Archive of Our Own ^beta

There’s a wisp of resentment in the grass beside the bones of a dead bird, not quite strong enough to become a guài . Was it roadkill? Did it die of old age? Was it devoured by a predator? it’s so weak it’s impossible to tell. Xue Yang plays with it like a child in mud. A drop of sweat nearly drips into his eyes. Passing pedestrians eye him warily. Xue Yang sneers back.

The post on the cultivator request forum had specified an 11AM start time and very little job details beyond an address of the afflicted area. The job’s check in QR code was posted on the door of the tourist centre, the shabby little office’s sign was flipped closed. When he scanned it, his Nite Huntz cultivator app pinged with a registered assignment, and he received a text that stressed again the address, and reminded him the information packet will be sent at 11AM, like he could have forgotten.

Waste of fucking time. This information session could have been a goddamn email.

An engine rumbles its way into the parking lot, and Xue Yang shoots to his feet, peering over the roof of his car to find the familiar gleaming grill of an electric blue jeep. His heart pounds too fast in his ears the second he recognizes it.

“Fuck you, I found this one first!” Xue Yang greets as soon as Zichen slams the car door shut. He’s about as eager to see him as he is to gouge his own eyes out. The tourist centre parking lot was blessedly free of company until Zichen got here; just the mid morning sun and persistent mosquitos and a mostly melted slushie perched on the crumbling curb. His car doesn't have air conditioning, so he hangs out in the shade of a very skinny tree, waiting for the mission’s departure time. 

“It was an open listing.” Zichen replies drily. “There's no limit to the amount of cultivators on this night hunt.” He looks around the empty parking lot. “It's not as though there's much competition.”

“That's because I scared anybody stupid enough to try and butt in on my job with a knife.” He flicks the same knife out now, lazily performing knife tricks. Zichen narrows his eyes at him. Xue Yang leans back on the door of his car. The metal is hot against his back. “The other half weren't interested when they figured out how long the drive would be.” He points the knife at Zichen. “Fuck off before I make you.”

Zichen looks good, richly tanned from the summer sun, shoulders bunched with muscle. Xue Yang hasn’t seen him since early spring, and he thought it could be like going cold turkey. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks unconcerned, certain that Xue Yang is joking.

He’s not joking. His fingers are tight around the handle of his knife and even he isn’t sure what he’s going to do with it.

Their last night hunt together had involved a 4 am screaming match outside a camp ground stalked by a mountain cat guài, fucking viciously against one of the picnic tables, and feeling disconcertingly empty after, like a crumpled candy wrapper.

He’s better than that, he told himself in the crisp dewy witching hours of early spring, shrugging back into his windbreaker and savouring the rings of teeth imprints on his shoulder. He was bored of this, it wasn’t fun anymore.

Now, in full summer sunlight, cherry syrup coated tongue suddenly dry and ogling Zichen’s exposed clavicle, he’s not so sure.

“You look well,” Zichen comments.

“Fuck you.” Xue Yang retorts.

*

Xue Yang met Song Zichen by the punch bowl of a convention. Not the open to the public ones even laymen can buy tickets to, but the private swanky ones held in upscale hotels for the lordlings of the cultivation families. A friend of a friend of a friend of Meng Yao’s got him the pass, and he’d considered setting the fucking hotel on fire at the sneer the coat check girl gave him. 

The ball room gleamed, a live band played in the corner, waiters circled in white blazers with silver trays laden with flutes of champagne. It was like being in a movie. Xue Yang bit his inner cheek, and swallowed back venom.

Fuck these pretentious fuckers with their prestigious family names and their illustrious academics. They wouldn’t know a malignant spirit if it fucked their mothers in front of them. 

He thought, watching Zichen disdainfully observe everyone else with a slight wrinkle of his nose, Zichen might be a kindred spirit. 

(What a fucking joke, he thinks in retrospect, easing himself out of Zichen’s hotel bed in whatever city they’ve met in last, and only putting his shoes on outside the door.) 

“You think any of these pretenders even been on a night hunt without their shixiong holding their hands?” Xue Yang sidles up to ask. 

Zichen, tall, broad, with deep cool eyes that looked like wells, stared at him with the same slight wrinkle of his nose. Xue Yang’s hackles rose, ready for that same nasally sort of condescention all those fucker speak to him with. He took a careful step back, tipped his glass at Xue Yang in greeting. “Doubtful their shixiong have been on any night hunts either.”

Xue Yang laughed so hard a few nearby partygoers gave him disdainful looks. He barely managed not to flip them off. “Savage!” He crowed, reaching out to slap at his shoulder, the gesture easily dodged. “I like it!”

Zichen just frowned. “It was an honest observation.”

Xue Yang paused his boisterous laughter to study him, before kicking up again louder. “That just makes it better.”

*

Xingchen joins them in the tourist centre parking lot next, as inevitable as a tsunami following an earthquake. Xue Yang makes a sound of frustration that goes ignored. Xingchen stops to duck back into the passenger side window to speak to his uber driver. He carries a garment bag, probably containing his cultivation robes, his sword, and two iced coffees. “Oh. Yang’er is here,” he says, handing Zichen a plastic cup. “Why didn't you text me you were looking at this case? I would have got you a coffee.”

He sounds pleased to see him, like it hasn't been months since he last texted him. Like he hasn't even noticed how long it's been. Xue Yang’s mouth tastes sour.

“Fuck your coffee.” Xue Yang hisses. “The whole point of taking these off the grid jobs is so I won’t run into you fuckers.”

That is a lie. The off the grid ones may not charge as much, but the client doesn't look half as hard at his license. In the city, people are spoiled for choice and the major clans are like household names. The fact that he’s been able to avoid Xingchen and Zichen both is just an added bonus.

“Well why don't you come with us?” Xingchen tucks a lock of hair behind his ear, sips his ice coffee, catches the condensation on his perfect lips with a swipe of a pink tongue. “This job seems big, and you know we like having you around.”

“Debatable,” Zichen huffs. 

“Standing on ceremony is so fucking like you, fucking hypocrite,” Xue Yang snaps. His skin crawls, the prickle of sweat and mosquito bites and the vicious urge to bury his hands in their insides and close his fingers around their hearts. His lip curls with a snarl. “Just come out and fucking say what you mean, Zichen, don’t let Xingchen speak for you!”

Zichen’s mouth opens, dark eyes widened with mild surprise. “I was just—”

Their phones simultaneously buzz or beep when the clock strikes 4. The promised information packet for the job. He skims through it quickly, mentally taking stock of his suppression talismans. The job seems simple enough, maybe some local teenagers fucked around with the graves and woke up the resting spirits. Hardly the kind of thing that needed three whole cultivators. It seemed easy enough for sect juniors just getting their feet wet on their first night hunt.

But he wasn’t going to back out. He wasn’t gonna let the illustrious duo (Bright Moon, Distant Frost, even their names perfect complements) chase him off a job he arrived at first. He has bills to pay and cake to buy. Xue Yang stands, tosses his slushie cup at a trash bin and misses. He does not pick it up.

“I don’t fucking need either of you.” He does not look at them. He does not sound nearly as sure of that as he wants to. “Just stay out of my way.” He yanks open his car door, gives the trapped heat a moment to escape, already thumbing the address from the case PDF into google maps.

He leaves Xingchen and Zichen in the parking lot, their heads bent together, talking and watching him go. They are perfectly matched, closed brackets curving into each other.

There is no space between them.

Xue Yang fixes his eyes on the road and drives.

*

He met Xiao Xingchen on the tail end of a night hunt in a cemetery, covered in graveyard dirt and undead slime. One ghoul had wandered from his luring circle, pulled to the qi of living energy just passed the cemetery gates. 

Xiao Xinchen swooped down, like a reaper's scythe, the swing of his blade edged in frost Xue Yang could feel even from a distance, leaving the tombs around the beheaded ghoul glittering with it under the yellowish street lamps. 

There are cultivators who make all their money live streaming their night hunts, and this surreal, beautiful bastard looked like one of those. But on closer inspection, He had no tacky go pro harness. And he, unlike those livestream cultivators, wore full, traditional robes, gleaming white. 

“Excuse the fuck outta you, that was my fucking kill!” Xue Yang snarled, reeking and in a foul mood. 

“My apologies, friend,” Xingchen offered with a prim bow. “I didn’t think you needed the help, but I was in the position to lend it just the same.”

He spoke like he was auditioning for a Shakespearean play. Xue Yang snorted, uselessly brushing ghoul slime from his hair. “Anyone ever tell you you’re fucking nosy?” he grumbled. He swung his sword over his shoulder. It rattled in the ill fitting sheathe he had to buy separately.

Xingchen laughed brightly. His face transformed, from haughty and cool, a full moon on a clear night, to something bright and unrefined. “Only all the time!”

“And you still haven’t learned your lesson?” Xue Yang retorted. 

He expected this cultivator, in his pristine robes (who the fuck wears robes to night hunt anymore? He wanted to throw mud at him just to mar the pretty picture), with his pristine sword, to be offended. But Xingchen’s smile grew warm, like they were sharing a joke. “Maybe you can help it stick?”

Xue Yang’s throat dried, something vicious roaring through his mind and clawing at his rib cage. “Might be too late for you I think,” he teased, and Xingchen laughed, ugly and graceless, with a little snort. Xue Yang focussed on cleaning up his array materials, and thought about fucking Xingchen in a mausoleum, in grave dirt and decimated corpses, pulling him down to earth.

It took him three months to get Xingchen into bed. Not because Xingchen wasn't interested but because somehow, paradoxically, he was afraid of what it would mean if he was. 

Xingchen usually responded to his flirtation with laughter. The first time they fucked, he dared Xue Yang to make good on all his boasts. And how could he back out then, when being around Xingchen made him feel weightless, energized, and bright. How could he back out when saying no seemed like losing a good thing?

And it’s always been Xue Yang’s policy to grip good things by the throat.

So he let Xingchen buy him a drink, take him by the hand and lead him back to the hotel, blew him in the pristine bathroom, fucked him over the hotel desk, jostling the TV and knocking the branded stationary to the floor. 

He felt the pit of his stomach drop out when afterwards, Xingchen had kissed the bridge of his nose sweetly, gave him a syrupy smile, and whispered “You’re welcome to use the room as long as you need, that was fun, Yang’er.”

All of it saccharine and rosy, yet he’d never tasted anything so bitter.

Sleeping with Xingchen was like swallowing nails. Xue Yang didn’t know why. It’s not as though Xingchen made any promises.

*

His shitty little car splutters and dies at that weird liminal space between civilization and wilderness, too far away from the city to get help quickly. “Fuck,” Xue Yang hisses. He pulls off, tires skidding in the soft dirt. His eyes are burning, his candies have started to melt together in the heat of the car. The sun sinks slowly, stretching the shadows of the trees, giving them a golden halo. The air smells of pine and gasoline. The road is quiet.

