Work Text:
The first time Mu Qing kissed Feng Xin, their living room was frigid and their heater was broken.
Not that it mattered. The slide of Feng Xin’s lips against his was a heat in itself, the dying vestiges of a thousand suns zeroed into one spot, two bodies, one couch, two twin breaths inhaling and exhaling in tandem. Outside, the wind pounded against the windows.
Inside, Mu Qing rediscovered how it felt to be human.
That was six months ago, and the seven years and two days before that was an exercise in all the firsts Mu Qing never expected to have. Fourteen years old and giving a classmate a black eye because he touched his shoulder; fifteen and being dared to touch him, a single press of his hand on a forearm before he drew back and shouted off the dare; sixteen and engulfed in the first kind of hug he wanted to drown in, neverending, all the warmth coalesced into a single pair of arms he struggled and broke out of.
Eighteen and discovering the kind of heartbreak that made his frame shudder. Twenty and opening the door the first day of summer, that punch against his shoulder he reciprocated with hardly a thought, numb to the news that Feng Xin was coming back home. Twenty-one and moving in together. Twenty-one and sharing counter space and blankets and the TV late at night when neither of them can sleep.
Six months and two days to the moment Feng Xin turned to Mu Qing, arm stretched along the back of the couch, and said, “You want to date?”
Six months and two days to the scowl Mu Qing gave him, choking out, “Fine, if you insist,” alongside the pounding of his heart.
Six months and two days to Feng Xin leaning over and pressing a kiss to his burning red cheek like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Six months and two days.
—
Six months ago it was winter, and now it's the kind of summer that blares through the windows and cuts through the AC blasting its last dying breaths in their living room. Six months and their apartment is the same, their lives are the same, their friendship is the same except for when Feng Xin strips off Mu Qing’s clothes and blows him in the bathroom with the shower pouring cold water like rain.
Their friendship is the same, except that Feng Xin introduces Mu Qing as my boyfriend. When he looks back at him with a raised eyebrow in front of all his college friends, he says it's fine. Open up a bit. Feng Xin is not unkind. Mu Qing has known that since the first day when they were fourteen, even as he cradled a bloody nose in the nurse's office. Feng Xin still reached out a hand. Feng Xin still threw a punch at the next older boy to trip Mu Qing as he walked home laden down with groceries for his mother.
Feng Xin is not unkind.
A little cruel, sometimes. Like when it’s so hot Mu Qing wants to crawl out of his skin, spread out on the couch shirtless, and Feng Xin sits next to him and gives him a look. The one that means I want to be one body. One body, and then he leans down to kiss Mu Qing’s collarbone and one hand splays across his chest and Mu Qing wants, so bad, but the AC is useless so he snaps instead. Tells Feng Xin he’s no better than a dog. Bites back a smile when Feng Xin is so offended he sulks, until the touch on his chest is a shove and the two are wrestling on the couch.
A little cruel, the way Feng Xin makes Mu Qing laugh like he’s remembering how. Head pushed into the cushions, grip on his thigh so hard he’ll bruise and still Feng Xin presses his lips to the corner of Mu Qing’s mouth, wrenching the breath out of his lungs in one fell swoop because really. Really, Feng Xin.
Really, Mu Qing has no word for the feeling in his chest. Not tight like panic, but not loose like happiness; an inbetween, a fear of everything that has been and everything that could be that warps around the secondhand furniture of their apartment and lingers in the one corner of the living room where Feng Xin shoved his workout equipment. Shining in the glint of his eye, unfurling petals in Mu Qing’s chest when it’s past midnight and they’re shouting at each other over the love triangle in a romcom they only watched because Xie Lian recommended it.
Six months, and the two of them are the same. Always talking, always fighting, always seeking. This long, and Mu Qing doesn’t know if it’s supposed to be easy. If he should be struggling with lowering his defenses, should hate sitting on the counter while Feng Xin chops carrots and forces a sliver past his grimacing lips.
Six months, and Mu Qing doesn’t know how to say if this is love.
—
Xie Lian shows up at their door two days after a text to inform them he’s back in town for the summer, a single message underneath saying I’m bringing someone with me :). The someone is tall and gangly, dressed in blacks and sharp reds with silver necklaces layered in front. He has one eye. One hand grasps onto Xie Lian’s, but his other twitches like he wants to use both of them to cover his smooth knuckles and soft palms, an appendage safe in a cave of skin.
“This is San Lang,” Xie Lian says with no degree of unease.
Mu Qing has lived with Feng Xin for a year now, and known him for six before that. He knows the tenseness of his shoulders better than he knows where to find protein powder in the cupboard. He knows Feng Xin thinks the same as he does, recognizes the same glint from their high school hallways.
