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The sunset from Puqi shrine is unparalleled. Shi Qingxuan has watched sunsets from many views through the years. Drinking wine and watching the sky change color from endlessly extravagant pavilions used to be one of the ten thousand pleasures of every day.
Now they sit on the stoop of an agonizingly tacky little shrine in the middle of nowhere, and watch the clouds shift over a perfectly normal skyline. Not glorious and auspicious, or carefully-crafted and manicured for a perfect view on behalf of the elite and wealthy, while blocking the view for the city at large.
The old Shi Qingxuan would have never thought about such things. The old Shi Qingxuan would have puffed at the limited skyline and the scraggly trees.
The old Shi Qingxuan died years ago now. The beggar Feng watches the sunset and wishes he could share it with his two most important people. Guilt is sour inside him at the thought. In the end, didn’t “Ming Yi” kill Shi Wudu?
From the start, hadn’t Shi Wudu killed He Xuan?
“Sorry for the delay!”
The pensive mood evaporates at once. Shi Qingxuan turns from the sunset, and smiles at the best choice he’s ever made in a long life of foolishness.
The Xie Lian who hurries out of Puqi Shrine is like a new man, re-made in all the ways Shi Qingxuan has been undone. Gone is the hapless beggar the old Windmaster took under his wing, back when he had wings to take him under. His cheeks and lips are tinged pink, no doubt pestered and played with by the ghost king playing at domestic bliss inside the shrine.
Shi Qingxuan still can’t understand what got under Feng Xin and Mu Qing’s noses about the whole situation so much. How could they look so sour and angry when Xie Lian was so clearly, vibrantly, actively happy around his vicious friend?
So once Hua Cheng had hunted them for sport. So what! They were gods. They could handle a little hunting.
“Are you sure I’m allowed to eat those?” Shi Qingxuan asks as Xie Lian sets down a tray with tea and fresh steamed buns. “Crimson Rain made them for you, right?”
“San Lang made them for me, so I can share them as I like.” Xie Lian says with a nod. “He would never expect me not to. I think he’s glad it’s you I’m sharing with and not one of the others!”
‘The others’, he still says, as if Shi Qingxuan is still one of them.
“You don’t have to feed me every time I stop by.” they object, even as they lift a bun in their good hand, squeezing the bouncy steamed dough lightly. Easy to forget how nice buns are when they’re fresh!
“I don’t share out of any obligation.” Xie Lian lifts his teacup, settling on the edge of the porch and facing out towards the sunset. “But I can, and I like to. Pray the good Windmaster doesn’t mind?”
“How could I mind?” Shi Qingxuan laughs.
The bun is delicious. Xie Lian’s cooking no longer leaves Shi Qingxuan chasing shadows or losing vowels, but it’s true that Crimson Rain is a far more traditional cook. It feels like a ludicrous thing for a beggar to know. Shi Qingxuan thinks of how their friends would react back at the capital. “There goes Ol’ Feng again! Next you’ll tell us Shi Wudu died of a broken heart!”
He did, Shi Qingxuan would reply. Not his own heart, but one he broke without remorse to save me.
“How is the capital recently?”
Xie Lian’s voice is mild and warm, drawing Shi Qingxuan from grim reminiscence.
“Busy, busy, always busy,” Shi Qingxuan huffs. “But you know that, your highness! Aren’t there dozens of your temples in the city now?”
Xie Lian flushes and clears his throat. “Ah, well, that… Yes.”
“Because a giant statue of you guarded the city against all of the heavens?”
“Technically…”
“And your own embodiment walked among the poorest and led them to heroism?”
“Enough, enough!” Xie Lian is laughing, awkward and desperate, flapping one hand at Shi Qingxuan. “It really wasn’t anything so praiseworthy! Some would say it was my fault the capital was in danger in the first place!”
“Who would say that?” Shi Qingxuan narrows their eyes. “I want names.”
Xie Lian’s answering grin is blinding. It’s the sort of grin Shi Qingxuan once only saw him give Crimson Rain. They receive it themself often these days, and know without a doubt that is because they are not mere acquaintances anymore. There may not be a simple word for their relationship, but it isn’t just amicable.
No one understands Shi Qingxuan like Xie Lian does.
No one but Crimson Rain understands Xie Lian the way Shi Qingxuan does.
“You know prayers are no replacement for gossip,” Xie Lian scolds mildly, reaching out to tap Shi Qingxuan’s forehead. “Will the Windmaster really leave this old god without any interesting stories or anecdotes?”