Xue Yang pops the hood to stare at the engine, fingertips blackening with grease as he inspects.

There’s nothing for it though. He slams the hood shut, and waits for a tow, lounging across the windshield.

Zichen’s stupid electric blue jeep slows as it sees him, signals, and pulls off to the shoulder of the road. Xue Yang stays seated on the hood of his car, snapping his phone’s popsocket and glaring at the jeep’s flashing tail lights. 

Xingchen steps out onto the gravel, props his elbow on the open door, and does his best to leer. “Going our way, stranger?” He’s approximating a Jersey accent that just ends up southern. He laughs at his own silliness and tries again. “Need a ride?”

“Condescending to help the less fortunate?” Xue Yang sneers. Xingchen’s smile dims. Xue Yang smells blood. “Must be fucking funny to see me out here, must feel so fucking good to be able to help.”  He pitches his voice high and singsong. He hopes Xingchen takes the hint, gets back into the car, drives away. He doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t want to ask for help, wants to make it clear this is a last resort. 

“Am I not allowed to want to help you, Yang’er?” A fucking trap. What will happen if he says no? Or worse, if he says yes? He wants to scream. His popsocket has started to peel from his case.

Zichen leans out of the driver side window,  lifts a brow. Xingchen smiles and waits. He must look like an animal to them, barely worth their reaction, their notice. He fumes. “Yes I need a fucking ride, shit, you except me to beg?” He slides off the hood of his car and strides over to the jeep, impatiently yanking at the back door handle until the locks click open. 

“There’s a cooler in the back, if you need something to drink,” Xingchen informs. “Were you out here long? Have you called Roadside Assistance?”

“None of your fucking business.” He jogs back to his car, grabs his duffle, a denim jacket and his sword off the back seat. He waves his hand at Zichen’s mirror until he pops the trunk, shoving his things in beside Zichen’s travel worn backpack and Xingchen’s hard sided carryon covered in stickers.

His duffle does not look so out of place.

He’s been in Zichen’s back seat before. Fucked in Zichen’s back seat before. He balls up his jacket to lay down on, skin prickling from the blasting AC. It does nothing to cool his mood.

“Did you get anything more from your info packet? It was a little short on detail.” Xingchen rests his chin on the shoulder of the car seat to look at him, trying to change the subject or smooth over the atmosphere.

“Was a little busy trying to get there and being stranded in the middle of nowhere.” He pulls restlessly at the seatbelt. It cuts into the meat of his palm.

“Something’s been disturbing the graves on the island. There’s been no sign of anything yet, but there's a general increased residual resentment.”

“No attacks? No sightings? But disturbed graves?” Xue Yang repeated, frowning at Zichen’s reflected eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Do you know anything like that, Yang’er?” Xingchen holds out his hand. Xue Yang silently passes him a water bottle. It’s so easy to fall into familiar patterns, if he lets himself.

“Hungry ghosts maybe? Unable to find any offerings to snack on so they’re digging up corpses?” He fiddles with his cell phone’s pop socket, satisfied with the click each time he snaps it shut, trying vainly to get it to adhere to the case again. “I don’t get it though, if nothing’s happened except some disturbed grave and increased resentment, what the hell did they call us for?”

Xingchen shrugs, sips his water. The light refracts inside the bottle, Xue Yang wants his mouth where the bottle rests, wants to press his teeth into the pillow of Xingchen’s lower lip like plastic. “The atmosphere was disturbing tourists and visitors.”

“Of fucking course it was,” Xue Yang snorts.

“Maybe this job will be as simple as a suppression spell,” Zichen offers.

“Three days in a car with you fuckers for a suppression spell these fuckers could have bought off Amazon? Fuck that. If it comes to that, I'm waiting on the beach while you take care of it.” Xingchen laughs at Xue Yang as though he’s joking. Xue Yang tries not to remember loving that sound. He holds onto the bitterness, the cold resentment. “Useless hacks. I guess they have the money to blow on cultivators instead of taking care of it themselves”

Xingchen laughs again brightly and offers, “If it’s a quick job, want to go ziplining on the way back? There’s a park for it. We should be able to see the ocean from the top!”

“Sounds nice,” Xue Yang agrees with a sharp smile. “You really wanna drag me along to third wheel on your date?” He closes his eyes, breathes. He is capable of making good decisions. He is capable of mitigating harm. He doesn’t need to let himself get any closer than this; he can keep himself to the back seat.

“What makes you think a date wouldn’t include you?”

“Zichen knows why, did he not tell you,” he snaps.

Xingchen’s gaze cools. “I’m not some go between for the two of you. I’m not your father to tattle to. Any miscommunication between you is between you.”

Xue Yang watches Xingchen for a long moment. “Yeah. None of your fucking business. Just like always.”

“That’s not fair,” Zichen intones solemnly.

Xue Yang pointedly shoves earbuds in, and rolls to face the seat. The seatbelt cuts into the meat of his upper arm. The discomfort is grounding.

He can still hear them. He can see them in the rear view mirror. They talk of other things while they think he can’t hear. 

“Have you been ziplining before?” Xingchen asks, already googling prices.

“I’m willing to try it,” Zichen agrees. “It’s better than that time you tried to convince us to go skydiving.”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Xingchen knocks at his arm. Zichen lifts a brow at him.

“You must have siphoned it from me.”

They sound like before. This could be any one of their night hunts from before. Xue Yang squashes the thought down viciously. It grows back again like a weed.

*

There are proper schools for cultivation. Full private academies, weekend courses, youth led summer camps, all of which culminate with fancy certificates and a license to practice. There are proper smiths and workshops dedicated to crafting cultivator swords, one in tune with the energy of the wielder and engraved with the sword’s name. 

Xue Yang had YouTube and a fuck it we ball attitude. Xue Yang has the fake license Meng Yao had a friend of a friend make him. Xue Yang has the sword he picked up at a pawn shop after bartering away all the jewelry he had on him and half his rent. 

He is the antithesis to everything a proper cultivator should be. 

But he makes a fucking great demonic cultivator.

He was already fucking around with resentful energy before he ever had a name of it. 

And then he found a forum (gone now, lost to the information purges of the internet) explaining demonic cultivation, what it could do. The power and potential it had, even though it was a bit like riding a tiger. 

His first job had been a haunted pond on some far property. The story told to him by the gruff old man who owned the property was fairly simple: a little girl drowned, and her spirit was disturbing the livestock and escalating daily. 

He spent half the hunt simply waiting by the edge of the pond for the ghost to show herself. Her bedraggled little cotton play dress, her stringy hair, her pale and bloated face. He held out his hand to her. He asked her for her story.

He coaxed the little girl, who was actually held under the water by her older brother some half a century before, into coming with him, binding her spirit to a talisman of his own invention. He considered setting the older brother, aged and cracked like a wooden barrel left out in the elements, on fire to pay for his crime. But that was no way to maintain his dubious license. 

“Is she laid to rest?” The older brother asked, rubbing his palm on his jeans. Sweaty with guilt he wondered?

“Your pond isn’t haunted,” Xue Yang answered. 

He still has the peaceful ghost of the little girl, his very first bound spirit. 

*

“I told you we shouldn’t go through the city,” Xue Yang mutters. They’ve barely moved a few feet in the past fifteen minutes. The sun gleams orange and gold off car roofs and windows. The longer they stay still, the more he itches, knee bouncing, idly twisting the seat belt. He wishes he could get out and run between cars, barefoot, hot asphalt burning the soles of his feet.

“Oh? Talking to us again? Done pouting like a toddler?” Zichen asks dryly, flicking his turning signal and hoping to merge into another lane. Almost everyone ignores him.

“Talking to you just long enough to call you an idiot,” Xue Yang grumbles.

“Drop it.” Xingchen’s voice doesn’t sound gentle and coaxing, exhausted from long hours already, temple pressed to the window, leaving a smudge, hair mussed by the head rest. “There’s candy in Zichen’s bag for you, Yang’er.”

Xue Yang tips himself up over the back seat to rummage in Zichen’s bag in the trunk. He pulls out a bag of gummies, kept in the front pocket where he always finds them. He wonders how long they’ve been there. Did they purchase them before they left the city and offered Xue Yang a ride? Were they remnants from the last time Xue Yang took a job with either of them? Were candies kept on hand, on the off chance they ran into him? He settles back into his seat, rips the package with his teeth. 

“Hold out your hand,” he tells Xingchen.

Xingchen blinks at him, leaning over the emergency brake to hold out his hand. Xue Yang shakes out a few gummies into his palm. “I’m only giving you a few cause you’re a freak that doesn’t even like candy. They’re wasted on you.”

Xingchen giggles, tired lines smoothing beneath his smile. “So thoughtful.” 

“And none for Zichen cause he appreciates candy even less.” Xue Yang pops a gummy into his mouth, chewing obnoxiously loud.

Zichen huffs. “I appreciate the sentiment.” 

“You’d better. And no take backs, I’m eating these all by myself.” He makes himself comfortable again in the seat, carefully sorting through the best flavours.

He’s so fucking easy, he berates himself, the itch under his skin soothed over.

*

Six months ago, they fucked at a Cultivation Conference. Xingchen invited Xue Yang himself, and draped a Lanyard labelling him staff around his neck like a king bestowing a favour, dropping a kiss to his forehead. So Xue Yang spent a weekend loitering around the conference centre’s bar, fetching water or sound equipment, and half listening to Xingchen lecture on the merits of spell infused cultivator robes, or Zichen lecture on the form and function of a horsetail whisk.

Then at night they would convene in the hotel bar across the street. Zichen looked imposing in his suit, his legs went on for miles, his shoulders could span a canyon, his hand, resting lazily around the neck of his beer bottle (wrapped around his neck, pressing in with his tumb, broad palms rough with sword callouses). Xingchen looked elegant, in white and silver formal robes, his gauzy sleeves allowing an implication of his perfect forearms, like the moon peering shyly from behind a cloud, smiling, big sugar crystals from the rim of his glass on his perfect bottom lip. Little details adding up like salt to water, practically a chemical reaction, he had to have them or he would die. 

(As always Xue Yang didn’t fit, ripped jeans and one of Zichen’s oversized baseball tees, the punctuation that laid uselessly outside their bracket)

Six months ago, they fell into bed together again, hardly an incident worth noting except —

Xue Yang had laughed so hard he wanted to throw up, watching Zichen’s big stupid eyes trail after Xingchen as he slid from bed, tiptoeing into the shower. “You’re fucking gone for him huh?”

Zichen, careful and honest and stalwart, merely replied, “Stones from glass houses.”

