Archive of Our Own ^beta

Mu Qing walks a little slower, slowing to a stop on the beaten down pathway. When he’d woken, the house had been empty. Now he sees why. In front of him, Xie Lian, Feng Xin, and Hua Cheng walk together, easily keeping in step with each other. In the early morning light, this bit of distance away, he sees mostly just their silhouettes. That alone is still beautiful. 

They’d gone shopping, Mu Qing realizes. There’s a full basket of groceries in Feng Xin’s arms, scraps in Xie Lian’s, and pieces of fruit in Hua Cheng’s hands that he feeds to the two of them. 

They’re so comfortable together. 

Xie Lian smiles when he finally notices Mu Qing. 

“You’re awake,” he murmurs. Maneuvering his scraps into an arm to free his hand, Xie Lian reaches up to touch Mu Qing’s shoulder. It’s only out of pride, out of not wanting his beloveds to know, not wanting to offend them, that he does not flinch away. Xie Lian smiles up at him. 

Mu Qing wishes he could return it earnestly. 

He helps Xie Lian set his scraps to the side beside the door, and steps aside so they can come in. It’s the small things, he tells himself. He can build from that. 

It’s different when all that was between him and Xie Lian, and him and Feng Xin, was just friendship. When all he had with Hua Cheng was tolerance. When all he had with them meant they didn’t seek to touch him or didn’t care if he kept his distance. But even from afar, Mu Qing had fallen, wanting for their love the way they loved each other. And they had allowed it. 

Shaking the thought from his mind, Mu Qing follows Feng Xin as he goes to the kitchen to start unpacking the groceries. “You checked the fruits and vegetables for bruises, right?”

Already, Feng Xin looks done with him. “Of course we did.”

“How much did you pay for this?” Mu Qing asks as he assesses the rice, weighing the bag in his hands. He knows they all have money and it isn’t much, it shouldn’t have cost that much, but a part of him still wallows at the thought of overpaying. 

“Even now, you worry about such things?” Hua Cheng speaks up as he rinses his juice-stained hands. There’s a towel near him but he moves to the side instead, wrapping his wet hands around Feng Xin. Ignoring the god’s yelp and attempts to push his hands off, Hua Cheng continues, “Rest your head, General, I was there. I made sure they weren’t being duped.” 

But the reassurance falls flat as Mu Qing watches the way Feng Xin is wrapped in Hua Cheng’s arms. There’s not…there’s not any real discomfort in it. In fact, Feng Xin seems to relax into it once he’s given up on the idea that Hua Cheng would let go. 

They really are so comfortable together, the three of them. Mu Qing thinks of it too often. He’s suffocating in the thought of it, as if his lungs have been ruined entirely, when he sees Feng Xin and Hua Cheng hold Xie Lian as though he was an irreplaceable treasure, someone they were still not sure they had gained enough worth to even be near him; when he sees Xie Lian’s bright eyes and even brighter smile, when he sees the way Xie Lian gravitates whenever the other two were near; when he sees the falsely reluctant way Hua Cheng and Feng Xin touched hands and snuck small, fleeting kisses, Mu Qing knows he does not belong here. Those affections have not been given to him because they cannot be. They try, gods, they force themselves to try, their hands seeking to be gentle, to act gentle with him—he who they not long ago could not stand. 

He knows it’s his own fault that they have to try in the first place. 

Each touch he sees shared between each other is one filled with a fated sort of love—helpless, undeniable. Every touch they hesitantly bestow on him is the opposite, a reluctant sort of affection that they shudder to be reminded of. 

(It reminds him all the more how they have all hurt him before. He’s not a hypocrite nor a delusional man, he doesn’t pity himself—Mu Qing knows he’s done his fair share. He’s hit Feng Xin too many times to count and attempted to hit Hua Cheng at least half as many. But he’s never hit Xie Lian. None of them have ever hit Xie Lian and Mu Qing was the only one of them to have been hit by Xie Lian. 

Their hands have long marked him with hatred. The blood they spilled between them stained him with their disgust.) 

In a love that has transpired for hundreds of years…

They haven’t loved Mu Qing for the entirety of one. 

It’s his own fault that they never loved him before, that they haven’t loved him for longer. After all he’s done to deserve it, how can he believe they love him at all? 

He watches as Xie Lian is pulled into the fray; they wipe their wet hands and splash water on each other. Mu Qing can see how careful they are to not let the water touch him—

(To not let him be included.) 

Mu Qing stands there, the rice still in his hands, and listens to them laugh. Not for the first time, he thinks that he shouldn’t have asked them for a chance. He shouldn’t have confessed. 

He shouldn’t be here. 

But they had given him this chance. The least he can do is try. 

🌸 • 🌸

“Sorry, General. General Nan Yang has not returned since after his mission.”

Mu Qing blinks. “He hasn’t?” He’d been there when Feng Xin received his mission; it didn’t sound like anything that’d be out of his abilities. But things can always go wrong, things can always become unpredictable. Mu Qing’s hand wavers towards his saber. “Had there been an issue—?”

The deputy official shakes her head. “He reported he was fine.”

His hand drops. “I see.”

Bidding the deputy goodbye, he turns on his heel. He’d thought that since he and Feng Xin had come up into the Heavens when Mu Qing had, both of them called away for missions at the most awful hours, that they would return to Puqi Shrine together. He’d had thought Feng Xin would’ve sought him out, would’ve waited, because that’s what Mu Qing would’ve done. 

