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The first day after Xue Yang inserts the nails into Song Lan’s head, he washes his hair.
Song Lan’s hair is smooth beneath his hands. The strands are fine, the ends silkened by moisture.
“Clean,” Xue Yang croons. “You like that, don’t you, Song-daozhang?”
Song Lan doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak.
“Awww.”
Xue Yang laughs. Careful not to tangle the strands, he wraps a band around a lock of Song Lan’s hair. “Not even gonna thank me?”
When he lets go, Song Lan’s hair cascades across his shoulders. A droplet of water trickles down his neck and settles in the hollow of his collarbone. When Xue Yang touches him, his skin is cool, and smooth, and still.
Dead things are obedient, after all. Living things are hot and messy, with sensitivities and stupid ideals. Xue Yang had made sure to watch, savouring the sweetness of it, when the last nail slid into that channel that he’d drilled into Song Lan’s skull, and those eyes went perfectly blank. He’s confiscated Song Lan’s sword, too, and locked it in a cupboard with a talisman. Maybe he can have it back if he behaves.
“Hah.” Now, he slides his palms across Song Lan’s chest. It always gives him a thrill of satisfaction to feel the curve of musculature, the strength beneath Song Lan skin. Song Lan truly is his masterpiece. “Or do you think I’m dirtying you, Song-daozhang?”
A flash of inspiration strikes him.
He grabs Song Lan’s forearm and lifts his hand. Then, he presses Song Lan’s fingers against his own chest, which is still coated with the sweat and grime from the day’s work.
Song Lan doesn’t pull away, or move at all. He doesn’t speak. The smooth weight of his hand yields, docile, into Xue Yang’s grip.
Xue Yang focuses on it – on that mental cord that now binds Song Lan to him.
On all that power beneath his skin, leashed to Xue Yang’s grip.
"Mm.”
He lets go of Song Lan’s hand, smirks at him, and points to the bucket of water beside him. “Your turn, now.”
The fierce corpse gets to his feet. Song Lan lifts the bucket and approaches Xue Yang with his stiff walk and marble eyes. Then, he picks up the washcloth and holds it to Xue Yang’s shoulders.
“That’s right,” Xue Yang croons. “You can thank me like this, Song-daozhang.”
The water is cool and clean, just like Song Lan’s fingers. Xue Yang doesn’t quite remember the last time he’s taken a bath, and it feels so good that he lets out a sigh.
Song Lan’s hands work mechanically, alternating between rinsing the washcloth and reapplying it to Xue Yang’s body. Amidst the steady rhythm, Xue Yang’s eyes drift close.
His head hurts. Like this, with his eyes closed, he can feel it again. His head’s been hurting since some time yesterday, when he made all the upgrades he could think of to a blood resurrection ritual and still Xiao Xingchen continued to lie there as though he didn’t exist. That shit’s getting fucking exhausting, lately. Sometimes he’s so tired his whole body hurts.
When he lets go of Song Lan’s hand, it continues its motion, following the easy command issued by his mind. Scrub, wipe, rinse. Across his chest, around to his back. Not the slightest flinch away from the dirt on Xue Yang’s body, from his skin.
Dead things are obedient.
Xue Yang prefers them that way.
He doesn’t know when he drifts off to sleep. The water splashes by his shoulder in a steady rhythm. The hand against his skin stays cool.
The presence beside him is heavier than Xiao Xingchen’s, and darker. It thrums with a steady power, leashed to Xue Yang by resentful energy.
It looms over him when he works, and eats, and passes out. It obeys when he orders it to buy him food from the market, or clean the cottage, or set up the arrays according to the Yiling Patriarch’s notes.
It casts its shadow across him when he crawls back into the stack of hay beside Xiao Xingchen’s coffin with moonlight puddled a few inches away from him and the night wind rattling through the roof.
He’s just careful to make sure that Song Lan’s face is turned away from Xiao Xingchen’s coffin.
He can’t fucking stand Song Lan looking at Xiao Xingchen’s coffin.
Xue Yang opens his eyes and Song Lan is – gone.
The first thing he registers is that the sunlight is too fucking bright. The air feels all wrong – weightless breathless light – the way it is when the world’s about to splinter into shards –
Something is sticking to his face. When did it get so fucking bright? He can’t breathe. It’s that nightmare again. That old nightmare of being alone under the blinding sun which tears him apart and spills his guts across a hot pavement.
Xue Yang is barely on his feet when nausea seizes him and he doubles over. Maybe a nail’s slipped loose. Maybe Song Lan’s found a way to break free. He’s dead but he’s back to being a living thing and he’s gone–
Xue Yang tugs at it, at that cord of resentment that joins them. Claws at it until he is stumbling into the door of the room he woke up in and lurching into the common space of the cottage, dragged by the faint pulse of it (still there, still there) and –
Song Lan’s shadow darkens the corridor.
The fierce corpse stands, completely still, outside the room in which Xiao Xingchen lies. His back is to the door and a half-completed talisman lies at his feet.
Relief floods Xue Yang so deliriously he nearly collapses. Memories of the previous night come back in fragments. He remembers now: the ritual that failed, the way he’d used up the last of his talisman papers, and how he must have passed out while combing through the Yiling Patriarch’s notes in the next room.
Song Lan had stayed exactly where his last command had left him. He’s still here.
Xue Yang stumbles forward.
The fierce corpse steps to his side and blocks the garish light from the windows.
Xue Yang manages to twist his face away from Xiao Xingchen’s corpse before he throws up. Song Lan catches him before he hits the ground again.
Xue Yang is washing Song Lan’s hair again, the first time he loosens the nail in his head.
Song Lan’s skin is perfectly smooth, and just as cool. Xue Yang made him that way, after all: raised him above the quality of common fierce corpses, whose flesh and filth rot right off their bones.
Xue Yang traces the pads of his fingers across Song Lan’s scalp. No bump, no scratch, no spec of dirt.
