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It’s a quiet night when Xue Yang realises that he once again feels safe and hopeful about his future.

The stars are all out and the air smells of burnt wood and smoke around the merrily crackling campfire. He’s staring into the flames, their ever-changing dance a captivating sight – but what’s on the other side of it is what really has his attention. Xiao Xingchen sits, straight like the column of the gallows, with his eyes closed, either in meditation or sleep. His long hair is unbound, the last few inches of it pooling on the ground around him like the deepest shadows. To his right, there’s Song Lan, most assuredly asleep, his gun within reach just in case. He is on his back, and Xue Yang is still puzzled by how he can get any rest like that.

To his left, A-Qing is also resting, snuggled up in a blanket on her bedroll, with only the top of her head sticking out of it. No matter how warm the night gets, she always complains it’s far too cold to sleep. Xue Yang has a suspicion that if they ever settle down, the hearth in her room will never be extinguished.

Settling down – what a new, brave idea, he thinks, and raises his mug to finish off his coffee. It’s not as good as Song Lan’s but he didn’t want to wake him up simply because he started to feel a bit sleepy. He sloshes the last bits of grounds to the earth beside himself, and resumes his staring into the flames. He almost wishes they would tell him that this future they are all heading towards is safe, and happy, and free of those things that hurt Hattie and Thomas. They were his employers, the owners of the farmstead he was hired to work at – and they were also his family. Maybe not parents, not really, but what do you call them when they clothe you, feed you, love you - maybe as much as your mother did before she passed - and also get you an annoying brat of a little sister?

Xue Yang sighs, the crackles of the fire swallowing up the sound. He buries his face in his crossed arms, and thinks that even if the future is not safe, or happy or even guaranteed while those creatures are out there, he is happy to face it with these three by his side.

**

The story begins with him standing in the town square of Fuck-knows-where – the lady at the general store told him, but bless her heart and her accent, he was no more informed after the conversation than before it. He is standing there, in the ring that corrals the livestock on busy market days and the foolish humans on any other, when there’s a need for entertainment. He eyes the targets lined up on the far fence, then turns his attention towards the people waiting for the show just outside of the ring. They are either smart or experienced viewers of such a sharp-shooting spectacle, leaving a wide berth around the targets. He is somewhat curious if there was a death here, to warn them that not all who sign up for this are as good as they claim to be, but he knows he won’t ask. Maybe A-Qing will know, after spending the better part of the morning socializing in the tavern, chatting mainly with the proprietor’s wife.

Now, he turns his head back towards the targets – six cans, weighed down with rocks inside – and gets ready to fire. The best one before him hit three. He hopes not a single one of his competitors are ever called to war on a side he’s on.

His gun is ready in his right hand, and the almost feral need to show them how this is done sharpens into a smile, sure and wild.

“Fire on my mark” the referee calls out, and Xue Yang tenses with anticipation. He’ll shoot five – he thinks first –, just to get them agreeing to another round, to give them false hope they can beat him. Then, he thinks, there is no time for that. They need rations, a change of clothes, and then most of all, they need to be on their way. He will shoot six, he decides.

“Go!”

The world narrows down to the six targets, and as he aims and shoots, quick like no other person before him, one by one they fall to the straw covered, sun-dried ground, with a neat hole in their middle. He hears the defeated yell of many after the fourth one lands, hears the excited yell of A-Qing, ladylike as always, then he hears the collective awe-filled gasp of the crowd as the sixth target joins its brethren beneath the fence.

He turns towards the referee, and bows like an entertainer at the end of his show. If he had his hat on, he’d take it off and clutch it to his chest for more flair, but it is in A-Qing’s hands at the moment, ready to house their earnings, lest her hands are not enough to hold it all.

One might call that overconfidence, but Xue Yang simply calls it as it is: reality. He is better than these pampered bumpkins. And now he has a reason to win aside from personal enjoyment and the need to prove himself, so he is even better than his past self.

“Six out of six, dead centre!” The words ring loudly over the yells of the crowd, pleased and angry alike, and Xue Yang grins. “The winner is Jessie!”

Jessie – or Xue Yang as his mother arranged it – grins at the competition. They seem to be the type that can handle losses about as well as a three years old child in a rich family. The expression on their faces is like that as well – just on the verge of a tantrum. Xue Yang has the urge to laugh, but he presses it down. He’ll have time to laugh about it later on, when they have the money, the food and the clothes, and the town is nothing but a dusty memory behind them as A-Qing and him ride away.

He walks up to A-Qing, perched atop the fence, and offers a hand to help her down. She ignores it and promptly hops off, her grin almost a perfect match of his. Was Xue Yang not painfully sure that his mother passed away without having any more babies, he’d entertain the idea of them being siblings by blood. As things stand, it might simply be that they shared the same kind of hardships growing up and ended up being shaped by them just the same. 

She twirls around him and approaches the first group of onlookers, bills already in their hands, and offers them his hat. She has a huge smile plastered on her face, but most people ignore that in favour of looking at her eyes. They are cloudy, as if they were blind or damaged beyond repair – but he knows she can see with them. During the day, her vision is just as good as his. It’s after sundown when she can see sharp like no one else.

She does not say anything about it either way, to the gawkers, and does not pretend to stumble or feel for directions like she used to do before the Walkers took pity on her. When a lady puts an extra bill in the hat with a kind smile on her face, not wagered on his shooting but donated to A-Qing, neither of them mind it. It’s money, with half a dozen things it could go towards buying.

Xue Yang watches as she turns back, hat full of bills, and waves. It’s in his direction, but only mostly. There’s movement coming from his left, from the fence A-Qing was sitting on throughout the competition, and when he turns to see whom she managed to either charm or fool once again, he finds two men whom he didn't pay any attention to when he offered a hand for her. One of them is leaning against the railing, an ashen grey hat covering the upper part of his face. He is looking towards the crowd, but the man next to him is looking at A-Qing, waving back with an elegance not a single person should possess outside of the fantastic tales his mom used to tell him. He stands straight and sure with a long braid of hair falling over his right shoulder, reaching down to his belt, which is empty of guns as far as Xue Yang can tell. The one with the grey hat has two to make up for it.

A-Qing is almost an adult, or so she thinks, only guessing her own age, and she is free to talk to whomever she wishes – but Xue Yang worries all the same. Some men are worse than the average, and while he’s fairly confident A-Qing can and will protect herself, they don’t need another wanted poster circulating around. Although, Xue Yang thinks as he watches the pair some more, maybe it’s the same ethnicity that got them talking. The one with the long hair looks Chinese, at least, and Xue Yang can understand how that could draw in someone like him, or someone like A-Qing. He’s had barely any connection to his own culture, especially since his mother died, and A-Qing has had way less. She struggles with this part of herself, he knows, the one that is supposed to be Chinese by birth, American by locality and something completely different if you were to ask those who raised her. Not that they would answer in any tongue they understand. He has arrived at the conclusion of not giving a fuck quite a few years ago, but it was hard, and mostly fuelled by disappointment in people in general. Not a single family gave a fuck about his near-death experience in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and not a single family of white settlers ever spared him a kind word, until the Walkers.

“People are trash,” he summed it up once for A-Qing, when she asked him about it. “So you gotta treasure those that aren’t.”

And she did. She has been annoying ever since she settled into a comfort around teh Walkers and him, but it was entertainig that she gave as good as she got from him. Xue Yang remembers how much it meant to him when she first felt comfortable enough to return one of his jabs - just as it means a lot now that her smile along with that joyous strength in her steps are back more often than not. They will be gone when night falls and the memories return, as per their custom, but he will take the small wins and the huge victories alike.

Grey hat raises his head abruptly – his eyes are dark and sharp, and if the long-haired one is elegant, this one is handsome as hell –, and the blood freezes in Xue Yang when he yells a loud and clear ‘Qing-guniang!’ over the cacophony of voices all around them.

He whips his head towards the girl, and he sees the problem right away – one of the beaten contestants is there, gripping the hat in her hands with a look of utter rage on his face. He was not there just a moment before – but that’s for later. He should not have been distracted by the two men, nice looks be damned.

The anger he feels doubles when the angry man’s other hand finds a grip on her arm, fingers going white from the force of it – and somehow, he’s two steps away by then although he does not remember running, and he grabs onto the man’s wrist, twisting it so he’d lose his grip.

“Let go of my sister you arse” he seethes, and he can see when the man first feels the sharp tip of his dagger dig into his side. “Go on, unless you want some bloodletting to happen here and now.”

The man loosens his hold, his face pale from the realisation that Xue Yang is not joking, and in the next moment he’s falling backwards from the punch Xue Yang delivers. His left hand hurts from the impact, but he decides that he will deal with that later.

A-Qing is silent by his side, and when he turns to her, he can see that it’s not from fear. She’s holding back, breathing in and out slowly, the way Hattie taught her, her eyes focused on the crumpled form on the ground as if he was the prey and her the hunter already smelling blood.

“It’s alright” he tells her, again and again, until she finally focuses back on him. She looks sick. She always does after she’s tested like this.

