, almost hysterically ‒ shame him into surviving. “When you get out I’m going to fucking kill you ‒ who gets in a boat not knowing how to swim ‒ get the fuck out! Get the fuck out!”

“Shut the fuck up!” He yells back, voice lost to the deafening thunder of the waves, and frantically tries to keep his head above water ‒ “I ‒ I ‒ Pei Ming!”

“Feng Xin!” Pei Ming’s voice is closer now, and through rapidly darkening vision he can just make out a beacon of gold, most likely Pei Ming searching for him. “Feng Xin! Feng Xin! Where are you, where are you ‒”

The water is alive.

It’s his own spiritual energy, that he’s funneled into his bow over centuries of use, but it’s also mixed with Jun Wu’s spiritual energy from its original blessing ‒ Jun Wu, years of poison and repressed rage wrapping icy tendrils around his limbs, dragging him down, down, down.

“Where are you?!” Pei Ming is almost incoherent with his panic, “Help me find him ‒”

“Feng Xin.”

The words wash over him, filled with a jaded kindness ‒ he hates how his first instinct, ingrained after all those centuries of answering to Jun Wu, is to kneel, to bow, to show his deference.

“Come here.”

“Feng Xin! Get out!”

“Do you not answer to your Heavenly Emperor?”

“You’re not my fucking Heavenly Emperor anymore,” Feng Xin rasps. “You lost that title when you ‒ when you ‒” Water, he’s so fucking sick of the suffocating taste of lake water in the back of his throat ‒ “Get out of my head, get out of my head ‒”

“If I can’t have Xie Lian,” Jun Wu’s voice is soft, gentle compared to the poison dripping from his lips, “Then I suppose you will have to do.”

Because he’s never first, he’s never been anyone’s first ‒ for a while, he had thought that maybe Xie Lian would have ‒ then after him, maybe Jian Lan ‒ and when that fell through, that maybe Mu Qing would have ‒ but ‒

Feng Xin is sunlight, warm and bright, until he gives too much and they melt under his touch.

“Come with me,” Jun Wu’s fingers come up around his waist, an icy presence that he flinches away from, “We’ll die together, wouldn’t you like that? And I can change,” Jun Wu’s face shifts, Mu Qing’s sharp features staring right back at him, “I have always been kind ‒ die while watching this face, something you’ve only ever dreamed of ‒”

The only thing running through his mind, he realizes, is how much he regrets not saying sorry to Mu Qing, how he wants to beg for Xie Lian’s forgiveness.

“Get out of my fucking head!” he howls, pushing him away with a surge of spiritual energy, a risky move given the amount already swirling in the water, “Leave me alone ‒ get out of my head!”

Jun Wu hums. “I must admit, this was a surprise. But you have only yourself to blame ‒ I did warn you, about what should happen if you broke your bow.”

“Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” He’s woefully unarmed, tossed around between the waves like a ragdoll, a phantom’s taunting voice in his head ‒ “Stop it stop it stop it stop it!”

He screams, the sound tearing its way out of his throat as Jun Wu tugs him upwards ‒ Pei Ming answers, a desperate “Feng Xin!”

The water stops in place.

“There!” Mu Qing’s voice, too loud too loud too fucking loud in his ringing ears, “Pei Ming, he’s right there, get him out ‒”

Strong arms wrap around his middle, hoisting him up out of the water but the spiritual energy isn’t about to let him go, ringing in his ears, deafening him ‒ “He’s mine!” Jun Wu howls, waves rolling with his fury, “Let me have him!”

It’s strange ‒ the water stops, then surges forwards, before stopping again, like the movement of a faulty pendulum.

“Be quiet, old man,” Pei Ming snaps, bringing his sword down on Jun Wu’s brittle form, dispelling the spiritual energy as if it’s nothing at all. “Feng Xin, come on.”

He reaches out blindly, light dancing behind his eyelids, and holds onto Pei Ming’s shoulder as tightly as he can.

Pei Ming dumps him onto the shore, and Feng Xin heaves himself upwards and retches, water spilling from his mouth as he gags. The strength leaves his arms, leaving him freezing and trembling on the sand, water dribbling down his chin as he continues to cough.

“Leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone,” he babbles, echoes of Jun Wu humming in his ears, “Get out of my head, get out of my fucking head ‒ get out of my head ‒” he dissolves into breathless cries, fisting his fingers in his hair ‒ “Please, get out get out ‒”

“Feng Xin, look at me,” Pei Ming crouches down and looks him dead in the eyes, shaking him back and forth, “Breathe.”

He shakes his head, lungs burning as he continues to hack up lake water, tears mixing with the wetness already on his face from the tightness of his chest.

“How did you swallow this much water,” he hears somebody say ‒ Mu Qing, probably ‒ and the incredulity in his voice makes him choke out a laugh, before he continues to try and get air back into his aching lungs.

Pei Ming jabs a fist into his stomach, forcing what’s left in his lungs back up.

“Fuck!” Feng Xin doubles over, crumpling in on himself, ribs sore and body aching, but he can finally breathe. He convulses, one final mouthful of water splashing to the floor, and presses his forehead against the sand with a muffled whimper. “Get out of my head, get out of my head, shut up shut up shut up ‒”

Pei Ming slings an arm over his shoulder, dragging him to his feet with a “Clear the way,” in his commanding General’s voice, “Everybody, get the fuck out of my way ‒”

He takes a breath, stuttering on the inhale, and slumps against Pei Ming’s side, legs suddenly too weak to support him. 

“Get out of my way,” Pei Ming thunders, blurry shapes wobbling in the corners of his vision, “General Xuan Zhen, get out of my fucking way ‒”

His eyelids are heavy.

“He almost fucking drowned ‒ I’m not going to ask again, General, fucking move ‒” Pei Ming lurches forwards, jostling Feng Xin out of his stupor, “Xie Lian, not you too ‒ I’m trying my fucking best here, let me through or I’ll ‒”

“Your bow,” Xie Lian ‒ when did Xie Lian get here? ‒ murmurs, pieces of his once-proud bow slipping into his hands. The string, a dull grey compared to its original silver, quivers in his fingers and he nods gratefully.

His throat hurts too much to speak but he tries, mouthing thank you while his grip tightens on the broken string. Emotion rises in his chest ‒ while he’s ashamed of the weapon’s origins, it had brought him through tough times, its grip comforting against the heel of his palm, and now he can’t even hold it without pressing the two halves together.

A violent shiver, the cold air beginning to chill him to the bone, and his teeth chatter together loudly in the quiet. His bow falls from his fingers, hands automatically coming up to his face to make sure that they’re still there, because he can’t fucking feel them.

“Feng Xin,” Mu Qing’s voice is unsteady with a strange emotion ‒ fear, he would think, but Mu Qing hasn’t ever been openly scared. “You need to get inside, Pei Ming, bring him inside ‒”

“We have to get inside,” Pei Ming is nothing but shapes in his vision, voice soft and gentle, “Can you take a step for me?”

With a great effort, Feng Xin manages to get one foot in front of the other, wobbling dangerously.

“That’s good, that’s good. Another step ‒ you’ve got it, just keep going.” Pei Ming is a comfort against his side, firm and steady against his shivering form. “Xuan Zhen, if you’re going to stay, then fucking make yourself useful and get his other side.”

Another presence ‒ Mu Qing, his hazy mind supplies ‒ moves to his right, hand moving to his back and hauling him upwards.

“I need you to stay awake, okay?” Pei Ming leans in, putting searing-hot fingers to his forehead, panic plain on his features, “Feng Xin, can you do that for me? Just don’t go to sleep, that’s all I need you to do ‒ keep your eyes open, I’ll tell you when it’s okay to sleep.”

“Mu Qing,” he mumbles, vision going out of focus, “I don’t feel ‒ I don’t feel well.”

“You’re going to be okay.” Mu Qing’s voice is sharp but quiet, worry poorly hidden behind a thin show of anger. “You’re so stupid, how do you not know how to swim ‒ Feng Xin, look at me, look at me.”

He stumbles, exhaustion truly beginning to settle in, and closes his eyes.

-✩-

An explosion of pure spiritual energy rocks the entirety of the Heavens.

Mu Qing appears in the communication array at once ‒ “What happened,” he calls, over the deafening chattering of a million other officials, “What happened?”

And something like fear begins to curl in his gut when Feng Xin doesn’t appear, because the explosion was so potent that he can feel it in his bones still ‒ it shakes him to the very core, because who could possibly have ‒

“Feng Xin!” and screams tear through the array, undeniably Pei Ming, “Feng Xin! Don’t let go ‒”

Mu Qing doesn’t hesitate ‒ instantly, he surges forwards, knocking an inkwell over in his haste, his mind buzzing with Feng Xin, Feng Xin, Feng Xin, you piece of shit you better be fucking okay, and scrawls out a distance-shortening array, throwing himself through.

He stumbles, blinking at the sudden influx of light ‒ a lake, a fucking lake.

The water surges upwards, blocking out the light as he stares, dumbfounded. There’s no way this is natural, and he takes a step back ‒ the water swirls in a spiral of wrath, screaming in agony, flashes of amber-colored light flashing through the curtain of mist, and his heart drops ‒ is Feng Xin in there?

“Feng Xin,” he whispers, starting forwards ‒ Feng Xin doesn’t know how to swim, he remembers, all those years ago ‒ he had made fun of him for it, hadn’t he? “He can’t ‒”

Pei Ming appears, gasping for air as he emerges from the waves, and then turns right back around and screams ‒ “Feng Xin! Get the fuck out! If you didn’t know how to swim then why the fuck did you get into the boat ‒”

And by his side, Xie Lian tumbles out of his own array ‒ “He can’t swim?” Xie Lian starts forwards, hands coming up to clasp over his mouth, “Oh, gods, no ‒”

“Feng Xin! Don’t fucking drown, do you have any idea how embarrassing that would be for you?!” Pei Ming truly is getting desperate, “When you get out I’m going to fucking kill you ‒ who gets in a boat not knowing how to swim ‒ get the fuck out! Get the fuck out!”

A flash of something ‒ he strains, bloody crescents being dug into his palms, as he tries to see.

And then ‒ Jun Wu.

His spiritual energy blankets all of them, bringing forth memories of a darker time, and Mu Qing can’t suppress the shiver that races up his spine, the fear curling deep in the pit of his stomach from a god that no longer threatens them ‒ he instinctively turns to Xie Lian, stepping in front protectively ‒

‒ and the screaming starts.

There is something, something profoundly wrong with the sound of Feng Xin’s screams.

Fear, pure fear ‒ what Feng Xin saw, he doesn’t want to know ‒ what he does know, the sounds of “Get out of my fucking head ‒ leave me alone ‒!” ringing in his ears, is that he never wants Feng Xin to sound like that ever again.

Pei Ming plunges ahead, his voice thundering throughout the entire lake ‒ “Feng Xin! Where -?!”