He pauses only when he reaches the channel in the side of the head, where the nail was driven in.
Before the nails, Song Lan never cooperated. Xue Yang had to keep a tight hold on him. Even after his death, Song Lan still got that hardness in his eyes that he had that first time he saw Xue Yang, when he looked like he was about to throw up just from brushing up against him.
And that other time, of course, when he charged into Yi City to ruin his life.
Xue Yang likes to think of it. Think of the way he’d wanted to break Song Lan since the first day he met him. To dissolve that iron in his jaw and crush his heart. It’d been delicious, to slice Song Lan’s tongue out of his mouth and watch his filth puddle into his own robes. To push the nail into his skull and watch that pride drain into nothing.
That pride and anger in Song Lan’s eyes, that had trained on him, bored through him.
Xue Yang looks down at the nail again. At his hand, circling at the edge of it –
– And a terrible, delicious curiosity coils through his stomach.
His fingers move of their own accord. They press against the head of the nail.
By an infinitesimal shiver, the nail loosens.
Song Lan continues to stare up at Xue Yang. His hair splays neatly across the ground that Xue Yang has cleaned for them.
In his gaze, however, something flickers.
Xue Yang’s fingers are still on the nail. The grip tightens.
Song Lan’s gaze darkens further. His eyelids stir, closing in a slow blink.
Xue Yang leans forward. His heart catches in his ribs. The weight of Song Lan’s body continues to lie still on his legs, firm as that heaviness of his shadow. Still, Xue Yang feels breathless, like the time Xiao Xingchen had told him that his voice sounded familiar before smiling and saying that their friendship must simply have been meant to be.
His hand tangles in Song Lan’s hair. Knotting the locks tight against his fingers to hold Song Lan’s head still with his other hand, he steadies his breath and loosens the nail until it is exactly half-out.
The fierce corpse’s head jerks.
Song Lan’s fingers convulse on the floor where they’re splayed near his face. His mouth twitches. A ragged sound vibrates through his throat. His gaze darkens further, a hint of that old fury flickering into view.
Heat tugs in Xue Yang’s gut.
How can he get that perfect blend of it: between the blankness of those doll-eyes, and that delicious, helpless fire?
How far can he loosen the nail from Song Lan’s head and still keep him beneath him?
There is another ragged sound, and Xue Yang realises that he's panting.
Pinning Song Lan down by the shoulder, he twists another quarter of the nail from Song Lan’s skull.
Song Lan’s face contorts. His body convulses beneath him. Colour sinks back into his eyes, and his pupils dart, as though he barely knows where he is – barely knows that he is in Xue Yang’s grip, pinned to the ground that Xue Yang has kept clean just for him.
Then, Song Lan’s gaze trains on Xue Yang’s face –
– And a shock of hatred sears his gaze.
Song Lan lunges up at him, fist swinging. He is stronger than Xue Yang, especially in this form. A wordless sound tears itself from his throat – an animal sound, because Song Lan is no more than that, now – but his hard, dark eyes burn through Xue Yang with the same disgust as he always had, back when he always looked at him as though he would like nothing more than to run his sword through his heart –
Xue Yang slams the nail back into Song Lan’s head. A split second before Song Lan’s fist would have shattered Xue Yang’s jaw, the corpse falls limp by his side again.
“Ah, fuck you.”
Song Lan just looks up at him with glassy eyes.
Xue Yang pushes his head off his lap. It hits the ground with a dead thud and Xue Yang kicks at the side of it until it gives beneath his feet, lolling against Song Lan’s shoulder, dislodging the robes that Xue Yang had washed for him.
Then, he drags Song Lan upright and sends him to the opposite side of the room with his face toward the wall.
Song Lan’s not allowed to look at Xiao Xingchen. Tonight, he’s not allowed to look at Xue Yang, either.
Xue Yang doesn’t tamper with the nails for another week.
Song Lan stays on the other side of Xiao Xingchen’s body as Xue Yang works on his next set of talismans.
Watery sun still makes its way through the blinds, but the shadow of the fierce corpse blocks most of it out.
Song Lan fetches ink and paper from the other room whenever Xue Yang runs out. Why, thank you, Song-daozhang, Xue Yang would tell him, and then turn Song Lan’s head away and set him beside him again. Song Lan always returns. He returns with dutiful steps and glassy eyes. He returns after every errand, even when Xue Yang has passed out.
Xue Yang shows him his sword, once. Brandishes it before his glassy eyes and giggles when Song Lan makes no move to grab it. What, lost your touch? he taunts, and then laughs until he doubles over.
He’s arranged all the talismans perfectly, this time. The rituals are completed, Xiao Xingchen’s body is placed in the correct position, and a faint light is aglow around him.
It’s exactly like what the notes promised would happen. Except for the fact that it’s been this way for the past three fucking hours, and Xiao Xingchen continues to lie completely still, even though the ritual was supposed to bring him back in a matter of minutes.
A low heat burns in Xue Yang’s chest. He’s checked the talismans against the notes more times than he can count, and now the lines are crawling on the pages, and still Xiao Xingchen lies unresponsive –
As though he’s fucking with him. As though he’s doing it on purpose. Another one of those stupid fucking things that he does, like dragging that blade across his throat, and now, pretending as though Xue Yang doesn’t fucking exist even after he’s carried out the most powerful ritual he has ever tried, just to save his life.
Xue Yang squeezes his eyes shut.
Chengmei, he’s always imagined Xiao Xingchen would say when he comes back. Because he doesn’t know Xue Yang’s name. Was never supposed to. Chengmei, what –?, followed by that bemused little hitch of breath that he always let out when Xue Yang made some dirty joke that he didn’t immediately understand. And Xue Yang would talk about how he’s had to spend a year fixing him, and so Xiao Xingchen should learn to appreciate their comfortable life and stop doing stupid things, and –
Silence.