“Let’s get back to the saloon, get some food” he talks, and he draws her towards the gate to exit the circle. Her right hand finds his arm, and it’s a good sign that her fingers are holding on, but not digging into his flesh. He keeps talking to her, ignoring the rest of the people around them, and after what feels like the longest walk in recent memory, they are at the saloon, and he sends her up to their room with the promise of bringing food and a drink as soon as he can.

A-Qing is a good actress when need be – but not with him, not anymore. Her smile is gone when she nods and asks for something with meat in it, and Xue Yang feels the urge trash about his ribcage to go back and gut the son of a whore who stole her fragile and momentary joy. He won’t. She’d hate it too, mainly for having to run once again as a consequence.

He steels himself as her steps fade, and goes to the owner’s wife behind the counter.

“Is she alright?” She asks before Xue Yang could even open his mouth, and it’s part worry, part curiosity that drives it.

“Some asshole wanted to hurt her” he says, then when the lady flinches a bit, he raises his hands as if in surrender. He’s absolutely not in the mood to listen to some preaching about language, and she must sense that it’s not the time for it. She sighs and in the end, she does not say anything. “I promised her some food. Do you happen to have anything I could buy for her? Something with meat in it, most preferably.”

“Lunch will be a good stew, but it’s still some hours away, love” she shakes her head slowly. “It’s no meat, but I have fresh bread and some cheese though, if she’d care for those.”

Xue Yang nods and counts out the price of it on the counter. When he gets back to their room, A-Qing is holed up in the corner, the blanket from the bed drawn around her tightly. Her eyes flash towards him, as if she’s expecting a threat – but then recognition settles in, and her eyelids slip shut. He knows she’s ready to fight, always, at a moment’s notice, and he knows that she hates it. She wants to be as carefree as she was starting to become just before Hattie and Thomas were killed, but it seems impossible now. She told him, days after those things came, that she felt responsible. Now, Xue Yang knows that’s not true, and told her that much even back then, but he also knows it’s not an easy thing to actually believe it. He does not believe, after all, that it wasn’t his fault they weren't there to save them. A-Qing does.

“Here, this is all she had” he holds out the plate, and the girl takes it, slowly chomping down on the bread and cheese. She looks a bit disappointed there’s no meat, but no complaint leaves her mouth.

“When can we leave?” She asks, and Xue Yang settles onto the floor right next to her. He hums in thought, runs the list of things he still needs to do, the list of things he needs to buy, and sighs.

“We can spend the night away from town already.” It’s going be a hurried affair getting everything done before that, but he knows she wants away from the people. He agrees with the sentiment wholeheartedly. “You up to coming to the store with me? Or should I pick out things for you?”

“Just don’t forget to get an extra blanket” she replies, and Xue Yang hates how silent her voice is, how withdrawn. “Or two of them, rather.”

**

Night finds them setting up a temporary camp, already far away from the town and its folks. Xue Yang feels that familiar prickle under his skin, feels like he’s being watched, so he wants to skip building a campfire, but A-Qing is cold, and if they get attacked, he won’t see what he’s shooting or stabbing in the dark. If someone – or something, rather – has followed them this far, they are visible to them even without the flames.

A-Qing is staring at a spot, vaguely towards the town they left behind, but she does not say anything and she seems relaxed, so Xue Yang chalks it up to her being deep in thought. She’s been rather quiet all afternoon and evening. It’s weird and uncomfortable in a way how much it reminds him of the days right after the attack, right after they lost the Walkers. She barely spoke then, and she seems to have sunken into that same pit of guilt and sorrow once again. She did nothing wrong back then, and she did nothing wrong in this town – but the worst scum of this world will always find those that deserve better. Xue Yang can – and does, with a gleeful little smile – imagine a world where A-Qing is less restrained, where he did not interrupt. In that world, that piece of shit would have gotten what he deserved for harming her. Maybe more, even – but Xue Yang is not one to bother with fitting the punishment to the crime that precisely. For that man to lay his hand on her, grasp her arm strong enough for her skin to bruise under her shirt, seems enough in Xue Yang’s estimate to warrant having his whole arm ripped off and then fed to him in bits.

“What’s with the creepy smile, huh?”

“Turning that guy inside out in my head, starting with his awful hat. Thing looked like an angry long-hair cat swallowing his head whole, didn’t it?” he shrugs, and A-Qing wheezes out a small laugh. It’s more than what he hoped for, but maybe she’s getting better at pulling herself together. It takes practice, after all – he just wishes life wasn’t so ready to provide opportunities for it.

“Yeah,” she cackles into the blanket, then furrows her nose in clear distaste “With that awful stench of his, that’s the most swallowing any of his parts are gonna get.”

It is only after he starts to laugh that he remembers A-Qing is a young lady, and she should not be joking like this. But it is a joke, and after the day she had, it would be welcome even if it was three times as crass according to society. But, as his policy has been since childhood, fuck society when they need to run from it.

“Brat,” he chokes it out though his laughter “Where are your manners?”

It would maybe have an effect on her, would he not start laughing again, as soon as the words are out. Now, all she does is turn her head to the side and lifts the corner of her blanket to look at her boot-covered leg and the hem of her trousers. Her face shows concentration, as if she was trying to remember something - then with a furrow in her brows she pokes a finger against the frayed end of the fabric.

“A real mystery, that one. I think it went wherever my skirts disappeared to” she shrugs finally, and they both lose it again. He knows it’s not that funny, but he thinks they might both be at the point where if they don’t laugh, the silence will bring out the tears. It’s better to laugh, anyways, even if it hurts like hell. He remembers how much she liked to wear Hattie's old dresses, altered to fit her better, how she liked to twirld around in them, finding joy in the fabric fluttering in the air. Maybe one day he can offer her a safe and comfortable life where she can do so again.

A-Qing turns her head, once again in the same direction, and the half-smile on her face, remnant of their laughter, turns into something brighter. She sticks a hand out of her cocoon, and waves – and Xue Yang reaches for his gun.

When he whips around, he can see nothing, but the dark silhouette of rocks and a few dried-out bushes. It does not mean a thing though – if she saw something, there is something there for sure.

“Don’t shoot them, okay?” She sighs, and bundles herself further in the blanket. “They were fun to talk to.”

“They were…” he starts, eyes scanning the darkness, hoping to catch a glimpse of what A-Qing saw, when it dawns on him. He forgot about them, forgot to ask her how she came to know them. “The two at the fence? With the grey hat and the long braid?”

If his voice dips into full disbelief, she cannot really fault him for that.

“Yeah,” the blanket-cocoon twitches, as if she just shrugged. Her eyes are closed as she continues to talk, tiredness bleeding into her words, making them slow and unguarded. “I think they are kind. I mean, truly, really kind.”

His fingers continue to linger around the holster, but he lets some of the initial tension seep out of his bones. If she has a good feeling about them… Her feelings are trustworthy. Still, he gets up and starts pacing, both to gather feeling back into his half-numbed legs and to occupy himself with something other than worrying until their uninvited guests show up properly.

It takes a few minutes for them to get within the halo of light the fire provides, and Xue Yang is still exactly as happy about the company as he was several minutes prior, which is to say none. It must show on his face, as the two men leading their horses next to themselves exchange a worried look.

“Do forgive our intrusion” the one with the long braid says, and his voice catches Xue Yang completely off-guard. He heard the other one yell back in the town, and it carried power and surety – this one is different though, and Xue Yang understands why he is the first one to speak. A soft-spoken man who seems to mean what he is saying has some chance in this scenario to not get shot by him. “We tried to catch up to you during the daytime, but our horses were too tired and we had to stop.”

“As flattering as all that is,” Xue Yang eyes them, and he still cannot spot any weapons on the one who just spoke, and the other one is keeping his hands very visibly far away from his belt with the two pistols in it. His own fingers are still at his holster, caressing the leather, caught between his trust in A-Qing and his instincts that this is far too weird. “Why? Why come after us at all?”

“The man who hurt Qing-guniang” grey hat nods his head towards the girl with a frown on his face that mirrors Xue Yang’s own feelings for that worm of a man perfectly. “We heard him plan robbing you with a few of his friends.”

“He feels he should teach you a lesson, too” the other man adds with a slow nod of his head. “That part seemed to be the most motivational for him.”

“And you came all this way to warn us?” Xue Yang asks, already taking inventory of all the other possible reason why these two may have wanted to track them down all the way to the middle of nowhere. Some of them twine themselves together with the worry that has been gnawing at his mind ever since the end of the competition – how did they and A-Qing became acquainted during his shooting? Who approached whom and why?

The two men look together at that, and Xue Yang thinks, for that half a moment they take to nod at each other, that this is where the other shoe drops. His finger slides towards the trigger ever so slightly. Then, as calmly as before, the man with the long braid turns to him, and offers a smile. It has no bite and no malice, only a warmth that nestles itself deep in Xue Yang’s belly. If only he could trust them.

“It seemed the right thing to do,” the man says, and his eyes wander to A-Qing, his expression turning more sombre. “Especially after how he treated your sister. If they do come after you, we’d like to offer our help. Song Lan and I would both be honoured if you accepted it.”