Clearly he had been wrong. 

For a moment, a wretched moment, Mu Qing debates. His own palace or Puqi Shrine. And then he scolds himself. He’s been lucky enough that they allowed him to be a part of their love. Being sensitive about these things is ridiculous. 

They’re asleep when Mu Qing arrives…he swallows roughly. Being sensitive about these things is ridiculous. 

Mu Qing undresses and fits himself into the corner of the bed that’s been left for him. He falls asleep laying on his side, watching the sprawl of the other three men tangled together. 

🏹 • 🏹

He never brings it up to Feng Xin. There’s no point really. Their habit of going to missions together and coming back together, was only that. A habit. There isn’t an obligation, there isn’t a physical contract or even a verbal agreement. Of course, it’s different now. Xie Lian’s back now. Hua Cheng’s part of them now. 

Eight hundred years of habit is hard change, that’s all, so Mu Qing brushes it to the side. He hates change. He’ll get used to it. 

(He tells himself this every day, every hour, for weeks. He’ll convince himself eventually.)

“Try this.” Hua Cheng’s voice suddenly interrupts Mu Qing’s thoughts, enough to pull his gaze away from the mending he was absentmindedly doing just in time to see him shove a spoon into Feng Xin’s mouth. 

“Gah-lck!” 

Hua Cheng laughs as Feng Xin drops the piece of wood he’d been carving into and grabs for the glass of water Hua Cheng held out for him to take. His eyes screw shut, and his whole expression contorts. Almost desperately, he gulps the water down, and Hua Cheng only laughs harder, his whole body nearly wracking with it. Mu Qing’s hand stops completely, suddenly captivated. It’s a real laugh. Full of mirth and mischief and none of the mocking it used to have. 

“Crimson brat—” Feng Xin starts, sputtering.  

Brat, he says, as if he hadn’t once been more than terrified to speak up around Hua Cheng if it didn’t come to protecting Xie Lian. A pang stutters the beat of the heart in Mu Qing’s chest. Feng Xin’s gotten so comfortable with speaking with Hua Cheng that he doesn’t worry about watching what he says anymore. There’s nothing to toe around. Mu Qing’s happy about it, he is. 

(but why weren’t they like this with him yet?) 

“Well, Xin-ge, how is it?” 

“Sweet. Too fucking sweet,” Feng Xin complains. He raises the now-empty glass pointedly. “But you already know that!” 

Hua Cheng puts on an affected almost pout, almost appearing innocent—something they all know too well that he could never be. There’s too much crookedness in his eyes regardless to ever make such an expression believable. Still, he tries. “I thought Xin-ge would like it.” 

“Sure you did,” Feng Xin grumbles. He casts a wary glance at the pot in the kitchen. “That’s not for dinner, is it?” 

“Just for you, ge,” Hua Cheng smiles too wide when Feng Xin looks at him with visible despair. 

“A-Cheng…”

Xie Lian comes through the door then, hands and robes messy with dirt. A streak of it ends up on his cheek as he brushes his hair out of his face. Mu Qing’s tempted to wipe it off. He has a handkerchief in his sleeves. He can just take those few steps—

He stays seated, unsure suddenly of overstepping his bounds. Though they’d come far, touch is still something precarious between him and the others. 

“Has San Lang made dinner?” Xie Lian smiles brightly. 

Hua Cheng nods and goes back to the kitchen, refilling the spoon. Xie Lian follows more sedately behind him. “Will Gege try it?” 

“Of course,” he says, and he lets Hua Cheng slip the spoon between his lips. “Mmh! San Lang has been practicing his cooking. It tastes very good!”

“Does it, Gege?” Even now, the ghost king is bashful when faced with Xie Lian’s admiration, when given compliments. 

“It does! Doesn’t it, Feng Xin?” 

As one, they turn to Feng Xin. The god drops his head, muttering something under his breath about unfair bias. 

“You had to have heard what I said,” Feng Xin says exasperatedly. 

“Did I?” Xie Lian replies airily. He’s gotten so playful lately. “‘Sweet’ isn’t a criticism, is it?”

“You—! I guess not.” Feng Xin rubs at his face. There’s regret painted clean across his features. But it looks too fond when he looks at the other two immortals again. “As a dessert, then.” 

It’s not much of a compliment, not really— 

(It’s more than Feng Xin’s offered him, Mu Qing thinks, outside of an apology made so long ago.) 

—but Hua Cheng’s ears turn redder and Xie Lian beams, and Mu Qing sits like a spectator at the table saying nothing. 

“But what are we really going to have for dinner?” Feng Xin nearly begs. 

Xie Lian perks up. “Oh, what about—”

Mu Qing listens as the two fall into conversation. Awful ideas, all of them. A smile quirks at the corner of his lips and he goes to say just that—

But something makes him pause. Mu Qing turns towards Hua Cheng. The ghost king still holds the spoon in his hand, and his eye slides towards Mu Qing. Mu Qing suddenly realizes what made him pause. 

Throat tight, he keeps watching Hua Cheng. But whatever it is that he made, Hua Cheng doesn’t offer Mu Qing any. 

🦋 • 🦋

Mu Qing has never been one to run cold. 