“That’s Hua Cheng,” Feng Xin says. He’s not unkind, but this is unkindly.
Xie Lian smiles. “Yes. San Lang. We’re dating.”
Feng Xin opens his mouth. No sound comes out, stilled from the gentle touch of Mu Qing’s hand on his upper arm. The moment warps and shapes itself to a standstill of four bodies, tension tangible enough to cut with a knife. But Mu Qing has lived with Feng Xin for a year now, and known him for six before that. He knows Feng Xin thinks the same as he does.
He knows the both of them prize Xie Lian’s happiness over anything else. And the way he smiles, a little warmly, a little lost, a little confused with his feet on the opposite side of the door from his best friends, shines with an unabashed confidence Mu Qing hasn’t seen in years.
Mu Qing steps aside. Feng Xin steps with him. Xie Lian absolutely beams, Hua Cheng sending death glares to the both of them.
Hua Cheng used to be a small thing that crept in the shadows of their school, bruises lining the edges of his clothes. He only ventured out to speak to Xie Lian at lunchtime, a single word or two before Feng Xin and Mu Qing ran him off; he was miserable, anyone could see that, but he had a tenacity that pointed only to Xie Lian. He had a tendency to place everything else second, to leave unsigned notes in his locker, to offer his red-marked homework to copy, to turn his desolate everything into something for the object of his affections.
Mu Qing thought it was infatuation, the same way he caught himself watching the way Feng Xin’s throat bobbed when he swallowed. That deep seated fascination with someone, the urge to catalogue every miniscule change of expression in a library not from A to Z but from up to down, 1 to 100, starting over with decimals and lowercases and every combination until Mu Qing could tell when Feng Xin had a sleepless night not from the bags under his eyes, but from the way his gaze drifted where before it would snag with a sharp focus.
Infatuation, except it never passed. Mu Qing sees it now with the way Hua Cheng hovers around Xie Lian, placing a hand on his shoulder when they’re standing in the kitchen. Mu Qing imagines the warmth under the fabric of his t-shirt, how he would feel it rush down his own arm if he were to place a hand on Feng Xin.
Mu Qing wonders if Feng Xin sees it. He wonders if Feng Xin thinks the same as him about this, feels that urge to be near him always, or if it’s one-sided as Mu Qing convinced himself all his affection was. Hua Cheng is in love. Xie Lian is in love.
If Feng Xin is in love, he’s never said it.
Then again, maybe Mu Qing should be able to tell. Feng Xin’s hand has barely left his hip all evening, half possessive and half comfort at the intruder to their secure, warm apartment. He could say to Feng Xin, maybe, that Hua Cheng is no longer a threat, that the glint in Xie Lian’s eye says he’s in love — but then he would admit to thinking about love, and possession, and comfort, and the rock sits in his throat with no way to escape.
Half past eight, Xie Lian gets up from the couch with a big sigh and says, “We should go before it gets dark.”
Feng Xin gives Mu Qing a look. In his catalogue of A to Z, up to down, 1 to 100, decimals and lowercase, he takes this to mean he intends to intrude a little farther than most would. He intends to ease his own worry, ease that part of him that must take care of those he’s devoted himself to.
Xie Lian has known Feng Xin not for seven years, but for seven more before that. He must intercept the look Feng Xin gives Mu Qing, because he frowns, a small thing but there nonetheless. He says, “San Lang, I’m going to help Mu Qing tidy a bit. Why don’t you wait in the car?”
“Let this one help,” Hua Cheng says immediately, no grudgingness as though this is a duty.
Xie Lian shakes his head. Mu Qing watches the frown flip so fast it’s as if he’d been smiling all along. “You’re too good to me,” he says, and Mu Qing swears he can hear the quiet I love you entwined with the cadence of his voice. You’re good to me. You take care of me. I love it. I love you.
Through it, the hidden communication softens Hua Cheng’s eyes. For all their time in school together, Mu Qing has never seen him look quite that innocent. He says, “I’ll wait in the car.” You see me. You accept me. I love it. I love you.
Hua Cheng leaves. Xie Lian brushes by Feng Xin on the way to the kitchen, where dirty mugs lay waiting to be washed. This, too, is the kind of silent message gathered from years of proximity; go out there, please. I know you want to.
The sky outside is beginning to darken, a blue tinted light shining through the windows in preparation to disappear altogether. Feng Xin follows Hua Cheng, closing the front door quietly the way Mu Qing has sniped and nagged him into doing. This leaves Mu Qing sitting in the old, falling apart armchair that sucks in its occupant and threatens to swallow them whole.