Grey hat, who apparently goes by Song Lan, hums an affirmative noise. Xue Yang looks at him and finds that he cannot read him. He is either such a passive person all year around, or he is trying to hide his thoughts, his feelings – and in Xue Yang’s rather rich personal history with cunning assholes that usually means trouble for him. He grins, a memory turning into an idea, and he knows that even if it will prove nothing, he’ll have some fun at least.

He lets his right hand steer clear of the holster, very visibly, as he saunters up to Song Lan. He can see the confusion in his eyes, the minute move of his torso backwards as Xue Yang gets within one single step of a distance. He reaches up towards the man’s chest, intent on poking him. His vest is a faded grey, but it is clean and nicely patched, and when two of Xue Yang’s fingers make contact with it, it feels soft. The contact is cut short by a hand, yanking his own away, fingers a vice-like grip on his wrist. Song Lan’s face goes through quite a few emotions, but it is clear that he’s not happy – he has leather gloves on, but Xue Yang notices that he drops his hand as soon as it is away from his chest as if he had the plague or something. He was right.

“Song Lan, huh? You feel the same? All chivalrous and noble, protecting a girl you’ve known for half an hour at best, and a man you don’t know at all?” He would try another poke, was Song Lan not watching his hands like a hawk, a distressed half-frown nestled into the corners of his mouth.

“I stand by our decision,” he says then, and forces his gaze back away from the offending hand. The look he offers Xue Yang is honest and determined - would he receive that look in a shadowed alley, with no others in sight, he would end up on his knees for sure. It should not be this difficult to tear his gaze away from Song Lan’s eyes, but it is. Turning his head towards the other man comes with its own hardships, for his eyes are beautiful and his mouth very much kissable, still sporting that charming little smile. He really needs to hold it together a lot better than this.

“And who might you be?” he asks, half curious about the person’s name, but mainly aiming to get his thoughts back in order. Handsomeness can and often will hide bad intentions, the words spoken can be lies just as easily as the truth, and it seems he has to actively remember and remind himself of these facts in the vicinity of the newcomers. Even if something in him is more than intrigued by these two.

“Please,” A-Qing chimes in, and Xue Yang feels a light touch on his upper arm. Maybe his voice was a bit too rough, he thinks as he looks at the worried girl, now standing behind him with her blanket clutched around herself.

“Your brother is right, A-Qing,” the elegant one’s words make Xue Yang turn back, just in time to see the man offer them a bow – it’s small, with his hands placed oh-so-gently together, carried out with so much grace, it feels almost surreal to witness it. “My name is Xiao Xingchen, and my partner here is Song Lan. Since we were both sent away from our respective homes, we’re currently travelling around to find where we wish to settle.”

“What, are you some criminals?” The instinct to bring A-Qing behind his own back is strong, but she would take offence to that. Also, with his left hand still smarting after that punch earlier, and Song Lan having twice as much firepower as he does, it stands to good reason A-Qing is the better equipped to deal with them, should it come to that.

“I broke a rule in my community” Xiao Xingchen offers, but he looks pleased rather than sorry. Maybe it was a bullshit rule – Xue Yang thinks – but then again, it might not be true at all. “My master advised me very strongly that I see the world and never return.”

“You kill someone? Maim them?”

“It is rather complicated. I thought I would be able to help someone, but…” a sigh escapes him, this time accompanied by a pained furrow in his brows. It looks genuine enough. “I did not harm anyone. I’m still not in the habit of doing so unprovoked.”

It is both a reassurance to Xue Yang’s ear, and a warning – Xiao Xingchen has no weapons on his person, but for some reason he believes he could do some serious harm if pressed.

“Nice to know” he offers with a grin, then turns his head towards Song Lan once again. “And what about you?”

“He’s a bounty hunter” A-Qing chimes in, and the blood freezes in Xue Yang’s veins. She knows he has a bounty on his head, that his wanted posters are decorating the walls in several establishments in California, and she only drops this now? He forces the grin on his own face to stay, and if it grows sharper, he hopes they read it as his distaste for the profession showing through. Song Lan’s expression does not change, he looks slightly uncomfortable and absolutely serious, but he nods at hearing the words. “He told me he’s had enough of not getting paid the same.”

“I have,” Song Lan admits, and turns to the horse at his side to scratch at its neck before he continues. “I also had enough of the charges. You remember the lady who gave you extra cash?”

He looks back at A-Qing, and Xue Yang knows they both remember her. Pretty brown hair, decently fashionable clothes, and a good heart.

“Her husband treated her poorly, gambled all their money away, then drunkenly set their home on fire. She received no help from anyone, so she solved the issue herself.”

“She had such sad eyes,” A-Qing hums, and squeezes Xue Yang’s arm again. She does not have to say it out loud for him to understand, that she must have heard this story back at the fence, and decided to trust Song Lan was telling the truth. In which case, maybe they got lucky and are still in the clear.

“She is leaving town in a few days,” Xiao Xingchen says, and he looks genuinely excited to be able to share that with A-Qing. “She said she’d always wanted to go on a grand adventure.”

“It sounds exciting,” she nods, then hides a yawn behind her blanket. She looks tired, unguarded and unafraid, so Xue Yang sighs inwardly and makes his decision.

“Go to sleep, brat,” he guides her back towards the bedroll that she vacated some time ago. “Your new friends can tag along in our own grand adventure if they can pull their weight. Are you ready to fight, if those petty losers truly come after us?”

This last question is directed at Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen, who both answer in the affirmative. They look serious about it, so Xue Yang shrugs, tucks the blanket even tighter around A-Qing, then goes to set up his place as the first watchman of the night.

“Get comfortable, and get ready to be woken up at dawn. We’ll take turns.”

He watches as they all settle for the night, A-Qing disappearing beneath her usual mountain of fabric while Sogn Lan and Xiao Xingchen set up their own sleeping arrangements. He told them to be ready, but he has no intention of letting anyone take over; A-Qing needs her rest and he would not trust such new acquaintances to watch over them. He sits with the rifle he took from their homestead resting on his legs for the rest of the night, listening to the noises of the wilderness, imaging lurking townspeople and monsters alike in the dark. It is cold in the dawning hours, the temperature drops below what he likes, so after a yawn and a stretch he walks up to his own saddlebag to pull his blanket out of it. His steps are light and he does not make much noise with his bag either, yet he still catches movement from the corner of his eyes. It’s Xiao Xingchen, getting up with an elegance no one should possess after sleeping on the uneven, hard ground for hours. He looks at Xue Yang, then walks over to him with slow, silent steps.

“Is it my turn, now?”

“You can go back to sleep,” Xue Yang offers, and considers a lot of other offers he would have made just a few years prior if he were approached like this. He is almost sure Xiao Xingchen does not know of the effect he has on him, and with him being a stranger and Xue Yang running away from justice, it might be for the best. “I’ll wake you when I need you to take over.”

“But you won’t, will you?”

Xingchen is still smiling, and his voice is even and soft, as if he was talking about the weather and not calling Xue Yang out on a lie. He does not look affronted or bothered by it though, only slightly amused.

“No, I won’t,” he sighs, and walks back to his previous place to sit and cradle his rifle for a few more hours.

“I understand. May I still keep you company? I’m afraid I’m fully rested now.”

That’s how they end up sitting next to each other, Xue Yang hunching forward to rest his elbows on his knees, his eyes heavy as all hells, while the man next to him looks like a statue with a straight back and a slightly mussed braid that draws Xue Yang’s attention every time he looks towards him. At one point, Xiao Xingchen starts to hum something, just low enough not to be a hindrance, and it is such a gentle tune like the small waves in a warm summer lake, it draws Xue Yang in fully. He lets it wash over him, lets it settle in his chest to warm the ice-cold grief there, and the next thing he knows is that his eyes are closed.

He blinks them open, and it is still dark, but he knows some time must have passed because the fire is barely clinging to its life even though he added some branches just before Xingchen woke up.

“You should sleep some more,” the man says softly, even before Xue Yang can speak up. “I promise you no harm shall come to you or your sister under my watch.”

“Keep that promise,” he huffs out before a yawn forces him to admit defeat. He stands and looks towards his own bedroll, uncomfortable and so, so inviting. “Or I’ll be forced to haunt you until your end days.”

He ends up asleep before any regrets could start screaming at him in his head. The next day, he wakes rested and safe, just as promised, to the sight of A-Qing happily chugging down a mug of something, Song Lan polishing a knife he did not see on his person the day before, and Xiao Xingchen sitting where he left him at dawn. He offers a beautiful smile and a gentle nod, and Xue Yang allows himself to smile back.

**

The story goes on with a new routine forming. It is almost scary, how easy it is to fall into steps with the two additions to their small team, but it is also a very interesting progression, Xue Yang notes. No matter how he wishes he could deny it, but they do fit in. Maybe, a small part of him dares go as far to suggest that they make it all better. For one, A-Qing is happy. She now looks forward to learning from all three of them, and goes to bed all excited to wake up the next day. The same is also very much true for him: he is still waiting for the slap to land, so to speak, and he knows that the closer he gets to those four hands that might deal it, it’s going to hurt worse than anything when it finally gets delivered. He wants to be proven wrong, for the first time in memory. He simply thinks he won’t be. Fate is rarely kind enough to him like that. And yet, there is just that little snippet of extra joy in waking up to the smell of coffee Song Lan makes, to the bamboo chimes of Xiao Xingchen’s laughter, to seeing A-Qing snicker into her arm for making him laugh. It feels dangerously like something he could get used to, that he could actually miss if it ever ceased. 