“Well, since you asked nicely,” Shi Qingxuan relents, grinning brightly.
They tell him about their group of beggars— the ones who formed the core of the human array back when Jun Wu attacked. They tell him how they still talk about the good meal they were served at a shrine in the middle of nowhere, and the strange daozhang who insisted on serving them.
Xie Lian asks after many of them by name. How their ailments are, how their moods have been, if anyone is suffering.
“I send my followers dreams, asking them to aid those in need,” Xie Lian sighs. “But they often twist my meaning into making deals which benefit them.”
“Your highness, even you can’t single-handedly change the fate of the common man in three years.” Shi Qingxuan snickers, shaking their head.
“I can try, ” Xie Lian objects, though it’s laughingly, hiding his sheepish smile behind his teacup.
Shi Qingxuan watches him for a moment, tearing at their second of Hua Cheng’s steamed buns. They have to bring it up somehow, he knew. Xie Lian will never volunteer the information. Not if he thinks it wouldn’t be welcome.
Xie Lian’s eyes slide away from the sunset, back to Shi Qingxuan. He is still smiling, but softly. There’s a strange, knowing light in his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, but he puts his tea cup down, and offers out his hands. Shi Qingxuan puts the poor meat bun down as well, and takes Xie Lian’s hands in their own.
“Can I ask you something?” Shi Qingxuan asks, their voice small.
“Anything.” Xie Lian replies, and it seems like he genuinely means that.
“Why did you stay?” Shi Qingxuan asks, squeezing the hands in his own— such a physical anchor, unlike the knowledge of Xie Lian’s eyes seeing through his own had been.
He doesn’t have to specify. He sees the flickers of emotion that slide past Xie Lian’s smile. Tension, sorrow, a flicker of frustration. Shi Qingxuan wonders who that frustration is aimed at. It’s almost certainly not them. Xie Lian has never been frustrated with them for what happened on Black Water Island. Even though he should have been.
“Hm.” Xie Lian says at last, turning Shi Qingxuan’s hands over to look at their palms. His thumbs trace lines over their palms. One hand relaxes easily. The other never unclaws fully, after the injury that left him changed.
“As you know, I spent… A long time in the mortal realm.” Xie Lian says at last in the understatement of eight centuries. “In that time, I saw a great many people come to the end of their lives.”
He speaks in a slow, careful rhythm. It is the voice he speaks Truths in, not the one he uses to scold, or play, or joke. Shi Qingxuan swallows, and listens to a true god speak.
“Even if I’d had my powers, there was little I could have done. Most people don’t die to dark spirits, or even battle. They die of sickness. Of poverty. Of desperation.”
Shi Qingxuan shivers. Xie Lian squeezes their hands, unbearably gentle in the same hands that once tore the emperor of heaven from his throne, not out of anger, but in defense of the world.
“Yet no matter how sad the circumstances, no matter how harsh the reality, no matter how they would have spat on me if they were living, there was never a time my offer of company to the dying was declined.”
Shi Qingxuan sees it in him. His hands are steady and warm. He has held the hands of dying people with the same rough palms that now cradle Shi Qingxuan’s hands as if they were still anything precious.
“I couldn’t save you.” Xie Lian whispers, and it sounds like it breaks his heart. “I couldn’t help. By the time I understood, it was all too far gone. But at least, I wanted to bear witness for you. At least I didn’t want you to be alone.”
“Oh.” Shi Qingxuan chokes, fighting tears.
“In the end, I couldn’t even do that.” Xie Lian closes his eyes, and breathes through what must be pain. “Forgive me for leaving you alone. I would have stayed if I could have.”
“I know that.” Shi Qingxuan hurries to soothe, even as their tears overflow down their face— finally clean after being ushered to refresh themself upon their arrival to Puqi shrine. “I know. You didn’t have to stay.”
“If anyone but San Lang had pulled me away, I never would have forgiven them.” Xie Lian lifts one hand away, still holding onto Shi Qingxuan’s trembling, clawed hand. His sleeve is soft, blotting away Shi Qingxuan’s tears. “You deserved much more than simply someone beside you.”
“...Do you still see him?” Shi Qingxuan asks, though it scares him. Though it hurts.
“Sometimes.” Xie Lian admits readily, brushing Shi Qingxuan’s sad, tangled hair behind their ear. “He knows what I think of his actions.”