Xue Yang hadn’t found that half as funny. He smacked at Zichen’s chest. (something inside him already knew better, told him to run, pack his shit and not look back, this was dangerous, he couldn’t stay here—)  He smacked again, but Zichen just caught his wrist, his perfect long fingers made his bones look as fragile as a bird’s, delicate. He pulled Xue Yang’s hand to his mouth, kissed his palm, eyes dark and fixed, his breath tickling his skin. 

“And not just for him,” he murmured significantly.

Six months ago they fucked at a conference, and Xue Yang decided he’d had enough fun with the pretty cultivators.

(So why does he keep fucking them?)

*

Xingchen joins him in the back seat at their first gas stop. Xue Yang can see Zichen through the window, pumping, looking stupidly serious in his aviators, gazing at nothing. “You didn’t have to go,” he whispers. He doesn’t touch, obeying unspoken rules about boundaries. He sets his palm on the car seat between them, close enough to touch Xue Yang’s knee.

He stares at Xingchen’s hand, perfectly shaped nail beds, painted a shimmery natural pink, perfectly straight fingers, delicate knuckle bones. He props his elbow on the driver seat backrest, lip curled in disdain. “Didn’t think you gave a fuck either way.”

“That’s not fair.”

“You didn’t message after,” Xue Yang points out. “You dropped me off real quick. So how unfair am I being?”

“Zichen said you seemed to need space. I was giving you that.”

“Thought whatever was between me and Zichen was between us?”

“I didn’t ask what happened. And he didn’t tell me. But he told me you had a disagreement.” Xingchen daringly inches his fingers closer. Xue Yang wars with himself. Does he want to rebuff him? If he lets Xingchen touch, he will give in. He’ll be right where he fucking started, no better than before.

But who is he kidding? He was ready to let them back in because of a bag of his favourite fucking candies.

Xingchen touches his knee, bare through the rip in his jeans, the touch ticklish. Xue Yang shivers. “You didn’t have to go,” Xingchen repeats, earnest and soft. His fingertips are a little cool from resting so close to the AC vent. He draws circles on his skin between the distressed and fraying threads.

“Well, you’ve been playing it safe. Why can’t I do the same?” He lets himself touch, fingers curling around Xingchen’s wrist. He can feel the flutter of Xingchen’s pulse through the thin skin.

Xingchen inclines his head. “You’re right. I’ve been cowardly. But you were cowardly too.”

Xue Yang chews his tongue. He doesn’t have the words to explain how terrifying those months with Xingchen and Zichen were. He can’t explain why, except that it felt Xingchen was carelessly playing with something breakable and precious, and if it shattered, there would be no repairing it.

Xingchen flipped his hand around, tangled their fingers instead of pulling away. “We want you. Here. We missed you. We aren’t going to let you go again.”

“They have laws against that.”

“I don’t give a fuck.” Xue Yang snorts. Swear words sound hilarious on Pure, Righteous, Xiao Xingchen. Encouraged, Xingchen smiles at him warmly. “It doesn’t matter what you do. We won’t be the ones to let go first.”

“Oh yeah?” Xue Yang lifts a brow. That’s a promise he’s not stupid enough to believe, especially since it’s exactly what he wants to hear. He’s learned all his lessons the hard way. 

Zichen pulls open the passenger side door and shares a look with Xingchen, communicating silently. The car floods with the scent of gasoline and baked pavement. Satisfied by whatever he reads on Xingchen’s face, he says “Switch out. Someone else take over driving.”

Xue Yang pulls away from Xingchen, slams the car door closed on him and slides into the driver's seat. Driving, he can think in peace. Driving, he can mull over that entire conversation, chew at it like a dog with a bone. He replaces Xingchen's phone with his own, and ques up his favourite driving playlist. Zichen groans. 

“Hey man, you didn’t complain when Xingchen was listening to bollywood soundtracks.”

“That’s because Xingchen doesn’t play the same 30 songs on repeat.”

“I’ve been like this since 2008, and I'm not changing now.”

It could be a conversation from before. Before spring. Before Zichen said— Before.

Was it that easy? Could they turn it all back and forget, just like that? His shitty pop punk soothes something in him, riles up the voice that reminds him it’s too good to be true.

*

“When I was a kid, I wanted this.” Xue Yang said when their breathing slowed, tangled together on top of the sheets. Zichen’s chest was still sticky hot beneath his ear. He usually tolerated post coitus cuddling for maybe ten minutes. Xue Yang made sure to hoard every second. Xingchen hummed, shifting his head from his place on Zichen’s belly. 

“Marathon sex in a penthouse suite?” Xingchen offered, with a smile and shimmering eyes.

It would be so easy to agree, to make a joke of it, close his eyes and indulge in cuddling Zichen until he got sick of it and pulled away. Maybe run his fingers through Xingchen’s hair. He shrugged a little, idly swirled his finger around Zichen’s nipple, giggled when Zichen squirmed. “High thread count sheets. Penthouse views. Private jets. Fast cars. Balmain. Creme brulee for breakfast lunch and dinner. I didn’t even really know what creme brulee was, it just sounded fancy and that’s what I wanted.” It sounded silly to say out loud. Shallow. But fuck it, he could be shallow, he still didn’t have half the shit on his list.

“Is it all you thought it would be?” Zichen’s voice rumbled beneath his ear.

“Creme brulee ain’t shit but the rest of it’s alright.” Xue Yang sighed. He couldn’t tell if he was grateful the conversation deviated, that they did not look deeply into the why of his statement, unearthing the poor little orphan buried beneath petty desires.

Xingchen turned his face to laugh against Zichen’s skin. “You love creme brulee.” 

“Like it’s good for what it is but it’s not worth the fucking hype. It’s just fancy burnt pudding in cute little cups!”

“Which is why you had four of them at dinner tonight?” Zichen prodded.

“You were paying. And maybe it’s burnt pudding but it’s expensive burnt pudding.” Xue Yang shrugged.

When he was a kid he wanted to have a face, a real place, to be seen, to feel real. He wanted enough money, enough power, enough status, to finally be a person. He wanted luxury. He wanted peace.

He already understood he won’t be able to buy or fight or fuck his way into that life but. He’s come pretty damn close. 

And it wasn’t half bad.

*

There’s a ghost in the motel room. 

She looks lost,  pacing in front of the closet door, wet hair dripping to the floor, but leaving no puddles. She barely even acknowledges them as they clump at the doorway, though as with all ghosts, she pauses, swerving towards Xue Yang as though he’s a tempting dessert she caught a whiff of. 

“If we exorcise it, think we can get our room comped?” Xue Yang tosses his bag in the vague direction of a bed. The ghost swirls uncertainly, like candle smoke in a breeze. She takes no notice of them. She drips and looks plaintively at the window.

“It’s not particularly strong,” Xingchen remarks, observing her. “I doubt the owner even knows about it.”

“Pathetic,” Xue Yang mutters. “Imagine dying, and resenting enough to become a ghost, and still not being powerful enough to do anything about it.” He wonders if he would have made a ghost like this once. If he died any time before he became a demonic cultivator, angry enough to burn the world down and utterly powerless against the might of the omnipresent system.

She’s barely enough of a spirit to talk to.

Xingchen hangs up his cultivator robes in the closet. Zichen goes to take a shower. Xue Yang detangles her like picking at threads in a sweater. 

He never told either of them that he can hear their stories, taste their regret like old blood on the back of his tongue, pulled into their death. With her, it’s just flashes of memories. A secret lover. A sudden rejection. Despair, loneliness, sinking into a bathtub and bleeding out, waking again even lonelier than before.

She sighs as the last knot of her existence comes loose, dissolving into smoke.

“Your exorcisms are so beautiful, in a way,” Xingchen says, braiding his hair for sleep.

“She was just weak.” Xue Yang shrugs. He picks up his duffle and slaps it onto the desk, looking for his toothbrush.

“But she’s at peace. And you did that.”

“Stop being so sentimental.” Xue Yang can’t look over at him, cheeks hot. He moves over to the bathroom, and stops short to see Zichen already there, shoulder propped against the doorjamb. “What?”

“I wish you wouldn’t use demonic cultivation,” he says. His hand twitches, before his fingers clench on his elbow. “But it’s true you give them peace regular cultivators can’t, and I appreciate that.”

Xue Yang scoffs and brushes past him into the washroom. The steam smells of Zichen’s body wash, citrus and pine, flooding his lungs and filling his head. “When have I ever asked for your approval?”

*

The first time they fucked, Xingchen pressed him back against the hotel door and sucked his cock into his perfect plush mouth, lips pinked and shiny, while Zichen fisted a hand in both their hair, holding Xue Yang still, controlling Xingchen’s pace, biting savage kisses across Xue Yang’s collar bones.

They all parted ways casually.

The second time they fucked, Xingchen took his time fingering Xue Yang open, one finger at a time teasing at his rim, dipping inside, crooking up and teasing him. Two fingers then, hooked up into his prostate, the slick sound of too much lube. Three fingers. Xue Yang squirmed and whined for more, until Zichen pressed the hot head of his cock to his bottom lip, smearing a drop of precum, easing inside and fucking his face as slow as Xingchen’s four fingers pressed inside him and stretched him.

They all parted ways casually.

The third time they fucked, Xue Yang pressed his tongue to Xingchen’s soft and quivering hole, kissing him deep and sweet, sucking the twitching rim, easing both thumbs inside to pull his hole open, force his tongue in deeper, Xingchen’s insides hot and writhing around his tongue and fingers. Zichen jacked him slowly, big hands firm and calloused, thumbs pressed just under the head, nail against his slit, palming his balls, utterly distracting. 

They all parted ways casually.

The fourth time they fucked, Xue Yang realized this might be a little more than coincidental or convenient meetings. Quick fucks, blowing off steam after successful hunts. Before hunts. During hunts.  In the car, and in a recently cleansed house, in hotel rooms, in elevators, in upscale restaurant bathroom stalls.

They always parted ways casually.

*

The last sign Xue Yang spotted on the highway promised a rest stop and a scenic view, to eat the lunch they packed in the cooler. Xingchen missed both possible turn offs, so he eats a convenience store chicken salad sandwich with one hand, the other on the wheel. Zichen dozes off against the lid of the cooler, his own face and fingers meticulously cleaned of any mayonnaise.

Xue Yang licks his fingers of the last trace of shredded chicken, scrolling through the information PDF the tourist centre provided on his phone. It contains only the bare minimum Zichen already summarized: the historic tourist community was upset by the general malaise that increased on the island, and would like the source investigated. “They got this info locked tighter than a nun’s panties. You’d think they were holding federal secrets on this island,” he complains.

“Maybe they are. Our very own Area 51!” Xingchen chirps.

Xue Yang laughs. “Hilarious for sure, but we’re gonna need more than this.”

“Do you still have A Qing’s number? Call her, she’s our back up for this one.” Xue Yang doesn’t really think it’s a good idea, but he barely has enough service to do the research himself.