He wakes up in a good mood on the sixth day, pulls the leather glove on his left hand, a wooden prosthetic pinkie finger filling out its own section, forever curled into a relaxed shape. This far, he has not received any questions about it, although Song Lan gave him a jar of salve on the second day of their travels, saying it’s good for bruises. It was a good assumption as it was truly bruised; punching that asshole was worth it even if the wood slamming against the delicate scar was a lightning bolt of pain then, and a continuous throb now.  He is used to it, the constant reminder of loss, the itching and hurt in the finger that he no longer has and that gets worse when the weather turns bad. It is a welcome relief to at least be able to treat part of the hurt. As unexpected as it was, it was still a nice gesture from Song Lan. He has been applying it ever since, and it feels a lot better with each passing day. It’s still sore, the sharp needles permanently lodged into the memory of bone, but it’s not as bad as it could have been without the treatment.

That, combined with what Song Lan told them about that lady, paints a rather pleasant image of him, but Xue Yang is far too wary of others in general to think he knows enough to form the full picture of who this man is, exactly. His caution is not the only thing, however, that makes him want to know more about him.

**

On the seventh day, they put up their camp near a lake that tastes clear and offers them plenty a fish for their late dinner. It is slightly cold by the time they settle all their belongings, the water almost chilly to the touch, but all four of them vote for taking a bath. A-Qing is the first to take the lantern and her change of clothes down to the bank, while Xiao Xingchen sets up a makeshift line for the clothes she intends to wash out between some branches, then picks up A-Qing’s blanket from her already laid out bedroll, and places it near the fire. When he catches Xue Yang’s eyes following him, he smiles at him.

“She gets cold so easily,” he says, then takes a knife and sits down next to Xue Yang, helping with the fish. “Tonight is particularly chilly as it is.”

He knows it does not take a long while to learn that about her, but the thoughtfulness makes that little itch in his ribcage ever more persistent, until he has to raise the back of his left hand and rub it against his shirt. It does nothing, other than bring it in front of Xiao Xingchen’s eyes without his glove on to shield it from view. It’s not bad, as far as injuries go, but Xue Yang dislikes looking at it. Dislikes it even more when others are staring and asking stupid questions about how it came to be like that. If it hurt. Sometimes they aren’t even that stupid, but he still gets this all-consuming rage flare up in his lungs as a response, hating that he is forced to remember. To think of that day and the following torment again.

“Did the salve help?” Xiao Xingchen asks, and when Xue Yang turns to him, his sight is still set on the fish, preparing it for dinner with precision. It is not a stupid question by any chance, not prodding and digging deep into the rubble of past.

“Yeah,” he answers, and focuses back on the fish in front of him, still untouched by his knife. “I should probably give it back to him, huh?”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Xingchen shakes his head slightly “A-Lan and I don’t need it at the moment. Tell me if it is close to running out and I’ll make another batch.”

“You made it?”

“Yes, I did. My master taught me a lot of things before I had to leave. How to make salves and poultices, medicinal teas. She was teaching me basic wound care when I had to leave.”

“That’s not the worst kind of knowledge to have while on the road, especially away from society," he thinks of how it could have saved him - a young, afraid thing with an overflow of pain - from so much suffering if someone with that kind of knowledge ever helped him. "You could probably settle anywhere with that, too. You'd be appreciated for sure.”

“I’m afraid it is far too little to offer a settlement a good doctor,” Xiao Xingchen thinks for a moment after speaking, then sighs. “Although I would not be opposed to learning more.”

“Just take a good look at who volunteers to teach you,” Song Lan says from a few steps away, then takes his place amongst them. “There are all kinds of miracle-doctors about who could not help you with a needle prick, let alone anything worse.”

The conversation then turns into retellings of what kind of doctors they have come across during their lives, their travels, and Xue Yang laughs at them, but he does not offer a story of his own, only things he heard from Thomas and Hattie. The ghost of pain that is permanently etched into his left hand would not lead to any story worthy of laughter, and Xue Yang wants to hear more of their joy tonight. Even Song Lan has chuckled at an anecdote that comes from Hattie, and he is completely gone for that sound. Bringing his own childhood into it would take away any chance of hearing it even just once more, so he buries the tale as deep as his soul will allow and tries his best to forget it, just for now.

He is more than content with the decision as he hears Song Lan almost-laugh two more times by the time dusk rolls around and A-Qing arrives back from her bath. He finishes his dinner first and goes to take his turn at the water, providing the two men with enough time to both finish their own meal and then draw lots at who is going to work the kinks out of A-Qing’s hair as per their new nightly routine.

Then once he’s back, it is their turn to go; A-Qing’s hair is done neatly for the night, set in a braid singalling that it was Song Lan who dealt with it, and she looks at least a bit less hungry than she was before. She keeps staring into the distance, turning her this way and that, as if she was trying to map out what the area can offer as a second course. He’s putting the kettle on the fire when she sits down on her bedroll and tucks herself into her favourite, warmest blanket.

“I might go out to catch something tonight,” she says after a while, and continues surveying the dark just the opposite direction from the lake.

“You know how Xingchen is, he wakes at the ass crack of dawn. He’ll be worried about you.”

“Oh, he won’t be” she says, and turns back to face him. “He’ll probably guess I’m out hunting.”

“At dawn?”

“He knows I’m not fully human” she says, and it is delivered in such an unperturbed manner, he can only blink like an overgrown owl for a moment. Then his brain catches on, and he turns his head towards her, his eyes widening in a silent question.

“He has known from the start, about me, and I about him,” she sighs, defeatedly and rubs her nose at the blanket. “He smells… Too clean, I guess? For a human. He’s more like rain on a cloudless night. Cold and moonlit.”

“Does he now?” Xue Yang asks, and he knows exactly what A-Qing is describing. He does not know what Xiao Xingchen smells like, not on the level A-Qing does, but he sat in their barn just enough times on such clear nights, listening to the rain pitter-patter on the roof. It truly was clean and fresh. It is not a bad smell, not like what he associates with ghouls, so maybe whatever the man is, it’s not that wicked of a being.

“He’s most certainly no ghoul, not even a bit, but… He’s not human either. He does a good job acting like one, though.”

“Too good. Why didn’t you tell me any sooner? He could have been dangerous.”

“He is, I think” she nods slowly, her eyes staring into the vastness of the night sky over the fire, where the sparks dance in the slow wind. “But I wouldn’t travel with him if I felt he’s a threat to us. He feels powerful, but also like he belongs with us. It’s weird, I know, but…”

“If you trust him, I’ll only keep half an eye on him” Xue Yang says, and he means it. A-Qing has never been led astray by her gut feelings. If she feels safe, he can reast next to Xingchen as if nothing has changed.

“And you will keep the other on Song Lan until you get them into a jealous lover’s spat?”

“I’d never.” It’s not even a lie, at least not fully. He’d keep an eye on both, admire both, wish for one to warm his back while the other is cradled to his chest, and then go on with his life not having any of that. These two make him greedy, wanting both at the same time. “On that note, what about Song Lan?”

“He’s human” Xiao Xingchen’s voice answers from behind them, and Xue Yang’s heart speeds up at hearing it. A-Qing’s eyes widen as well, and that is a feat in and of itself, to spook her. When he turns, he finds the man in his yellowed white linen shirt and faded cream trousers, his wet hair unbound and his eyes mesmerizingly dark. There is a kind smile on his face, and a serene air about him, and Xue Yang struggles to believe that he is this unperturbed by his secret getting out. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“We have enough coffee” he offers weakly, and gestures towards the pot and the two empty mugs next to the fire. Xingchen is attractive, kind and absolutely not something he’d associate with those salivating monstrosities that tore Hattie apart and ate most of Thomas’ corpse. Not that A-Qing has any resemblance to them either, but she is still mainly human. If she is right, it means Xingchen is anything but one.

“Wonderful” Xiao Xingchen says and sits down, and now that Xue Yang thinks about it, his movements are far too calculated. He has chalked it up to the man’s natural grace that he never stumbles or slouches, but now he finds himself questioning everything, even without a proper confirmation. He wonders if he wants to know it for sure. “I’ve grown so fond of its taste. When I was still living with my master, we had nothing like it.”

“It’s bitter” A-Qing frowns, but Xue Yang has seen her drink it down without a flinch when they had early mornings at the farmstead, or when the cold got to her far too badly. “I’m sorry for saying anything. I just… I like having the two of you with us. But he needs to know.”

“And we like travelling with you, if you forgive me for talking in both mine and Song Lan’s name,” Xiao Xingchen offers while he pours himself some coffee. “We’re both glad fate led us to you when it did.”