Shi Qingxuan snorts despite themself. Then they grimace and exclaim aloud at the mess it makes. Xie Lian only laughs, warm and fond, and fishes free a handkerchief for them.
Shi Qingxuan hides behind it a moment longer than they need to. They take a slow, shaking breath.
“And now?” They ask, when they lift their head again. “Why do you still welcome me now?”
“Because we’re friends!” Xie Lian replies, eager and bright again all at once. “Even when I was nothing, you chose me then. Why wouldn’t I do the same?”
His grin is blinding for a moment. Then he blinks, and lifts his hands, waving them, stuttering “not that you’re nothing! Not at all! That was so rude of me!!!”
Shi Qingxuan is certain they are not imagining the stifled laughter floating through the thin walls of Puqi shrine. They don’t bother being offended, only bursting into laughter of their own. It feels like a weight lifted, to laugh with this strange, kind man in the shadow of such cruelty.
“San Lang!” Xie Lian cries in objection. “Why do you always have to overhear such embarrassing things?!”
“Gege left this one all alone to slave over the hot stove,” Hua Cheng answers at once, draping dramatically out of the window of Puqi shrine, all but melting in performative despair. “This one longed for the soothing sounds of his voice.”
Xie Lian puts a hand to his face, looking pained. Shi Qingxuan only smiles. He should be jealous. Both of them had loved a devastation, after all, even though only one of them knew it from the start.
He can’t envy Xie Lian’s situation. To do so would be to envy unspeakable pain. Shi Qingxuan understands better the kinds of experiences that turn a spoiled young prince into a humble beggar now.
“Ah, San Lang, you can just join us!” Xie Lian objects, shaking his head. “It’s not as if the Wind Master doesn’t know you’re here!”
Shi Qingxuan waves with their good hand.
“Thank you for making enough buns for his highness to share!” They say by way of greeting.
“Tch,” Hua Cheng rolls his eye. He only ever has one in front of Xie Lian these days. “Clearly you don’t know his highness as well as you think. There’s no amount of buns I could make that he wouldn’t share.”
“Oh, your highness, I just remembered!” Shi Qingxuan lies, having been waiting for the right moment to bring this up. “There’s a styling of hair popular in the capital that this one feels would suit you. Would you permit this humble Ol’ Feng to play dress up with the crown prince once more?”
“Shi Qingxuan, you know I enjoy when you style my hair.” Xie Lian laughs, shaking his head.
“This one will bring the comb, gege.” Hua Cheng says, his eye gleaming in interest.
Maybe it’s a little cheap, but Shi Qingxuan did use to be good at bringing people around to their side. Xie Lian has a secret like of tenderness that he only hesitantly indulges in, but Shi Qingxuan hadn’t realized that until the third time they’d combed his hair.
Hua Cheng, on the other hand, was an open book. To get on his good side, you just had to do a single thing:
Be kind to the crown prince Xie Lian.
There was, after all, a reason Shi Qingxuan could simply drop by Ghost City, or Taicang mountain, or Puqi shrine and find themself welcome. The same certainly couldn’t be said for Feng Xin or Mu Qing. While Shi Qingxuan was still a fool who had everything, they’d been wise enough to share it with the stranger who ascended only to be laughed at and shunned in the heavens.
Now they have little to offer, but they still give it freely.
It takes them time, with only one good arm. Xie Lian never minds. Every touch against his scalp seems to settle him further as Shi Qingxuan works through his hair, root to tip. Hua Cheng leans against the railing on the porch, watching Xie Lian’s face. He never looks away to the landscape, or to Shi Qingxuan.
Xie Lian’s head lolls into their hands as they work, and they compensate for it with the ease of long practice now. The crown prince melts into every kind touch.
By the time his braids are in, Xie Lian has melted into a puddle. Shi Qingxuan finds excuses to linger. Hua Cheng enables them. Passing over little jewels to hide amid his braids. He even sends a wrath butterfly. Perhaps he intended it for something different, but Shi Qingxuan fearlessly bullies it into place, crowning Xie Lian’s braid like the rarest of silver ornamentation.
“There,” Shi Qingxuan says at last, once Xie Lian has started to come back to himself with the slowly diminishing touches. “What do you think, Crimson Rain? Doesn’t it suit him?”
“Gege always looks beautiful.” Hua Cheng says flippantly, but his smile when Xie Lian looks at him is warm with approval.