No sound of Xiao Xingchen’s voice. No rustle of robes, no hint of breath.
There’s only silence.
Gradually, the glow fades, too. The maximum duration of the ritual has passed, and the array disappears.
Somewhere inside Xue Yang lies a festering thing that has been sucking at his ribcage ever since Xiao Xingchen first called him disgusting. It's shapeless and carnivorous as the silence of the room.
Xue Yang’s bones itch. He wants to destroy something.
“Fucking – get rid of it all,” he snaps at Song Lan, pointing at the talismans that still hang around Xiao Xingchen’s body.
The fierce corpse moves. Xue Yang feels it first in his mind, in that that centre of gravity where Song Lan is leashed to him. Then, steady footsteps and the rustle of robes break the silence as Song Lan moves across the room. Obediently, Song Lan bends and begins to undo the talismans from the array. He works quietly and efficiently, until a heap of the papers lies by his feet. Then, he straightens and stands still again: an obedient puppet, who will never do more than Xue Yang has asked of him.
Without Song Lan’s footsteps to disrupt it, the silence oozes through the room again. It grows, and grows, and grows, like a sludge that spreads from the cavern in Xue Yang’s chest, and he cannot stand it; he needs more or he will fucking explode –
So he lunges toward Song Lan and grabs him by the throat.
He needs to fuck him up horribly. Horribly enough for Song Lan to wrench him away and stab him through the guts. To split the silence with a shower of blood, until everything is all loud and violent and right again.
The fierce corpse doesn’t fight him as his fingers tighten around its throat. Xue Yang squeezes, and Song Lan’s eyes remain glassy. He cannot hit him back – not unless Xue Yang makes him do it. He cannot even see Xue Yang. Just like Xiao Xingchen. He doesn’t even fucking know that Xue Yang exists –
Xue Yang pushes as hard as he can, and the dead weight of the fierce corpse doesn't resist as it hits the wall. As Xue Yang catches his breath, though, it simply straightens before falling completely still again.
‘Do something.” Xue Yang’s chest hurts. He sends a pulse of resentment through the channel between himself and Song Lan. “Fucking do something! Fucking – just –”
The fierce corpse steps forward. Steady footsteps sound again. The fierce corpse makes its way toward Xue Yang, raises an arm, and pushes Xue Yang in the chest. It’s a dull and mechanical force, and Xue Yang lets himself fall – lets his body hit the wall behind him, and the pain that erupts from his back dulls the panic in his chest, just a little -
And then Song Lan stands unmoving again, and Xue Yang bites his lip so hard he tastes iron.
It isn’t enough. It isn’t enough. Xue Yang wants something more, something he cannot describe. And because he cannot describe it, he presses his hands into the rough floor and pushes himself to his feet. The momentum swings his body against Song Lan's and he wrenches the nails free from Song Lan’s head.
Song Lan staggers back – an irregular, uncoordinated sound. A rattling gasp hisses across Xue Yang’s face.
Yes, Xue Yang thinks deliriously, heat spreading through his chest. Yes, yes, like this –
A hand grabs him by the shoulders. Then, he is pushed against the other wall, more swiftly than the previous time, the movement sharpened by fury.
Xue Yang tastes blood in his mouth, raw and ringing. Delicious. He gathers a mouthful and spits it at Song Lan, and watches it dribble down Song Lan’s arm.
Song Lan cringes back with an animalistic snarl. As he swipes his hands through his robes, his eyes train themselves on Xue Yang again, thrumming with a hatred that pins Xue Yang to the spot.
Song Lan wants to destroy him.
Song Lan thinks he can. Thinks that Xue Yang has fucked up for real and that it’s now his chance. Stupid, arrogant Song Lan who’s gotten himself just as fucked up as Xue Yang and who’s still dripping with Xue Yang’s blood and filth.
Someone is laughing. It takes a second for Xue Yang to realise that it’s him.
He laughs and laughs and laughs as he slams the nail right back into Song Lan’s head, just as the fierce corpse surges forward to strike at him.
Collapsing back against the wall for the third time, he can hear nothing but the sound of his own laughter. Still, that awful knot in his chest has eased a little, and he can somewhat breathe again.
“Don’t just stop, though,” he rasps at Song Lan.
Song Lan straightens.
He steps toward Xue Yang, circles him once, then paces to the far side of the room before returning. He pauses just for a second before Xue Yang, and then repeats the circuit again.
Xue Yang’s vision swims. His whole body throbs. With the last of his strength, he turns Song Lan’s head away from Xiao Xingchen’s corpse. As the world fades away, he clings onto the rustle of Song Lan’s robes and the circle of his footsteps, round and round him.
The third time Xue Yang the nail from Song Lan’s head, Song Lan growls something incomprehensible and his hands go straight to Xue Yang’s throat
There are no more preambles. Song Lan is set on destroying him.
Stony hands wrap around his throat. They squeeze the air from his lungs, the panic from his chest, the thoughts from his mind. Black spots dance across Xue Yang’s vision, and he waits until the very last moment before he opens his mouth and lets a stream of blood and spit dribble onto Song Lan’s hand.
Song Lan wrenches his arm back, freeing Xue Yang’s throat with a grunt.
“You delicate maiden, Song-daozhang,” Xue Yang wheezes. Unable to stand a little bit of filth. As though he isn’t a walking corpse himself.
Xue Yang pushes the nail back into Song Lan’s head right before he throws up. Then, he puts his head on Song Lan’s obedient shoulder and touches the bruises on his neck, listening to his own heartbeat slow through his ears.
The thing inside him doesn’t feel so rotten anymore. He feels wrung and bare.
The fourth time Xue Yang loosens the nail in Song Lan’s head, Song Lan lunges for the knife on the table that Xue Yang has been using to polish his tools. The weight of the fierce corpse knocks the table askew, sending notes and talismans flying, and the knife skids onto the ground and disappears in the gap behind a shelf.