“Fate is a right bitch” he growls, and tosses a dry twig into the fire. “It is not fair at all. If that’s what brought you here, it’s only trying to make amends.”

“A-Yang…” Xiao Xingchen starts, and his name in his mouth is always delicious, but when he says it just a bit exasperated, he cannot help but try to push just a bit more. Xingchen however stops right after his name, pauses, looks toward the lake, and his earlier smile gets just a slight bit brighter. A-Qing glances in the same direction and sniffs the air. Her head tilts to the side, curious but not alarmed. Maybe it’s Song Lan making his way back from his overlong bathing.

The smell of blood wafts into his nose before he could continue and curse fate as he usually does. He glances at A-Qing, then at the direction she’s still staring in – and Song Lan emerges, with the source of the smell dangling from a rope in his hand. It’s a bloody, skinned thing, and he can now understand why it has captivated her so.

“I see you took care of tomorrow’s lunch,” he points at the carcass of what might have been a rabbit in life. He chances a look towards A-Qing, and if there’s a time to hope, it is now. She is so transfixed by that bloody thing, half the world could explode around her without her noticing. He goes through a rather long, multilingual list of curses in his head.

“Xingchen caught it, but it had to be cleaned,” Song Lan answers with a shrug, then walks up to where A-Qing is sitting and holds it out for her. Her expression goes from deeply interested to surprised, then to plain hungry in a heartbeat, and Xue Yang knows that if it was him holding that piece of meat and not prim and proper Song Lan, she’d have already snagged it.

“Should it,” she has to swallow mid-sentence, and Xue Yang admires her resolve. She has been hungry for raw meat for almost a week. “Not be prepared first?”

“Qing-guniang, please. I’ve seen far stranger things since travelling with this one. If you’re hungry, just eat.”

“I’d love to hear about some of those stranger things some time,” A-Qing murmurs, pressing her mouth back into the blanket, and Xue Yang agrees with her fully. It would be both fun to hear them, and a good way to learn about whatever else might be waiting for a chance to ruin their lives. “You knew?”

“Xingchen told me today. He also told me you said you were hungry.”

She nods, and Xue Yang sees the way she struggles with what to say. She hesitates only a moment more, then takes the rabbit. There is a silent string of sounds that might have been a ‘thank you’ in Mandarin, but he’s not sure. Xiao Xingchen is smiling though, so it must have been something to that effect. Or a curse even, kowing the man's sense of humor. Song Lan sits down between him and Xue Yang, his eyes landing on the last unused mug. He ignores the first loud tearing sound as A-Qing starts ripping into the meat, then continues to do so as it gets both messier and louder as she forgets about the world outside of her meal.

“You made coffee?”

“Stay away from it,” The pot is still there next to the fire, so it must be nothing better than lukewarm, but it is coffee as far as Xue Yang is concerned and he feels like he’ll need at least two more servings of it if they are to continue their earlier talk. “Unless you’re up for making some more.”

Song Lan shrugs and pours out the rest of Xue Yang’s attempt into his own mug, takes a sip of it, and blanches.

“I shouldn’t ask you how you screwed it up this badly,” he says and presses the back of his hand to his mouth. “I should ask how the two of you dare drink it.”

Xiao Xingchen laughs a little, then drinks another mouthful of his own mug, with a teasing smile disappearing behind its rim. A-Qing stops her chewing for a moment, then thinking better of it simply shrugs as an answer. Xue Yang cackles and swallows down the beginnings of an admission that even he likes Song Lan’s brew better.

“What did I interrupt?” Song Lan asks as he gathers what he needs for a new dose of better coffee, starting with his canteen of water to rinse out Xue Yang’s attempt from the kettle.

“A-Yang was cursing fate. He said meeting us might be a compensation” He watches as Xiao Xingchen's lips curl around an amused smile.

“You most certainly are” Song Lan says, and a slight red tinge appears on Xiao Xingchen’s face at hearing it. Xue Yang loves it, and loves the shy motion with which Xingchen looks to the side. “And I make good enough coffee to be a contender. What does fate owe you a compensation for, though?”

The silence that follows that question is not real, Xue Yang knows. He knows the wildlife is still loud, the bugs annoying and the fire must still be crackling in that merry, heartwarming way, but he is deaf to all of that for a moment.

“Our homestead was attacked,” A-Qing’s voice breaks through that soundless bubble around him as she starts talking. It sounds far away as if they weren’t a few feet away from each other, and so, so full of pain. “And Thomas and Hattie…”

She draws in a heavy, halting breath, and Xue Yang can hear when the tears threaten to bubble out along the next word that leaves her mouth, if not with the next breath even.

“They died” he says, and the words are a lot lighter than he feared, once they are past his tongue. It is distant, as if it means anything less horrible than the memory of discovering their mangled body and the beast feasting on Thomas’ corpse. He wants to be disappointed in himself, disgusted with how easily he can talk about it, but at the moment the happiness is more overwhelming. If he can talk about it, A-Qing does not have to. “We were gone, just for half a day to get some stuff. When we got back, it was carnage. The livestock all scattered about in bloody scraps, doors torn off their hinges, windows broken in.”

He takes a deep breath, then another one. Even remembering this much is painful, but he finds that he has no tears left to shed. All he feels is the white-hot glow of anger starting to heat up his insides.

“Bandits?” Song Lan asks, silent and tense with anticipation.

“No,” He starts, then looks at the worry on Xingchen’s face. Maybe he is as pale as he thinks he might be at this point, but this is the best chance he’s ever going to get to tell the truth to someone who might actually believe it. Xiao Xingchen knows there are creatures, he is one, for fuck’s sake. If he questions what Xue Yang is about to share with him… “They were not human. Not fully, for sure.”

He closes his eyes as he speaks, and imagines the day which he cannot forget a single detail of, even though he’d gather his weight in gold just to erase some of the images from his mind. He is there again, in the lingering warmth of the day, looking at the dead livestock, at the shocked A-Qing who looks ready to run both into the homestead and away from it, eyes wide and lips trembling. He feels his voice break as he describes it for Xingchen and Song Lan, the smell of blood and human waste, the first stab of realisation that the bloodied bundle of clothes on the front porch was Hattie’s corpse, her face clawed in half and her throat ripped out. He tells them about the silence as they kept on looking for Thomas, hoping that he got luckier, him clutching his gun and A-Qing grabbing the rifle from the empty living room. He tells of the sounds, barely anything at first – then the wet squelching of teeth ripping into raw flesh.

Thinking about that part, it flashes through his mind that while that sound was gut-churningly disgusting, he had no problem hearing the same just minutes prior when A-Qing was tearing into her dinner. Maybe it’s because it was a rabbit, and not their sort-of-father, or maybe it’s because A-Qing is A-Qing, and not like those things.

His fingers card through his hair, pushing it out of his face as he gathers more details, although at this point things get fuzzy. When he saw those creatures, a part of him knew it would be a fight until death. At first, they looked like very lean, thin humans unclothed and underfed, and Xue Yang thought of cannibals. Then they turned away from Thomas’s ripped open chest and looked at him, and he was no longer certain what they were supposed to be. Their faces looked like some twisted god pulled a human face into the shape of a fox’s head. He remembers fear, remembers that split-second decision that he wants to live and wants his sister to live, and remembers the first few bullets he shattered those misshapen skulls with. The two feasting on Thomas fell, but more came. A-Qing was rooted to the ground, shaking apart until one of the hidden monsters jumped on him, tearing at his back with abandon. Then, she came alive with fury and instinct, and got at least four of them. He remembers shooting some more as she helped him up – and the next thing he remembers is the spare room at A-Yao’s home. It was followed by her telling him where she really came from, what she suspected she might be, at least partially. Telling him that she would not have stayed, especially not years, had she known they'd follow her.

He finishes the story, and his back throbs with that same, initial pain that kept him bed-bound for two weeks, belly-down in the bed, biting at the linen sheet from the sheer agony of having the wounds cleaned.

“They are called ghouls, devourers of the dead,” Xiao Xingchen says softly, and looks at A-Qing with something like sadness in his gaze. Xue Yang wishes he could shield her from this, but he knows she has at least guessed at it already. “I’ve heard tales of ghouls letting go of the changelings they take until they find some use for them. Maybe they had need of you. It is not fate’s fault, and neither is it yours, A-Qing.”

“It sure as hell isn’t hers” Xue Yang almost spits the words, because why would he ever think to bring it up – but when he glances over at her, looking small and frail bundled back in that cocoon of fabric, meat forgotten in the dirt next to her, it’s clear she has carried the guilt all along.

“It’s not,” Song Lan adds, and Xue Yang is very thankful for him saying if with full conviction. He would believe it, and he hopes A-Qing will as well.

“You say they might have wanted something from me,” A-Qing sighs, and rests her head on her knees, staring into the bright flames. The night is full of the little sounds that have been their constant while travelling, but Xue Yang remembers how the pitter-patter of firewood was her go-to source of comfort even back in their homestead. “But what? I had nothing that wasn’t given to me by Hattie or Thomas or A-Yang. Nothing they couldn’t get from anyone else – anywhere else.”