And there ‒ he points, two figures barely visible through the spray of the crashing waves, and Mu Qing chokes on his breath because that’s ‒

“Stop,” he whispers, unable to move. 

Pei Ming surges forwards, grabbing Feng Xin by the shoulders and pulling him away, Jun Wu’s form flickering out of existence as his spiritual energy is dispelled. They drag his body to the shore, where Feng Xin falls to the sand and immediately begins to cough, water cascading from his mouth ‒

“Leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone, get out of my head, get out of my fucking head ‒ get out of my head ‒” Feng Xin curls into a fetal position, eyes squeezed shut as he sobs, “Please, get out get out ‒”

Pei Ming crouches by his side, muttering something under his breath and forcing more and more water out of Feng Xin’s lungs, and Mu Qing ‒

“How did you swallow this much water," Mu Qing mumbles numbly, and Feng Xin laughs, a small thing, almost inaudible between his heaving coughs, but it’s familiar, before lapsing back into incoherent murmurs.

Mu Qing doesn’t want to look ‒ can’t look ‒ at the writhing figure on the floor, but he can’t look away either ‒ he’s always known how Feng Xin looks beaten and bloody, their fights always leaving them bruised, but this is different. He feels vaguely sick, watching Feng Xin so weak, as if the very life has been sucked out of his limbs.

“Clear the way,” Pei Ming rumbles, casting a piercing, golden gaze at all of them, baring his teeth like a protective older brother ‒ and in this light, Mu Qing realizes faintly, they really do look like siblings, the similar umber hair, the sun-kissed skin, the amber of their eyes.

He moves forwards as if in a trance, unable to tear his eyes away from Feng Xin’s pitiful figure.

“General Xuan Zhen, get the fuck out of my way!” Pei Ming snaps, eyes wild with fear ‒ “He almost fucking drowned ‒”

Mu Qing is frozen.

“I’m not going to ask again, General, fucking move!” In the corner of his vision, he sees Xie Lian coming forwards, both of them staring in horror at Feng Xin still coughing up mouthfuls of lake water. “Xie Lian, not you too ‒ I’m trying my fucking best here, let me through or I’ll ‒”

Xie Lian, strangely quiet, presses the pieces of the bow into Feng Xin’s fingers.

And Mu Qing knows, maybe better than anyone, how much he’s depended on that bow ‒ the color of those arrows, a beautiful grey similar to the skies right before a storm, have been seared onto the backs of his eyelids. He can remember as if it were yesterday, every battle they’ve fought together, the comforting color streaking past him and embedding in the skull of some unfortunate ghost, the steady comfort of knowing Feng Xin had his back ‒

Feng Xin’s fingers are trembling, and the remains of his bow slip to the floor.

“Feng Xin,” Mu Qing says instinctively, real fear curling in his gut at how those fingers, the steadiest he’s ever known, shake like a leaf in the wind. “You need to get inside, Pei Ming, bring him inside ‒”

Pei Ming sends him a scathing glare, and then turns back to Feng Xin, his voice softening, “Feng Xin, we have to get inside, can you take a step for me?”

And Feng Xin takes a step, swaying back and forth on shaking legs ‒

It isn’t right to see him like this, water still dripping from the corners of his mouth as he struggles to simply put one foot in front of the other ‒ it’s bizarre, before Mu Qing sees the remnants of Jun Wu’s powerful spiritual energy, draining Feng Xin of what little energy he has left like a parasite.

Nobody tries to remove it. Jun Wu is still a formidable foe, even when far, far away, trapped underneath a mountain of stone.

Pei Ming continues to murmur, encouraging and soft in Feng Xin’s ear, hissing at him as he passes by ‒ “Xuan Zhen, if you’re going to stay, then fucking make yourself useful and get his other side.”

He settles back into his position on Feng Xin’s right ‒ always his right, Feng Xin is left-handed so he stays on his right, to protect him always ‒ hauling him up to his shoulder.

“Mu Qing,” he hears, golden eyes blinking blearily up at him, “I don’t feel ‒ I don’t feel well.”

Gods ‒ Feng Xin’s voice is quiet and meek, sturdy figure reduced to a shaking mess, his skin freezing to the touch, and something rises to his throat ‒ concern, maybe ‒ and he tightens his grip on Feng Xin’s waist, almost hugging him. “You’re going to be okay,” he says. “You’re so fucking stupid, how do you not know how to swim ‒”

That might not be what he should focus on, right now.

“Feng Xin, look at me,” Mu Qing says frantically, watching Feng Xin’s eyes flutter shut. “Look at me ‒”

They burst through a temple’s doors, barely sparing a glance at the statue at the altar ‒ Pei Ming truly is one of the most popular martial gods, he thinks, his likeness smiling down at him from the banner ‒ and shove Feng Xin in front of the hearth, breathing fire into the embers.

“Get him warm,” Pei Ming hisses, shrugging his robes off and thrusting them into Mu Qing’s arms, and he begins to draw an array ‒ he can vaguely make out the characters for warding away evil spirits, gold lines beginning to glow. “Stupid son of a bitch emperor, gods ‒ always getting into trouble, that fucking Feng Xin ‒”

Mu Qing, feeling a little self-conscious beside Pei Ming’s reckless fury, tentatively drapes the robes over Feng Xin.

“Stand back,” Pei Ming barks, slamming his hands down into the array, the room lighting up with the gold of his qi. 

Jun Wu doesn’t go quietly, his spiritual energy leaving claw marks in the wood from where he tries to hang on ‒ “You’re paying for all this fucking damage,” Pei Ming growls, “I don’t care if you’re trapped underneath a mountain, you’re going to fucking pay me for these troubles ‒ a million merits wouldn’t be enough ‒”

Feng Xin whines, hands shooting out to fist in Mu Qing’s robes, eyes wide and unseeing ‒ “It hurts,” he gasps, breath coming in uneven pants. “It hurts ‒”

Instinctively, Mu Qing kneels and cradles his head in his fingers, trying desperately to soothe his fevered forehead, “Feng Xin,” he whispers, holding him down, “Stay still, just stay still for me, you need to be still.”

“It ‒ it ‒” and Feng Xin sobs, holding Mu Qing’s robes to his chest and clutching them until his knuckles turn white with the strain, “Please, it hurts ‒”

“Feng Xin,” his voice trembles, unused to giving comfort. “I’m right here, it’s me, it’s me ‒”

“Mu Qing,” Feng Xin looks up at him, recognition flashing in hazy eyes, “Mu Qing, Mu Qing, I ‒ I ‒ you ‒”

He gags, Jun Wu’s murky qi spilling from his lips and dissipating into the air.

“You’re here,” and that ‒ Feng Xin has no right to sound so hopeful, to be so filled with relief as if he hadn’t expected Mu Qing to drop everything to be by his side. “You’re here, Mu Qing, I thought ‒ you were angry at me, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry ‒”

Something like revulsion turns his stomach, not for Feng Xin but for himself ‒ how could Feng Xin think, for even a moment, that Mu Qing wouldn’t ‒ how could he make Feng Xin afraid that he wouldn’t be by his side?

“Be still,” Mu Qing whispers, pressing a shaky kiss to his temple, “Be still, and ‒ Feng Xin, I’d never leave, okay? Just ‒ be still.”

“You’re here,” Feng Xin repeats again, voice still filled with disbelief.

And then ‒ he convulses in his arms once more, going limp.

“Feng Xin? Feng Xin?” He knows that he asked him to be still, but ‒ but seeing the motionless body in his arms makes his heart drop with fear. “Feng Xin, wait ‒”

A sound from the array ‒ he turns to look, Pei Ming smearing the golden lines with the heel of his boot and trudging towards him. “He’s alive,” Pei Ming says shortly. “Put him near the fire. All we have left to do is wait.”

Feng Xin, Feng Xin, Feng Xin. 

(“I hate you,” he murmurs, watching the steady rise and fall of Feng Xin’s chest. “I hate you, you know that? I hate you for making me worry, but I still ‒ I might love you.”

The last part is for his ears only.)

-✩-

They’re not as close, Mu Qing and him.

Feng Xin is their link, ever Mu Qing’s rival and, upon a time, Xie Lian’s closest confidant ‒ it must be tiring, holding them together like a band about to snap. 

“He’s still asleep,” Pei Ming whispers, exhaustion lining every crease of his face. “I don’t want to leave, but there’s been an emergency at one of his temples, so I’ll go and take care of it.”

“Of course,” Xie Lian bows his head respectfully, opening the door for him. “Be safe.”

And he thinks, poisonous with envy ‒ when did you and Feng Xin get so close?

He shouldn’t be jealous, he should be glad for Feng Xin, for gaining such a powerful ally who cares so much, who looks at him like a little brother ‒ he can see it in Pei Ming’s eyes, the softening around the edges that makes him look so similar to Shi Wudu’s brotherly gaze ‒ but his heart still aches. He should be happy, but all he feels is a hollowness in his ribcage, that snarls to keep Feng Xin and his loyal earnestness for himself. 

He was my friend first, he wants to rage, but he bites his tongue.

(Xie Lian is a coward.)

Mu Qing hasn’t left Feng Xin, not even for a moment, and Xie Lian sighs, soft and quiet. This really is like the old times.

The wedge between them is cold and vast, from Mu Qing’s departure all those years ago ‒ Xie Lian has come to terms with it, knowing that Mu Qing had a perfectly valid reason to leave, but that doesn’t mean his heart doesn’t hurt when he thinks about ‒ it. When he sees Mu Qing, the waves of regret overwhelm him, regret at snapping at him, not once or twice but three times, the first departure, the temple, the rice ‒

They sit, silent, by Feng Xin’s side.

He studies Mu Qing’s face ‒ pinched in a way he’s never seen, eyes never leaving Feng Xin’s peaceful features for a moment, fingers tentatively stroking over Feng Xin’s tanned skin ‒ he thinks, for a second, rivals, huh?

“He’ll be okay,” Xie Lian offers kindly, just as much for himself than it is for Mu Qing, “He’s strong, he’ll be fine.”

“I fucking know that,” Mu Qing hisses back, voice tight with barely disguised concern. As soon as he sees Xie Lian looking, he snatches his fingers away from Feng Xin’s neck, pink beginning to crawl up his face. “He’s dumb, and really fucking stupid, but he wouldn’t die from something like ‒ something like this.”

Xie Lian hums in agreement, and they lapse back into silence.

“We should get him a new bow,” Mu Qing says quietly, fingers returning to Feng Xin’s face, a show of tenderness Xie Lian wouldn’t expect from him. “Since he broke his old one. It’ll be ten times as powerful as his old ‒ Jun Wu’s piece of shit.”

He thinks about it.

It would be the perfect apology, surprising Feng Xin with a new weapon ‒ they all love weapons here, don’t they?

“Alright,” Xie Lian says readily. “We’ll get it.”

-✩-

spring: amends

(and all the things unsaid, come sweetly to your lips)

They (read: Xie Lian, Mu Qing refuses to step foot in their home) ask Hua Cheng if he has a bow in his huge hoard of antiques.