He couldn’t; working as hard as he did, made him sweat too much, too hot. But he feels cold now. There’s air in the spaces between him and everyone he shares his bed with. Mu Qing rises slowly, carefully—he doesn’t want to wake anyone. Feng Xin, after all, has always been a light sleeper and, being right beside Mu Qing, makes it all the more likely that Mu Qing’s movements would wake him. But the other general snoozes on, body curled towards Xie Lian who is laid sprawled between Feng Xin’s and Hua Cheng’s arms. 

Laying in this bed made for four, fitting and filled with four, is worse than laying in his bed in his palace alone. 

Mu Qing feels alone now. And it’s so cold. 

He climbs out of the bed, and picks up his over robes from where he’d folded them and put them to the side. Mu Qing won’t risk disturbing the air by putting them on. Not that it might really matter. He’s always been the type that could be unnoticeable even when he is right there and, in this relationship of them four, it’s no different at all. 

His eyes sting. 

It’s really no different at all. 

Avoidance has been his penchant, a habit borne from knowing survival came from supplication and being unseen. Mu Qing craves the safety of it now. 

Silently, he slips out of the bedroom and out the front door, closing it without a sound before taking off down the path. The air’s muggy, unbearably so in this late hour, but Mu Qing shrugs on his outer robes anyways as he heads to the village. 

It’s better this way, they don’t need him. If he just has some space, if they just have some space from him, they’ll realize it, too. 

But that rests heavily on them not finding him. Mu Qing could slam his head into a wall at the instant headache that brings because he knows if they find him too easily, they’ll be eager to placate even if they don’t mean it. That’s the type of people Feng Xin and Xie Lian are. Hua Cheng…he’s not so soft with Mu Qing. This tension still exists between them in parts, in waves, in the restraint they show to each other that Hua Cheng doesn’t show to their other two beloveds. But he’ll go along with it because it’d be what Feng Xin and Xie Lian want. 

(Mu Qing dare not admit he wants it. He doesn’t want them to find him. He doesn’t want them to want him back. He doesn’t want them to try to convince him. He doesn’t, he doesn’t—

His heart hurts so much, he has to look down to make sure he’s not bleeding. Pressing his hand to his chest, he tries to breathe, tries to meditate: 

I don’t want this. I don’t want them. 

Because he knows he doesn’t deserve them at all.) 

It hardly matters either way, though. Mu Qing doesn’t want placation. He doesn’t want pity. He’s detestable—no amount of strained affection would change that. 

🐈‍⬛ • 🐈‍⬛

“General…” Pei Ming stares at him. He’s in sleep robes, his hair in two neat braids that looks odd on his head. “While I appreciate the visit, may I ask why are you here? At this time??” 

Mu Qing bullies past the other man, comfortable in this at the very least. “Because they won’t think to look for me here.” 

“They—you mean your beloveds.”

“Yes.”

“Who you mostly live with.”

“Yes.”

“One of whom is Crimson Rain with his demented wraith butterfly search team, and the other who knows you by your shadow in the midst of burning flames. You believe they won’t know that you’re here?”

Mu Qing refrains from letting Pei Ming know how clever Xie Lian can be in solving puzzles and how Black Water with his uncountable amount of clones and information is in Hua Cheng’s debt. He needn’t worry the other god more as it stands. 

“You have a lot of questions,” Mu Qing grumpily says instead, slumping down on Pei Ming’s divan. He grabs a cushion, hugging it to his chest but he knows it immediately: unlike his past centuries, hugging a pillow won’t bring him warmth like it used to. Mu Qing hugs it tighter. There’s nothing else for him to hold onto.

(There’s nothing but the inanimate that would be fine with him holding them.)

Mu Qing holds his breath until the hiccuping sob in his chest settles. He’s fine, he’s fine, he doesn’t get to mourn the loss he brought onto himself. “I don’t plan on staying but I don’t want to travel at this ridiculous hour like a sneak in the night.”

“Are you not—” At Mu Qing’s glare, the man shuts his mouth and sits in the divan across from Mu Qing. He waves a hand, Mu Qing recognizes the gesture, feeling suddenly a little thankful that Pei Ming is willing enough to ask one of his deputies to get some tea. 

Mu Qing doesn’t want to speak, so he doesn’t. Pei Ming obviously does, but he wisely waits until they have their cups in their hands and Mu Qing is partially preoccupied. 

(He wonders how warm it is beneath the sheets back at Puqi Shrine, pressed against Feng Xin and Xie Lian’s heat, feeling the course of spiritual energy in Hua Cheng’s body that kept his skin as hot as if blood still ran beneath it. 

He wonders, he wonders, he wonders…

And he knows this tea isn’t warm enough.) 

“They’re going to kill me,” Pei Ming mutters. He rubs the bridge of his nose. “Would you, ah, like to talk about it, Xuan Zhen?”

He does. He doesn’t. How can he explain he’s in love with three people who have no reason to love him at all? That, once again, like always, Mu Qing is just a presence, an unwanted guest, only to be tolerated among others? 

Mu Qing scowls. “No.” Then, he pauses. He knows of his worst traits but ungrateful truly was not ever one of them. Sipping more of his tea, he mutters a quiet thank you and ignores how Pei Ming beams. 