“Right? So pretty!” Shi Qingxuan enthuses, and Xie Lian squeaks an embarrassed objection. “Really, your highness, imagine how crimson Rain would have reacted if you’d let me put you in a disguise before we went to Ghost City!”
“He already reacted strongly enough!” Xie Lian objects, and Hua Cheng laughs a vicious, delighted laugh.
Shi Qingxuan knows from their talks with Xie Lian. They know that the love between them is untouched by the fact that Xie Lian only rarely indulges in any physical acts of pleasure with his beloved. They know that Hua Cheng expects nothing of him. It’s the only reason he doesn’t excuse himself immediately at the unmistakably passionate look that passes between them.
“Well,” Xie Lian clears his throat. “With this done, you must allow me to return the favor, Wind Master.”
“What?” Shi Qingxuan blinks. This isn’t part of the script. Usually Shi Qingxuan styles Xie Lian’s hair just before leaving him in Hua Cheng’s loving, indulgent arms and making their way to the guest room tucked into the back of the shrine.
“Unless you wouldn’t enjoy it?” Xie Lian’s face is gentle in the darkening evening, genuine and awaiting Shi Qingxuan’s judgement.
“Oh, I…” Shi Qingxuan glances at Hua Cheng.
“Why are you looking at me?” Hua Cheng scoffs, scowling. “His highness made you an offer. Do you want to accept, or be a fool?”
“San Lang!” Xie Lian scolds again, though it’s in such a laughing tone that it only feels indulgent.
“No no, he’s right!” Shi Qingxuan agrees cheerfully. “Far be it from this fool to decline!”
“This one will light the lamps,” Hua Cheng says, pushing off from where he’s standing. He stops by Xie Lian to bend down, tilting his chin up and giving him a slow, indulgent kiss.
Shi Qingxuan doesn’t bother looking away. They keep a soft smile on their face, because— Yes, there. Xie Lian always glances at whoever’s nearby after he kisses his beloved, waiting for rejection.
“Your highness, you’re sure you don’t mind?” Shi Qingxuan says, not commenting on it at all as Hua Cheng straightens and brushes past them into the house. “This one’s hair isn’t so nice these days.”
“All the more reason it needs gentle treatment.” The god answers, softening another inch at the tacit approval.
By the time Hua Cheng returns, the shrine is glowing softly. The hellish abomination of an establishment plaque is stark in the yellow-gold light. Behind Shi Qingxuan, Xie Lian has started combing at the tips of his hair.
Hua Cheng brings three fresh teacups, though he says nothing. Shi Qingxuan cradles one in both hands, warding off the creeping chill of the night. It’s quiet on the porch of Puqi shrine. Shi Qinxuan doesn’t try to fill the silence. Xie Lian hums absentmindedly sometimes, but it’s quiet and gentle. Hua Cheng flops down and pillows his head on Xie Lian’s lap, yawning quietly and settling in to rest.
Shi Qingxuan recognizes it for the vote of confidence it is. It isn’t just anyone that Hua Cheng would trust with Xie Lian.
He doesn’t have to worry. Xie Lian’s hands are so gentle, and it’s been…
One time, a long time ago, Ming Yi finally relented under Shi Qingxuan’s pleading and helped them with their hair before a trip down to the mortal world to drink. His hands had been cold in Shi Qingxuan’s hair, skilful and brisk, braiding sharply.
Xie Lian is nothing like that. He’s gentle and delicate, and a little uncertain. He mumbles apologies whenever he so much as tugs. Hua Cheng stops breathing at some point, and Xie Lian pauses in his work to coo softly down at his beloved.
“He stops breathing when he sleeps?” Shi Qingxuan asks in a whisper.
“I think he only does it to make me happy in the first place.” Xie Lian agrees in a whisper. “So when he’s really asleep, he stops bothering. It’s sweet.”
“Don’t tell him I agree, he’d gut me.” Shi Qingxuan whispers.
And then, because Xie Lian’s hands are so gentle, and they’re so, so tired of being strong, they whisper “I wish…”
They grimace immediately after. It’s wrong to want, after everything. After what he did.
But Xie Lian only says “I know.” and keeps brushing their hair, never stopping to actually style it.
Shi Qingxuan only briefly rouses to recognize that they’re being carried.
“Mm, I can—” they mumble.
“Relax,” Xie Lian replies in a whisper. “I can look after you sometimes. Rest, my dear Wind Master.”
For the first time in months, Shi Qingxuan’s dreams are absolute nonsense, without a single glimpse of yellow eyes in sight.