“I have a theory,” Xiao Xingchen drinks the rest of his coffee, now terrible and cold at once. “Ghouls are not known for travelling this far away from their original home, somewhere in the abandoned parts of the deserts in Egypt, without a direct command from a powerful sorcerer. Based on what I know, sorcerers seek out ghouls to command if they want something from their first and only true leader.”

“But I don’t know anyone like that” she shakes her head vehemently, and as she looks at Xue Yang, he knows they are both trying to remember if they’ve seen anyone that could be the leader of ghouls. He could swear they have not.

“No,” Xingchen continues, then he stops and looks at A-Qing, as if he was considering something. Then, he takes a deep breath, and offers her his hand. She takes it without any hesitation. “But the sorcerer might have thought you’d be a good vessel for what remains of her soul.”

“That’s just stupid” she whispers, her eyes wide with disbelief – then it turns to shock. She has seen things odd enough, beings bizarre enough to not dare fully deny this as a possibility. “Why would this person need me?”

“Yes, why her?” Xue Yang echoes, watching as the tears start to roll down A-Qing’s face in silence.

“You got away not once, but twice now. They might consider you powerful enough to carry her soul, but maybe not powerful enough to feel like they need to stop chasing you. After all, all they need is but one moment of weakness.”

“Fuck them. I’m not gonna share my body with a… A ghost or something. I won’t let them. I’ll kill them first” she sounds so determined then, Xue Yang cannot decide if he feels more proud of her for her strength in the face of such news, or more worried that she might do something foolhardy about it.

He watches as the fire paints her tears gold, watches as the determination curls her brows into something serious – and he also sees the way she clutches at Xingchen’s hand as if that was the last thing keeping her this composed. It is enough to make something dangerous and glass-sharp unfurl within him, urging him to shout or rage, to go after whatever ghoul remains on the continent and gut them with a dull knife before she could maim them herself.

“Will the ghouls stop if the sorcerer dies?” he barely recognises his own voice when he speaks up. He sounds calm, although he feels like a storm is hitting his entire being with full force.

“The ones already on your trail probably wouldn’t” Xingchen hums, considering it. “But no more would wander to America without further prompting. As I said, they are not really the travelling sort.”

“Then the sorcerer dies. I will make sure of it.”

When he says it, it’s more than a promise to himself or A-Qing, it is a conviction. There is no universe where Xue Yang will live and not hunt down the ones that ruined his happiness, and there is no way he will let them take anything more from him. He watches as she curls more into the hug Xiao Xingchen has drawn her into, watches as she lets herself cry until her tears soak through the shoulder of his shirt, as he keeps talking so silently it’s only for the two of their ears.

It takes barely half an hour for A-Qing to cry herself into a fitful but deep sleep. Xiao Xingchen lifts her up like she weighs nothing, sets her carefully on her bedroll and makes sure the blankets are securely around her to shield her from the cold of the night. Song Lan watches, quietly contemplating something as he sits next to her, with a steaming mug of coffee in his hands.

“I’ll watch over her” he says, and Xue Yang is momentarily distracted out of the red haze of his fury.

“Thank you,” Xingchen smiles at him, then at Xue Yang as well. “Would you accompany me on a short walk? I think we should talk some more.”

The night is beautiful, the moon is bright and the stars are brilliant overhead, and the day has already been so full of revelations, he thinks he can take some more, so when Xiao Xingchen offers him a hand to help him up, Xue Yang takes it. He realises that he never wants to let it go, even now that he knows, irrevocably and certainly that Xingchen is not human. The attraction is still very much there, though, and so is that unexplainable trust that keeps his heart tight and his brain questioning all his stupid choices.

He never lets go of Xiao Xingchen’s hand as they walk, and the man also does not pull away. It feels like the start of something.

“You haven’t asked what I am,” Xingchen does not as much break the silence as lets his voice seep into it, like two creeks merging into one. 

“I’m afraid of the answer” he answers, baring the full truth of his own feelings, and his heart skips a beat as he is pulled to a halt.

“Don’t be,” Xiao Xingchen steps in front of him without letting go of his hand. He leans closer to Xue Yang, then closer still until they are standing with their faces only a small distance away, until Xue Yang has to tilt his head up to stare at the vision before him. Under the moonlight, Xiao Xingchen is even more of a sight than during the day, especially with his hair unbound. It is dark and deep, like the shadows in the nighttime, and he wants nothing more than to run his fingers through it. “I’m simply Xiao Xingchen.”

The fingers on his face are a surprise, but a welcome one now. They feel like normal fingers, with normal human skin stretched over them, slightly chilly from the night air. He tilts his head into their touch, and he’s rewarded by a mesmerizing smile for it.

“What is Xiao Xingchen then? Aside from a tease?” he asks, because if he has anything in abundance, it’s the need to know more.

“He is… He used to be human. And then he got curious when he found a ring in an abandoned, blocked cave, only unsealed by an earthquake. That ring housed something ancient, something not of this earth. It was dying. It wanted its knowledge to remain.”

“And what did it want in return? Your soul or I don’t know, your firstborn?” It's endearing as always how his words can bring that small brilliant shine into Xiao Xingchen’s eyes, even if it's mixed now with a bit of a sorrowful look. 

“It wanted to die outside, looking at the moon or basking in the warmth of the sun. It said that was the only thing that drew it here, in the first place. The silver light and the golden warmth. But most of all, it did not want to face the end alone.”

Xue Yang raises his hand and slides his fingers over Xingchen’s wrist, smoothing his thumb over the silky inner part of it. Xingchen is looking at him, but he bets he’s also looking into his own past. He looks mournful for a moment, and Xue Yang can understand why – dying alone must be hard for everyone. He does not know that entity in the ring, but he knows it experienced the luckiest turn of events by meeting this man when it did.

“When it finally died, something of him, more than just knowledge and memories, became part of me. My master had no words for it, but she no longer wanted to house me in this new state.”

“How long has Song Lan known?”

“I think I might have told him on the third day of knowing him,” he says, and there is a small note of uncertainty in his tone. “Not that he believed me right away.”

“I cannot exactly fault him for that, you know?” He tilts his head to the side, a mischievous smile playing on his lips as he imagines Xiao Xingchen, baring his soul and Song Lan denying it because of the reality he must have lived contained no ghouls or anything of similar nature.

“He was doubting everything I said. Until I showed him things…” Xingchen says, then the shadows around his head darken and deepen until Xue Yang can swear he sees them form tendrils, as if they were lush stalks of seaweed in a river. He watches in awe as they move, slow and careful, to lift his hair and tug playfully at some of the strands, then he notices something and turns back towards Xingchen. His eyes are fully black now, like the shadows around him, almost all of them wrapped around Xue Yang’s body. “That convinced him.”

“So beautiful,” he gasps, then reaches for one of the smoke-shadow tendrils and runs his four fingers over its surface. It feels more solid than it should be based on the sight, and it’s cold, too.

“Are you not afraid?”

“Should I be?” Xue Yang reache up and twines his arms around Xingchen's neck, bringing the two of them even closer.

“No, never” Xiao Xingchen whispers it against his mouth as if he could barely stop himself from claiming it. It is Xue Yang though that closes that final distance, he is the one who kisses those pretty lips first. And whatever state Xiao Xingchen is in right now, it makes his mouth just as cold as the tendrils are, but for Xue Yang, it is more exciting than anything else to see how long it takes to kiss the warmth back into it.

**

It seems like a short beginning to form anything substantial, these past ten days, but Xue Yang does not mind it. He lives his life with the speed the world dictates, and now it feels as if he is stuck in a storm that keeps pushing at his back and tugging at his clothes, but he actually likes the future they are herding him towards. Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan are a force to be reckoned with, but they can also be so incredibly soft and caring, his heart actually skips a beat just thinking about it.

He knows he could grow to love Xiao Xingchen, that he is partway there already, and he knows he is just as charmed by Song Lan. At least one of those facts should make him sober up and leave, pack up and grab A-Qing and run until he leaves the known world behind if that’s what it takes avoiding breaking his own heart – but he finds he wants to stay, until the very last minute where their affection is genuine. Because it is genuine still, he feels it, and it means so much more than he could put into words. They see him, they see that he’s not good but he tries, for his sister and for the ghost of the Walkers, but he also knows Xingchen would press the same sweet kiss to his mouth if he was like he used to be before all that. Song Lan’s overall stance regarding him is still harder to pin down, but as the days progress and they talk, it gets easier and easier to believe that he is not indiscriminately after a bounty and that were he ever to learn of his supposed crime, he would not care. The stories he shares are unsettling in their simplicity, about orphans turning thieves, beaten wives becoming murderers and concerned parents taking up the rifle to solve anything threatening their kids. Xue Yang knows hunger and pain, humiliation and rage and he knows how viciously one might want to end them. So whenever Song Lan speaks of these folks and turning his back on their bounties, Xue Yang wishes he’d dare to bring up the poster with his face on it in California.