A Qing picks up on the third ring. “Xue Yang. Get bent,” she greets. 

“Already scheduled in,” he replies cheerily, kicking his heels onto the dash, pressing his bare toes to the cool windshield glass. “Your precious Xingchen-gege needs help. You’re on speaker. He’s driving.”

“Gege,” A Qing trills, tone doing a complete 180. “What do you need!” 

“Is there any more information you can get on Minister’s Hospice?” Xingchen swallows his bite of sandwich quickly. “Any past hauntings or activity? The hospital’s history?”

A Qing hums, before she mutters, “Hold on a sec, let me check.” Something rustles, thumps, then the clatter of a keyboard.

“While I’m still young and beautiful please, Qingqing,” Xue Yang prods. 

“Fuck off,” A Qing snaps distractedly, clacking at her keyboard even more furiously. “I don’t even want to talk to you, put Zichen-ge on the phone.”

“Sucks to be you, he’s napping. So you’re stuck with me.”

She makes a hissing sound while she types. Xingchen giggles into his sandwich.  “Ah, Okay. Here. Ministers Island, settled 1776. It was a resort at first…” she hums as she quickly scans for more information. “Then the hospital was built in the 1820s for tuberculosis or something. Lotsa rich dead people on the island. Closed in 1917, and then turned into a historic site in 2006. Nothing that exciting really, except for the location and the well preserved facilities.”

“Anything stick out about the patients or the staff that seems off?” Xue Yang tries.

“Normal illness related deaths on the island. Not even a single psycho nurse or anything. Downright boring.” 

“Shit, Course it couldn’t be that easy huh?” Xue Yang sighs.

She hums thoughtfully as she taps her keyboard, muttering a little as she reads. “This is weird. There was a job posted for this about two months ago. But the local cultivators that accepted it never reported in.”

“Accepted another job maybe?” Xingchen offers.

“Could be.” But A Qing doesn’t sound convinced. “That’s all there is so far.”

“Thanks for the info, A Qing,” Xingchen gushes sweetly. 

“I’ll keep researching. Call you if I find anything. Bye Gege.”

“Bye!” Xingchen gets out, muffled by another bite of his sandwich.

“Bye little bitch!” Xue Yang chirps.

“Bye rat bastard!” A Qing chirps right back, twice as sweet.

In the back seat, Zichen’s mouth quirks upwards, not quite as asleep as Xue Yang had thought. A Qing hangs up, and Xue Yang balls up a receipt to throw at him for laughing.

*

He met Meng Yao outside a bar. Technically, he met Meng Yao on a r/cultivation thread, and they found out they were in the same city and had some interesting views on cultivation methods, so they decided to meet up.

Meng Yao looked like he just came from a college business party, crisp slacks, crisp polo, charming dimples topping a crisp smile. They shared a pitcher of sangria, feeling each other out. “Why cultivation? It’s not exactly a profession for…” he gestured as politely as he could.

“Gutter rats?” Xue Yang offered.

“Not my words,” Meng Yao said mildly, sipping his sangria. Unlike Xue Yang, who rudely shoved his tongue into the glass to get at the cherry in the bottom, he stirs  the fruit in the bottom with his straw. “I know someone,” he finally volunteered. “They could help you get your license.”

“But?” Xue Yang hedges. Quid pro quo is just a matter of course.

“You proposed some pretty interesting research topics. Cutting edge, one might call them.”

“All theoretical, of course,” Xue Yang interjected.

“Of course,” Meng Yao agreed, secret Mona Lisa smile and deep dimples. “But I’d like to know more about your theories. I want to give you the means to learn more.” He reached into his expensive leather satchel, sliding a card across the table. “There’s a seminar on arrays I'd like to invite you to, if you have time.”

“There gonna be an open bar at this thing?” Xue Yang took the card, inspecting the fine paper, rubbing his rough thumb over it. There wouldn’t be an open bar, but it did promise refreshments. “I’m not gonna say no. You know what they say. Knowledge is power.”

Meng Yao practically grinned at him, like he was meeting a friend in the light after decades of darkness and loneliness. “Those are words I live by.”

*

They stop at a gas station. Xue Yang pumps, Zichen goes in to pay. Xingchen sops cleaner over the windshield, scraping away the remains of splattered bugs. The sun cooks the pavement. There is nothing around except trees, and a two lane highway, and a big green sign for a one horse town whose name may be French, or indigenous, or a bastardization of the two. 

There’s something to be said about the liminality of gas stations. 

When Xue Yang is finished pumping, he wanders through the gas station’s small convenience store, pockets a bar of fudge, momentarily memorized by the swirling blue raspberry flavour slush in the noisily humming machine. Every gas station he’s ever been in has the same smell: mop water, gasoline, burnt coffee, day old donuts. The smell makes it feel like he’s been here before, in this exact gas station, a million times, and like he’s never seen it before in his life.

He trips back out into the sunshine, stretches his arms over his head. 

“See anything interesting?” Xingchen hooks his fingers in Xue Yang’s belt loops, tugging him closer. Xue Yang doesn’t resist him, drawn in like he always is, tipping his face up to meet Xingchen’s mouth. 

“Found some fudge,” he says, their lips brushing.

“Can I have a taste?” Xingchen smirks, teasing their lips together. 

“Not sure I feel like sharing,” Xue Yang quips, but Xingchen just laughs and kisses him properly.

(And it doesn’t matter that three hours ago he told himself he could go without this, he’s never been known for restraint, and what they won’t give him he will take and take and take and—)

Zichen comes back out with canned iced coffee for Xingchen, beef jerky for himself, and a pack of twinkies for Xue Yang. 

He takes them without thanks, eats one, lets the spongy cake and cream stick to the roof of his mouth, chews slowly. He crumples the blue plastic too hard, belly tingling, mind working and unable to come up with an answer.

“Good?” Zichen asks archly, his eyes light even though his mouth never smiles. 

“Mmm,” Xue Yang agrees. “And you know what else is delicious with a cream filling?”

Xingchen snorts, an ugly sound that doesn't suit him. Xue Yang likes that sound very much.

Zichen sighs. “I walked into that one.”

Xingchen switches on the radio, and, disappointed with the selection half obscured by static, plugs in his aux cord. Xue Yang closes his eyes, tips his head back into the gentle gust of the AC, listening to the wheels on the pavement, and Xingchen quietly singing along.

“What’s that band you showed me called, Yang’er?”

Xue Yang peeks open an eye. “Why? Did you like it?”

“Wasn’t really my taste, but I thought Zichen would like it.”

“Your taste is fucking incomprehensible.”

Zichen huffs before schooling his face, as though to hide he finds anything Xue Yang says amusing. He agrees. They’ve talked about this before, probably in this same back seat. 

He wants to jump out of this moving vehicle, anything to escape.

*

Four months ago, Xue Yang spotted Zichen’s stupid jeep in the gravel parking lot of the off season campground. He didn’t have the good sense to get the fuck away, to miss him entirely like ships passing in the night. The monster was dead, the heroes prevailed, he didn’t have to stick around. But he did. He leaned against Zichen’s driver side door, waited 15 minutes until Zichen came striding along the hiking path, sword slung over his shoulder, scraping his hair back into a bun, shoulders bunching with muscle.

Four months ago Xue Yang made another bad choice.

Four months ago he didn’t care how cold it was, early spring snow still clumped in shadows, dingey with mud. He bent over the picnic table, moaned into the weathered wood, eyes squeezed shut, or rolled back, overwhelmed on Zichen’s cock, already unused to taking him. He didn’t care who the fuck heard them, head spinning as Zichen grunted softly against the back of his neck, whispering his name like he was a dessert, a delicacy to be devoured.

Four months ago, Xue Yang came down from the afterglow of the best fuck he’d had in months (and it’s irrelevant that he can pin point the exact day, Zichen’s lips still burn his palm), clarity even colder than the slush melting at the knees of his jeans. He shoved Zichen away.

(Eight months ago he might have teased Zichen about keeping lube in the glove compartment. Eight months ago everything was still normal)

“It’s been a slice, gotta run.” Xue Yang’s voice was trembling, fear huddled like a rabbit in his chest. Of what, he didn’t know, couldn’t say.

“Wait, where are you going?!”  Zichen demanded, dragging at Xue Yang’s wrist to pull him back (his perfect fingers pulling his wrist, his perfect lips against his palm.) He caged him against his chest (Xue Yang wanted to crawl into his ribs once, still did,) “Where the fuck have you been?”

“What difference does it make to you?” Xue Yang shoved again, and Zichen grunted against the force of it. But he didn’t let go. His fingers would leave bruises on his wrists.

“You aren’t answering my texts, it’s been months, what the fuck is going on with you?”

“Nothing’s going on with me. Maybe I’m just fucking bored Zichen, ever think of that?” He bared his teeth, sneered. “I can get a big dick anywhere.”

Zichen finally let go. The breeze was still sharp, blowing off the ocean, whistling through the trees, cutting right into him. He didn’t realize how warm Zichen was. “Is that what you—?” He started, eyes dewy, hand still lingering in the air between them, as though he would still grab Xue Yang back, hold him, if he just implied he wanted it.

“Just go back to Xingchen. What are you even doing out here on your own?” Xue Yang straightened his coat, brushed uselessly at the cold damp patches on his jeans. “I’m not your replacement fuck, you can’t just fucking settle for me like a fucking consolation prize.”

“I’ve never said that.” His voice was cold now, stonier, building walls to defend against Xue Yang’s sharp words.

Xue Yang glared, “You don’t need to say it!”

“Where is this coming from?”

“Just fuck off Zichen! Do you want me to fucking spell it out for you? Fuck off!”

Four months ago Xue Yang flipped Zichen the bird, and told himself if anyone ever tried to take anything from him, he’d destroy it first. He felt sick the whole drive home. Zichen did not text again. 

Four months ago he breathed a sigh and he was certain it was of relief.

*

Zichen joins him on the hood of the jeep with a water bottle he presses to Xue Yang’s knee. Xingchen is a little ways back, talking to A Qing on the phone. The ocean breeze gusts around them, the sun sinking down over the water, a watercolor painting of a bruised and aching skin, a burning horizon. 

“You talked with Xingchen,” Zichen starts, voice a little halting. Hesitant. Xue Yang glances over. In the dramatic golden hour sunlight, one eye is cast in shadow, dark coffee brown. The other is alight, a thousand flecks of colour refracted. 

“Is it your turn or something?” Xue Yang scoffs. He turns back to the water. The waves lick at the shore like an indulgent lover. “You guys are more in tune than ever.” Zichen blinks at him slowly. “I guess that's no surprise, you’ve been dating this long.”

Zivhen is silent for a long moment. He picks his words like he's picking letters out of a scrabble bag, stringing them together. “We weren’t...” He starts. “We only started meeting up for coffee two weeks ago. This is our first hunt together since—“

Xue Yang turns again, mouth open. Zichen looks composed. Serious. “What?”