“Ge, would you like me to teach you how to shoot a bow?” Hua Cheng looks excited, giving him a radiant smile, “Of course I can, choose whichever you’d like ‒”

“Oh, it’s not for me,” Xie Lian browses through the piles upon piles of weapons, “Feng Xin broke his the other day, and we ‒ Mu Qing and I ‒ want to get him a new one, because he doesn’t seem very well right now ‒ it would be like a ‘you recovered!’ sort of gift.”

Hua Cheng droops, face falling into a pout.

“What about this one?” Xie Lian raises it up, dark-wood and almost his height ‒ he fumbles with it, hands scrambling to find the grip and latch on. “It seems a little heavy for a bow …”

“No, Feng Xin prefers a bow with a shallower curve.” Mu Qing sits in their garden, fixing him with an unimpressed look. “Did you even listen to him when he talked about this? Have you even seen his weapons room? The ones he doesn’t use very often always have that steep slope to their limbs ‒”

“Alright, alright,” Xie Lian laughs a bit uncomfortably, because he truly doesn’t know this ‒ he hasn’t visited Feng Xin’s palace, because it doesn’t feel right to just barge in without asking, does it? “How about this one?”

Mu Qing doesn’t even spare him a glance ‒ “No, the grip isn’t big enough for his hand ‒ Dianxia, are you even trying?”

“This one ‒”

“Too short.”

“What about ‒”

“The shelf wouldn’t be able to support his arrows, what is that even made of? Is that glass?”

“Surely, this ‒”

“Are you trying to give Feng Xin back problems?”

“Mu Qing,” Xie Lian says, struggling to keep his smile firmly on his face, “Clearly I don’t know Feng Xin’s weapon tastes as well as you do, would you like to come up and look with me?”

Mu Qing gives him an unimpressed stare. “If you really knew Feng Xin, then why would I need to come up and help? Just find a bow that you think he’d like, or do you not even know what he likes anymore?”

And it stings.

Hua Cheng steps forwards, a silent comfort behind him, and Xie Lian sighs, soft and tired.

“I overstepped,” Mu Qing says quickly, bowing his head.

“No, no, you didn’t,” Xie Lian murmurs, setting the bow back onto the table. “It’s ‒ It’s my own fault, really. You’re right.”

They return to an uncomfortable silence, Mu Qing resolutely looking at the floor, rubbing the blades of grass between his fingers. Xie Lian shuffles back to the mountain of bows, continuing to search for one that Feng Xin might like.

(An impossible task, given that he doesn’t know what ‒)

After a pause, Hua Cheng moves to his side, helping him to separate the piles into two groups ‒ one for the bows Feng Xin would never use, and one for the ones he might. 

His heart fills with a soft adoration when he sees Hua Cheng carefully studying the already made piles, brow pinched in concentration as he tries to be helpful. It warms his heart to know that although Hua Cheng doesn’t particularly like his friends and vice versa, he still puts an effort into finding this gift, since he knows how important Feng Xin is to him.

“San Lang,” he says, after an afternoon of searching, “I don’t think you have what we’re looking for.”

Hua Cheng looks at him, panicked ‒ “Ge, I can ‒ I can look harder, if you ‒ I ‒ I’m sure I could find something you like, if you would just wait a moment ‒ I can find you something! I’m sure I can find something ‒”

“Calm down!” Xie Lian gently tugs his ear in reprimand, smiling softly. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll ask around, you must be busy.”

“I’m never too busy for you,” Hua Cheng says earnestly, grabbing his hands and holding them between his own, “Just tell me what you need, and I’ll get it for you. Anything you want. Give me a list of what Feng Xin likes in a bow, and I’ll have it before you can even ‒”

“Oh, don’t trouble yourself on this, it’s supposed to be a gift from us, anyway.” Xie Lian presses a sweet kiss to Hua Cheng’s cheek, hopping down to the garden. “Mu Qing, let’s go.”

-✩-

“Fuck if I know,” one of Feng Xin’s junior palace officials mumbles, not looking up from their training.

A second official hits them with their sword, forcing them into a bow ‒ “Forgive him, Taizi Dianxia, General Xuan Zhen, I’ll make sure to ‒ to discipline him. What he meant to say is that we, uh, don’t know where you could find something like that. General Nan Yang hasn’t needed a new bow in centuries, so, um, you could ask the Heavenly Empress ..?”

Ling Wen sends them on their way with a clipped “Go ask someone else, I’m busy.”

“Jun Wu’s temples might have something you’re looking for,” Pei Ming tells them, a kind of sadness in his eyes, “He had a store of them, too, right?”

For a moment, Xie Lian just laughs. The idea of stealing a weapon, even from someone as despicable as Jun Wu, just doesn’t seem right to him, although he finds himself considering it, before shaking his head. “We can’t just steal ‒”

“It’s not as if he’s going to be using them,” Mu Qing has no such qualms. “Perfect. Let’s go rob a temple.”

-✩-

They stand in front of one of Jun Wu’s temples that still stand, ironically in the Southeast.

(“If we give Feng Xin a weapon that we take from a temple … in his region … is it still a gift?”

“It’s not his fucking temple, of course it’s still a gift. What’s he going to do? Steal from Jun Wu himself?”)

“Are you sure this is it?”

Mu Qing scoffs at him, sweeping forwards and kicking the old, wooden door off its hinges. “We’ve already broken so many rules, it doesn’t even matter anymore.”

They walk through the temple, vines growing through cracks in the walls, the once-rich banners molding and covered with decay ‒ Jun Wu’s likeness stares at them from above the altar, and both of them grimace.

“Just ‒ don’t look at it,” Mu Qing snaps, turning resolutely to the side. “His weapons will be in the halls, so let’s find one.”

Their steps are deafeningly loud on the stone tile, each resounding noise sending shivers up Xie Lian’s spine. It feels wrong, standing by Mu Qing’s side without Feng Xin to balance them out, and he dearly misses the sound of them bickering in his ears ‒ he misses a lot of things, now that he thinks about it.

A pebble skitters across the floor.

“This place doesn’t feel right,” Xie Lian whispers. “It feels ‒ it feels ‒”

“It’s an abandoned temple, of course it’s going to feel weird breaking in!” Mu Qing’s knuckles are white on the hilt of his sabre. “Just ‒ stay behind me.”

He grabs Mu Qing by the sleeve, if only to remind himself that someone is there with him, and it speaks volumes that Mu QIng doesn’t shrug him off. 

They walk through winding hallways, sometimes doubling back on themselves, the only light coming from Mu Qing’s palm, that makes shadows dance on the walls. It’s so unbearably creepy that Xie Lian finds himself with Ruoye already at his side, for any monsters or people that might jump out at them, his arms beginning to hurt with how tightly he’s tensed up.

A face smiles at them in the dark, and both of them react instantly. Xie Lian flings a hand out, Ruoye wrapping around whatever the fuck it is, and Mu Qing slashes out with his sabre ‒ wisps of fabric flutter to the floor, a tapestry of Jun Wu ripped to pieces.

(Good riddance.)

The floor beneath them begins to slope downwards, and the air goes stale, their very footsteps stirring dust around their ankles. It’s been a long while since anyone has come down here.

As they continue, walking past more and more tapestries, the light in Mu Qing’s palm suddenly bounces off of something reflective.

“I think we’ve found it,” Mu Qing’s voice breaks the silence, strangely loud after what feels like a shichen of absolutely nothing. “How many weapons did he have?”

Xie Lian eyes the suits of armor manning each end of the hall with apprehension, something about them unsettling him. “Never mind that, just ‒ just find something he might like. There are some bows on the walls, too, if any of those are Feng Xin’s type.”

They both stare up at the mountain of weapons with dismay.

“I’m not looking through that,” Mu Qing says flatly. “You can’t make me. Who knows what kind of weird effects touching one of them might have? Don’t touch any of these things, Dianxia.”

“I wasn’t going to.” Xie Lian feels kind of offended that Mu Qing would think him that stupid.

Searching through the weapons takes a long while, given how they have to be so careful with each one. Xie Lian struggles with every single one of the bows ‒ all of them are so tall ‒ holding them up for Mu Qing to judge, and then tosses them to the side when Mu Qing shakes his head.

They have to have been here for over two shichen, and yet they’re no closer to finding the perfect bow ‒ and then a glint of pale alabaster catches his eye.

He turns, staring up at a softly glowing bow on the wall.

“Mu Qing,” he murmurs, stepping closer to the bow, “Look at that.”

“Huh.” Mu Qing comes to his side, squinting at it. “He … might actually use that. I don’t remember seeing this, when Jun Wu asked us which weapons we wanted. It’s better than any of the ones Hua Cheng had in his hoard, anyway.”

Xie Lian gets on his tip-toes, struggling to reach the weapon, and laughs nervously ‒ “Could you ‒?”

With a sigh, Mu Qing pulls his sleeves to cover his hands, taking great care so that none of his skin touches the bow, and cautiously lifts it from its pedestal.

“Halt!”

The suits of armor manning the hallways come to life, empty space where the bodies would be, the helmets floating in midair ‒ the armored gloves point at them, voices shouting “Thieves! Thieves!”

Disembodied gloves float to the mountain of swords and other weapons, hoisting them up as if they weigh nothing at all.

“Holy fuck,” Mu Qing curses, and then grabs Xie Lian by the arm as they run.

“Why are we running?!” Xie Lian allows himself to be dragged along, “We could take them, there aren’t even that many ‒”

“Those are reanimated sets of armor, Dianxia!” Mu Qing ducks under an arrow whizzing overhead, shoving Xie Lian out of the way of another arrow ‒ “They’re armed with the best weapons in the entire fucking ‒ to kill them, you need to break the array on the helmet, and ‒ none of us have the reach! If only fucking Feng Xin were here ‒”

“That’s the only time I’ve ever heard you actually wanting Feng Xin here,” Xie Lian mutters drily.

Mu Qing shoots him a poisonous glare. “This isn’t the best time.”

They sprint through the hallways, Ruoye momentarily slowing the suits of armor by binding the torsos together, but the leg guards keep stomping forwards ‒ “Fuck this!” and Mu Qing rips one of the doors of the hallway off of its hinges, sending it barreling right at the oncoming suits.

It sounds rather like upturning a board game onto a wooden floor, the clattering of armor getting knocked to the ground the best thing he’s heard all day.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop the armor pieces from rolling out from under the door, snapping back into place, hovering in the air in a vaguely humanoid shape ‒ it’s useless, Xie Lian realizes, Mu Qing’s sabre is too brittle to go up against armor blessed by Jun Wu, and Ruoye is too soft to even make a scratch on the array.

“If we can’t fight, then we need to hide,” Xie Lian hisses. “We need to ‒ there!”

And honestly, it’s Xie Lian’s fault. Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed both of them into the first trapdoor he saw, but in his defense, he was panicking.