Something fills his chest. Something turns over and over like a butterfly crawling from a chrysalis and finding no safe place to land, returning and reborn in phases as steady and whole as the moon. Mu Qing sits in the armchair Feng Xin lugged in off the street back when they first moved in, the first piece of furniture to grace their shitty, too-small, too-crowded apartment that leaves them bumping skin and balancing schedules and living as one unit in one space — Mu Qing sits in the armchair and grips the sides.
He’s sick. Not quite sick, even, but energized in a way that he can’t move a single limb for fear that the feeling will vanish.
Xie Lian ventures from the kitchen. His hands are red; if Xie Lian says he’s going to do something, he will, even if Mu Qing would have done the dishes himself after he left.
“I hope Feng Xin isn’t going too hard on him,” Xie Lian says. He puts his hands in his back pockets, the long hem of his shirt rucking up. His eyes are wide, fixated on Mu Qing as if he has some answer to this, some promise that he can control Feng Xin’s actions to the point where even now, sitting on the armchair, he can ease his anger.
Mu Qing knows Feng Xin. Nothing more than a firm word will come from his mouth.
From Mu Qing’s mouth comes, “Is Hua Cheng good to you?” Unbidden, wrenched from his throat so suddenly he’s not sure the thought existed before it was said out loud.
Xie Lian smiles. The corners of his eyes scrunch the way they do when he’s truly, honestly content. “Yes, Mu Qing. He’s very good to me.”
Mu Qing nods. His grip on the armchair loosens some. The something in his chest turns again, crushing the air from his lungs until he is certain that the world is an illusion kept afloat by his belief and the moment it wavers, the moment he lets doubt creep in, it will topple like a house of cards.
“Good,” Mu Qing says. “Good.”
“Thank you for giving him a chance.”
“Xie Lian,” Mu Qing says. “How is it?” Having someone to share your skin. To pick you up when you’re down or so high you want to float. Being in love.
Xie Lian hms. He taps a toe against the hardwood floor, looking upwards as though listening to a song nobody else can hear. After a moment, he brings his gaze back to Mu Qing, the flash of his eye a little mischievous, a little knowing. “It feels like I’ve swallowed a bird.”
“Oh.”
“One that likes to sing, but only when it hears San Lang’s voice.” Pink blooms across Xie Lian’s cheeks. “He’s good to me. Very good to me. Ah, you remember that blanket I used to have? In the backseat of my car, with the white and red stripes? The one my mother gave me.”
“The one you cried over after Feng Xin left the car unlocked and it was stolen,” Mu Qing says. The memory of tears streaking down Xie Lian’s blank face was not something easily forgotten. “I told him to be more careful.”
Xie Lian ducks his head. “Feng Xin did his best. There was nothing to forgive, even.” He shrugs, the roll of his shoulders small yet strong in the way it dismisses his heartbreak. There are many blankets in the world, but only one that his mother gave him. “I keep thinking, if I still had it, I would tear it into pieces. And that bird in my chest, the one that sings when San Lang speaks? It could burst out of a hole like a birdhouse and make a nest in our bedroom. Then it would belong to both of us, and he would know that regardless of what he does for me, the bird sings because it loves the way his voice sounds. It’s silly, isn’t it?”
“No,” Mu Qing says, that something clamoring in a cage so small it shakes his heart. “No, it isn’t. You’ve thought about this.”
“Hardly,” Xie Lian says, tilting his head. “And when I do, I tell him.”
Tell him, Mu Qing hears, and his heart hammers so hard he sees spots in his vision. Roots him where he sits, hands cold and clammy with the thought that he has no word for this feeling, no way to contain it when it threatens to burst from his skin and leave him in ruins. Six months and he’s made a mess of himself, overthinking the way Feng Xin touches him in passing. Six months and his heart is a birdhouse.
—
Mu Qing and Feng Xin brush their teeth side by side most nights. Feng Xin bumps his hip into Mu Qing, he bumps him back, and the two of them fight one-handed with the mirror reflecting the amusement contorting their faces, the fondness that comes from being unabashedly themselves with one another.
Tonight, Mu Qing reciprocates the bump of Feng Xin’s hip with a half-hearted slap of his arm. Feng Xin pauses brushing, staring at Mu Qing like he’s announced he wants to move out of the apartment and sleep in the street.
The look has Mu Qing spitting in the sink and rinsing out his mouth before he’s brushed for half the time he usually does. The something in his chest has strangled him all evening, even as they watched TV with tangled legs, and now it catches his breath in such a way that he thinks he may start hyperventilating.
“Mu Qing.” Feng Xin catches his arm as he turns to leave the bathroom. “Tell me whatever fucked up thing is making you act weird.”
Mu Qing stills. He struggles to inhale. After a moment, Feng Xin goes back to brushing his teeth, his grip on Mu Qing’s arm still just as strong. Caught. Caged. Whether his ribcage or his throat, the feeling is inescapable.