“Xingchen barely texted me back. You ghosted me completely. I felt like…” he sighs softly. “I broke what we had. If I had just—“

“What the hell are you talking about?” Xue Yang snaps. 

Zichen closes his eyes. Counts backwards from ten. There are stress lines around his eyes, his mouth, hinting at pain. “I tried to make you feel… more. Do more. Than you wanted or felt. I pushed that—“

“This might be the most emotionally mature thing I've ever said, but you can't take credit for other people's bullshit.”

Zichen huffs a laugh. “That's pretty much what Xingchen said.”

They are quiet for a long time. The pinks and reds darken to dark blues and purples, a star or two peering out through the sheets of colour. Xingchen waves at them as he finishes his call with A Qing. But he doesn't interrupt them. He slips onto the jeep’s back seat. 

Zichen holds himself perfectly still and poised, a magical blue glow settling over him now. “I spent every moment we were all together second guessing myself. It was torture. Do they like me? Is this all just for fun? Does it feel as serious for them as it does for me?”

Xue Yang's throat feels tight. This is more than Zichen has ever said to him about it. He wants to duck away from his feelings. He wants to dive into the ocean. He can't answer. He doesn't know what he would say. He thinks if Zichen looked at him right now, he would disintegrate. But Zichen doesn't look at him. He stares at the evening sky, with the tight expression of a prisoner on death row, waiting for the ax to fall. 

“C’mere,” Xue Yang murmurs, even as he slides over the hood, right palm settling on Zichen's muscular thigh, pushing himself up into his space. Zichen used to flinch when he came too close. Now he acts like Xue Yang belongs there. How did he never notice? Did he notice?

He presses their mouths together, gently exploring. Zichen melts against him one muscle at a time, sighing softly, relieved. He cups Xue Yang’s face delicately, soft fingers curling back behind his ear, tender. “Is this…?” Xue Yang whispers, but he doesn’t know what he’s asking.

Zichen touches their foreheads together, noses brushing in a soft kiss. “Whatever you want. Whatever.”

He sounds desperate. Xue Yang still doesn’t know what to say, but he can’t let him hurt again. That seems like an impossible task when he’s broken every beautiful thing he’s ever owned.

*

He’d been on hunts with Zichen and Xingchen both since they met. Never together. He didn’t even know they knew each other. It shouldn’t have surprised him that they did, that they found each other. They fit together in a way that made more sense, smooth glass to Xue Yang’s jagged iron.

(In hindsight, he could admit he probably wanted to keep them separate, two perfect things that hadn’t realized how imperfect he was in comparison. In hindsight, he could admit they probably always knew.)

“Of course,” Xue Yang muttered, expression twisting into a sneer when Zichen rounded the corner after Xingchen. His hackles raised, something already snarling at its cage. “You two know each other?”

“Zichen is a dear friend,” Xingchen agreed, like he wasn’t fucking grinding Xue Yang beneath his heel. How did Xingchen explain him to Zichen? With that same casual introduction? How did Zichen feel? But when he glanced at Zichen, he couldn’t read anything. “How lovely that we’re all friends!”

“Of course,” Xue Yang said again, tone simpering, mood black. That made perfect sense, and he was deluding himself if he thought otherwise. Friends, Xingchen said, like that’s what you called whatever they were. Were they even that? Was that the right word?

Fuck them for making him think —

Fuck him for falling for it.

But there was no time for the destruction Xue Yang wanted to rain on them, for all the curse he knew.  Their quarry found them and circled them, expert predators hemming them in. They were smart for monsters, chasing them to tire them out, striking strategically.

Xue Yang knew better. Demonic cultivation was frowned upon by even the most open minded cultivator. But Zichen’s bleeding sword arm was the rock, and the pack of yāo were the hard place. So Xue Yang called on his favourite ghost, a long nailed, long tongued widow who died in despair. She slashed out at the yāo, beating them back long enough for them to regroup.

“What the fuck was that!” Zichen snapped, gesturing at the ghost.

“Did you want to take that hit yourself?” Xue Yang snarled right back. The damage to Zichen’s arm was worse than he thought, the torn flesh already turning black, poisoned with resentment. Xue Yang dug around in his drawstring backpack for remedies.

“Demonic cultivation is bad for you.” Xingchen offered, a wave of pure ice and frost flowing from his sword to push back the yāo flanking them. He hardly needed to bother. His Widow’s Ghost was decimating them, chasing even as they tried to retreat.

“I'm not dead yet. Which you will be if you don't pay attention” He yanked at Zichen’s arm, ignoring his hiss of pain. “Don’t be so fucking proud. Stay still.” He smeared the powder over Zichen’s wounds. The black poison faded from his skin as the medicine sucked it away.

Around them, the battle was over. The widow ghost appeared at his elbow, bowing deeply. Zichen tensed beside him, warily grasping the hilt of his sword. The widow ghost paid him no mind, looking at Xue Yang imploringly. “Good job babe,” he assured. He nicked a finger and fed her some blood. Zichen made a noise of disgust. Xingchen made a matching one of fascination. She slurped at his finger hungrily with her long rolling tongue, her touch was icy cold. He opened his binding book and eased her back into her page.

Zichen looked horrified and intrigued, eyeing the book warily. He had seen it before, certainly, but it was under so many spells and arrays, the resentful energy was almost imperceptible. “What happens when you don’t feed them enough?” Xingchen helped him stand, eyes also fixed on the book.

“Then I guess that’s the day they’ll eat me.” He shrugged, tucking the book away.

“We don’t want that,” Xingchen told him firmly. 

Xue Yang reeled. When had they become a we?

*

The big green highway signs have added the turn off exit to a tourist trap. Xue Yang looks at it longingly. He’d researched the place, planned his visit, before all those plans went to shit. He can’t imagine taking Zichen and Xingchen on one of his weird little detours but, what can it hurt?

“That’s not too far from where we’re going.” Xue Yang points out the sign gesture with a  wave of one finger from the steering wheel. Xingchen glances up from his phone, eyes caught by the big billboard as it whips by. “It’s like, what did they call it, an open air museum. Like a replica of a pioneer village.” It’s a calculated move. Zichen isn’t listening, headphones in, reading  most likely. He just needs to get Xingchen on his side.

“Oh? I haven’t heard of this before.” Xingchen’s eyes light, eager to know more. “What else?”

“There’s hay rides, and an old fashioned bakery and…” he casts around for something else Xingchen might like. “A petting zoo, stuff to learn about history and shit—”

Xingchen  beams at him. “How did you know that was just the sort of thing Zichen would enjoy?” Xue Yang’s eyes flick to the rearview mirror. Zichen looks back intently, eyes dark and deep and full of meeting. Xue Yang glares at the road.

“I’m just a fucking thoughtful guy,” he growls. Not like he’s listened to Zichen ramble about his current devastatingly boring non fiction audiobooks often enough. 

“We can go, can’t we, Zichen?” Xingchen prods. Xue Yang can feel Zichen’s eyes on the back of his neck, burning. He’s already changing lanes in traffic.

“We don’t have time for this,” Zichen grouses, while Xue Yang signals and turns off. He does not offer any more resistance than that, weak to Xingchen’s pleading eyes. “We have a job to do.”

“The place is haunted. It's still gonna be haunted tomorrow,” Xue Yang teases. “We’re not gonna come back this way, so why not get some culture?”

Culture is a handful of shabby little cottages and shops set up to mimic a little village; a post office, a mill. A white washed church steeple pokes at the sky. A stout red brick schoolhouse squats in a grassy lot dotted with dandelions, and another woman in a prim grey dress rings a hand bell to announce the start of an activity or workshop. A general store doubles as a gift shop where they sell rock candy and fudge. A gaggle of third graders gawk at the rabbits in the petting zoo, play tag in and among the buildings and clamour around the candy. A woman in period dress cards wool in the doorway of a cabin.

Zichen looks slightly less miserable when yet another staff reenactor hands him a full colour booklet, with a map and descriptions of the area.

Xingchen grabs Xue Yang’s hand to drag him around to each place, fascinated by the shuttle of a loom as a reenactor demonstrates. He laughs and tries to churn butter when a reenactor waves him over. Another reenactor at a Blacksmith’s workshop encourages Zichen to take a swing at an old horse shoe, while Xue Yang films him. The whole village is so small it barely takes them an hour to poke their heads into every cottage. But Zichen is immersed now, taking his time to read each sign and placard, intoning in his smooth teacher voice the date and restoration process, while Xue Yang and Xingchen wait at his elbows for him to impart knowledge.

“Want to ride the hayride?” Xue Yang points at the wagon.

“And you’ve lost me.” Zichen nods at them both. “You two go ahead, I’ll see you after.”

“You think Zichen is afraid of horses?” Xue Yang watches Zichen’s retreating back.

“It’s the smell I think?” Xingchen responds.

They’re joined on the ride by a mother and her two sons. Xingchen smiles brightly at them, and elbows Xue Yang in the side when he pulls faces. The sun is hot, the breeze is moist as though threatening a summer storm. Xue Yang drapes himself over the side of the wagon, watching the little town roll by. Xingchen leans against his side, his hair sticks to his skin, unbearably warm. Xue Yang doesn’t push him off.

Zichen greets them with a lemonade, a stick of candy and a postcard each when they get back. 

“They had ice cream too, Zichen. And it’s so very hot.” Xue Yang peers at him from beneath his lashes, traps his bottom lip between his teeth.

“You’re impossible.” Zichen sighs. But he returns to the general store to buy ice cream.

Xingchen takes a seat at a picnic table half hidden in the shadow of the general store, and sips his lemonade, his lips look obscenely red. “Did you research this place? Before you came?” He asks mildly. Xue Yang blinks. Xingchen just props his pointed chin in his palm. “You seemed to know a lot about it.”

Xue Yang shrugs, and his shoulders stay hunched, “Sometimes I think there’d be money in being a local travel blogger or something.” Its not the truth. This is how he carves out pleasure between jobs. But he doesn’t know how he would explain that, doesn’t think he wants Xingchen to know.

Xingchen inclines his head, accepting the answer, never pressing for more (Never caring to know), “Do you come to these kinds of things often?” 

“When I can.” He sips his lemonade, thinks Zichen is taking a long time. “I was supposed to come here in… fuck I dunno, third grade maybe?” 

“Why didn’t you?”

Xue Yang shrugs. In the field across the way, the children are being lead in a game that involves a stick and a hoop, racing each other while onlookers cheer. “Between homes or something. No one to sign the permission form. No one to pay for the field trip.” He hadn’t even really wanted to go, eight and angry, but it was that he couldn’t, that it was denied to him. He wanted it. He wanted everything. So he takes it now, while he can.