When sunlight starts to stretch across the sky, an all too pleasant mellow yellow for the terrible mood he is in, Mu Qing thanks Pei Ming one more time before setting off to the mortal realm. It’s easy to disappear there, too much land to cover, easier if he doesn’t stay in the Southwest. So Mu Qing blocks his beloveds from his array and heads to the East. Once again, they’ll hate him for his abandonment. But they’ll understand then. They’ll realize they’re fine with just them three. 

Mu Qing keeps walking. 

It’s okay. I don’t want them. 

The mantra leaves him shuddering. He’s so damn cold. 

🦋 • 🐈‍⬛ • 🌸 • 🏹

Maybe they miss me, Mu Qing keeps thinking for the first few days since he’d left. Then, right after: it doesn’t matter. I don’t want them. 

He reminds himself of the traits of his that they cannot stand. He brings the worst to them: this deliverance of an unsatisfactory, miserable love when they’ve all spent so long chasing their incredible romances. Mu Qing’s never been someone worth going after—his departures all but begged for. In not asking him to go, he’d been too greedy in staying and his selfishness in forcing them to be stuck with him, traps them with the memory of what it is like to believe that it is better off to be alone. Because, with him, they are. 

They’re worse with me. 

For all Mu Qing has been keenly aware of his worth, it’s always been a vague sort of comparison, one of him to the pompous sons of noblemen who had neither intellect nor talent, that held not a single brain cell or vein of kindness in their hearts. Mu Qing knows his worth compared, compared to the gods who are no different. 

He cannot say the same of his loves. How many times has he been compared to them and been found less than? Mathematics is his forte, but Mu Qing’s long lost count. It doesn’t matter; to be considered a lesser standard, a lesser being, to have something with such shortcomings, was nothing more than disappointing. 

He can hear Hua Cheng’s voice. Who’d want trash? 

No one. 

The East is surprisingly perfect for this loneliness, perfect to touch the heat of the sun in the early morning and feel nothing but the remnants of the chilly night. He’s cold. 

Mu Qing laughs, both of his hands out in the rays. He's turning pink. If he leaves his hands out long enough, if he doesn’t protect his skin with spiritual energy, he will surely burn. 

But he’s still so fucking cold. 

He thinks of the warmth of a bed he could not get comfortable in, only an audience to a great love that did not include him even though he was so near. Such was it to be hated, such is it to be so hateable. Mu Qing has earned his seat at the side edges. He deserves even less than that. 

That bed isn’t his to lay in, the memories aren’t his to reside in. The warmth that radiated from them…

It’s all gone in those first few days. 

It doesn’t matter. I don’t want them. Chest tight, he keeps saying the mantra. I bring the worst with me. 

For the next few days, Mu Qing is somehow unnoticed by Lang Qianqiu who, for all his apparent obliviousness, never lets a single thing transpire within his territory without his knowing. But then, Mu Qing had taken care to hide his identity. Even though hoping his actions aren’t so foreseeable to them, he doesn’t want to risk them finding him so soon. 

He tends to his business in a small, lent-out shack somewhere in the middle of the other god’s territory, letting himself get lost among the ever-growing populace. His junior officials know to ping his array when needed and when delivering word of missions, but not any other time. 

They never contact him about his beloveds. 

Weak to his impulses, Mu Qing interrupts Chen Weici’s report of new prayers where he is needed. 

“Has General Nan Yang, Dianxia, or Crimson Rain come around?”

It escapes from his mouth with too much hope. Mu Qing turns a humiliating red in mortification. To think he interrupted hearing his prayers to ask for—

He blinks. Chen Weici has not yet answered. Dread fills the pit of Mu Qing’s stomach. 

“Chen Weici?” 

The silence stretches for even longer, and Mu Qing’s heart thumps louder and louder until he swears his heart has moved to sit between his ears. 

“…they did not, General.” 

Oh. That…Mu Qing’s throat is suddenly tight and his eyes water. Roughly, he rubs his hands across his face. This is what he wanted, this is what he wants. He knows he brings the worst to them, he knows they’re better off without him—

So why does it hurt so much to find out so certainly that even they know the same to be true? 

“General…?” 

He hears the worry in Chen Weici’s voice and clears his throat. Mu Qing has always, always been good at never letting anyone know how he’s feeling. “All’s well, A-Ci. Please forgive my interruption. You can continue.”

Another pause. Of his officials, Chen Weici knows him best. And perhaps that’s how she knows to do as asked. Maybe she knows Mu Qing will break down later.

Maybe she knows, like with all things, he only needs to get through this. 

She delivers his favorite tea and some snacks to him later on her way to a mission Mu Qing knows doesn’t exist. He loves her, he does, like a child of his own, and maybe she’s the only one in his life that he hasn’t brought misfortune to. 

“Thank you, A-Ci,” he murmurs as she calmly steps past him, neatly ignoring Mu Qing’s attempts to do take the things she’s already hassled herself into bringing. He sits on the bed, watching her pour the already prepared boiling water into the tea leaves, straining it before bringing the cup to him.  

Her eyes flit to him when he thanks her again. Like him, she hides her expressions well. 

“Take care, General,” she murmurs, dipping her head in a bow. “This one hopes to see your return soon.”

But she could never hide her concern for him. Mu Qing gives her as gentle a smile as he can muster and watches until the door closes behind her—

—and then he keens over the cup in his lap. 

They hadn’t come searching for him. A laugh hiccups out of his throat on the tail end of a sob. 