He shakes his head and stares at the horizon where the air just begins to glow a bright red, far over the dying embers of their campfire. It’s a new morning, leading to a day of endless outcomes. Maybe today their pursuer will show up, or the dusk will herald in the ghouls ready to tear them to pieces. Maybe today will pass without anything but riding farther East, their horses kicking up the dirt peacefully as they go on. It is all down to fate, and it seems to be apologising something fierce, bringing nice things their way. It might as well even last.

**

True to how his life tends to go, it does not. He gets a few days of happiness, and it should be a warning that things are about to go sideways like they usually do, but he hopes that this is finally it. This is his break from losses. Xiao Xingchen’s kisses feel like a revelation still, and he notices how Song Lan’s changing too, into a more approachable, touchable person around him. He lays his hand on Xue Yang’s back or his arms when he has to go around him, his gloves tucked into his belt more times than not, the touch light and grounding. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say Song Lan is doing it on purpose – he asks for the dagger Xue Yang is holding and runs his fingers over Xue Yang’s when he takes it. He hands him a mug of coffee, and holds it just a bit longer than necessary until their hands meet on its surface. And, noticing the look Song Lan gives him when he’s laughing about something Xiao Xingchen just said, it might just be the case that he is right in sensing the intent behind those actions. The timing is almost a shame, because he might be far from a good person, might be even further from any sort of decency, but he will not hurt Xiao Xingchen.

The more he thinks about it though, the more he tries to go over all the things he has been noticing about Song Lan’s behaviour towards his person, the more convinced he becomes that he might have some trouble brewing. He wants to keep whatever it is he and Xingchen have now, and when he thinks about drawing Song Lan into the same languid kisses, he feels his heart constrict with the need to make that too a reality.

A few days go by while he is pondering over these things, and then one day he wakes with a throb in his hand and the most unsettling feeling burrowing under his ribs. He braces himself for a talk, for his greed to put off either or both of these men – but when trouble arrives, it is something he is not prepared for.

He is returning Song Lan’s mug to his saddlebag lying innocently on the ground, ready to be picked up whenever they decide to move on, and he doesn’t even notice anything amiss at first. Then, as he puts the mug on the ground, he catches something peeking out from the bag – a piece of paper. He almost dismisses it as inconsequential – but then curiosity gets the best of him. There’s just something so familiar about it, about the way the words crawl around that small segment he can see, he cannot leave it be. He’ll apologise, but he needs to know. Fear lodges itself into his heart as he lifts the flap and pulls out the complete missive, and then the world comes to a halt.

His own face, drawn almost correct, stares back at him from the paper, surrounded by words that have been haunting him ever since California. It should not be here, not where he is finally happy and about as free as he can be. It should not be in this particular bag either, it should not belong to the men he has come to care for this much. But it is there, and the truth of it hits him mercilessly in the chest.

Stumbling he raises to his feet, eyes still locked on the poster, and he waits for the anger to come, to wash over him until it is all he can feel – but it never arrives. All there is in his heart is the bitterness and devastation of disappointment.

“A-Yang?” Xiao Xingchen calls from behind his back, but all it brings now is pain, to hear the worry in it.

“What’s wrong?” Song Lan asks, and Xue Yang wants to shout at him, but that would require strength that has just deserted him.

So, instead of answering, he simply turns around, with his own wanted poster clutched in his hands. Something akin to terror washes over Song Lan, and Xiao Xingchen’s smile disappears as well. They share a look that Xue Yang is far too upset to try and pick apart.

“You tell me” His voice is so low, he is not sure Song Lan even hears it, but it matters very little. He is not done. “What do you want from us? From me?”

It is almost frightful how he sounds more unsettled, even to his own ears, than if he was shouting.

“Was it true that you’re looking for a place to settle down? That you want to help us?” It seems as if Song Lan wants to talk, as if he is ready to explain – but Xue Yang does not want to hear it. He feels tired. He knew they seemed just too perfect to be real, so it should not be this deep of a cut, but it still feels like steel grinding against his bones, seeing his wanted poster in Song Lan’s hold. It suddenly feels too hard to breathe, too taxing to stand, and he cannot show that in front of them.

“Don’t talk to me!” he growls, and for a moment he is spooked by the vitriol his own voice holds. He knows they could stop him, especially Xiao Xingchen – and his silence on the matter is just another stab right where it hurts the most. It could be one of those posters Song Lan could decide to tear apart, but he has not done so, even after they told them what really happened that day at the Walker’s homestead. He has kept it, and it was far too morbid a keepsake to mean nothing.

As he storms off towards the water, he keeps thinking about it all. About their first meeting, about how they spoke to A-Qing before him. Maybe they were unsure about bringing him back to California back then, and they wanted to gather some information on his crimes as they did with that woman. He thinks about their routine then, the comfort of it, the flirting and the kisses that he felt were genuine from Xiao Xingchen and the care and slowly growing openness from Song Lan that felt genuine but that he has to question now. It felt as if the man opened up to him even before they told them what happened, and he almost convinces himself as he walk, not even really watching where, that at that point, the idea of going after his bounty must have been deemed unimportant. Almost. They might simply be that good at acting. And if they were, that would shatter him into more pieces than he could ever piece back together, he knows. He has grown to care for them, to plan with them in their future – and what a stupid mistake it is, to have fallen for them.

The sun is hot, his shirt sticks to his back uncomfortably, but it is nothing compared to his misery. He feels like kicking something, Song Lan or a cactus, or even his own ass for all of this. He crumples on the ground like a wet rag as soon as he reaches a copse of trees next to the water and pulls his legs closer to himself – as if it could protect him from his heart beating out of his chest with a vengeance. They are good for A-Qing. Xiao Xingchen is powerful enough to protect and teach her how to embrace her inhuman self, while Song Lan could teach her about anything else. How to write or read in both languages that should be hers by right, teach her more than the basics of Mandarin he could scrape together from his childhood memories.

There are steps coming from behind him, and he refuses to move. If Song Lan is there to finish the job and drag his corpse anywhere for the blood-money – well, he feels far too disappointed in the whole world in that moment to care.

The steps come to a halt right at his back, and nothing happens. For one heartbeat, for two – then the body behind him moves, and arms wrap around his torso. They are strong, but their hold is so gentle, it would take nothing more but a bit of wriggling to get them off of his person.

“I’m sorry,” the man breathes it onto his skin, warm and wet, and Xue Yang feels the tears he’s been keeping at bay break free. He wants this. This closeness, this intimacy – this very man and his infuriatingly perfect partner. “We should have told you. Xingchen wanted to, on day one. He was fully convinced it wasn’t you that killed the Walkers, and after he told me about the ghouls, I also thought so. But in the end, I was slower to overlook the rest.”

“You know,” Xue Yang takes one of Song Lan’s hands into his, then looks at it – the callouses, the small cuts that are usually hidden by his gloves. It’s almost more intimate to see him without gloves than it would be to see him completely naked. “Thomas and Hattie became my family. I didn’t want to get attached, first, but then… They were so good to me, even if I was an ass at first, even though they deserved someone better. After a while it felt like living with my ma. Felt like peace.”

“And the ghouls ruined the happiness, and then people wanted to pin it all on you.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, and curls around the hand in his hold even more. Song Lan’s fingers tighten around him, as if he was saying he’s not letting go – and Xue Yang is happy about that. The feeling of betrayal is still lodged in his chest, but is it truly betrayal if neither Xiao Xingchen nor Song Lan ever planned on cashing in his bounty? If they simply wanted confirmation, if they were curious?

“I know it’s not enough, but I am sorry we came and ruined the rest afterward” Song Lan’s offer is there for the taking, and he could say he doesn’t feel slighted at all, but that would not be true. He could also say there is no going back to what they just started sharing, but that would be even further from his feelings.

“You didn’t,” he says in the end, and he finds that he means it in full. Nothing is ruined, not irreparably. What they share might just be like a bone, stronger after the break heals. “You made it – you make it better.”

“Yeah?”

Xue Yang laughs, then leans back and crowds into Song Lan’s space. The arms around him tighten and the hand not holding his flattens against his side. The strong, possessive hold makes his blood sing with desire, and he lets a shuddering exhale leave his lips.  

“You’re also making everything so much harder” he says and he means it, fate be his witness. “Making me wonder how much I can wish for at once.”

Xue Yang holds still, and his heart stills even more so when Song Lan presses one lone kiss into his neck, just where he melts from it.

“How much do you desire?”

“How much are you willing to give me? Hm, Zichen?”

He hears the gasp, feels as the fingers at his side dig deep enough to leave the most delicious bruises there, and he knows he owes Xiao Xingchen several kisses for sharing Song Lan’s courtesy name. The though lodges something inside his heart that hurts beyond words. He wants to feel Song Lan’s mouth on him again, and he wants to be able to keep kissing Xingchen. He also does not want to betray either of their trust.

This is the point where he decides that he will need to have a talk with both Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen about him being a greedy soul, but he truly cannot choose between them. This is where he decides to live in the moment and embrace both his desires and the man next to him.