“Don’t throw around accusations,” Mu Qing says, struggling to break free.
Feng Xin spits in the sink. He rinses his mouth and toothbrush one-handed with a degree of ease that has Mu Qing staring, has him thinking about Xie Lian’s bird, has him dry mouthed and close to kneeling on the floor.
“Is it that fucker Hua Cheng?” Feng Xin asks. Even now, he doesn’t let go, just uses his grip as leverage to pull Mu Qing closer. “Did he say something while I wasn’t in the room? I don’t care that he’s dating Xie Lian, I’ll punch his fucking teeth out.” The words are false — neither of them would hurt anyone important to Xie Lian — but the sentiment is true.
Mu Qing stares at Feng Xin’s collarbone, afraid to look any higher. This close, Feng Xin’s heat warms his cold blood. This close, Feng Xin’s scent clouds his nostrils, some mixture of fancy herbal shampoo and sweat from the heat of summer that Mu Qing wants to fucking devour.
“Not him,” Mu Qing chokes out. He places a hand on Feng Xin’s chest, right where he can feel the second when he stops breathing at the contact. “I’d chew him out myself if he did.”
“I know,” Feng Xin says. “I know.” His voice is too breathy to be natural.
The two of them, standing in a too small bathroom in a too small apartment in a too hot summer that’s one of many Mu Qing wants to spend together. It would be so easy to kiss him, to crowd him against the counter, to drown in the scent and sensation of Feng Xin against him until he can’t think at all and afterwards he’d fall asleep and wake up in the morning and maybe he’d forget the feeling, forget the way it chokes him.
“Feng Xin,” Mu Qing says, and he knows the feeling comes back whenever he looks at him. “Do you feel something in your chest?”
“No? I mean, should I? Fuck, we don’t have mold, do we?”
Mu Qing drops his head against Feng Xin’s chest. He breaths in deeply, inhaling all he can. Feng Xin is so fucking stupid and still he wants to reach out and swallow him whole. All the more when Feng Xin wraps his arms around him, holding him close.
“When you look at me,” Mu Qing says. “Do you feel something in your chest. Like a bird. Or your heart.”
Like this, Mu Qing can hear Feng Xin’s pulse. It beats a one-two, one-two right up against him, clamoring to be heard, speeding up like it wants to jump from his chest and be caught in a slippery hand to be sold off somewhere or else given away.
“Are you asking if I like you?” Incredulous. “Mu Qing, I asked you out six fucking months ago. We fuck regularly. We live together. Of course I fucking like you.”
“But do you —” Mu Qing breaks off. He exhales this time, slowly, like ridding his lungs of all oxygen will rid his chest of the pressure bearing down. “When I look at you, I don’t know what to do.”
Slowly, Feng Xin’s hands shift. They rub circles into Mu Qing’s back, a gesture so comforting, so strange it burns behind his eyes.
“I never know what’s going to scare you off,” Feng Xin says quietly. “If I tell you how much I hate not being around you, who’s to say you won’t jump on the next fucking train?” Circles on his back. Gentle. “If I say I like fighting with you, that’s just fucked up. People don’t like that shit. But I do, when it’s you, because it’s about stupid crap like remembering to close the cupboard —”
“Not stupid,” Mu Qing says.
“Stupid crap like remembering to close the cupboard,” Feng Xin continues, louder. “Fuck, Mu Qing, I thought I hated you for years. Looking at you makes me want to — punch you in the face, or kiss you, or break the fucking wall so we don’t get our deposit back.”
Mu Qing squeezes his eyes shut. He presses closer to Feng Xin. “You don’t know what to do.”
“No.” Feng Xin shifts, bringing an arm around to force Mu Qing’s face up. His eyes are soft, full of that determined flair he had at fourteen and never lost. “You’re a fucking idiot, Mu Qing.”
A laugh bubbles in his throat. Mu Qing chokes it down where the rest of his lightness stays, right behind his heart and kept in his ribcage. “The nerve of you to call me an idiot. I talked to Xie Lian earlier, and he doesn’t forgive you for leaving the car unlocked and getting his blanket stolen.”
“Already back to telling lies,” Feng Xin says, irritation flickering.
The corners of Mu Qing’s mouth turn up. “You want to kiss me so bad over it.”
“Yeah,” Feng Xin says. “I love you.”
The moment stops and pulls into itself. Mu Qing blinks and the world outside has vanished, leaving nothing outside the precipice of the bathroom. Seven billion people, gone in an instant. Six months, and Mu Qing has become something he never anticipated, swallowed in the acreage of comfort and safety he’s learned to settle into rather than run away from.
“Yeah,” Mu Qing says. “You too.”
Six months and Mu Qing is in love.