They were probably happy to be rid of him. Mu Qing’s caught in it, unable to stop the pathetic hysterics, his hands shaking around a too-hot cup of tea that splashes onto his hands. And still he laughs. 

He’d been right. He cries at the thought and he laughs at the thought, and he breaks down completely because, even with the steam rising into his face, with the pink-red of new burns on his hands, wrapped in this cocoon of triumph, he’s still too cold. 

🦋 • 🐈‍⬛ • 🌸 • 🏹

“General?” An exasperated Cheng Weici contacts him through the array some days later. “We are in need of some…assistance.”

Mu Qing frowns. It isn’t often that Chen Weici reaches out to him for assistance, the junior official is usually far more than capable these days to need any. “A-Ci, what’s happened?”

“Song Youyi,” and Mu Qing can hear the grit of her teeth. “Has gotten us into quite the predicament.”

His eyes close, and Mu Qing tips his head back. So, not a dangerous predicament, but one where they are thoroughly and/or awkwardly stuck. 

“I didn’t know it was a trap!” Song Youyi wails. 

“Volume, Song Youyi,” Cheng Weici and Mu Qing both all but cry out, surely the both of them wincing from the other man’s hysterics. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Song Youyi sniffs. “…General?”

“Yes, A-Yi?” Mu Qing sighs as he gathers his saber and supplies. 

“You’re coming to get us, right?” 

“Yes, A-Yi.”

It doesn’t take long to get to the place where his junior officials direct him. But it’s nothing what he expects. For one, there’s no one there. 

If there are no people, then what exactly were his officials doing here? Wait, not his officials. Official. What had Song Youyi been doing? 

Mu Qing sighs and begins picking his way through the high grasses. From what he knows of this area, it’s a karst landscape with sinking streams and springs encircled by tall, nearly mountainous heights of rock covered in sparse greenery. Of course, Song Youyi and Chen Weici were purportedly on top of one of these near-mountain slabs and, of course, there is no temples of his up there for him to get there directly, and of fucking course his junior officials hadn’t even gotten there by a distance-traveling array in the first place so now he can’t either. 

Of course. 

He’s walking alongside the wide river where the grass is shorter, less dense, perhaps by villagers from not too far coming there to fish, when he senses it. Spiritual energy. More than his officials have. Mu Qing spins around, zhanmadao drawn, when a length of cloth suddenly stills his blade—Ruoye??—and a body barrels right into him with a shout of, 

“You fucking son of a bitch!”

With his arm awkwardly held and Feng Xin’s weight against him, Mu Qing’s immediately set off balance. He’s quick to try and compensate—

—and then they’re both toppling into the river, plunging beneath the water’s surface. Mu Qing makes the mistake of gasping slightly as the water rushes around him and, choking, he struggles to make sense of where the surface is. Ruoye’s gone from his hand, he cannot use it to pull himself up. 

Hands suddenly grab his wrists, tight, dragging Mu Qing out of the water. Sputtering, he half-struggles against and half-clambers closer to the person hoisting him up from the river. 

“Feng Xin, you bastard,” he coughs out, eyes squeezed shut against the slight burn of the water having gotten into his eyes. He’s sopping wet, his robes hanging with a waterlogged weight against his skin that leaves him shivering. “Who the fuck—”

But it’s not warm brown eyes he sees when he opens his own. 

Mu Qing goes still. Hua Cheng’s holding him so close, Mu Qing can see the different shades of amber in his lone eye. “…you,” he murmurs. “What—?”

The younger man’s hair is messier than usual and he stares at Mu Qing with a devastation that’s horribly familiar. 

‘Please don’t send me away!’

Like a fourteen-year-old begging to be in a war, to serve until he dies, Hua Cheng looks at Mu Qing with the same anguish. With the same vehement anger that cannot seem to break. “There are better ways to break up, General,” he says, and his body’s shaking slightly. Mu Qing can feel it against his own, held against Hua Cheng like this. “You can just say you want out instead of running away.” 

There’s an edge to it like Hua Cheng means to be harsh. But it sounds too broken. Too hurt. 

Mu Qing can’t breathe suddenly, a useless gasp escaping him, short and sharp and he closes his teeth around it until the ache to breathe worsens, radiating through his chest until he could go dizzy from it. That’s not—that can’t be because of him, it can’t. 

They’d come for him. 

Confusion washes over him. Why now? Why would they even bother—

“Do you know how fucking worried we were?” 

Mu Qing jolts and, mouth dropping open suddenly, he turns to look at Xie Lian—Xie Lian—who’d just swore. Xie Lian who’s shaking slightly, hands fisted by his side and eyes red, his expression tight. Mu Qing has seen him angry and hurt before but this…this is different. 

It makes Mu Qing shrink slightly. “Dianxia…” it sounds meek to his own ears, and he cringes. What need did he have to grovel? 

(But apologizing for mistakes isn’t groveling, Mu Qing knows this better than most. He’s always apologized first.) 

Xie Lian doesn’t seem to know what he wants to do. So he keeps a slight distance even as he bites out a sharp, “What were you thinking, leaving the way you did?” 

“What Dianxia said!” Feng Xin finally rises from the water to all but snarl. But the words themselves sound so ridiculous, petulant. 

“I— I was helping!” Mu Qing protests under the weight of all three of their gazes. 

“Before this carries on any further, we shouldn’t be here to hear of our General’s personal affairs.”