Xue Yang’s almost disappointed. He’d like to see the ways in which Song Lan has thought about carving him up.
Maybe he should show Song Lan his sword when he’s conscious, so he wouldn’t feel like he’d just have to settle for stupid kitchen equipment. Maybe he would –
Then, Song Lan slams him against the door and pulls his head forward to break his skull against the stone.
Xue Yang almost regrets it, too, when he pushes the nail back in and the grip on his jaw slackens.
The fifth time, Song Lan throws him to the ground and pins him down by the shoulders.
Xue Yang squirms, delighted. He wraps a leg around his waist, for the fuck of it, and grins up at him.
“You’re such a pervert, Song-daozhang,” he laughs. “Didn’t know this was what you wanted all along?
Song Lan’s jaw drops open. The incensed flare in his eyes lingers, just for a split second longer, even as Xue Yang drives the nail back into his skull.
Later, curled into his coffin-bed, Xue Yang reaches into his pants and thinks of it – of the force of Song Lan’s hatred, the strength beneath his skin. His guts convulse. He jerks himself off fast and rough, eyes squeezed shut so he can feel the full weight of Song Lan’s shadow at the edge of the room.
Xue Yang keeps Song Lan beneath him, this time. Restores his consciousness but binds his wrists to the ground with a talisman.
Song Lan struggles. Xue Yang marvels at it, at the helpless fire in his gaze, the desperate flex of muscle beneath his skin. A wall of strength that desires nothing more than to crush him – all leashed to his control.
The talisman doesn’t last long. It isn’t so simple to restrain a fierce corpse like Xue Yang’s creation. Soon, he has to push the nail back into Song Lan’s skull, and then it’s all quiet again.
The seventh time he slides the nails out of Song Lan’s head, Song Lan doesn’t move.
As the clouds clear from his eyes, Xue Yang sees the flare of recognition that has become familiar at this point. Song Lan’s arm twitches – involuntary, animal – but instead of reaching for Xue Yang, it simply falls to his side.
Song Lan just sits and stares at Xue Yang.
The fire in his eyes is still there, but it has dimmed. His fist trembles slightly, but otherwise, he doesn’t move.
Then, he breaks Xue Yang’s gaze and looks over at Xue Yang’s hand, and the nail still held in his fingers –
– And his eyes drop to the ground.
“The fuck.”
It’s all fucking wrong. Xue Yang doesn’t even know why he’d undone the nail this time, or what he even wanted. Fuck it, maybe he was just bored.
Regardless, this is all wrong.
Xue Yang wants something else, something he can’t quite name, but Song Lan continues to stand still with his gaze trained on the nails in his hand. After what feels like an eternity, he finally raises his head, only to look in the direction of the room where Xiao Xingchen’s corpse lies. There is another jerk of his arm, and –
Xue Yang’s heart stutters in his chest.
Then, Song Lan’s gaze drops again.
“The fuck.”
Fucking stupid. Doesn’t Song Lan want to kill him? Hasn’t he made that clear from the very first time he saw him? And now, given a clear chance, the fucker just sits still as though Xue Yang has not even thought to allow him a few moments of consciousness.
“Useless.”
There is this blank look in Song Lan’s eyes even before the nail slots fully back into his head.
Morning sun oozes through the window and Xue Yang orders the fierce corpse to shut the curtains and block out the light. He presses his face into the cool smoothness of Song Lan’s chest and wraps himself with his shadow.
He slaps Song Lan and kicks his side.
Song Lan backhands him. Then, his eyes dart around the empty room, lingering at the cabinet in which Xue Yang has kept his sword, and then he pulls his fist back to strike –
The talisman on the door activates and sends him crashing into the other side of the room.
Conscious and disoriented, he grunts as he pushes himself upright.
The nails are back in his skull before he gets to his feet.
Dressed in Xiao Xingchen’s blindfold and Xiao Xingchen’s white robes, Xue Yang seats Song Lan on the chair and crouches before him.
The first time Xue Yang had put on Xiao Xingchen’s face and looked in the mirror, he shattered the glass and made Song Lan clean it all up.
And then he wondered if Song Lan could be allowed to look at Xiao Xingchen’s face if it were on him.
When he slides the nail out of the fierce corpse’s skull, Song Lan draws an intake of breath that he doesn’t need. There is a pause, where Song Lan’s raised hand is frozen in the air. Then, for the first time in a long, long while, he lurches forward and seizes Xue Yang's shoulder.
Pain flares through Xue Yang’s spine again, thudding deliciously as Song Lan pins him with the weight of his body.
Grinning up, Xue Yang considers kicking at Song Lan, but Xiao Xingchen’s robe catches his calf in a tangle, and it occurs to him that Xiao Xingchen would never kick at his Zichen, would he? Now, pinned by Song Lan’s hands and knees, he's helpless beneath him and a coil of reciprocal heat flares in his insides. Song Lan doesn’t have his sword anymore, but he doesn’t need one to kill Xue Yang like this, if only Xue Yang let him –
“Zichen,” Xue Yang croons, modulating his voice.
Song Lan lets out a growl of absolute fury. It is wordless and animal and Xue Yang feels drunk on it. Clenching the nail in his free hand so tightly that it breaks his own skin, he wriggles under Song Lan’s grip and delights at the tremor that passes through his arm.
“No, Zichen!” He gasps out. “Zichen, why are you hurting me?”
Song Lan jerks. Almost simultaneously, his grip slackens, and Xue Yang’s shoulder thuds back against the wall. The blindfold falls askew, and Xue Yang opens his eyes to see Song Lan’s head snap toward the direction of the room in which Xiao Xingchen’s body lies.
When Song Lan turns back to Xue Yang, he's no longer touching him, and the fire in his gaze is gone, replaced with something slippery and hollow –
– As though he’s no longer looking at Xue Yang, but at someone else entirely.