Xingchen looks at him. It's a quiet and discerning look. His eyes are like stars. Xue Yang thinks about plucking them out, doesn’t want him to see—

Then Xingchen smiles, sweet and disarming. “Well I’m glad we got to come along. This was fun.” 

“We’ll find a fucking… art gallery or something for you next time.” Xue Yang sips his lemonade. He’s glad he convinced them to go. He remembers lonely trips and lonely selfies next to quirky tourist traps. And this is nicer.

It has nothing to do with them. This is just more fun.

*

Xiao Xingchen texted him the QR code for the job he was on, followed by his hotel address and room number. It seemed a bit like laying out cheese for a trap. Xue Yang took the bait.

He waited 20 minutes in the crisp autumn air for the bus. He played with the candy wrapper in his pocket, folding and twisting it while the bus rattled along its route, mostly driving past empty stops, until he pulled the string for his, and walked the additional ten minutes to the address listed.

Xingchen greeted him with a kiss at the door to the haunted house of the week, marble smooth fingers cupping his cheek, smiling against his mouth when he pulled away. “Thanks for coming along, Yang’er,” he whispered, brushing his hair back from his face as though to look into his eyes. His face looked orange under the street light. “This job looked boring, and you always make the boring ones so funny.”

“Where’s Zichen?” Xue Yang asked, expecting him to prowl around a corner any minute, all stormy eyes and stony face. But he didn’t appear and without him Xingchen looked wispy and immaterial, like candle smoke and fog. Xue Yang frowned. After last time he thought — 

“Haven’t texted him in a bit.” Xingchen shrugged. 

“Is he on another job?” He pressed.

“You could text him yourself, you know,” Xingchen tutted. He tugged at Xue Yang’s wrist, his fingertips were cold. Xue Yang pulled his hand back. That single cold touch settled like cement in his belly.

“Do you even know?” Do you even care? Does he even matter? Do I? Am I just the flavour of the week, someone in the city desperate enough to drop what i’m doing and come when you call like a dog.” Anger felt better, more comfortable than cement, fiery and familiar. “I thought you were getting along so well, attached at the fucking hip. Did you drop him already? Tell me you didn’t before you got a chance to fuck him—” 

Xingchen frowned, taking a step back. All the air seemed to go with him.  “Don’t do that. There’s no need to be jealous.” 

“No. Of fucking course there isn’t,” Xue Yang spat.  The moon doesn’t give a fuck if the ocean and stars and sun all yearn for its bright face. The moon disappears at a whim, coy and duplicitous. “Who’s fucking jealous?”

“Clearly not you,” Xingchen grumbled. They frowned at each other for a long time, sizing each other up. Xingchen cracked first, reaching cautiously for Xue Yang’s hand again. “Let's finish the job and go back.”

“Yeah whatever,” Xue Yang agreed.

A seed burrowed in his heart, a whisper. He was never going to get anything from Xingchen he wasn’t already willing to give. Like the moon, Xingchen reflected nothing. Xue Yang wondered if Zichen had already figured that out.

*

The highway looks ominous at night. There are no other cars on the road, or else they have temporary travelling companions before the other car turns off, leaving them in the darkness alone. Xue Yang imagines wolves' eyes peering out from between each passing tree, or lanky monstrous shapes loping along beside them. Cryptids leap from the infrequent street lamps, or tall slender shapes, incongruous with the trees, are briefly brought to life by the headlights and a trick of the eyes.

They could stop anywhere on this lonely stretch of highway, wander into the woods, and probably find some sort of hungry creature.

The car grows quieter as the sun sinks, leaving them with Xingchen’s podcast for company, occasional laughter, as though they are the ghosts, and the recording holds the real people.

“Should we drive through the night?” Xingchen wonders, checking his GPS.

Zichen shakes his head. “We don't know what we’ll be walking into, better to be well rested.”

They passed the turn off for Motel Six a while back, leaving them with a private motel in a small town that makes Bates Motel look cheery. The parking lot is packed though, proof enough this nowhere town, similar in shape and name to all the other nowhere towns they’ve passed through so far, only comes alive in the summer.

They drop Xingchen off at the lobby while they go to search for a parking space

“At least when the owner tries to axe murder and eat us, someone will notice.” Xue Yang skips around to the trunk to drag out his duffle bag, taking one handle of the cooler.

“You’re being gruesome.” Zichen grumbles, taking the other handle. Together they lug the cooler to a thirsty patch of grass to dump the water and half melted ice out.

“How many of these RVs do you think are serial killers on holiday?” he laughs a little too loud, it echoes over the parking lot.

Zichen tugs him in by the back of the neck, pressing their mouths together, his tongue shamelessly seeking entrance, his fingers sliding up into Xue Yang’s hair, gripping, before scraping his nail down over the back of his neck. Xue Yang lets out a startled little moan, nearly dropping his end of the cooler. Zichen kisses like he wants to crush him like a hard candy between his teeth.

Xue Yang offers himself up eagerly.

When they part, Xingchen is leaning against the open trunk, twirling an old fashioned brass key around his index finger, watching them smugly. “Don’t stop on my account.” He smiles deceptively sweet. “But I'm pretty sure there are security cameras around and that’s not how I imagined our first sex tape.”

“Pervert,” Xue Yang teases. He drops his end of the cooler, leaving it for Zichen, and follows Xingchen to the room.

The motel decor is floral and bland beige, like something forgotten in the eighties. It smells of rug deodorizer and mold, the AC rattling and wheezing like an old man, blowing around musty air. Zichen sets his things on the bed closest to the window, mouth set in a grim line.

“Imagine. I should trust scoundrels like you? I fear for my virtue!” Xue Yang trills dramatically.

Xingchen laughs and lays back on the ugly brown sham, patting the other side of the bed invitingly. “I promise to keep my hands to myself, Yang’er.”

A lie.

But Xue Yang doesn’t call him on it.

They settle in for the night, Zichen comfortably alone in his bed, almost too tall for it. He waits until Xue Yang and Xingchen are under the covers before he turns out the lamp. “Good night,” he murmurs, and drops to sleep immediately. 

Xue Yang can hear the clicking of his own eyelids as he stares into the dark, tracking the beam of light from outside shifting on the brown carpet as the sad AC shifts the curtains. It takes less than a few minutes for Xingchen to renege on his promise, wrapping himself around Xue Yang, tangling their legs.

Xingchen sighs into the top of his head, burying his nose in his hair. “It’s been a really long time.” He sounds pleased, like he missed this, which can’t possibly be true. It’s the closest Xingchen’s come to acknowledging Xue Yang’s long absence, his cold shoulder. “Yang’er?”

Xue Yang breathes out slowly, and pretends to be asleep.

*

The first hunt without them shouldn’t be so hard. He hunted without them plenty before he ever even met them.

A yao nearly got the drop on him, where Zichen would have been watching his back. Xue Yang grunted as sharp claws caught his shoulder, leaping back from the mutated beast, blade swinging out. But there’s no one to snort with laughter at a witty one liner when he finally got the killing blow.

He didn’t need them, he reminds himself, roughly bandaging his wound in the back seat of his car with the first aid kick Zichen shoved in his hand and told him to carry around. 

He didn't need them, he reminds himself, putting on his post hunt victory playlist, too much bass that Zichen would groan at, and Xingchen would sing along, roaring down backroads recklessly. 

He didn't need them. Because if he does, it’s too late for regretting now. Regret is the salty taste of tears and the rust of blood and a hole in his chest he can't fill. Regret has no fucking place in his life. Even if he did crawl back like a simpering dog, begging for scraps of their attention, the weight of Zichen’s feelings, the cool disinterest of Xingchen’s facade, wouldn't he end up right back where he is now? Tomorrow? A month from now? A year? 

Wouldn't he end up right back here? Alone and licking his wounds like a feral thing. Wasn't it better to end it now, before it got any deeper. Before Zichen was stupid enough to say something like “I love you” out loud, and bring all their cracks out into the light. Before Xingchen could coldly, emotionlessly, draw away, unmarred by them entirely, like neither of them mattered. Before Xue Yang grew tame at their heels and forgot how to survive without them. 

His side ached. He may have bled through his bandages. He drove too fast. 

Did he want them? Maybe. Sure. They were fun. 

But He didn't need them. And they didn’t fucking need him. 

*

When he wakes, Xingchen has migrated half way down the bed, face buried in his stomach, curled around him like a comma. Xue Yang lays there unmoving, staring at the popcorn ceiling. His shirt is damp where Xingchen drooled on him. The AC has been turned down so it just ticks and coughs quietly. The curtains are open, the room bright with sunshine. 

He thinks he dreamt, and can’t remember. 

The single cup coffee maker on the dress, the only thing in the whole place purchased after 2005, hisses and sputters out a cup of weak coffee, dribbling weakly into the cup. When it’s finished, Zichen moves to the bedside, sets down the cup, and leans over to look at Xue Yang’s face. “Five more minutes, and then we have to be out of here.”

He doesn’t lean over to kiss Xue Yang. He lightly brushes Xingchen’s bangs back from his face, and goes back to making tasteless coffee.

Xue Yang lays still another moment longer, seething. Fuck him, who said he needed five minutes? He wasn’t comfortable or anything. Xingchen was a strange octopus, the worst bed partner — 

His own fingers find Xingchen’s hair. Xingchen murmurs and nuzzles his belly, breath warm and ticklish. He’s awake and faking it, Xue Yang thinks, but Zichen promised them five more minutes, so it’s fine to indulge.

Just this isn’t too much.

“Let’s get french toast for breakfast,” he says.

Xingchen does a terrible job of pretending to sleep, laughing softly against his belly. “Predictable,” he mutters. 

Zichen heaves a long suffering sigh. “Only if there’s a place on route.”

There is in fact a local diner off the highway, helpfully and generically named Diner in big white letters that can be seen from the exit. 

They are seated in a plastic booth that the nineties forgot, surrounded by nostalgic touches of a family owned business, fishing photos, people posed in front of station wagons, an autographed photo of a musician he’s never seen or heard of before, kitschy chicken themed knick knacks on dusty shelves. The placemats are colouring sheets, and there is a plastic cup of crayons beside the condiments basket. Xue Yang plucks a blue crayon from the cup, doodling a few random symbols.

“I looked it up on the way here,” Xingchen announces, considering the crayons for a while before choosing a yellow one to colour in the middle of a flower. “We can go whale watching in Saint Andrews when the job is done.”

“Why whale watching?” Xue Yang holds his hand out for the yellow crayon. Xingchen gently places it in his palm, like he’s entrusting him with a treasure. “I thought you wanted to go ziplining?” Xingchen smiles at him warmly, like Xue Yang just told him a secret. Xue Yang has no idea what earned him a smile like that.

