Chapter Text
"It suits you. You wear it perfectly."
Xie Lian long had given up grasping their location. He had no perception of where they are. Or how much time had passed.
He only knows he's inside a dilapidated cottage. He also knows his head hurts. He wants to sleep. He wants to be alone. He wants to be left alone. Yet that's probably a mercy he doesn't deserve because this is not the first time White No Face pays him a visit. He recently comes and goes as he pleases, a habit he took up more than happily – and it's anything but pleasant.
Looming darkness, looming silence. The first one is impossible to penetrate, the latter shatters when White No Face starts to speak again.
"So... Your Highness likes this skin of mine?" White No Face asks, his tone somewhat curious and challenging as he stares into the large mirror in the corner, where two cry-smiling masks stare back at them, two identical reflections in white funeral robes.
Xie Lian lets out a noncommittal hum.
His senses are numb but he of course, knows what White No Face is trying to do. Make him admit, wear him down more. Probably messing with his head or do something that would end in a fight. Because Xie Lian knows - they both do - he couldn't win.
A thought, suddenly bright in the deep fog of his mind, forms itself into a question. "But… Can I see your real face?"
It's a bold request and more words than Xie Lian spoke in a while. His throat feels like it's being scratched with each word, but it's still better than having it cut open by a hundred times.
White no Face turns towards him slowly, the mirror showing one side of him. He's much more taller than Xie Lian, he looks like a hanged ghost next to him.
"What if I look monstrous?" White No Face asks. If what Xie Lian asked had surprised him, he doesn't show. But Xie Lian imagines bewilderment under his mask.
"I'd still like to see it." Xie Lian says, his tone surprisingly full of determination, lacking the shallowness of his heart.
"Because we are friends now, right, Your Highness?" White No Face asks. Xie Lian is so numb he only recognizes it's laced with mockery, failing to detect the ever-so faint fragment of hopefulness. Still, he makes a noise he considers somewhat indifferent.
He had friends once. Before they left.
"Someday… when you're ready," White No Face continues eerily gently, "I'll show you my true form."
The old wooden door creaks open, a black boot holding it still.
"Your Highness?" Wuming asks, stepping into the room. "Who are you talking to?"
Before Xie Lian can answer, he throws a last glance at the mirror. There's an enormous crack running through it that wasn't there before. White No Face vanishes from sight, which makes him believe that he wasn't even there in the first place. It might be very well the case.
"I—" Xie Lian begins. Then he remembers how Feng Xin reacted when he first told them about White No Face's visits. He clears his throat, easing up whatever feelis like it's clogging it. He changes his mind quickly, crying-laughing white mask facing a similar one, full of smiles.
Wuming is holding two small pouches in his hands, the pattern on them delicate.
"Have you brought the medicine?"
"I'm sorry, Your Highness. That's all I could find."
"And the other one?"
Wuming seems to pause.
"I thought maybe Your Highness would like to take a bath," he says carefully.
"You mean I stink." Xie Lian laughs without mirth. Not so long ago, it would have been impossible for such blunt words to leave his mouth. Xie Lian has always paid attention to personal cleanliness and that emberrassing moment when Feng Xin, Mu Qing and his parents could smell him slowly resurfaces in his mind, making him horrified and disgusted.
"No," Wuming denies it immediately. His tone is calm, as if he would speak the irrefutable truth. It irks Xie Lian.
"... I can put them away."
"Leave it," Xie Lian says curtly.
It's been a while he had a bath.
"I'll draw water," Wuming says, coming and going like a shadow.
After some debate, Xie Lian starts to undress. As soon as he gets to it, the door opens again - and Wuming freezes with two huge buckets of water in his hands.
It only takes a moment for him to recover, but occupies himself with the bath.
Xie Lian doesn't find himself to care, the mere thought tires him out.
Xie Lian takes off the half-crying, half-laughing mask, his funeral robes and puts them on a chair. In his undergarments, he settles into the wooden bathtub.
Wuming's motions speed up, he hastily put everything away. Then, just to do something, he prepares the medicine. It's not too much to prepare, but he makes it into meticulous work as if counting the healing plants stem by stem, grass by grass. He boils water, then puts everything in a pot, avoiding looking at Xie Lian's direction at any chance.
Xie Lian, on the contrary, watches his every move.
"Bring me the medicine when it gets ready." Xie Lian says. His head hurts so much, hundreds of ghosts raging inside.
Until it gets ready, unfortunately, he has time to think.
The bath feels nice and relaxing, even though it's a bit too hot.
In another life, when Xie Lian would have been still the crown prince, someone would surely help him bath. Even in yet another life, if that someone would be still Wuming, Xie Lian would have simply laughed about this and would even encourage him like “Why are you getting so worked up? We're both men after all!”
The hot water makes Xie Lian dizzy, a bit too hot in his skin. When Wuming arrives with the medicine, he has a passing strange thought.
This Wuming before him… who knows what kind of expression is he wearing under the mask? Maybe he's flinching when he gets a whiff of an unkept Xie Lian. Maybe he eyes the door and waits for a moment to dash out and leave.
How come he has always wearing one? Suddenly, Xie Lian reaches out, his fingers locking under the edge of Wuming's mask.
“Why are you hiding yourself? Do I know you?”
Xie Lian could easily rip it off, had he the intentions to do so. Yet he waits.
Suddenly, there's a flash of a movement, and Xie Lian feels a pressure on his wrist, long fingers enclosing around it.
Wuming's skin is cold against Xie Lian's heated skin, the grip can be considered neither too firm nor light. "Your Highness is free to take it off. But..."
Xie Lian waits.
"I... I don't look very good without it."
...
"Have all of you gone mad today?!" Xie Lian shouts angrily, then pulls back with a splash.
The silence is striking, and Xie Lian can swear he hear his own heartbeat… ghosts naturally don't have one.
Fuming and soaking under the water, he pretends that Wuming's wasn't yet another heartbeat that had stopped because of him.
Wuming draws back to put the bowl back and Xie Lian doesn't follow him with his eyes anymore.
"I don't want to see it," he mubles in the tub, much to himself, his bottom lips skimming over the surface. He feels like a child that's sulking.
He follows Wuming with his eyes, when he peeks back.
The scented bath embraces him. It has an undeniable cooling effect. His hair must have slipped loose, dark strands spreading across the small tub, the herbs dangling and gripping into it.
Not an incense time later, Xie Lian realizes he's acting ridiculous. He comes up, straightens his back and leans on the board of the tub.
"You..." he calls after Wuming, hoping, and he hopes this time, it's not too late. "Come here. Help me do my hair."