He doesn’t like this. He can stand the terror of being crushed by Song Lan’s fury, but he can’t stand the wrongness of this watery gaze, so he reaches forward and drives the nails back into Song Lan’s head.
Song Lan’s arm falls around his waist as it slackens.
Xue Yang stares at it: at Song Lan’s black sleeve, and his long fingers spread over Xiao Xingchen's white robe. He thinks of Song Lan looking at Xiao Xingchen. He thinks of Song Lan touching Xiao Xingchen. He thinks of Song Lan's body atop him while he’s dressed all in white.
He presses a hand between his legs again, feeling hot all over and just as sick.
He doesn’t wear Xiao Xingchen’s robes anymore.
It’s getting difficult to get much out of Song Lan, though.
You want me dead, Song-daozhang; don’t you forget that, gets him a withering glare that sends hope shivering up his spine. Song Lan doesn’t do anything else, though, and simply turns away from him. Xue Yang can feel it, even through the cord of resentment that connects them: the weight of Song Lan’s body, stubbornly still. Or am I’m so dirty you don’t want to touch me anymore?
Just like Xiao Xingchen. Pretending that Xue Yang doesn’t exist. That Xue Yang wasn’t the one who’d crafted and perfected him.
Song Lan barely shifts when he pushes the nail back into his skull.
Xue Yang opens his eyes to see Song Lan staring directly at Xiao Xingchen’s body.
The room is still dark. Xue Yang’s head is all murky with sleep and pain, and it takes a moment for him to register what he is seeing.
Then it grips him — a tug in his gut: an emptiness where the cord of resentment that binds Song Lan to him should be. The familiar panic that floods him every time he thinks that he has lost Song Lan –
Song Lan, who isn’t supposed to look at Xiao Xingchen’s body.
The nail must have slipped out, some time in the night. He’s gotten careless. The fucker could have gutted him in his sleep, or even searched the whole cottage to get his sword back. Or taken Xiao Xingchen’s body and spirited out of Yi City –
– And when Xue Yang woke up, it would have been to the awful sunlight splitting through his eyes, with the world in splinters, and the cord joining Song Lan to him snapped, leaving nothing but panic and emptiness, forever, under the terrible light –
Song Lan shifts and his shadow falls over Xue Yang. He’s still there, and it’s still dark, and Xiao Xingchen’s body still lies, unmoving, on the other side of them both. Song Lan simply gazes at him, and there is something heavy in his eyes; too heavy, it seems, to lift him up and take Xiao Xingchen away, or drive a sword through Xue Yang’s chest. As though he truly is dead and all he wants is to be buried with Xiao Xingchen.
(The way that Xue yang sometimes feels, in the silence of the night, when he thinks about Xiao Xingchen after turning Song Lan’s gaze away.)
Xue Yang’s throat ties itself in knots and he can’t fucking breathe. His skin burns and all he can do is lie paralysed while Song Lan looks at Xiao Xingchen.
As though sensing that he’s awake, though, Song Lan then turns toward him.
A nameless ache stabs through Xue Yang’s chest. This is when it will happen, then. This is when Song Lan will crush what’s left of him.
But Song Lan doesn’t move. The heaviness in his eyes doesn’t shift. He continues to look at him in the same way that he looked at Xiao Xingchen. Song Lan stares down at him with that unbearable weight, as pressure rolls through Xue Yang’s chest and his fingers clench at his sides.
“Zichen,” Xue Yang moans, softly. It comes out involuntarily, a punched-out sound.
Song Lan doesn’t move, doesn’t come near him, and doesn’t leave. Doesn’t look away.
“My friend,” Xiao Xingchen once said to Xue Yang, when they were sitting together in a clearing in the woods. Xiao Xingchen had wanted him to describe the way the sunlight looked when it filtered through the trees, or some other sentimental shit that Xiao Xingchen missed being able to see. “My friend, what will you do after this?”
Xue Yang grunted. Xiao Xingchen never said what he meant. As though being cryptic mattered in the real world.
“Well, someone’s got to cook dinner. And it’s not going to be you.”
Laughter teased at the corners of Xiao Xingchen’s mouth. Then, he shifted on the rock where he sat.
“No, I meant – You must have other pursuits that will take you.”
A breeze parted the leaves. The sunlight beamed down on where Xiao Xingchen was sitting, and Xue Yang has to squint.
“What ever does Daozhang mean?”
“I mean...” And he hesitated again. “Well, that you understand you are not obligated to stay with this humble one?”
Xue Yang laughed. He couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help the pressure in his cheeks that split his face and had him fucking giggling.
“Well,” he finally wheezed. “If Daozhang simply wishes for an excuse to part with this one, he can simply say so.”
Xiao Xingchen gasped. It was always so easy to draw such reactions from him. Xue Yang loved it.
“No, my friend.” A hand settled on his arm. “I will not –” He coughs. “What I mean is: I will not bind you to me if that is not what you wish, but I…”
And then he must have said something else, some bullshit that Xue Yang cannot quite remember. One of those fake promises that righteous priests like to tell to make themselves feel better.
Xue Yang fucking hates the sun now, ever since Xiao Xingchen’s sword reflected the glare of it that last day at the courtyard. Stupid day of Xiao Xingchen doing stupid shit, because he’d promised that he wanted to by Xue Yang’s side but he still gave more fucks other people who shouldn’t matter – like those worthless villagers who'd treated him like dirt, like his precious Zichen who‘d abandoned him.
Which is why he keeps Xiao XIngchen in the dark, now.
“Wake!” Xue Yang yells, hurling the last talisman into the array. It has to work. It has to. Xue Yang has modified the previous technique to take into account the damaged condition of Xiao Xingchen’s soul. There is nothing more that he can do, no other method that he has found even in the Yiling Patriarch’s writings, that can further enhance its effects. “Xiao Xingchen, you promised – you fucking promised, Xiao Xingchen –”
Whenever he isn’t yelling, there is only silence. The rotting thing from inside him that grows to fill the room.