That was Chen Weici’s voice, as proprietous as usual, only barely glimmering with irritation that only Mu Qing and Sing Youyi would likely hear. Mu Qing’s eyes dart around. 

(He ignores the way it feels like relief to find distraction, to act as if he isn’t the center of this, of them.) 

Where—?

His eyes widen when he sees his junior officials. Wrapped in butterfly silk, they are carried closer atop a swarm of wraith butterflies. 

“Lord Crimson Rain Sought Flower, if you’d please let us down,” Chen Weici says politely, airily. She truly has mastered Mu Qing’s penchant of acting frustratingly unbothered and above others’ nonsense. She meets Hua Cheng’s gaze fearlessly, almost as if unimpressed. “Before I spend the rest of my immortality attempting to stab you in your remaining eye.”

If the nonchalance and threat startles any of his loves, they do not show it beyond a slight widening of their eye(s). With a wave of Hua Cheng’s hand, the silk starts to disintegrate and the butterflies slowly descend, bringing Chen Weici and Song Youyi closer to the ground. 

Feng Xin huffs out a breath behind Mu Qing, muttering, “She’s more like you than CuoCuo is like me. How the hell is she not your blood?”

But Mu Qing ignores him, still mildly horrified. “You kidnapped my junior officials!” 

“You didn’t give us much choice, Mu Qing!” Xie Lian says, throwing his hands up.

This is more emotion than Mu Qing is used to from his prince than Mu Qing is really used to seeing except for truly desperate situations. This, this isn’t the same. They—they didn’t need him. Why make such a bother with something disposable? Wide eyed, he stares at Xie Lian. “I didn’t—why?” 

“Oh, it’s probably because you were hiding and didn’t let anyone really reach you by array but I shouldn’t assume. They didn’t say before we got captured but, if I may add one more assumption, General, I dare say they wanted to see you,” Song Youyi pipes up, blinking at Mu Qing innocently. 

Mu Qing despairs. Song Youyi was always too damn honest and…naive to a degree. Mu Qing should ground him until he learns not to fall for whatever trick they’d set. 

Chen Weici, finally free, presses her fingers to her forehead. “I’m locking you up in your room when we get back.” 

“You’re grounding me?!” Song Youyi cries. “But—!”

“Leave,” Hua Cheng finally speaks again, throwing his dice to the ground, a doorway opening like a tear into the fabric of the sky and ground, revealing the welcoming hall of Mu Qing’s palace. 

At the sight of it, Chen Weici closes her eyes for a long moment. Her voice pings into Mu Qing’s array. “If I may look into protection and blocking arrays, General?” 

Flustered, Mu Qing clears his throat, bidding his officials to head inside. “I’ll, ah, let you know after they...let me go.”

“Understood.” 

As the door shuts behind them, Hua Cheng suddenly pushes Mu Qing backwards, right into two arms that capture him before he can protest. Feng Xin’s wet hair falls over Mu Qing’s shoulder as the other god rests his forehead there. “Why the fuck did you leave again?” 

His voice cracks. Mu Qing thinks of a dilapidated shack and a ground covered in rice. He thinks of a broken bridge and lava rising to consume him. 

But he won’t let the guilt break his resolve. He won’t accept their placation. “You—you don’t need me.” 

“…what?” 

Hand flinging out in aborted motions, Mu Qing gestures to them, insistent. “You—the three of you. You’re g-good for each other. I- I am the one who has held all of your hatred, who you have all known hatred for because I…I am not…I am not something worth loving.” 

“Something?” Xie Lian’s voice sounds dangerous. It sounds devastated. “Is that what you are? A thing?”

Mu Qing almost falters. A tool, hasn’t that all he’s ever been? Even a god is no more than that, distributor of blessings and aid, expected to act on the command of prayer. The outrage of that acknowledgment makes sense, it also makes none. Xie Lian of all people should know by now what it means to be used, should know how happily people would use others. But his once status of princehood, of dreaming of saving people, might still make him think that everyone has a worth beyond their functionality. 

Mu Qing grimaces. He doesn’t let himself stop though. “Other than pity, for all the trouble I cause, for all that we are awkward and uncomfortable with each other, what-what reason could you possibly have for keeping me around?” 

“Who are you to determine our rationality? Who are you to decide our choices for us?” Hua Cheng’s chin tips up, looking down at Mu Qing ominously. 

“That’s not—“ Mu Qing sputters. Anger makes him reckless. “That’s not what I’m doing! You—all of you get so attached, so set on pleasing others, feeling so fixed on nostalgia and sorry for me, that you put up with me! How can you blame me for wanting to…wanting to save all of us this trouble of cutting worthless ties? I—this isn’t love. You cannot love me.”

He’s never been worth such effort, so much inconvenience, not since his mother passed. He’s tired of this love of obligation. 

“Still, you are deciding for us. Reasoning for us. Do you think we’re incapable of it, General?” That tone that Hua Cheng puts on, it drives Mu Qing mad and his lip curls. 

“I see you. All of you together. I do not fit in this.” The hurt bubbles up in his throat. He shouldn’t—he shouldn’t—they've a right to their anger, as misplaced as it is. Mu Qing shouldn’t—but the words slip out, haste and harsh, “If you’re so eager for a spectator to your grand love, get a pet!” 