“The ziplining place will be closed when we’re coming back,” Zichen explains. He does not join in on the colouring, but he watches them fill in the lines on their placemats, and doesn’t even scold Xue Yang when he starts drawing dicks all over his placement. “So it’s that, or finding something to do in the city.”

Song Lan primly spreads cream cheese on his bagel. Xingchen pours too much cream into his coffee. The diner smells like coffee and grease and sticky syrup. Zichen’s expression twists when Xue Yang’s custard french toast arrives, oozy creamy goop onto the plate, powder sugar dissolving on contact. “I’m not taking care of you when you lose your toes to diabetes.”

“Who asked you to?” Xue Yang digs into the saturated mess with relish, moaning obscenely.

“Don’t lie Zichen, of course you’d take care of Yang’er,” Xingchen teases, coolly removed as always, as though this theoretical caretaking has nothing to do with him. As though he wouldn’t even —

Zichen clears his throat. “Pass the creamer,” he deflects.

Xue Yang’s head spins. His knife and fork are frozen over his plate, flight or fight mode. He remembers to breathe. They must look normal to onlookers. They could be three friends even, on their way to a national parc, or a beach, or even a real city. No one can guess Zichen’s ankle presses against Xue Yang’s calf, or Xingchen’s pinky is digging into his hip crease beneath the table. No one can guess Xue Yang is losing his mind.

*

“What are you so afraid of?” Zichen whispered against the top of Xingchen’s head. Xue Yang lifted his face to study him. He trembled beneath Xue Yang’s hand, like he was holding back tears. “I let it go and I haven’t asked and I just want—”

“Oh Zichen,” Xingchen whispered, sweet, sympathetic, heartless. “It’s just not what I want. I have boundaries. I’m allowed.” He sat up, brushing away Zichen’s hands. White street lights spilled through the curtains, lining him in silver, a sliver of the waning moon and equally as distant.

“What are we doing this for? Why can’t—”

“No point asking him that.” Xue Yang sat up too, slipping from the bed, snatching his jeans from the side chair. “He’s just using us for a good time. Have fun getting your dick wet, stop over thinking it. Right Xingchen?”

“I never said this was anything more. I thought we were having fun.” Xingchen says, somehow softer still, pleading. “Can’t we keep going as we have been?”

“That’s—“ Zichen squeezed out. Nothing more followed. 

Xue Yang studied them on the bed. Zichen looked a little like the earth was crumbling from beneath him. Xingchen looked beautiful, dotted all over with hickies, hair falling over one shoulder, eyes big and wet. Xue Yang wanted to kill him. He wanted to shake him until — 

“Well I'm not having fun anymore.” Xue Yang said decisively.

“Yang’er,” Zichen tried, catching his hand, trying to pull him back into the bed. “Don’t, Yang’er, we can—”

“Don’t worry. All you have to do is keep being fun, Zichen.” He glanced at Xingchen and snorted. “Good fucking luck.”

*

The island looks like a lump jutting out of the muddy shoreline, sides worn away by the tides, a slim track of land connecting the mainland to the island when the tide is out, smoothed into a muddy road.

“We’ll be trapped when the tide comes in,” Xingchen comments warily, rolling down the window and letting in the salty, muddy ocean breeze. The air is crisp on the water, not stagnant and sultry like it had been inside the trees. “With whatever is on it.”

“Or whatever’s on the island will be trapped with us.”

Xingchen laughs softly, glancing at him in the side mirror. The ocean breeze blows back the scent of his hair and mixes. Xue Yang tries to breathe through his mouth. “I love your baseless confidence.”

“How the fuck’s it baseless? We haven’t fucked up a mission yet, right? One hundred percent success rate is the opposite of baseless.”

“One hundred percent success rate? What about that time with those guài?” Zichen asks, cooly bursting his bubble.

“We’re not dead, and they are. That’s what I call one hundred percent success.”

They pass under a sign welcoming them to the land, and the sun dips behind a cloud at the same moment, the ocean breeze cool and foreboding. “Sense that?” Xue Yang asks, frowning out the window. He can practically taste the resentment in the air. The others nods grimly. The jeep trundles up to the main ticket office. 

They have several more hours of sunlight to scope out the place. Less talented cultivator would take the time to set up spirit trapping arrays, or ghost detecting devices that make annoying radio hissing noises. 

Xingchen changes into his cultivation robes right there in front of them, laying his casual clothes on the car seat, wrapping himself in silk one layer at a time. His belt cinches his impossible waist (like a pair of arms would), but his hair remains in a messy braid, strangely casual against his ridgid robes.

Xue Yang turns away before Xingchen can catch him watching.

They start in the old hospital graveyard. Climbing ivy vines around wrought iron gates have just started to brown, fading out for the end of summer. Old stone tombstones, weathered by ocean mists, crumble into the soft earth. Xingchen sweeps the entire area, sword at the ready, but it doesn’t point in any particular direction. The resentment blankets the entire island, not any stronger for being in the graveyard even though this should, reasonably, be the source.

Zichen doesn’t wear anything for his hunts in particular except for a jade belt decoration, tied to his belt loops. His casual black shirt stretches tight over his shoulders as he bends to inspect the tombstones, where the earth is indeed churned like something crawled out of it, with no hint as to where the corpse, most likely little more than fragile clean bones, would have gone. “Maybe the ghosts awoke over time. There's no family here, no one to worship or clean the graves.”

Xue Yang licks his lips thoughtfully, perches on the cross shape of another tomb, toying his fingers in the trailing wisps of resentment like a child would paddle in a stream. “Silent for a hundred or so years just to wake suddenly for that? No. Something. Someone, woke them.”

“Another demonic cultivator?” Xingchen asks, lowering his sword reluctantly.

“More powerful than you?” Zichen asks. He says it like it’s inconceivable, like there’s no one who could be better at this shit than Xue Yang.

Xue Yang grins. “You’d better fucking hope not.”

They take strategic spots in the cemetery for a suppression array, mutually agreeing that, while uselessles, at least the array would prevent anything else from waking up to add to their worries.

The question is, when this job was posted, did they suspect it was a demonic cultivator? Was it a trap? Or was the complaint lodged innocently?

*

Dead things were everywhere. Things with fangs were everywhere. Monsters were everywhere. They lived in the forests and in dark alleyways and in white picket fence homes and sent you to bed without dinner on good days. 

His first friend was a ghost, a boy no bigger than himself, who hung out in the empty lot beside his apartment complex. He avoided being home when he could, and he thought his friend was the same. They played in the field together, chasing bugs, comparing bruises, hungry and haunting.

His first friend touched his hand (hurt, cold, hurt hurt hurt and then darkness—), his first friend had no name, no voice, no face. Just memories of a painful death in an empty lot and no one who cared he was stuck there.  His first friend longed to dissipate, to sleep, and maybe one day he might have done, naturally. A cultivator put him to rest. 

Dead things liked him. Everywhere he went, resentment reached for him like plants turned towards the sun, tangling about his ankles like vines. Buzzing around his head like flies. 

His second friend was a ghost, a teenage girl who leapt off a bridge, whose ghost hung out on the concrete slabs beneath, and silently watched him graffiti the bridge supports. 

His third friend was a ghost, a homeless old man who fell asleep one winter and never woke up. He told the same story over and over again, until it was engraved in Xue Yang’s mind, or else he cursed and raved in some language Xue Yang did not know. 

Dead things are everywhere, and they all wanted to be Xue Yang’s friend.  

*

Zichen takes a picture of the hospital floor plan and texts it to them. The sun slants low through the lobby. Here, it still looks friendly, a cheery sign welcoming visitors, a print out of tour times tacked underneath. The atmosphere is rotten and oppressive. Xue Yang breathes deep, feels the resentment like he’s holding livewires.

“Should we split up? Make a real horror movie of it?” Xue Yang asks, rocking on his heels. 

Zichen makes an irritated noise at him. Xingchen chuckles. “The place is rather large. Maybe we should—”

“The horror movie bit was a hint, we should abso-fucking-lutely not split up.” He’s pretty sure the only horror movies Xingchen has ever seen were the ones they watched together, piled together in Zichen’s jeep at a drive in, something black and white and classically cheesy. “If you guys fuck up how the hell am I supposed to save you?”

That makes them both smile, warm and familiar. “Ah yes, Yang’er my hero.” Xingchen’s voice is solemn, and he fights back a smile. “Hold me close in case I get scared.'' His robes smell clean, a little floral, when he presses close, draping them in a sweetly scented cloud.

“Going to be clingy too?” he tosses at Zichen, brushing Xingchen off to pick a direction. They start on the top floor, because according to Xue Yang, “Creepy stuff is always in the basement.”

“Then wouldn’t it make more sense to start in the basement?” Zichen asks as he holds the stairwell door open for them.

“Nah, need to build up a sense of anticipation.” He grins, all teeth.

The tours in of the building are usually limited to the first two floors, where they would show the day rooms, a few patient rooms, the massive tiled bathrooms with rows of tubs sunken into the floor. Under normal circumstances, this would probably be a fascinating place for a visit. They go to the third floor after only a brief walkthrough of the main floors. 

Xingchen’s sword seems to sing as soon as the door opens, gleaming as it detects evil energy.

“Holy shit!” Xue Yang gasps. Zichen drags him back by his collar, away from the teeth of a shambling feirce corpse, his sword severing it’s neck like a dry branch. “What the fuck are all these corpses doing here? How the fuck did no one notice this?”

They aren’t, first of all, the rickety skeletons he was expecting. There were a few, certainly, but most of the corpses were fresher,  with blue flesh spiderwebbed with black veins. Once he regained his bearings, he attacked. His sword has a dark lustre compared to the pure gleam of Zichen’s or Xingchen’s. It suits him,  slicing at grasping arms or growling throats.

They have performed this dance a hundred times, it feels so easy. (It wasn’t at first, unaware of each other’s abilities, inability to communicate their strategies, the fear pressing against his spine that they wouldn’t watch his back.) They don’t need to say anything now. Xingchen and Zichen flank the fierce corpses, while Xue Yang nicks his finger, scrawling characters into the air to begin a suppression spell.

A corpse charges him on the right. Xue Yang doesn’t flinch, and Xingchen drags it back, piercing it through the heart, the frosty tip of his sword tinged blackish red.

A corpse howls and swipes at his left. Xue Yang doesn’t flinch, and Zichen swoops down from above and kicks the corpse back several feet.

A hand grabs Xue Yang from behind, pressed hard over his mouth. And Xue Yang can’t even scream, dragged backwards into the stairwell and away from the fight.

“Xue Yang!” He’s never heard Zichen’s voice like that. Resentment whirls up around him like an evil whirlwind, the world goes black between one blink and the next.