Song Lan is on the other side, back-facing Xiao Xingchen’s body, the way Xue Yang has arranged. Xue Yang pushes himself to his feet.
“It’s all your fault,” he snarls at Song Lan. “If you hadn’t come and ruined both our lives –”
Xue Yang’s arms shake as he throws them around Song Lan’s shoulders and wraps his hands around his throat. His fingers fumble against the ridge of Song Lan’s skull, and he barely knows what he’s looking for until he’s wrenching the nails out.
Song Lan gives a jerk of consciousness. He takes a step forward before halting, and then his gaze falls onto Xue Yang, and it's soft and murky, just like that last time.
He looks at Xue Yang like – like –
Bile rises in his throat. Does Song Lan even still see him? Xiao Xingchen is lying silent and unresponsive, and Song Lan is also acting like it’s not Xue Yang in front of him, even though the nails are out of his fucking head.
He vaguely registers that he’s yelling something. He hates that Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen can make the world feel this way: untethered, unmoored.
“It’s all your fault!” He pummels at Song Lan’s shoulders, determined to draw a reaction, and Song Lan just doesn’t move. Gone is the iron that used to brand him so deliciously. Song Lan simply stands there and continues to look at Xue Yang with that strange, wrong hollowness in his gaze.
“You told him to leave you, Song-daozhang,” Xue Yang snarls, aiming for where it has to hurt the most. “You told him that you should never see each other again, but then you still decided to come as though you had the right to ruin the rest of his fucking life –”
At this, something flares in Song Lan’s eyes. He takes a heavy step forward, and Xue Yang stays in place, snarls up at him, and waits for Song Lan to do it – to remember that he wants to destroy him, to rend him from limb to limb and rip the rotting thing out of his ribcage.
“All you’ve ever done is hurt him!” Xue Yang screams. “Xiao Xingchen is dead and it’s because of you! It’s all your fucking fault! He’s dead because of you and he will never come back – because of you! Because of you!”
Every line in Song Lan’s body is pulled taut. His silhouette trembles in the moonlight, a beautiful arch that reaches toward Xue Yang. And Xue Yang needs it, craves it, hasn’t had it in such a long time – to be pinned to the spot, and have Song Lan’s rage burn clean through the rot inside him –
“Maybe I should make you kill more of those villagers,” he seethes. “I’d even let you take revenge on those shitheads who were rude to your dear friend. Wouldn’t you like that? The only worthwhile thing you can ever do for him would be to help me kill those fuckers –”
Song Lan stumbles. His shoulders fall, and his mouth opens uselessly, as though he is fumbling for speech that has left him in the filth where Shuanghua had cut him down. Then, he shakes his head, and the hulking frame of the fierce corpse sags.
Xue Yang’s masterpiece, even fueled by resentment and granted consciousness, just stands before him with his gaze lowered, as if all the strength has drained from him.
Those miserable villagers!
He shouldn’t have brought them up. Xiao Xingchen had cared so fucking much about them too, and couldn’t bear to kill them. Miserable lives that would have spent fucking him over for the rest of his life had Xue Yang not stepped in. And now Song Lan, too, doesn’t seem to give a shit that it’s Xue Yang who had given him his new strength at all, and becomes all pathetic just because Xue Yang mentioned those lowlives —
And now he is just standing there – the only thing he knows how to do these days – as though some fucking puppet string has snapped and nothing is working anymore –
Xue Yang doesn’t realise he’s crying until the salt catches in his throat and he’s choking on it. He turns his face away from Song Lan, long enough to fish the nails back out from his pockets and drive them back into Song Lan’s head without looking at his face. Then, he collapses beside him.
Maybe he’s better like this, anyway. Better this than when he has his consciousness back and still doesn’t see Xue Yang.
Dead things are obedient. That’s why they’re cold.
Song Lan’s body catches his weight and blocks out the moonlight.
It’s quiet. The hole in the roof must have reopened again, letting in the winter chill. Not like Xue Yang has spent much effort on renovating. Not when it’s just him and Song Lan.
Xue Yang doesn’t remember when he last slept. All he knows is that he must have passed out in the work room, and it is so, achingly quiet.
Xue Yang’s robes are thin. He presses his face into Song Lan’s chest and tugs at his clothes. He brushes up against Song Lan’s hands, the cold fingers at his side. His coffin is in the other room, but he doesn’t want to stand to haul himself there. He can’t part from Song Lan’s body.
So he sends a command through the cord of resentment that joins them, and Song Lan’s arms wind around his waist and behind his knees. With his stiff arms and mechanical strength, Song Lan lifts him from the ground, and Xue Yang hangs weightless. His body no longer touches the ground, and his feet are no longer his own. The only thing tethering him to the world is Song Lan.
Song Lan walks him to his coffin bed and stoops to lay him down on the hay. It is cold in the coffin too, without any real covering, and Xue Yang trembles.
As Song Lan retreats, his hands let go of Xue Yang’s body and his cool fingertips leave his skin. The shadow that spills over Xue Yang shortens.
“Wait –”
Xue Yang doesn’t know what to say. All he knows is that the world is liquid and awful and there is nothing else inside it other than the weight of Song Lan against him.
At his command, Song Lan freezes in place. Mid-crouch, it is an unnatural position, stiff as his glassy eyes. His fingertips pause against Xue Yang’s skin – stiff fingers, that would only touch Xue Yang when he is under his command.
Xue Yang is so fucking cold it hollows his ribs from the inside.
“No, I –”
He's crying again. If Song Lan leaves him in the coffin, leaves him for death, he will never get up again. He’s a dead thing, just like Song Lan. Like the thing inside his ribs that has festered in the silence.
The fierce corpse pauses.
Then, its mechanical body bends down again. It lifts Xue Yang up, and shifts him to one side of the coffin. With the same precision, it then lowers itself into the coffin beside Xue Yang.