Hands suddenly capture his face, almost enough to hurt, and then Xie Lian’s kissing Mu Qing hard. Mu Qing gasps, he can barely keep up. His lips ache beneath Xie Lian’s but he doesn’t pull away. He feels the heat behind his eyes just seconds before the tears spill over and then he’s sobbing against Xie Lian’s mouth. 

“D-Dianxia.” Mu Qing’s nose burns. He’s crying, gods, he’s crying. Xie Lian thumbs his tears away. “D-Dianxia, w-w-why?” 

Keeping Mu Qing’s head tipped down towards him, Xie Lian rests his forehead against Mu Qing’s. “How could I not love you?”

It’d be so easy, Mu Qing says. It is so easy. He goes to say as much but Xie Lian isn’t done. 

“I dreamt of it once. If I could ever be considered a hero—”

Bewildered, Mu Qing interrupts. “You are.”

Because Dianxia is amazing. Dianxia has always been better than him. It is unquestionable. In a comparison of the two, Mu Qing has always been and still is nothing. 

“I always thought of you as my beauty,” Xie Lian says. His gaze is firm even as his hand gentles where he’s still holding Mu Qing. “My jade. My love for you drove me mad, it made me too harsh when I believed you to have discarded me so easily.” 

Mu Qing can only stare wordlessly. That cannot be true, it cannot—

“You’re so precious to me,” Xie Lian’s voice breaks into a whisper. “I am not sure what I’ve done to make you think otherwise but Mu Qing, you are not a thing. You are someone I’ve loved before I knew what love is, you are someone I adore. If you cannot stand me, if you do not love me, then tell me. I will never bother you again.”  

“You? You are not the bother, Dianxia…” Mu Qing struggles to breathe around the weight of his faults. The faults Xie Lian is ignoring. 

“Then don’t deny me this please.” It sounds like a plea. Like Xie Lian is begging Mu Qing. “I’ve waited over eight hundred years for you, Mu Qing.” 

Mu Qing can only look at him, feeling very suddenly weak. “…You’ve waited for me?”

Xie Lian smiles helplessly. Almost clumsily, he brushes Mu Qing’s hair from his face. “My whole life.”

Then he steps back just a bit, turning Mu Qing to face Feng Xin, whose hands shift to wrap around Mu Qing’s back. He stares at Mu Qing with too warm, too earnest, eyes that look tired. For a moment, he looks so lost. And then his eyes focus, found again. 

“You’ve known me the longest,” Feng Xin says without preamble, his arms tightening around Mu Qing. 

Mu Qing tries to swallow the urge to turn and slap his hand to Feng Xin’s face. Feng Xin must sense it because he squints, shifting his hands from around Mu Qing’s waist to Mu Qing’s wrists, holding them still with an expression on his face that looks all too much like saying, 

Are you fucking kidding me?

The exasperation doesn’t last long though. Feng Xin rubs his thumbs on the inside of Mu Qing’s wrists subconsciously, mouth twisting into a familiar frown. “And you know me the best. It is you who knows my every truth. For eight hundred fucking years, Mu Qing, it’s only been just me and you. Do you really think, after all that time, there’s any chance I could live without you?” He pauses. “Unless it’s me you cannot stand?”

He says it like it’s his ruin. 

Mu Qing can only shake his head. Hasn’t he spent those same centuries enduring this abuse he and Feng Xin levied against each other, waiting for something of him, a better part of him, to be noticed? To be cared for by this same man who never hated Mu Qing even when Feng Xin’s stupid mouth didn’t ever say so?  

Could it really be the same ridiculous miscommunication? 

Xie Lian wraps his arms around Mu Qing’s shoulders. His hand comes up to cup the back of Mu Qing’s head, pulling the younger god against his chest. In his arms, like in so many other situations with Xie Lian, Mu Qing feels so small. “We hadn’t thought you were so uncomfortable.”

“I’m sorry,” Feng Xin says it so easily, like it isn’t the first real apology between them. Mu Qing is frozen, words circling round in his head. Feng Xin is sorry. Feng Xin is sorry. “I know you best, too. I knew something was off but I thought you were just not ready, with your cultivation and all that. I should’ve asked.” 

Mu Qing trembles—they’re so warm—but he forces himself to scoff, even as his hands come up to clutch at Feng Xin’s robes tightly. “It’s not as if you could have known. Don’t act as if I cannot be responsible for myself. You don’t need to—need to—”

Could Mu Qing really have gotten it so wrong…? But then he remembers Hua Cheng who still stands on the riverbank. 

Unspoken, they step out of the water. But when Mu Qing looks to where he knows he must meet the ghost king, he nearly stops walking. There’s a sprawl of pillows and cushions along the ground and on a daybed that Mu Qing can swear wasn’t there before. When in the actual hell—?

His eyes fall onto Hua Cheng. There’s paint around him, paper and brushes. He has them set on the daybed around him, unworried of the mess they may make. When they get closer to him, Hua Cheng reaches out, snagging Mu Qing by the wrist. In a movement he can’t track, Mu Qing’s pulled onto the daybed, falling between Hua Cheng’s legs for his back to press against the ghost king’s chest. He’s still soaked but Hua Cheng doesn’t let any space sit between them. Flushing, Mu Qing closes his eyes tight. He can feel the heat of Hua Cheng’s spiritual energy wrapping around him where Hua Cheng’s arms reach around him to put paper in front of Mu Qing and press a brush into his palm. 

