“But what about your beloved?”
They’re sitting in Puqi Shrine when Xie Lian asks the question. Xie Lian was fretting over his ability to host Hua Cheng properly in the little shrine and so Hua Cheng has just been trying to reassure him by telling him just how much he enjoys his time in there.
To Hua Cheng the words are a total non sequitur and so he just blinks at Xie Lian in bewilderment.
“What about them?”
“Well,” Xie Lian scratches awkwardly at the side of his cheek, a sure sign that something about the conversation topic is making him uncomfortable. “It’s just that if San Lang wants to win them over, might they get the wrong idea if he spends so much time here in my shrine?”
“Oh, what wrong idea might that be Gege?” Hua Cheng asks the question teasingly but his eyes search his god’s face carefully, checking for any sign that he has overstayed his welcome and this is Xie Lian’s tactful way of telling him to go.
Xie Lian certainly does seem uneasy about something but Hua Cheng can’t tell what.
At the question the god blushes and looks quickly away and fuck he’s so cute, Hua Cheng wants to tease him forever.
“Ah no, I didn’t mean…” Xie Lain clears his throat awkwardly. “I only meant shouldn’t you be spending some of this time with them?”
“Gege are you trying to get rid of me?” Hua Cheng keeps his tone light and teasing but he has to know. Because if his god no longer wants him here then…
To his great relief Xie Lian shakes his head quickly. “No, absolutely not. I like having San Lang here very much. It’s only that I didn’t want to be selfish and take up too much of your time when there is someone else you may want to be with.”
“Gege…” Hua Cheng’s tone softens as he looks gravely at his god. “There is no where I’d rather be than here.”
Xie Lian lets out a soft breath. “San Lang is teasing again.” He sounds slightly put out but he’s smiling as he says it and it brings the smile back to Hua Cheng’s own lips.
“I promise you; this San Lang is nothing but sincere with Gege.”
Xie Lian laughs softly at that, what a beautiful sound, and Hua Cheng wants to keep hearing it, wants to keep teasing and amusing him all evening more than he’s ever wanted almost anything.
Maybe that’s why he says it, why he asks the damned question.
He doesn’t know what else could have possessed him.
Maybe he wants to confirm that there’s no competition?
Maybe he just wants to see Xie Lian blush again?
Whatever it is, he does ask.
“What about Gege? Has Gege ever had a beloved?”
Whatever he expected, whatever answer or non-answer, he didn’t expect Xie Lian’s cheeks to pail or the light in his eyes to dim or the way that all traces of a smile fall from Xie Lian’s lips.
He certainly doesn’t expect the words that falls like stones from Xie Lian’s lips.
“Yes, I have a beloved.”
Hua Cheng stills at those words. Externally at least. A masking shell clamping down over his features, keeping them from showing the pain that rips through him. Internally everything he is is freezing and cracking, a torrent of hurt and jealousy anger and loathing tearing through him.
The hurt and jealousy are obvious feelings, too obvious to need explaining.
The anger is for whoever Xie Lian has called beloved, whoever his god loves who is somehow not here, not by his side, not helping him and standing with him and protecting him. They are not good enough, but then, no one could be.
The loathing is all for himself, for the hurt and the sting and the expectations that are shattering around him. Why shouldn’t his god have a beloved? It has been 800 years and his god is amazing and perfect in every way. Why shouldn’t someone else have seen that and given him, what, in his absence, Hua Cheng could not.
Through lips gone suddenly dry as the grave he crawled out of Hua Cheng asks, “Is gege’s beloved someone I know?”
Xie Lian shakes his head. He’s staring off into the distance, too lost in his own thoughts to be aware of Hua Cheng’s.
Hua Cheng should be grateful for that.
He’s not.
“Then where are they now?”
He doesn’t mean to demand answers of his god but he can’t help it.
“He’s been gone for a long time.”
Xie Lian’s voice is soft and he raises a hand to brush it against the bandages that cover the shackle at his neck.
“Gone? Gone where?” Anger is quickly winning over Hua Cheng’s other emotions and he grits out the words. Furious with this stranger, whoever he is, for committing the ultimate sin, for leaving Xie Lian alone. Whoever this man is, wherever he is, god or human or fading ghost, Hua Cheng will find him and drag him back to lay at his god’s feet if it’s the last thing he ever does.
“Dead.” Xie Lian says it quietly, eyes still staring at nothing, then he shakes his head. “Not just dead. He was dead when we met. It’s more than that, he was dispersed. No that makes it sound too kind. His soul was destroyed, ripped apart.”
Hua Cheng stares at Xie Lian, the flicker of an idea forming at the corners of his mind. Before he can pursue it however, Xie Lian continues.
“It was all my fault. It was supposed to be me.” A soft pained laugh escapes his lips. “I didn’t even realize how I felt about him until after he was gone. That’s so like me isn’t it? To only realize what I wanted when it was no longer an option.”
Xie Lian no longer seems to really be talking to Hua Cheng. In fact it seems more as though he’s forgotten the ghost is there all together but that’s fine because Hua Cheng isn’t currently capable of saying anything anyway. All he can do his listen as the world tilts around him.
“Not that it was ever an option. He had a beloved and even if he hadn’t I’m sure I’m the last person he would have wanted. I was always so cruel to him, even though he never did anything but try to help me. He was the most loyal person I have ever known and I trampled his loyalty under my feet like it was nothing, yet he still sacrificed himself for me.”
“After he was gone I realized… I’d spent days laying there, looking for one scrap of kindness from the world, and I never realized that the person I was looking for was right beside me the whole time”.
” …My last believer.”
“…My Wu Ming.”
Comment