The heavy wooden door falls on top of them, and for a moment the entire room is lit up with gold, spiraling arrays flaring to life as they hit the floor ‒ Xie Lian can barely make out the characters for imprisonment, lock before the light disappears just as quickly as it appeared, plunging them into an inky darkness.

“Mu Qing?” He reaches out blindly, breath coming faster as it dawns on him ‒ of course, Jun Wu would still have his anti-theft arrays up. “Mu Qing, are you there?”

“Where the fuck else would I be?” and Mu Qing sounds pissed. “Dianxia, of all the places we could have hidden, you choose the one room that locks us in here for all time and eternity.”

A small ball of light appears in the palm of Mu Qing’s hand, just bright enough to illuminate the strings upon strings of the same characters repeating over and over again, wrapping around the room in a winding array, and Mu Qing heaves a frustrated sigh. “We can’t get out.”

“Oh.” Xie Lian carefully knocks on the trapdoor, wincing at the spiritual energy that violently pushes him back. “Oh.”

“Oh is fucking right,” Mu Qing snarls, slamming his fist against the floor. “Dianxia, I cannot believe you.”

Xie Lian winces.

He pushes a little harder on the trapdoor, gearing up to try and knock it out of place, before a sharp spark of qi surges through his veins ‒ he stumbles back, massaging the pins and needles at his fingertips with a frown.

If the curse binding them to this place is this strong from the inside, then to get out they just need to break it from the outside. Now to get help ...

He tries the communication array.

To his surprise, it works.

Unfortunately, the only person there is ‒

“Feng Xin, what are you doing?” because Feng Xin is there, dressed in all of his General’s armor, standing tall and proud in the array. “You should be resting! You ‒ you ‒”

Feng Xin jumps several feet in the air, whipping around to look at him with something like guilt on his features. “D-Dianxia.”

“Get back to bed! By the time I get back, you better be in bed!” Xie Lian wants to reach out and squish Feng Xin’s cheeks, and he wonders when he started seeing Feng Xin as an adorable but so, incredibly stupid little brother. “Feng Xin! Do you hear me?”

“What are you doing in the array?” Deflecting as always. “Is Mu Qing with you?”

“Well. Uh.”

Xie Lian carefully thinks about his options.

“We need a tiny bit of help,” he settles on, scratching his chin a bit nervously. “Could you call San Lang? Or anyone? We seem to be having a bit of trouble.”

“What happened?!” Feng Xin stares at him with wide eyes, instantly on high-alert. “Where are you? I can be there in no time, just tell me where you are ‒ Mu Qing is with you, isn’t he ‒ Dianxia, please, just tell me where you are, and I’ll be there ‒”

Uh oh.

“It’s nothing, but uh ‒”

“This isn’t fucking nothing,” and Mu Qing appears next to him, dusting the dirt and rubble off of his robes, “We need some hel ‒ oh. Feng Xin.”

“Where are you two?!” Feng Xin disappears from the array, obviously getting his things together, but his voice still echoes throughout the mostly empty room. “Are any of you hurt? Where are you? Is anybody else with you? Is anybody ‒ do you ‒”

“Don’t come,” Mu Qing says icily, obviously thinking about the suits of armor still roaming the temple and Feng Xin’s lack of a proper spiritual weapon. 

“But ‒”

“Don’t you dare come, Feng Xin.”

Mu Qing grabs Xie Lian by the wrist and forcibly yanks him from the communication array, glaring at him ‒ his eyes glow faintly in the dark, spiritual energy sparking to his fingertips.

“Keep Feng Xin out of this,” Mu Qing hisses, voice dark and dangerous, “He doesn’t have a proper bow, he’s still recovering from Jun Wu’s stupid fucking attack ‒ knowing all of this, how could you even let him know about ‒”

“He isn’t helpless,” Xie Lian doesn’t like to raise his voice, but Feng Xin was his bodyguard for years, he knows his skill firsthand. “And ‒ and I didn’t ask him to come, I asked him to ask San Lang to help us ‒”

“You know that whatever you say to him ‒ you know that he’d drop everything to help you,” and Mu Qing’s voice is thunderous, deafening, his shoulders coming up to his ears as if trying to make himself look bigger, “You know about Feng Xin’s stupid loyalty to you, how could you take ‒ take advantage of that?”

“I ‒”

“He almost died!”  

Oh.

“Mu Qing,” Xie Lian mumbles, unsure of what to say.

“You saw him, right? You saw him, after he almost fucking drowned, and ‒ he could have died, could’ve been torn apart by his stupid fucking bow and fed like scraps to the fish ‒ and he’s ‒ I never ‒ he could have died,” Mu Qing scrubs his eyes angrily. “He could have ‒ and I didn’t apologize for everything I said, he could have died.”

The silence is broken only by Mu Qing’s heaving breaths.

“He didn’t think I’d come,” Mu Qing whispers thickly, tugging at his bangs. “He was coughing up qi and the entire fucking lake from his lungs and ‒ and he didn’t think I’d come. He’s so stupid ‒ but I made him think that. I made him think ‒”

A scoff ‒ Mu Qing turns away, tossing the orb of light to the floor where it continues to glow softly. 

“Whatever,” he murmurs, leaving Xie Lian in the center of the room, opting instead to huddle up near a corner. “It’s not as if you’d care.”

And that makes something ugly turn in his stomach ‒ Xie Lian steps forwards haltingly, a slow, simmering anger beginning to boil in his stomach. “You think I don’t care?”

Mu Qing laughs, a cold, derisive sound. “What am I supposed to think, Dianxia?”

What is that supposed to mean? 

He takes a deep breath, calming himself down, turning away instead of confronting all of the tangled feelings that lie between them. “Let’s focus on getting out of here, first.”

“There’s no use,” Mu Qing spits, his fingers curling into fists. “It’s locked up tight.”

“Well ‒ then ‒ Feng Xin will have told someone ‒”

“He’s on his fucking way right now,” Mu Qing fixes him with a terrible expression, resentment in his glare, “You know that. If he gets hurt trying to help us, I’ll ‒ I’ll ‒” and he turns away again, scoffing wetly. “Whatever.”

They sit in relative silence, the only sounds being the horrible grating of metal on the stone tile, the suits of armor still patrolling the hallways above them.

“So.”

Mu Qing doesn’t even look at him.

“Mu Qing,” he says, as politely as he can, “How are you doing?”

“How do you think I’m doing?” Mu Qing snaps back, and Xie Lian shrinks back from the venom in that voice. “I’m stuck here, with you of all people ‒ just kill me, I’d rather die than stay ‒”

“Hey, there’s no need to be rude about it,” Xie Lian mumbles, hurt, “I’m sorry, this is my fault, but ‒ but we could ‒ this is an opportunity to uh. Catch up on what you’ve been doing? I mean. So. How’ve you been?”

“Fucking ‒ fine.”

“Alright.”

The air between them is so awkward that it’s painful.

“I wonder how Feng Xin is doing,” Xie Lian tries again.

Mu Qing doesn’t even dignify that with a response.

The air between them is cold, and it feels as if Xie Lian is trying to bridge an insurmountable gap, reaching a hand over the rift and meeting nothing but air ‒ Mu Qing doesn’t even try to reach back, and something like frustration rises to his chest.

He’s trying, he’s trying ‒ they haven’t apologized for their sharp words, three months ago, forced back together by Feng Xin’s near-drowning before they could fully heal ‒ but they can’t fix things if Mu Qing doesn’t try too.

“We used to be friends,” Xie Lian whispers. “Why can’t you talk to me now?”

The temperature of the room drops below freezing, a sudden chill sending shivers down his spine ‒ he slowly turns to see Mu Qing staring at him, eyes wide with disbelief. 

“Friends?” Mu Qing asks, eyes filling with something like fury. “You think we were friends?”

He’s said something wrong, but ‒ but he needs Mu Qing to say something, so that he can fix whatever gap there is between them. “What else were we, then?”

“Dianxia, we were never friends,” Mu Qing’s voice is no louder than a whisper, but it still feels as though he’s shouting, screaming ‒ “I was your servant, I did your mending, I cleaned, I was your servant ‒ we were never friends. You thought ‒ you thought we were friends, you thought we were equals, but we weren’t, and we weren’t fucking friends.

Everything I had, came from you. Everything I worked for ‒ I received training, all because you pointed at me in a crowd and said ‒ him. I had a place to eat, all because you allowed me to. I wanted desperately to be your friend, but ‒ but we fucking weren’t,” Mu Qing looks as though he might cry, eyes dangerously wet. “We fucking weren’t, Dianxia. I was never your friend.”

And hasn’t Xie Lian already known this?

The first time, just a simple bandage over a festering wound. This second time, a skilled practitioner digging deep into the flesh, looking for the root of the problem ‒ ah, he thinks. Mu Qing thinks he is unworthy.

In Mu Qing’s eyes, they have never been equals.

Mu Qing, the God of the Southwest ‒ Xie Lian, arguably a little weaker than him, now that he has strayed from his cultivation path ‒ they are, in almost every way, equal in power, in strength ‒ the only thing they differ in is birth.

Xie Lian wants to shake Mu Qing until he gets it, that they truly are equal. Mu Qing, maybe even a little better, for clawing his way to the rank of a martial god, for pushing on despite the mountains of odds against him. His icy demeanor hides a heart of ‒ maybe not gold, but certainly still something precious.

But ‒ Mu Qing would never listen.  

It’s Xie Lian’s fault, isn’t it? 

(Xie Lian has been doing a lot of self-reflection, lately.)

They can’t change the past, but ‒ 

“General Xuan Zhen,” he says, the words quiet and fragile. 

Mu Qing shrinks back, as though he expects a blow, and no, Xie Lian wants to throw his arms around him, hug him until this world of pains and sorrows melts around them ‒

“Mu Qing,” Xie Lian inches a bit closer. “My name is Xie Lian.”

The chamber rumbles around them, and Mu Qing hiccups, a small “What are you doing?”

“I was once the prince of Xian Le,” he continues on, “I was once attended by the most noble generals in all of the lands, and I drove them both away. I have been thrown from the Heavens twice, and have ascended three times ‒ you were once my servant, but ‒ but now ‒”

He steadies his breath.

“Mu Qing, my name is Xie Lian.” Xie Lian sniffles, praying that the wetness at the corners of his eyes doesn’t fall. “We cannot change the past, but we can change our future.”

The silence is overpowering.

“From one martial god to another,” and Mu Qing will never truly believe him unless he says it outright ‒ they are equal. “My name is Xie Lian, Mu Qing. I’ve been calling you Mu Qing this entire time, you might as well call me Xie Lian.”

Mu Qing visibly recoils at this. 

“Only if you want,” Xie Lian quickly corrects himself, slowly inching closer to where Mu Qing sits, stiff as a board. “Mu Qing, you’re the God of the Southwest ‒ you’re powerful. I’m grateful that you even hang around with this god, and I ‒ we might not have been equal back then, but I’m saying it now. You’re fit to stand on my level, if not higher.”