“I don’t know what I’m allowed with you,” Hua Cheng says it like a prayer, a confession. He holds Mu Qing so tight, like the hands of dehydration desperate to hold water between them to drink even as it slips from their fingers. Mu Qing knows it’s too soon to open his eyes and face Hua Cheng even as he lets Hua Cheng guide his hand in painting across the paper. Hua Cheng’s thumb rubs over a callous on Mu Qing’s hand, a caress against the roughened, work-worn skin. 

His free hand brushes Mu Qing’s cheek, just under Mu Qing’s eye where he knows a beauty mole lies like a fallen tear drop forever marking his skin. It marks the trail of dried tears, it marks the path where another tear slips down his face. “I’ve seen you cry for a mother and father you’ve lost long ago and still console Gege’s grief over a king you must’ve hated.” 

Hua Cheng takes Mu Qing’s free hand in his, and runs his thumb over Mu Qing’s knuckles. “I’ve seen you fight bloody with Feng Xin.” He entwines their fingers. “That same night, you’ll touch him gently and sing when he’s fitful from nightmares until he’s resting peacefully.” 

“It is you who’s done my accounting on my busy days, secretly as if it could be anyone but you, and I know now that this is what it means to be loved by you.” Hua Cheng brings their entwined hands up to his lips, letting them touch the back of Mu Qing’s hand in a kiss. “After I understood you, how could I not love you?” 

“Hua Cheng…” Mu Qing whispers, and his voice unsteady with how he trembles, that name so newly dear to him falling from his lips as if he doesn’t want to let go of it. 

He doesn’t, Mu Qing realizes. He doesn’t want to let go of Hua Cheng’s name. He wants to keep Hua Cheng trapped behind his teeth, buried in his chest where no one can see, no one can reach. There’s an irrational fear of losing all the things he holds dear if he ever dared share them. Mu Qing holds Hua Cheng’s hand tighter. How can he explain he doesn’t ever want to let that name out of his mouth, doesn’t want it to escape from its place in his heart and never be his again. It’s easier to keep his eyes closed now. Hua Cheng only holds him tighter. 

“You’re in my heart now, I cannot rid it of you. I do not want to.” Hua Cheng lets the brush fall from their hands, and shifts Mu Qing to face him, pressing their foreheads together. “But Qing-gege, in all the time you’ve loved me, when will you let me love you, too?” 

Mu Qing breaks down. If he’d sobbed before, he doesn’t know what this is. He cannot breathe, all he can feel is the air he’d been denying himself filling his lungs again. 

Someone whispers they love him, over and over and over again. Mu Qing can’t make out the voice, he’s crying too hard, but even so, he thinks he hears it from all of them. 

They love him. 

They love him.

They love him. 

They’ve always loved him. 

When he’s calmed, face cleaned by someone else’s sleeve, and boneless tired between the three of them, it’s easy to fake outrage. “I can’t believe—you guys—you guys were passing me around like a—like a—!”

“Errant kitten?” Xie Lian says wryly. Mu Qing knows he’s blushing down to his neck, and Xie Lian smiles softly, delightedly, fingers pushing Mu Qing’s bangs back again. 

“We wanted to give you some time and space…” Feng Xin gruff until clears his throat. “Just in case your brain thinks we didn’t want to look for you from the moment we saw you were gone.” 

“We also wanted to get you this,” Hua Cheng murmurs. 

Again he guides Mu Qing’s hand across the paper, the array, Mu Qing realizes, that he’d led Mu Qing into drawing. From it, a choker necklace emerges. Mu Qing has to stop himself from reaching out to touch. It’s beautiful. The necklace is not quite subtle, coils of black metal laid over soft fabric, in the prettiest shade of aquamarine, that boldly displays Feng Xin’s craftsmanship, Hua Cheng’s critical taste, and Xie Lian’s artmanship. Thin black chains dangle from it in varying sizes, beaded with pearls of the same aquamarine. The center pendant nestled against the necklace and framed by the beaded chains is the most stunning part. It’s a black gemstone heart. But, in front of Mu Qing’s eyes, colors and shapes swirl inside: silver-white butterflies flickering across, warm bronze curls and splashes, a fall of flower petals from the top down to lay at the bottom. 

“Let me show you something. Repeat after me, Xuan Zhen,” Hua Cheng whispers against Mu Qing’s ear as he places the choker into Mu Qing’s hand. Mu Qing shivers, eyes wide with embarrassment as he listens, as he stutters in repetition, 

Qin ai de. 

The choker suddenly changes shape and an elegant long dagger is in Mu Qing’s hand, the design of the choker engraved into the handle. It’s perfectly balanced, a good weight, and the sharp edge of the blade glints in the sun. Xie Lian touches the flat surface. 

“To protect in our love,” he murmurs. 

Hua Cheng repeats the words, and the dagger returns to a choker. Carefully, he takes it from Mu Qing’s fingers and clasps around Mu Qing’s neck. “Decorate you in our love.” 

Feng Xin’s thumbs stroke along the choker as he leans close, cupping his hands around Mu Qing’s neck when he looks up to meet Mu Qing’s eyes. “Give you nothing but our love.” 

Then he presses his lips to Mu Qing’s. 

And within their arms, within this space with his water-soaked clothes, within this love, Mu Qing finally feels warm again.