Pressed between Song Lan’s body, the edge of the coffin, and the hay beneath him, it's a little less cold. Song Lan’s eyes are open and unseeing. He lies as stiffly as he stood, with his arms by his sides. He wouldn't touch Xue Yang unless given the explicit command to do so. No one would touch him again. Not even another dead thing.
Xue Yang presses himself into Song Lan’s robe again, and thinks of stitching himself to the stiff body to make the trembling go away. But even that wouldn’t be enough. Not when Song Lan’s glassy eyes don’t see him. He wants. He wants. He wants –
“Zichen,” he whimpers, and presses his face into Song Lan’s chest.
He wants Song Lan to pin him beneath him and shatter his jaw with his fist. Wants the world to erupt into blood and violence again, the way it did before, the way it made sense, before Song Lan stopped responding to him, too. But everything is wrong, now. The wrongness worms beneath his skin and into his bones.
Xue Yang dreams of Song Lan’s arms winding around his waist and behind his knees, and Song Lan carrying him to the other side of the room.
In this dream, Song Lan undresses him with smooth touches, and then clothes him in white: the set of clean robes that he’s hung up, for special occasions, for someone who was special to Song Lan. Someone from a lifetime ago, from the other side of the coffin.
Song Lan smooths the fabric down his back, and it is gentle, deliberate, and strange. He combs his hair, straightens his collar. Then, he wraps a blindfold over his eyes and the world fades to a blissful blank.
Only then are the nails loosened from Song Lan’s head, so that Song Lan can hold him.
“Zichen,” he whispers, pitching his voice right.
Song Lan hesitates. He can feel it. Why? There is nothing to hesitate about. His enemy is fucking dead. The one in front of him is dressed in white.
Then, arms come around him, blocking out the cold, and Song Lan’s hand traces its way up his sides to cup his chin. Without sight, his senses are heightened. His skin heats where those fingertips touch him, and there’s a deeper throb, somewhere inside him that he can’t reach.
“Zichen.” He wonders if he’s crying again. Wonders if there are red streaks on the blindfold that he’s just put on. That happened, once. That happened, a long time ago, the most painful day of his life. “Zichen, it hurts.”
A finger traces over his lips, and Xue Yang doesn’t remember the last time he’s been touched there so gently. He cranes his head up, and it soothes him – the heaviness of the shadow above him, the skin against his cheek.
The air around him is still cold, and he wants more, so he twists his fingers into Song Lan’s robes and leads him to the coffin where he was sleeping. This time, Song Lan holds him between his body and the hay and the side of the coffin. His hands are wet when they touch him again. Wet from the liquid on his cheeks, or with blood. Xue Yang clings onto strong arms, and the body atop him presses more firmly down.
“Zichen,” he whispers again. His voice is pitched right – pitched so Zichen would keep touching him. “Zichen, don’t you want me?”
There is another moment of hesitation.
Then, the blindfold is slipped off his cheek.
The dark room takes shape again before him, and instinctively, he shies his face away. This isn’t right. Xue Yang isn’t meant to be here. But Song Lan’s weight pins his legs to the coffin and his shoulders into the hay. It squeezes the restlessness from his skin, the ache from his bones, and the emptiness from the room around them. It takes the words from his throat too.
Blindfold off, he can only screw his eyes shut as cold lips press into his.
Unseeing, he winds his arms around Song Lan’s neck and arches upward. He takes, and takes, and takes, until he is drunk on it. It is wet everywhere. His lips, his tongue, his cheeks and Song Lan’s hands are all slick and filthy. It’s surely staining the clean white robe that he’s in, and Song Lan must find it disgusting. Xue Yang sinks his teeth into him anyway, and wonders if he can carve both of them up and stitch their flesh together. Nothing is meant for him except what he can sink his teeth into. Nothing in the world is solid except for Song Lan’s body against his.
When Xue Yang wakes, Song Lan is beside him, and their limbs are tangled, heavy, indistinguishable in the dim light. Song Lan’s eyes are closed, as though he is still human. For a moment, Xue Yang wonders absurdly if he might be breathing. He feels around the channel in his skull and finds it hollow.
Xue Yang’s own head feels like cotton, soft and hollow, but he vaguely recalls that there were nails in Song Lan’s skull, once. There were supposed to be.
Fuck if he knows where they are anymore.
He squints. The room is pale with sunlight, but thick and muted, as though he’s looking through a layer of fog. Everything looks a little muffled. At least it isn’t so cold anymore. Or maybe he just can’t feel it.
His body doesn’t quite hurt so much anymore.
He looks down. White robes. Not his. The thought drifts in and out. There was a blindfold too, he remembers. There was supposed to be. Fuck if he knows where that went, either.
Xue Yang untangles himself from Song Lan’s body and his feet lead him to the other room. His usual robes hang where the white robes used to, and he changes back into them. Vaguely, it occurs to him that it’s still cold, but he barely feels it now, through that strange fog.
Then, his feet bring him to the cabinet that seals Song Lan’s sword.
Fuxue is heavy, the metal cool and smooth against his fingers. The last thing it did before Xue Yang sealed it away was try to cut his head off. The memory almost makes him fucking smile. He can feel the absurd tug at his cheeks and he can’t quite stop it.
As he returns to the coffin, he passes by Xiao Xingchen’s body. He doesn’t look at it. Simply carries Fuxue with him, back to the room where Song Lan is. In the foggy light, he still feels a light throb where Song Lan used to be bound to him, when the nails were in his head. The shadow of that cord of resentment, still there, even when Xue Yang doesn’t know where the nails are anymore.
Song Lan is sitting upright when Xue Yang enters the room.
His gaze focuses on Xue Yang, and then narrows. Xue Yang can see it: the tightening of his spine, the chill in the air.
Is it different, like this? Seeing him in the daylight?