How does he say this?

“Because ‒ because I ‒ I’m not who I once was,” and in this Xie Lian is confident, “And neither are you. I’m sorry for everything, for everything that I’ve done ‒ I’m sorry for turning you away, I’m sorry for forcing you to leave. I don’t understand you at times, but I promise that I’ll try harder, so ‒”

And now, if Mu Qing even still wants to be his friend ‒

“We’ve all made mistakes.” Xie Lian extends a shaking hand. “So if you’ll have me, we can ‒ we can try again, Mu Qing.”

A moment.

Then two.

Then ‒

“I’m not calling you Xie Lian,” Mu Qing whispers. “I’m really not. Feng Xin would have a stroke.”

And maybe they’ll talk more, in the future, when all three of them are together. Maybe, maybe they’ll smooth out the jagged edges, so they don’t keep cutting themselves on them ‒ but for now, Xie Lian thinks, watching the faintest of smiles break out on Mu Qing’s face, this might be what forgiveness feels like.

-✩-

They spend a long while in the cellar.

“Dianxia,” Xie Lian hears, “You and Mu Qing are in one of Jun Wu’s temples?”

“No,” Mu Qing snaps, much too quickly, “Go back home, Feng Xin, you’re supposed to be in bed you stupid fucking piece of shit, go back ‒”

“Why are you two there of all places??” Feng Xin sounds slightly winded, as if he’s sprinting, “Did something happen while I was asleep? I mean. I don’t know how long I was sleeping for but ‒ but ‒ why are you two there?”

“Turn back,” Xie Lian rarely uses his commanding voice, but this seems to call for it ‒ he lets his shoulders rise with confidence, his chin tilt upwards, voice deepening ‒ “Feng Xin, turn back.”

It almost works. 

He can hear Feng Xin’s breath stutter in fear, his steps slowing. 

“Dianxia,” and Feng Xin sounds so hurt, so meek, “Did I do something wrong?”

His heart splinters in two. Feng Xin sounds as if he’s been kicked, voice trembling with insecurity ‒ it’s as if Xie Lian has kicked a puppy, Feng Xin’s tone almost identical to a dog’s whine. 

“You’ve only just recovered, idiot.” Mu Qing surprises him by speaking first, voice uncharacteristically soft. “It’s dangerous.”

Feng Xin’s steps begin to pick up again ‒ “I can handle dangerous,” and Xie Lian laughs softly with how Feng Xin sounds like a child, chest puffed out and ready to take on the impossible. “Which one of the temples are you at?”

They share a look, Mu Qing mouthing no.

“If we don’t tell him, he’ll search every one of these temples,” Xie Lian whispers. “It’s better if he  only goes to one than it is for him to go to every one of the what, twenty temples in the area?”

Mu Qing gives him a poisonous glare, crossing his arms so tightly across his chest that the fabric threatens to tear, but finally concedes. “Fine,” he snaps, voice strained, “But ‒ Feng Xin, if I see so much as one scratch on you, I’ll ‒ I’ll fucking kill you.”

And it’s so unlike Mu Qing to ‒ to be so ‒

“You really like Feng Xin, don’t you,” Xie Lian murmurs, almost to himself, and smiles when Mu Qing nearly hits his head on the wall with how badly he startles. “I never doubted it, but ‒ you’re being strangely …”

“Stop.”

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed by! Really!” Xie Lian scrambles to Mu Qing’s side, grabbing his hand in his own. “You can ask me anything you’d like, if you ‒ you need any advice, or something, since you know, I’m with San Lang.”

“I’d rather die.”

Xie Lian suppresses the urge to pinch Mu Qing’s cheeks. “Don’t be like that, San Lang really isn’t that bad …”

“I’m not talking about this with you.”

“... alright.”

Silence.

It’s best to let Mu Qing come to you, Xie Lian muses, like trying to befriend a particularly prickly cat ‒ don’t force it to do anything, just open your palm and turn away, shoulders relaxed so that it deems you friendly.

And sure enough, it works.

“... he didn’t think I’d be there for him,” Mu Qing mumbles under his breath, just barely audible. “I don’t ‒ I don’t know how to ‒ I’m not good at this.”

His heart twists.

Xie Lian leans back against the wall, thinking very carefully about what he’s going to say.

“You don’t have to be perfect,” he settles on. “Nobody can be perfect. You don’t have to change anything, either ‒ you’ve been yourself for the last eight-hundred years, and Feng Xin hasn’t left you yet, has he? The only advice I have,” and here he thinks about opportunities wasted, of so many missed chances, “No one is truly immortal.”

He doesn’t have to elaborate. Mu Qing stares at his own hands, breath hitching slightly.

“You love him,” Xie Lian says.

Mu Qing doesn’t respond. 

(That’s a clear yes.)

“You love him,” Xie Lian clasps a hand over his mouth, heart swelling in his chest because while he didn’t think Mu Qing didn’t love Feng Xin, he also didn’t expect him to actually admit it. “Mu Qing, you love him.”

“Don’t say it again, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Mu Qing is a violent shade of red. “I don’t know, I just don’t know! I don’t want him to be so stupid. I don’t understand why he doesn’t think I’d stay, have I not made it clear to him? How much I lo ‒ how much I care about his stupid face?”

Xie Lian winces. “I’m sure he knows, it’s just ‒ you two were arguing, before.”

“So?” Mu Qing glares at him, face drawn with unhappiness. “He should know that I ‒ I wouldn’t leave him, not over some dumb argument. I’m here with you right now, aren’t I?”

Hm.

(He has known these generals for his entire life. He knows Feng Xin’s temperament, honest to a fault, and how Feng Xin understands best when things are told to him with nothing but the truth, almost a direct contrast to how Mu Qing talks behind a wall of sarcasm, of things he doesn’t really mean ‒ and yeah, Xie Lian can see how their communication breakdown happens time and time again.)

“You know how Feng Xin is,” Xie Lian says haltingly. “He’s kind of. He’s. He’s the type of person who doesn’t get something until you beat him over the head with it.”

Mu Qing snickers wetly.

“It might be … difficult, to tell him what you mean, but I’m sure he’d appreciate your efforts.” Xie Lian puts a tentative hand on Mu Qing’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “None of us are truly immortal, so ‒ so live in this moment, don’t take it for granted.”

They sit in a comfortable quiet.

And then ‒ the chamber rumbles, the clattering of iron boots against stone tile echoing throughout the chamber, drawn to the entrance ‒ there’s a surprised cry of “What the fuck?” and both of them stiffen because that’s ‒

“There he is,” Xie Lian can’t hide the relief in his voice. 

“I’m going to kill him,” Mu Qing snaps, lunging to the door and yanking on it with renewed vigor, “FENG XIN YOU DUMB FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!”

“I’m here to save you and this is the thanks I get??” The sound of an array being shattered from the outside ‒ the door unlocks, Feng Xin reaching down and pulling Mu Qing up, grabbing Xie Lian without a moment of pause. “Hurry, I didn’t think this through when I got here, run!”

Feng Xin ‒ he doesn’t even have a bow, Xie Lian realizes with horror. He’s just ‒ using what looks like a kitchen knife to slice at these spirits, a fucking kitchen knife ‒

“So, answer my question ‒ what are you two doing here?” Feng Xin dashes after them, pulling another kitchen knife out of his robes, what looks like a butcher’s cleaver, “I ‒ what are you two ‒”

“Well, what are you doing out of bed?” Mu Qing shouts back, sprinting down the hall with his chin held high, stepping seamlessly into a steady rhythm alongside Feng Xin, their teamwork fluid and perfect. “Didn’t Pei Ming tell you to stay?”

Feng Xin swivels on his heel, bringing his cleaver back behind his head and then throwing it with enough strength to stab straight through one of the helmets, the array scrawled on the inside shattering from the impact. “I woke up and no one was there, what the fuck should I have done?”

“Go back to sleep??”

Their easy banter soothes the ache in Xie Lian’s chest.

“We have to run,” Xie Lian darts in between them, smiling uncontrollably. “Does anybody know the way back to the entrance?”

Feng Xin fixes him with an incredulous stare. “What do you mean? We don’t have to run, I can ‒”

“Ruoye isn’t hard enough to scratch the arrays on the helmets,” Xie Lian explains, the white silk curling protectively over his chest. “And Mu Qing can’t risk slicing into the helmets with his sabre ‒ Jun Wu’s armors are really strong, there’s a chance his sabre will break ‒ and you don’t have a bow.”

“Then,” Feng Xin wrests a random bow off of the wall beside them, testing it in his (gloved, Feng Xin isn’t dumb enough to touch one of these things without protection) fingers.

(Xie Lian watches with bated breath, noting the curve and the tension of the string, and Mu Qing scoffs ‒ “He’s not going to like it.”)

Sure enough, Feng Xin’s face twists into a grimace, but he brings it up to his shoulder anyway, freezing in place as he aims ‒ “Fuck,” Xie Lian hears faintly, Feng Xin struggling with the grip. “Dammit ‒”

An arrow flies past the armor, a hair away from one of the floating helmets, and Feng Xin shouts a “Fuck! Fuck this! Fuck you!” before trying again.

Xie Lian watches ‒ it’s always impressive, he notes, to see the careful adjustments Feng Xin makes to his right hand, testing the tension of the bowstring, similarly making tiny changes to his posture as he aims, clearly unused to the short bow in his hands but still making an effort to aim. It really says something about his talent, to be able to adapt to a completely different weapon in such a short amount of time.

An arrow streaks straight into the inside of the helmet, breaking the array, and the armor falls to the floor, motionless.

“Got it!” Feng Xin smiles, radiant ‒ beside him, Mu Qing melts, his face softening into something like a sappy fondness, eyes only for the beaming smile on Feng Xin’s face. 

In a flurry of arrows, the rest of the armor sets fall to the floor, the sound of metal clanging on the stone almost deafening. Feng Xin turns back to them, still with that brilliant smile on his face, hands proudly planted on his hips (beside Xie Lian, Mu Qing's breath stutters, a barely noticeable hitch) and calls, “Did you see that?”

“Very impressive,” Xie Lian says easily.

“It’s whatever, I guess,” Mu Qing spits, face an inelegant pink.

With the threat of certain injury gone, they relax somewhat, but still hurry to leave ‒ the tapestries lining the walls look a bit too realistic for his liking, and none of them want to stay in Jun Wu’s temple for longer than necessary. They wander throughout the hallways, looking for the exit.

“So!” Feng Xin gives them both a once-over, reaching up to brush the hair out of his face as they walk. “If you two wanted a tour of the Southeast, I would have been glad to give it to you. What were you two doing here, anyway?”

“Uh.” Xie Lian turns to Mu Qing, worrying at his lip. “We. Uh. You see, uh.”

“We accidentally broke into this temple,” Mu Qing says, at the same time that Xie Lian blurts out a “We got lost.”

Feng Xin tilts his head, brow furrowed, and then scoffs. “Whatever. Hide your reasons, I don’t care, as long as you two are safe. Come, I’ll take you back to my palace ‒ are any of you two injured?”