When he opens his eyes, he finds himself in the hospital morgue. He pushes himself up from the cement floor, dusting off his hands, eyes still spinning. Metal doors to the cold chambers stand ajar, a long metal gurney holds a corpse, talismans and coins strung around it to raise it. Its neat and efficient work. He probably couldn’t do it better himself.

“What are you all doing here?” A weedy little figure emerges from the shadows. Xue Yang squints until pale features become recognizable in the gloom.

“Better question is what are you doing here?” Xue Yang steps toward the gurney, trails his fingers over the strings of talismans. There’s no life in the thing yet. The blood and cinnabar ink is still sticky. This ritual only just started. “You’re Meng Yao’s nerdy little brother right?”

Mo Xuanyu makes a little hiccupy noise of alarm. “Wasn’t sure you remembered me.”

Xue Yang inclines his head, acknowledging the statement. It's not as though he and Mo Xuanyu ever did more than pass each other in hallways, or greet each other at banquets. “Raising corpses? Naughty, naughty, A Yu,” he tuts. He circles the gurney, keeping it between him and Mo Xuanyu. “Let me guess, you were behind the summons to begin with? Luring cultivators to…?” He gestures at the gurney.

Mo Xuanyu nods eagerly, eyes lighting. “There’s only so much that can be done with civilian corpses. But I wanted them smarter, faster, sentient.” He steps closer. Xue Yang guardedly steps back. Mo Xuanyu barely notices. “I wanted to experiment with fierce corpses. Making them stronger —” Mo Xuanyu looks a little manic. The hollows of his eyes are puffy as though he hasn’t slept, but he’s powdered his face until he’s corpse white. “What if the corpse had a golden core in life? You understand don’t you?

Xue Yang wonders if perhaps they were on the same forums circa 2007, downloading the same badly scanned PDFs of demonic cultivation notes, wondering about the same power. Was this why Meng Yao agreed to sponsor him back in the day? “Too bad. These are my fucking cultivators. I’m giving you one fucking warning, for A Yao’s sake.”

“But I'm so close! Look” he fumbles a crushed hilroy notebook out of his bag, flipping through a few pages. They are stained rust brown, question marks beside scribble blood sigils. “I think a corpse could even retain a real personality! Like in the legends—”

Xue Yang heaves a long, exasperated sigh. Mo Xuanyu’s notes are nothing like his work. He files the concepts away just the same. “Look, just run.  I’ll call A Yao, get you out of trouble. My— my — they’ll look the other way. Just don’t get caught again. And we can all go home. I’d hate to have to kill you. A Yao would be pissed at me.”

Mo Xuanyu looks at him with big, sad, kohl rimmed eyes. Maybe some other time, some other life, they could have had fun making the perfect fierce corpses together, pouring over old research materials and legends. But he’s not giving up his — his Zichen, his Xingchen, for anything. Not even for a sympathetic mind.

Mo Xuanyu starts to say something, when the morgue door slams open, bouncing against the wall and cracking the tile. “Xue Yang!” Zichen gasps, eyes blazing. Several things happen at once. Xue Yang shouts and holds out an ineffective hand, like waving a flag at a bull. Mo Xuanyu squeaks in terror. Zichen slams him into the adjacent wall, the entire morgue echoes with the force of it. Xingchen gathers Xue Yang into his arms like he’s a frightened child, fussing at him, fluttering hands looking for injuries. Both of them look rougher than he does, swirls of resentment clinging to them with black corpse blood. They had to fight all those corpses without any of Xue Yang’s tricks to help them.

He bets they looked glorious. 

“Easy!” he warns when Zichen shakes Mo Xuanyu like a wolf shakes a rabbit. “He didn’t do anything!”

“He raised fierce corpses and kidnapped you,” Xingchen informs icily, like he could have forgotten.

“No harm from it, right? Just experiments gone too far.” Xue Yang waves them down.

“I wish—” Mo Xuanyu squeezes out from beneath Zichen’s savage grip. “I know you get it, I wish we could be different.” 

“Do us both a favour and stop talking, kid,” Xue Yang sighs. He shoves at Xingchen’s arm to be let go. “This doesn’t have to be such a big deal—“

Xue Yang feels welling resentment, like sand slipping from beneath his soles, sucked away by a retreating wave. He shoves out of Xingchen’s arms, throwing them both out of the way of the fierce corpse that lurches from the gurney. It’s faster than the others, focussed on swiping at Xingchen, and if Xue Yang weren’t so pissed at Mo Xuanyu he would want to take him out to coffee and talk to him.

“Don’t let him go!” Xue Yang snaps at Zichen, who starts to draw away. “He’ll fucking call others.” He doesn’t hear Zichen’s protest that they killed all the walking corpses they could find. Demonic cultivators are sneaky. It takes one to know one.

Xingchen’s sword seems to light up the whole room, even as it drops the temperature. Zichen cracks Mo Xuanyu’s back once against the wall, hard enough to knock him out and joins the fray. In such a small room it’s easy for the three of them to pin the new fierce corpse down. It snarls and swipes at them wildly, eyes black and leaking black blood. 

Xue Yang wishes he could tell them not to kill it, that he wants to study it. But he knows how well that would go. Still, it's a shame to see such an impressive fierce corpse fall still. 

*

“Let’s go somewhere,” Zichen proposed. He was already showered and dressed for the morning, hair braided back neatly, shiny and damp, wafting a crisp scent and water warm skin. He leaned down to brush Xue Yang’s hair back from his face. Xingchen was still dead to the world, covers pulled up over his head. 

“Go where?” Xue Yang grumbled, not quite ready to slither out of the luxurious hotel bed, back to his shitty car, to his shitty apartment. He was happy to delay that, to live in his strange candy coated, rose tinted dream until he was kicked to the curb, until the next time the esteemed daoshi were bored enough to call him.

“Brunch. An art gallery. A park. Anything. All of them.” Zichen’s usually wooden expression was more mobile than usual, his take on puppy eyes. 

“What part of this,” he gestures down at himself with his eyes. “Looks like I do brunch?”

“Consider brushing your hair and you’ll clean up pretty nicely.” 

“You’re feeling fucking catty today.” He flips back the covers, leaving behind the huddled lump Xingchen makes on the bed, padding naked into the bathroom.  “Order coffee from room service first or—”

“I already did. It’s on its way up now.”

Xue Yang paused, blinked. Zichen looked…eager. Like something about this was truly fun to him. Xue Yang was pretty sure Zichen’d been to every major art gallery and museum in the province. It couldn’t be that exciting to go. “Fine.” Xue Yang agreed. “But you have to—“

“Wake up Xingchen?” Zichen finished. He nodded solemnly, as though accepting a deadly mission. Everything he did was always slow and carefully considered. “Go. Shower.”

“Your fucking funeral.” He shrugged. 

Convincing Xingchen to get up early on his day off was a long affair, but eventually they were dressed and caffeinated, and walking through the glass arches of the gallery. 

“Is there a new installation you were looking forward to?” Xingchen asks, gliding through the gallery, studying the pieces. 

“Just wanted to come. With you both.” He explains haltingly. “It seems we only ever see the inside of a hotel room when we’re together. I wanted to do something different.”

Like a date, Xue Yang bit his tongue before he could blurt that out. He wasn’t stupid enough to put those kinds of words in Zichen’s mouth, capitalizing best on coasting off whatever vibes they have going on, for as long as they wanted to walk on the wild side, fucking street trash. So he scoffed, tucked his hands in his pockets, and managed his expectations. 

Xingchen smiled, hooking his arm with Zichen’s. “That’s sweet. You’re right. Something different is just what we need.”

Zichen dragged them around an art gallery, providing an impromptu art history lesson. Xue Yang ducked behind Xingchen whenever he wanted to yawn, or took selfies beside portraits of fat old white men with astounding sideburns. Xingchen giggled, imitated lounging female subjects, and Zichen pretended to look disappointed with them goofing off.

In the gift shop, Zichen carefully selected a postcard to send to his Shifu. Xue Yang considered something shiny to shoplift, fingering a colourful coffee table book full of medieval illuminations and manuscripts. 

“This was fun,” Xingchen beamed at them. “We should do this more often.”

Go on dates, Xue Yang didn't ask. “You know where to find me whenever you wanna pay for my meal,” he said instead. 

Because this wasn't a date. It wasn't. 

*

The sun is a thin gold thread stitched along the horizon, fluffy clouds scrawling across the sky dyed deep blood red. It’ll be another hour or so until the sun finally slinks up and lounges across the sky like a spoiled cat. 

Mo Xuanyu, under threat of harm to his research notes, helped them dispatch the fierce corpses that remained in the hospital. He sits now on a bench overlooking a garden, qi suppressed, whispering tearfully into his phone. With Meng Yao? Xue Yang doesn’t care to ask.

He walks over to the jeep, stretching his arms about his head, back screaming and shoulders aching.  “Well, the job was easy. Should we head down to the beach until the tide’s out? Skinny dip maybe?

“What the fuck Xue Yang,” Zichen demands as soon as he catches sight of him. 

“We won’t tell the board what really happened here. It was a build up of resentment that drew corpses. We won’t mention Mo Xuanyu’s name”

“But—” Zichen tries. 

“Being turned over to the Jin is a fate worse than death for him, believe me. This’ll stay hush hush. I’ll get to keep my license, we get paid, win-win-win scenario.”

“That’s not the point, Yang’er,” Xingchen sighs, cupping both hands around Xue Yang’s face. His cheek itches where he may have been scratched and didn't notice. Xingchen’s eyes are watery. “Do you have any idea how scary that was? We thought—“

Zichen presses in close too, burying his nose in his hair, and he doesn't seem to mind that he’s dusty and sweaty. 

“Would the both of you stop getting so sappy?” He tries to shake them of, heat building in his belly, bashful suddenly under their attention. “Everything turned out—

Zichen pushes him up against the car door. They both cage him in on either side, unbearably warm in the sticky summer predawn. “I don't care about the demonic cultivator. I just. Want a straight answer from you. The same straight answer you've been running away from.”

“I did tell him you would run the second he tried for anything more,” Xingchen agrees, combing Xue Yang’s hair back from his sweaty face. 

“Like you don’t know all about that.” Xue Yang retorts. He needs to run. It doesn't matter if he wants this, if they think they want this, he needs—

“I’ve already told you my answer. I’ve already admitted my own fears.” Xingchen agrees, voice stern.

“If you don’t— if this isn’t–” Zichen breathes heavily through his nose and tries again. “I thought we were all on the same page. I thought this was something you wanted.” His eyes are big and deep and softened, a well of want that goes all the way down. Xue Yang’s afraid he’ll slip and fall. 

“Is it? Something you want?” Xingchen presses. He leans in like he’s searching for a kiss. Xue Yang squeezes his eyes shut, tempted as always by the sweet pink shape of Xingchen’s mouth, the soft welcome he would find there if he looked. 

“It could be.” Xue Yang admits. 

That would have to do.