Xue Yang doesn’t really know. Doesn’t really remember what he’d been doing. Everything feels distant and muffled, and his head buzzes with static. There’s only the sword in his hand: cool and smooth and heavy.
Song Lan’s eyes drift to his hands, and something in his eyes hardens. It is familiar, an iron will that Xue Yang has once been so familiar with, from… from –
He holds the sword out to Song Lan.
“There you go.”
Song Lan looks back up and simply stares at him. His eyes flicker from Xue Yang’s face to the weapon and back again, narrowing further. Then, with the full strength of his fierce corpse body, he lunges forward and yanks the sword out of Xue Yang’s grip.
Xue Yang feels it properly, this time. The smile that pulls at his cheeks and threatens to split his face apart.
“What d’you think?” he drawls.
Song Lan grips the hilt. When he looks back at Xue Yang again, something in his gaze flares – the same old fire that Xue Yang had loved to elicit, and which draws a similar heat in Xue Yang’s belly.
“You hate me, Song-daozhang,” he remembers, and the smile splits his face further. The sun is brighter now, flooding the room. Fuxue’s blade catches it, flinging the light across Xue Yang’s eyes, searing and merciless. It hurts. It feels so good.
Song Lan’s chest heaves. The grip on his sword tightens as he raises it and steps toward Xue Yang.
“Stupid, Song-daozhang,” he hears himself say, as though from a distance away. He hears someone laughing. He thinks it might be himself. “Your sword back in your hand, and you’re still taking so fucking long to kill me. Even though you hate me –”
Song Lan snarls.
The light splits his face, carving out every ridge and shadow. His mouth pulls wide, and there is iron in his eyes, hatred in all the hollows of his skin. He is rough, and human, and warped under the sun. As he stares straight into Xue Yang, the heat of his gaze cuts through the murk of his brain.
“Oh yeah?” Xue Yang grits out. “That’s all you can do? Ah –”
Xue Yang is pushed against the wall. Moaning, he feels blood trickle down his hairline and drip into Song Lan’s sleeve. Fuxue is at his throat, and Song Lan’s face is an inch away, burning him with his hands, his eyes, his sword.
Xue Yang closes his eyes, waits, and smiles –
– And Song Lan’s grip slackens.
The tip of the blade retracts from Xue Yang’s throat.
Xue Yang opens his eyes to see that Song Lan has dropped his arm. His gaze has fallen, the fire is gone, and his eyes are as heavy as the time that Xue Yang woke up to find him staring at Xiao Xingchen’s body. His arm is trembling, the movement jerky and human in a way that his body should long have forgotten.
The fog feels like it’s closing in on Xue Yang’s head. It’s too fucking bright.
“Song-daozhang,” he slurs. “Can’t even fucking put me in my place anymore?”
Song Lan raises his hand, as though he’s about to say something, but Xue Yang’s ears are filling with static and spots of darkness dance across his vision.
Song Lan catches him, again, when he collapses.
It’s just noise at first, and the sound of his own voice tearing out of his throat, his face burrowing into Song Lan’s dark robes to block out the light. The world closes in to the pressure of arms wrapping around him and the burning in his lungs.
When the world takes shape around him again, his throat is raw and his face is wet. His hands are fisted in dark robes, and fingers are threaded through his hair. The room looks strange and bright. He doesn’t know when he stopped screaming, just that when he opens his mouth now, nothing comes out.
There are hands in his hair. They tip his head back, and water trickles into his mouth from a cup. Held in suspension by those hands, he has no choice but to take it. It spills a little, and then he coughs, spewing it all over Song Lan’s robe, but Song Lan’s fist just tightens in his hair as he lowers his head back down.
“What do you want?” he manages finally, voice coming out as a rasp.
Song Lan lets go of him, letting him sink to the floor. He turns away from Xue Yang to look out of the window, where the sun has risen.
Then, he lowers his sword completely to point the tip against the ground.
After a long, long moment, he writes:
Let him go.
The first day after Song Lan cremates Xiao Xingchen’s body, he washes Xue Yang’s hair.
Song Lan’s fingers are gentle against his scalp. They comb through the strands of his hair, squeeze the droplets out of their ends.
“Clean,” Xue Yang croons. “You like that, don’t you, Song-daozhang?”
Song Lan ignores him. Instead, he roots around in the mess of Xue Yang’s robes and pulls out a band to wrap around a lock of Xue Yang’s hair.
“As you should.” He rolls his eyes. “I helped washed your robes, by the way.”
Song Lan’s hands are careful as they work through Xue Yang’s hair, mindful not to tangle the strands. When a droplet of water trickles down his neck and gathers at his collarbone, a tentative finger follows it; traces the line of his throat and flickers across his pulse point.
Xue Yang hungers.
He turns and crushes his mouth against Song Lan’s. He presses closer, against Song Lan’s naked chest, against which he is leaning with his hips between Song Lan’s legs. When he reaches behind Song Lan’s head to pull him closer, he brushes against the empty channel in Song Lan’s skull.
There are no nails. Song Lan can hurt him. He can destroy him at any moment. He can do whatever he’d like with him.
When they break apart, both their mouths are slick, joined by a string of spit.
Then, Song Lan brings his hand to his chest and puts the washcloth between his fingers.
“Oh, fuck you,” Xue Yang sighs.
Xue Yang rinses the washcloth and applies it to Song Lan’s body. Song Lan’s eyes flutter, but they don’t close. The weight of his hands settles on Xue Yang’s hips.
Scrub, wipe, rinse. Across his chest, around to his back.
Song Lan’s eyes are heavy and murky. The air is still, except for the gentle splash of water and the sound of Xue Yang’s own heartbeat in his ears. Song Lan’s skin is cool, and softer than he remembered. Xue Yang wonders if he feels it too: the same ache in his stomach, that only he can keep at bay.
Song Lan’s palms rest against his hips, heavy and still. His gaze sinks into Xue Yang and settles into that rotten place inside of his ribs, and he doesn’t look away.