“No,” Xie Lian feels as though he’s in a dream, talking to Feng Xin after three long months. “But ‒ uh ‒ wow, look at that bow.”

The bow they came for lies on the floor, glimmering beneath a thin layer of rubble.

“Oh,” and Mu Qing starts forwards, pushing Feng Xin along. “Yes, look. A bow.”

“Yeah, look at it, doesn’t it seem nice?” Xie Lian brushes the remains of the temple’s ceiling off of the bow, careful not to touch it in case it does have some strange curse on it. “Feng Xin, you don’t have a bow right now, could you give me your opinion on ‒ on this?”

Feng Xin gives them both a bewildered look, before crouching down and inspecting it.

“It’s very well-made,” he says slowly. “Balanced almost perfectly ‒ the string could be a little tighter, but that’s just my preference. Nice color on it, too.” They watch as Feng Xin slides a gloved finger over the limbs of polished marble, rubbing the string between his fingers, staring at it with something like longing on his face, before turning away with a clipped “Let’s go.”

Xie Lian coughs. “So you … won’t take the bow?” 

“It’s Jun Wu’s,” Feng Xin says blankly. “I’m not stealing from a fallen god.”

The one factor they all forgot to take into account ‒ Feng Xin’s stupid, inconvenient moral compass.

They’ve done all this for nothing.

“Fuck,” Mu Qing mutters.

-✩-

“We don’t have anything,” Xie Lian’s head is flat on the table, where he knocks it against the wood in a steady rhythm. “We did all that ‒ we broke into a temple, stole a bow, and ‒ and he won’t even take it.”

Mu Qing downs a glass of wine in one gulp. “Yeah.”

They sit, surrounded by a cloud of misery.

After they had arrived back at the Heavens, Feng Xin had checked them both over, the easy atmosphere vanishing after they left the temple ‒ there were so many words left unsaid, Feng Xin looking as if he wanted to apologize for their argument all those months ago, but then Ling Wen had demanded them to give her an explanation on what the fuck had happened in the temple.

(By the time Mu Qing and Xie Lian had finished their briefing, Feng Xin had already left.)

Pei Ming walks by, looking at them with a vague kind of concern. “What are you two so upset about?”

“We broke into Jun Wu’s temple and stole this bow,” Mu Qing pushes the bow of pure alabaster across the table, sighing at how the light ripples over its surface and makes it shimmer with the sunlight. “But Feng Xin isn’t going to take it.”

“Ah.” Pei Ming leans over, smoothing his thumb over the surface. 

(“Don’t fucking touch it?? What if you get cursed??”

“If it was cursed, then ‒ why the fuck would you want to gift it to Feng Xin in the first place? Are you two stupid? What screams ‘very thoughtful gift!’ more than a potentially cursed bow?!”

“We were going to check afterwards!!”)

“It’s gorgeous, you two really have good taste.” Pei Ming completely ignores him, his fingers dancing over the grip, a wistful smile on his face. “It kind of reminds me of the Love God’s Bow, to be honest. I’ve never used it, because obviously I’m not that great with a bow, but ‒”

No way.

There is no fucking way Mu Qing just heard that right.

“Are you fucking serious?” His fingers itch to wrap around Pei Ming’s stupid neck and squeeze. “We went on that trip, almost got killed by Jun Wu’s stupid defenses, actually did get trapped in one of his stupid anti-theft arrays, only for you to tell us that you had a bow the entire time?”

“Oh.” Pei Ming doesn’t look nearly as sorry as he should be. “Well. I just remembered.”

He shrugs ‒ shrugs! The fucking audacity! ‒ and gestures for Mu Qing to follow him.

At least the bow is beautiful, Mu Qing admits grudgingly. A beautiful gold, intricate carvings running up both of the limbs ‒ a string of pure moonlight, a rich red tassel that almost sweeps the floor, jewels of every color beaded on the thread ‒ absolutely gorgeous, but it doesn’t seem ‒ right, somehow.

“What is it missing?” Xie Lian seems to hold the same sentiment, squinting at the ‒ blinding ‒ surface of the bow. “I somehow can’t imagine Feng Xin using this.”

Mu Qing leans forwards and wipes a thumb over the grip. “It’s the perfect shape, it’s just … tacky.”

They stare at it some more, long enough for the sun to peek over the windowsill, golden light flooding the room and making them both wince with how it reflects across the bow’s surface, so fucking bright ‒ “My eyes!” Mu Qing yelps, both hands coming up to shield his vision, “Holy fuck, we can’t give that to him ‒”

“Cover it, cover it!!” Xie Lian dives across the table, yanking the curtains off of the bar and throwing them over the bow ‒ he has to blink several times for his eyes to readjust to the low light. 

“Forget using it to shoot, he could blind his enemies with that thing,” Mu Qing spits, glaring at the sad pile of cloth. “Why do I ever think Pei Ming has a solution? He never does.”

Pei Ming crosses his arms, scoffing at the both of them. “It’s elegant, you two just have bad taste.”

“We could. Paint over the bow, or something.” Xie Lian, ever the problem-solver. “Surely it wouldn’t be as bad if it were less … shiny.”

And so they spend the rest of their morning tarnishing the gold, dulling it to a more acceptable bronze color that isn’t so hard on the eyes. Pei Ming complains the entire way, but reluctantly helps, spraying perfumed oils on the bow and watching in dismay as the gold fades into copper.

Similarly, Pei Ming lets out a strangled “What the fuck are you doing?!” when Xie Lian begins prying the jewels out of their places.

“Aren’t they tacky? I thought we were getting rid of the tacky parts?”

Xie Lian pulls another diamond from the surface, and Pei Ming makes a sound as if he’s in physical pain.

“They’re part of the bow!!” Pei Ming collects the jewels, clutching them close to his chest, looking scandalized. “They’re literally part of the bow, there are arrays in them, to help the user in battle ‒ put them back in!!”

“Calm down,” Mu Qing mumbles, bored. “Dianxia, just draw the arrays back on.”

The bow ends up looking slightly lopsided, the top limb encrusted with pale jewels and the bottom limb covered with Xie Lian’s handwriting, various characters winding up until they stop right before the grip ‒ but even for all of its lopsided-ness, it looks surprisingly good for the two shichen patch-up job they just completed.

“I’m done,” Pei Ming announces with a huff, tossing the handful of diamonds that they ripped out over his shoulder. “Tell him I helped.”

They stare at the bow for a little longer. It really does look nice.

Xie Lian pretends not to watch as Mu Qing carefully unclips the red tassel from the bow, replacing it with a handwoven charm of sage green ‒ one that looks suspiciously similar to the one hanging from Mu Qing’s own sabre.

(Wisely, none of them comment on it, although Pei Ming shoots Xie Lian a knowing smile.

“Your boy’s got it bad, huh,” Pei Ming murmurs under his breath, and well. Isn’t that the truth.)

-✩-

summer: rising 

(i fucking missed you)

Does Feng Xin go to Xie Lian’s cottage for the Dragon Boat Festival, or does he go to Mu Qing’s palace?

He doesn’t want to have to choose, but if they won’t celebrate together, the reality of the matter is that he’s going to have to make a decision. Xie Lian will probably be with Hua Cheng, so maybe Mu Qing will ‒

But does he even want to celebrate with him?

While they aren’t fresh off of their fight, all those months ago, neither of them have apologized yet, either. And ‒ and ‒ Feng Xin would apologize, but what if Mu Qing is still secretly angry? Then he would ruin the festival for both of them.

Best not to risk anything.

Feng Xin retreats to his palace, glumly closing the door.

He can’t even join in the godly festivities ‒ Pei Ming won’t let him anywhere near the river, so he can’t participate in the official Dragon Boat Race. It’s not like he wanted to, but still.

The only other thing left to do is make zongzi, but he’s never been good at it. Mu Qing had always made fun of him for the way he filled them, to the brim with rice and shreds of meat ‒ when they were steamed, they would break apart, and Mu Qing would always laugh at him for a good while before giving him one of his own.

(Those ones were always the best.)

“How pathetic,” he says aloud.

Nobody answers. He’s suddenly struck with how much he wishes Mu Qing were here, if only to say something snappy like “You just noticed?”

He haltingly opens cupboards, taking a string of cured pork from the rack, taking a sheaf of leaves from the shelf, carefully preparing his working space. His steamer is filthy with dust and he stops everything to clean it out. 

Then he sees the fireplace is strangely dirty, filled with ash, and of course Feng Xin has to clean that out too ‒ then the cutting board, a thin film of dirt ‒ then the countertops, then ‒

He’s stalling, looking tentatively out the window every couple of moments, hoping desperately to see ‒

“Don’t,” Feng Xin mumbles to himself, rinsing his hands off forlornly. “They’re not coming.”

The zongzi won’t make themselves.

He digs into the deepest recesses of one of his shelves, feeling around for a cloth bag, pulling it out with a triumphant huff. It’s nearly empty, only enough rice for a couple of zongzi, but well. It’s better than nothing. He’s not sure if he would even eat that many, with the way his stomach is curling in on itself with despair.

(Mu Qing isn’t coming. Xie Lian isn’t, either.)

His fingers shake from where they hold the leaf, holding it in a triangular shape ‒ his fingers won’t stop shaking, and with horror, Feng Xin realizes ‒

“Don’t cry, don’t cry,” he says firmly, trying to ignore the way his vision is blurring, “Don’t cry, don’t cry, you pathetic ‒ don’t cry, why would you even cry, there’s nothing to be sad about, don’t cry ‒” 

He sniffles, shoveling rice into the leaf, slipping bits of meat in as well, “Stop it,” he hisses to himself, “Stop it, you’re so stupid, don’t cry ‒”

Feng Xin grabs a length of string, haphazardly tying the zongzi in place, tears beginning to blur at the corners of his eyes, dripping onto the backs of his hands and shocking him with their warmth. “Pathetic,” he pauses to take a deep breath, steadying his trembling hands. “You’re pathetic, just ‒ don’t cry, don’t cry.”

The zongzi falls apart in his fingers.

It’s like his friendship with Mu Qing and Xie Lian, he thinks dumbly. He’s tied the rope too tight, and it’s burst.

He begins to sob, his back hitting the wall and sliding down ‒ he rocks back and forth on his heels, cradling the mess of a zongzi in his hands ‒ it’s not his first festival alone, but for some reason it’s ‒ it’s ‒

“Do you think he’s inside?”

His fingers are covered with rice and grease, and he just cries harder when he feels the disgusting texture of oil on his palms ‒ he aches with how lonely he feels, the three months suddenly hitting him in full force. He’s lonely, and Feng Xin ‒ Feng Xin ‒ he’s so fucking lonely.

“You knock. I’m not fucking knocking.”

The tears fall hot and heavy into his lap, where he buries his face into his knees ‒ he’s so lonely. What is three months, compared to eight hundred years? Maybe he’s just clingy. Or a crybaby.

“Fine! Okay. Uh.”

He had thought, after the whole Jun Wu’s temple thing, that they would be okay, but then Ling Wen had dragged them off to explain themselves, and he had waited for them to come back so he could apologize ‒ but then Pei Ming had told him to go, and suffice to say, the apology didn’t happen.

What a sad sight he makes. General Nan Yang, protector of the Southeast, a cardinal Martial God, curled up on the floor in a puddle of his own tears.

(Pathetic.)

A knock at the door.

Feng Xin scrambles to his feet, swiping roughly at his face with his sleeves, still cupping his failed attempt at wrapping a zongzi in his hands ‒ an unsteady hope is rising to his chest, ballooning outwards and filling the pit of his stomach with warmth ‒ are they ‒

He uses his foot to push the door open, and ‒ “Oh, it’s ‒ oh,” Feng Xin says, and he can’t quite believe his own eyes. “Oh. You’re here.”

(Maybe he’s not so pathetic, after all.)

“Were you making zongzi?” Mu Qing eyes his disgusting, wet rice-covered hands, and snorts. “Did you ruin them already? You should’ve waited for us.”

Feng Xin bites his lip, a fresh set of tears threatening to spill from his eyes, and dammit his hands aren’t clean enough to cover his face so he just stands there ‒ like a fool ‒ as he bursts into tears.

He hiccups, water streaming down his face, and it’s humiliating but he can’t turn away ‒ both Mu Qing and Xie Lian stand in his hallway, staring at him with horror in their gazes, before turning to each other and ‒ there’s no other word for it ‒ panicking.

“Apologize!!” Xie Lian smacks Mu Qing over the shoulder, waving his hands uselessly, “Feng Xin, he didn’t mean it, I’m sure he didn’t mean it ‒”

“I didn’t mean it,” Mu Qing agrees, voice unsteady and thin with panic, reaching towards him and hesitating, “I really didn’t mean it, Feng Xin, don’t cry, I didn’t ‒ I really didn’t mean anything by it ‒”

That just makes him cry harder. 

He turns, dropping his zongzi to the counter and rinses off his hands in the basin, bringing them to his face and covering his eyes helplessly ‒ it’s so humiliating, so fucking humiliating but he can’t stop, waves of relief crashing through his chest because they’re here, he’s not spending this festival alone ‒

“What did you do??” Xie Lian sounds aghast, “What ‒”

“I don’t know! I don’t ‒ Feng Xin, don’t cry, what the fuck are you crying about, I didn’t mean it, your zongzi aren’t that bad ‒”

“I’m not crying,” Feng Xin snaps wetly, resolutely not facing them. “Just ‒ just ‒ come in.”

He can feel their incredulous stares on his back, and he wipes the last of his tears on his sleeve, inhaling shakily. “I don’t have enough ‒ enough rice for everyone,” he sniffles, blinking rapidly. “So. I just. Come in.”

“I can go get the rice,” Mu Qing says, much too quickly, before fairly dashing out of the palace, face drawn in confusion.

The palace is quiet.

“Here, let me,” Xie Lian’s voice is filled with a tender kindness, gentle hands coming up to his back and guiding him to a seat. “I’m not the best cook, but I can try to ‒”

“No.”

Feng Xin pushes him back, scrubbing the tear-tracks from his cheeks. “I’ve got this, Dianxia.”

They stand in an awkward silence, Feng Xin tossing the misshapen zongzi in the trash ‒ it’s beyond saving ‒ and beginning to ready his workstation to create some new ones, fingers shaking with relief. They’re here.

His hands won’t stop shaking.

“Dianxia,” he whispers, biting his lip to try and keep himself from crying again, “You ‒ you’re here.”

“Why wouldn’t we be?” Xie Lian tilts his head in confusion. “We always spend this festival together. Why would it be any different this year?”

He might cry.

Feng Xin inhales, shuddery and wet, and resolutely turns back to the bowl of shredded meat in front of him. “That’s good.”

Thankfully, Xie Lian doesn’t press him any further, instead silently coming up to his side and using a towel to wipe down the damp steamer. They work in an uncomfortable silence, something like guilt hovering over both of their heads ‒ Feng Xin desperately wants to apologize, but would it be appropriate to bring up the argument on a day like this? But along the same vein, it’s impossible not to bring it up.

“I’m back,” a voice sounds, and ‒

Mu Qing holds a bag of rice.

It strikes him then, a wave of nostalgia rising to his throat and choking him ‒ because ‒

“Set the rice down,” Feng Xin says, voice thick with an emotion he can’t quite name. “Just ‒ just put it down.”

And they all go still.

“Ah.” Mu Qing quietly puts the bag on the table.

A silence.

“I’m sorry,” and Feng Xin is dangerously close to tears again, voice already hitching unsteadily, “I shouldn’t have ‒ it wasn’t ‒ I’m sorry,” all of these memories come up to the surface, from all those years ago. “Mu Qing, I’m sorry.”

“What are you talking about?” Mu Qing looks at him with an incredulous stare, “I’m the one who should apologize. We wouldn’t have fought if it weren’t for me.”

“You were only telling me what I needed to hear.” His eyes burn. “I really did fail you. I ‒ I should have given you a chance to explain. And ‒ and ‒ Mu Qing,” he says helplessly, wrapping his arms around his own ribs, sucking in a harsh breath, “I’m so sorry ‒ Dianxia, I’m so fucking sorry ‒ I left, and I regret it every single day ‒”

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” Mu Qing hisses ‒ 

“I failed you, and ‒”

“You didn’t fucking fail me, I left first ‒”

“Your mother needed you while I ‒ the only people who needed me were Dianxia and his family, but I left ‒”

“Well, you didn’t fail ‒”

“I did! I left!”

“Feng Xin, you didn’t fail ‒!”

“Both of you!” and Xie Lian stops them both, putting a strong hand on both of their shoulders, “You all need to calm down, and then speak. And ‒ and you guys are fighting over who was in the wrong, and it was me.”

A pause.

“Dianxia!” They both shout at the same time, “You didn’t ‒”

“Let me speak.”

And Xie Lian, kind, noble Xie Lian, dips into a bow. “That was a difficult time for all of us,” Xie Lian murmurs, “Mu Qing had to leave, to take care of his family, and it was unfair of me to expect him to stay ‒ and Feng Xin, you ‒ you did so much for me, and I shouldn’t have forced you to stay, either. And I know that both of you were hurt from my decisions, and I take ‒ I take full responsibility.”

“Dianxia ‒”

“You ‒”

“None of us should be blaming each other,” Xie Lian continues. “It’s all in the past, and we can only learn from our mistakes. We’re not who we once were, none of us are, so ‒ so let’s make this a festival to remember, a fresh start!”

Xie Lian pushes them all into the kitchen, where he shoves all their materials onto the countertops, making a makeshift sort-of assembly line. “Look to the future,” he smiles, the same, kind smile of their youth, “Let’s make some zongzi, everyone!”

And ‒

“Dianxia,” Feng Xin isn’t crying but it’s so fucking close. “I’m sorry.”

“Feng Xin! What did I just say?”

“I’m sorry too,” Mu Qing mumbles. “I know that we’ve changed, but I’m. I’m still sorry.”

Xie Lian gapes at both of them. “I just ‒ come on, let’s forget about all of that, okay? Zongzi, anyone? I can’t make these all by myself, come on …”

The palace is silent, just long enough for Xie Lian to fidget under the intensity of both of their stares ‒ Feng Xin swallows heavily, picking up one of the leaves on the counter and slowly beginning to wrap it into a triangle shape, mumbling a quiet “Alright.”

-✩-

The zongzi are okay.

Feng Xin’s are lopsided, while Xie Lian’s are a mangled, charred mess from where they fell out of the steamer and into the fireplace. Mu Qing’s look perfect, as always.

So if they take the average of all of their work, their product is somewhere in the middle ‒ just okay.

The atmosphere is still a little awkward, because can they really just sweep eight centuries of misunderstandings, pain and misery, can they just sweep those under the carpet? Xie Lian is obviously trying, and Mu Qing seems to be okay with it ‒ it’s just Feng Xin who stays behind, holding onto the guilt of eight-hundred years.

He takes a bite of Mu Qing’s zongzi.

It tastes like home.

It tastes like ‒ like home.

“How is it?” and Mu Qing looks as if he’s trying not to care, side-eyeing him and his reaction, “Better than yours, wouldn’t you say?”

Feng Xin swallows.

Then he bursts into tears.

There’s a moment of silence ‒ both Mu Qing and Xie Lian have identical looks of shock, staring at him with alarm ‒

“Why the fuck are you crying?!” Mu Qing grabs him by the face, pulling him close, “Stop it!! Why do you keep crying?? What am I doing wrong?? I call your zongzi bad, you cry ‒ and I admit that was my fault but then I make you the best fucking zongzi in the entirety of the Heavens, and you still cry ‒ what the fuck do you want from me??”

Feng Xin sobs, dropping the zongzi back onto his plate. “I’m sorry, I can’t ‒ I just ‒”

“Stop crying! Your crying makes me sick! Stop crying!” Mu Qing shakes him none too gently, clearly upset. “This is supposed to be a happy festival, stop crying!”

“Give him a little bit of space,” Xie Lian says softly.

He slaps a hand over his mouth to muffle his cries, but he doesn’t turn away from them. The embarrassment curls in his stomach, but ‒ but gods, they’re here, and it feels like home, that elusive feeling he hasn’t felt in centuries ‒ home.

“I missed you two,” and he can’t stop sobbing, tears dripping from his chin and into his lap, no matter how quickly he wipes them away, “I missed you, I missed you, I fucking missed you two so much and the last three months were the worst of my life because I knew you both were here but you just didn’t want to talk to me and I never want to do that again ‒”

“Breathe, Feng Xin,” Xie Lian comes over to his side, “Just take a breath.”

“‒ and I didn’t think you hated me but I was just so scared,” Feng Xin curls in on himself, hunching over to make himself seem smaller. “And I don’t hate you two at all, I ‒ I ‒ I was just being stupid, I really missed you ‒”

Xie Lian inhales shakily, his eyes also beginning to water. “Feng Xin …”

“Oh, no ‒ don’t start crying too.” Mu Qing’s voice is filled with frustration. “If you start crying, then ‒”

And Xie Lian begins to cry as well, throwing his arms around the both of them, squeezing them tighter and tighter until they’re all a tangled mess of limbs and hair ‒ “Your fingers are in my mouth,” Feng Xin whispers tearfully ‒ “Stop whining,” Mu Qing shoots back, the bite to his words muted and nowhere as sharp as his usual tone ‒ “I missed you both,” Xie Lian murmurs, words muffled by somebody’s shoulder, and they all fall quiet.

“I missed you too,” Mu Qing mutters after a beat of silence, almost reluctantly, and Feng Xin begins to wail.

“Mu Qing!” and Feng Xin throws himself at the front of Mu Qing’s robes, fisting his fingers into the neatly ironed fabric and pulling, burying his tear-stained face into his shoulder and beginning to sob anew. “I didn’t think I could miss your stupid face and your stupid ‒ your stupid everything but I did ‒”

“Get off of me ‒”

“‒ and I thought ‒ and when I saw you again in the Heavens I was just so glad you were okay but you didn’t look like you cared and I was just so angry at you but I missed you so much,” Feng Xin is almost incoherent with his cries, heaving great gasping breaths while forcing out words as if he’ll die if he doesn’t get them out. “I missed you, I missed both of ‒ both of you so fucking much, I ‒”

He lapses into another fit of tears, pulling his hands back and wiping at his face with them, continuing to sob.

Mu Qing casts a furtive glance at Xie Lian, almost as if asking permission, and then tentatively crouches down in front of Feng Xin’s ‒ admittedly pathetic ‒ figure.

“What a crybaby,” Mu Qing mutters quietly, reaching out and taking Feng Xin’s face in his hands, one hand smoothing the bangs away from his cheeks and the other tilting his chin upwards. “Stop it.”

“Mu Qing,” Feng Xin breathes, voice fragile and trembling, “I missed you.”

A moment of silence, where Mu Qing leans forwards and uses his thumbs to swipe at the tears dripping down Feng Xin’s features. “I missed you too.”

And Feng Xin makes a strangled noise, tears continuing to stream down his face, and he leaps at Mu Qing and bowls them both over ‒ “You’re heavy,” Mu Qing complains, but his hands come up to steady him, automatically moving to the small of his back.

“I missed you,”  Feng Xin repeats desperately, “I missed you, I’m so sorry for what I said ‒”

“Shut up.”

“I really am, I’m really sorry ‒”

“If you apologize one more time, I’m going to ‒”

Feng Xin laughs wetly, hands coming up around Mu Qing’s back to hug him tight. “What are you going to do? Punch me? Go ahead, Dianxia won’t let you.”

And ‒ and ‒

“None of us are immortal,” Xie Lian mumbles, cryptically (and also fucking wrong, the entire point of being a god is to be immortal, the fuck??) and Mu Qing seems to make a decision, taking a deep breath as if to steel his nerves. 

“Come here, Feng Xin.”

Xie Lian’s eyes are shining ‒ “I’m going to go get his gift,” Xie Lian blurts, giving Mu Qing a sly wink, “I’ll be right back, okay? Uh. Yes. I’ll be right back. So. Uh. Good luck.”

???

Feng Xin blinks dumbly.

Cool fingers come up to his jaw, cradling his chin with an almost impossible gentleness ‒ a hand finds its way to the back of his head, carding through his hair and loosening his bun, and ‒ and ‒ Feng Xin isn’t dumb, he knows exactly what Mu Qing is about to do.

“Mu Qing,” he breathes, feeling his heart skip a beat, “You ‒ I ‒ oh.”

Tears rise to his eyes again, and he tilts his head up slightly, trying to keep the tears from falling because if he cries right now, Mu Qing will undoubtedly take it the wrong way. His breath comes faster and faster, and he inhales sharply ‒ shaking with the effort it takes to stop himself from crying, but ultimately ‒

He hiccups, sure that Mu Qing will change his mind about kissing him. “I’m sorry, I just ‒” he squeezes his eyes shut, fresh tears beginning to roll down his face. “I’m sorry, I’ve just really ‒ really wanted this for a while.”

“You’re such a crybaby,” Mu Qing murmurs fondly ‒ fondly??

Feng Xin’s eyes snap open in surprise, a sharp reply on the tip of his tongue, and then Mu Qing tips forwards and slots their lips together.

And ‒ it’s nothing like he’s ever ‒ it’s ‒ 

Wet, he supposes. He’s been crying for a while now, and is this how he wants his first kiss with Mu Qing to go?

(He doesn’t have a choice, Mu Qing reverently wiping his tears away with barely-shaking hands, a gentle pressure against his lips ‒ Feng Xin shudders, unused to this tenderness, unused to getting what he wants.) 

Cute, he thinks. Mu Qing hesitates, as if unsure of where to go from here, after the first contact ‒ Mu Qing doesn’t know how to kiss, he’s never kissed anyone before, probably hasn’t ever held anybody’s hand ‒ and Feng Xin’s heart swells with an unbearable fondness, for this stupid god who is trying so hard for him. Him, of all people.

It’s almost comical, how focused Mu Qing looks ‒ Feng Xin laughs into the kiss, wrapping his legs around Mu Qing’s slender waist and squeezing him tighter, so that he can’t run away when he says “You suck at kissing.” 

Mu Qing lets out an offended squawk, but Feng Xin pulls him back before he can really try and leave.

“Oh, fuck you,” Mu Qing snaps, but a soft affection fills his gaze. “There, you aren’t crying anymore.”

“Was that all that was? A trick to stop me from crying?” Feng Xin licks his lips a bit self-consciously, a feeling of satisfaction curling in his gut when Mu Qing’s eyes follow the movement. “It worked, so do it again.”

Mu Qing scoffs, a lovely pink dusting his cheeks, and ‒ and Feng Xin really doesn’t expect him to do it, he was just teasing, but Mu Qing grabs him by the jaw and pulls him in ‒

When they were mortal, Feng Xin always burned with jealousy whenever Mu Qing picked up a new skill. Mu Qing always learned quickly, and became better than him at almost everything he tried ‒ there had been a couple of nerve-wracking years where Feng Xin was absolutely terrified that Mu Qing would become a better archer than him.

(It didn’t happen. Feng Xin is safe with his title of the best archer within their group.)

But this, he thinks deliriously, Mu Qing’s tongue swiping at his bottom lip, growing bolder by the second, this might not be so bad.

He shivers, digging his fingers into the nape of Mu Qing’s neck, opening his mouth to speak ‒ hey, wasn’t Dianxia supposed to ‒ and Mu Qing pounces, licking into his mouth and biting, a sharp nip that sends his train of thought into a tailspin.

“Hey,” Feng Xin protests weakly, panting, “You ‒”

It’s almost as if Mu Qing is trying to make up for all those centuries in which they haven’t been kissing. It’s impossible to think regular thoughts when ‒ when Mu Qing is right there, silver hair and dark eyes, staring right at him, staring right at Feng Xin. He realizes, with a start, that he wants those eyes on him, wants Mu Qing to keep looking at him like that ‒

Feng Xin melts. ”Mu Qing,” he breathes, eyes fluttering shut, “You’re here.”

The fingers on his jaw tighten.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mu Qing snaps fiercely, voice suddenly sharp and serious, “Feng Xin ‒ General Nan Yang ‒ no matter what happens, I will never leave your side.”

The words set his face aflame, because how can he say that, how can Mu Qing, the one who couldn’t even say friends without stuttering, how can he say ‒ that ‒ with a straight face? An involuntary noise leaves his throat, a strangled mix between a gasp and an embarrassed whine, and Feng Xin ‒

“How can you say that?” His voice, a trembling thing, sounds so weak. “You ‒ you ‒ how can you say ‒”

“I have never once doubted your devotion,” and Mu Qing pulls him closer, staring straight into his eyes with a gaze filled with fire. “I have never once doubted your devotion, to Dianxia, to me, so show me the same respect. Feng Xin, I will never leave your fucking side.”

Feng Xin chokes on whatever he was about to say.

“I love you,” his heart can’t take this, Mu Qing staring at him with earnest eyes, with a flush high on his cheekbones but staring directly at him with determination ‒ “I love you.”

Holy fuck.

“Mu Qing,” Feng Xin grabs Mu Qing by the collar and hauls him back in, crushing their lips together in a messy kiss, heart overflowing with warmth that floods his chest with delight, “You love me, you really love me ‒ you ‒ Mu Qing.”

A laugh bubbles from his throat, and he isn’t quite crying but his eyes certainly aren’t dry either. “I love you, Mu Qing, I love you ‒”

He kisses him harder, still laughing loud and clear, unable to contain the joy within his ribcage, and Mu Qing surges up to meet him, closer and closer until he can’t think of anything else ‒ Mu Qing, in the flesh, beneath his fingertips, looking at him with a kind of expression he’s dreamed about for centuries ‒

“I love you,” Mu Qing quietly agrees, and nothing in the world could stop him from ‒

“Here’s your gift!”

They break apart, Feng Xin flushing a deep red. “Dianxia,” he croaks, biting his lip, “A gift? You really didn’t need to ‒”

His words die in his throat.

“Oh.” and Feng Xin raises trembling hands to his mouth, because how dare they be so fucking thoughtful, to bring him a new bow ‒ he hadn’t had the chance to visit the forge, and now he doesn’t have to.

The bow, a breathtaking bronze, speckled with little dots of ivory ‒ it gleams under the sunlight, jewels the color of spring’s first blooms lining the limbs, and it just feels right in his hands, as if he’s used it for years. As he lifts it, a green charm flutters in the air, and he knows that pattern, he’s seen it every time Mu Qing lifts his sabre ‒

It’s beautiful.

“Oh,” he whispers, carefully reaching out to touch the bow, “It’s ‒ it’s ‒”

It’s beautiful.

“If you start crying again, I’m going to kill you,” Mu Qing says blankly.

“I’m not, I’m not,” Feng Xin whispers, unconvincing even to his own ears. “It’s very. It’s very beautiful, so. Thank you.”

His eyes burn, and he clutches it close to his chest, trying to even out his breathing so he doesn’t cry for what, the third time of the day? Feng Xin combs his fingers through the green charm hanging from the bottom of the bow, a surge of gratitude and adoration overwhelming his fragile heart.

“So that’s why you were at Jun Wu’s temple,” he manages to say.

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t take the fucking bow,” Mu Qing mumbles into his shoulder, “We broke in and stole it for you, and you still wouldn’t take it.”

It’s a constant battle, trying to keep himself from crying from the thoughtfulness that went into the gift, Xie Lian’s handwriting scrawled up the side in bold, elegant strokes, Mu Qing’s handiwork hanging from the bottom ‒ who wouldn’t cry from this?

Feng Xin inhales, a shuddering breath, and the tears don’t surprise him.

“Thank you,” and he smiles helplessly, “Mu Qing, Dianxia ‒ thank you, for everything.”

“Oh, he’s crying again.” Mu Qing presses a soft kiss to his cheek, shifting the two of them around so that Feng Xin leans against his side, a steady hand on his shoulder pulling him close. “Honestly. Don’t you feel embarrassed, crying at the slightest of things? It’s just a bow ‒”

“It’s not just a bow,” Feng Xin snaps back wetly, twisting the bowstring between his fingers, “It’s a gift.”

A bright laugh ‒ Xie Lian sits across from them and watches with an immeasurable happiness in his gaze. “Don’t fight, you two.”

Feng Xin closes his eyes, surrounded by ‒ by family.

It feels like home.

-✩-

(but you’re here now, and isn’t that what matters?

i love you.)