He looks at him, at his longer than proper haircut, the strict line of his mouth, the naked hunger in his eyes. He offers him a grin, hungry and needy, as he turns in his embrace, and he catches the moment Song Lan’s thoughts jolt in the same direction. He watches, bewitched, as Song Lan swallows and wets his lips with his tongue. He lets himself turn more so he can push at Song Lan’s chest until he gets the idea and sits down properly. He does not waste a second straddling his legs so they are chest to chest, his arms resting around Song Lan’s neck in a lose hold.

“Song Lan,” he whispers, his mouth only a breath away from Song Lan’s and he knows the other man is just as drawn into this moment as he is. His eyes are so wide, a deep brown that can look so severe, and that hold all the want and need Xue Yang has been tasting on his tongue ever since they met. “Song Zichen… Never do this to me again. Never make me feel like I cannot trust you.”

“Never again,” Song Lan says, only a whisper against his mouth, but not any less heated than Xue Yang’s own plea. It is followed by a slow kiss, just a press of lips against his own, then a much more passionate one. Song Lan tastes him as if he was something exquisite, as if he felt the same pull Xue Yang feels for both him and Xingchen.

“I cannot say how much I regret putting you through this” Song Lan pulls away, and looks Xue Yang in the eyes as he speaks, with honesty Xue Yang expects of the man and with gentleness he is still learning to associate with him. “But I will never regret coming after you, and I know Xingchen won’t, either.”

“You sure about that? I hear I can be some real trouble, once in a while,” he drawls, then pulls Song Lan’s neckerchief out of the way once again, to press another sweet, faux-innocent kiss onto the mark he just left.

“Hm, behave,” the chiding is half-hearted at best so he sucks on the sweaty skin again until the most delicious moan escapes him. “We’re absolutely sure.”

Song Lan’s fingers twine in his hair and pull, just a little, and Xue Yang resists until the sting of it becomes just a bit sweeter. Then he relents and lets himself be pulled a small distance away from his handiwork. When he glances up at Song Lan, he finds such fire in his eyes, it would be enough to melt him down to his basest impulses and needs.

“I can’t wait until we have some real privacy” It should be a crime how Song Lan's voice can make him feel, how it sends heat travelling all the way up to his neck from such simple words. “So Xingchen and I can take you apart properly.”

Xingchen and him? Maybe he does know about it then - did Xingchen tell him of their own, budding relationship? It seems Song Lan does not care much about it, as he draws him into another kiss, deep and hot and full of promises. Maybe he is good at sharing.

"Wouldn't you feel jealous?"

“Why would I be? He’s my partner” he says, and when Xue Yang still feels, and most probably looks like it explains nothing, he continues. “Partner as in lover.”

Xue Yang draws back at that. It would explain why Song Lan has been talking in the plural. It does not explain why Xiao Xingchen has never mentioned anything to this effect.

“No, wait” Xue Yang feels beyond confused by this point, but looking at the expression on Song Lan’s face, he might not be faring any better at making heads or tails of the situation. Then, it hits him. If he is together with both men, and they are also a couple, it might just work out fine.

“You mean I can have the both of you?” The question slips out in the following silence, but it fits there, hanging in the night air like the most precious star. Xue Yang knows he must look a whole spectacle right then, with his mouth open around a deep breath that seems to be stuck in his lungs and with the wonder of revelation clinging to his eyelashes in the form of a few unshed tears. “I don't have to choose?”

When Song Lan cradles his face in his palm and caresses his cheek with his thumb, Xue Yang presses into the touch some more.

“You already have us.”

Xue Yang slumps forward a bit, the rests his forehead against Song Lan's shoulder. He wants to steal more kisses, wants to go back and taste his skin even more, but at first he needs to convince his heart to settle and stay in his chest. 

Soon, he hears the sound if footsteps, and hears Song Lan murmur a quiet greeting.

“Do you mind if I join? A-Qing told me to come after you and fix whatever we made a mess of, unless I want to get my ass kicked,” Xingchen lowers himself onto the ground next to Song Lan, his knee bumping against Xue Yang’s. “But I see you’ve already got it all sorted out.”

When he reaches up to tuck a stray stand of hair behind Xue Yang’s ear, he nuzzles into the touch.

“Yes, it was most informative,” Xue Yang shrugs, as if his whole worldview did not do a full spin just a good quarter an hour before. “You figure out how to tell her what the mess was, if she asks.”

“My dear,” he says, and there is the beginning of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. With one slender finger he taps at his own nose, and reaches up to run his fingertips down Xue Yang’s face, following a trail his tears travelled before. “She’s part ghoul. I think it’s safe to say, she knew about me and Zichen, about you and me, and she will know about this new development between you two as well.”

“She knew you two were involved? And she didn’t tell me?” That is where he stops dissecting Xingchen’s worlds; the thought of his little sister smelling his relationships before he knew they counted as one stings too much to handle it in the moment.

“You did not…” Xiao Xingchen stops mid-motion. “Oh, A-Yang.”

“I thought you talked to him about it,” Song Lan chides Xiao Xingchen, but it carries no anger or disappointment, only a playful undertone, mixed in with some residual embarrassment over the whole situation. Xingchen looks at them, at the reddened, wet mark on Song Lan’s neck that his neckerchief only covers halfway, then offers both of them a sheepish smile.

“I think I forgot it needs clarification. You were clearly so interested in both Zichen and me, I assumed you had us all figured out.”

“Do you know how scared I was? To want you both, to maybe ruin your friendship, to have you both hate me for being undecided and so fucking greedy…”

He takes a deep breath and looks at the men he somehow managed to find and now he has a chance to keep, and he shuts the feeling of gloom down before it could ruin it.

“Zichen told you perfectly,” Xiao Xingchen leans in for a kiss, which Xue Yang is more than happy to provide, hoping that the man can still feel Song Lan’s taste on his lips. “You have us both.”

Xingchen smiles, the filtered sunlight peppering his skin and his hair with golden leaves, playful in their dance. Xue Yang grabs him by the neck then, urgent and forceful, to pull him into a ferocious kiss. And if that isn’t a heady thing in and of itself, it is made even more exquisite by the fact that he is still straddling Song Lan’s thighs, the man’s fingers digging into his sides like talons, and he does not mind. That he can have both.

His greed seems to be endless still; he reaches for Song Lan and laughs before they could kiss, laughs because the look in his eyes tells of the same restless want he himself has burning within his ribs. The midday sun has nothing on its flames, and it only flares brighter and hotter when Song Lan captures his lips.

A cold thing presses his sweat-soaked shirt right onto his overheated skin – it is sudden and unexpected, making him gasp out in surprise, driving his hips to press closer to the body underneath him. His mouth is already curling around a wicked grin as he turns to Xingchen - and just as he expected the man’s eyes have gone dark and there are shadows curling around him like smoke.

“Take him in hand” he tells Xue Yang, his voice silent, like the woods can be silent at night, with the promise of something lurking just beyond your reach. A broken gasp from Song Lan is the first answer to that request; the second is the rustling of fabric as Xue Yang opens his trousers as instructed.

A small, thin tendril joins his fingers as they wrap around Song Lan’s cock – the man bucks up under him and bites back on a yell, his eyes rolling back into his head. Xue Yang breathes out a laugh, kissing the last few puffs of air into Xingchen’s mouth.

“He likes the things you showed him, huh?”

“Just like you do, love” Xingchen answers, and with his flesh and bone hand he pulls down Xue Yang’s zipper as well, pulling at the fabric until it’s no longer in the way. The dark mist around Xingchen stretches, the cold dripping and flowing all over Xue Yang’s body, without a pattern and without mercy.

A shaky little “Yeah…” is the only response he’s capable of, his body shaking apart at the sudden overwhelm to his senses. It‘s too much and also just perfect, made even better when Song Lan’s hand cradles his face to draw his attention back to him. He has it, even before his thumb settles on Xue Yang’s lower lip, the weight of it an invitation he answers without much thought. His mouth falls open, and Song Lan grins. Then, he leans close and licks into his open mouth, turning it into a deep, most passionate kiss. It feels like utter filth, to feel Song Lan’s mouth devour his and have Xingchen’s shadow-touch on his dick at the same time and Xue Yang keens into it. They are perfect.

The dark mist presses his fingers harder into Song Lan’s flesh, turns his pulls faster and meaner, until he pulls away from Xue Yang and screws his eyes shut, his lips red and wet, trembling from the new pace. Xue Yang looks at Xiao Xingchen then, his mouth far too empty now, and the ethereal figure does not disappoint. He rises on his knees and crowds closer to the both of them until he can bend down and take Xue Yang’s mouth just as mercilessly as his shadow is pleasuring Song Lan. He can feel it, the curl of a smile, the breath of a laugh against his tongue – and then he feels it, the cold trail of something silky down his ass, parting his flesh until it can prod at his hole. He yells from it and Xingchen swallows the sound and takes his free hand to lead it to his own crotch.

His trousers are open already, his cock hard and so incredibly cold – the thought of taking it fills Xue Yang with the need to have it now, to learn what it feels like – but Xingchen has a different idea. His fingers are relentless around Xue Yang’s hand, keeping his grip almost as tight as his hold on their lover, his shadow a damned tease at his ass, promising delight and not delivering it. His tears bubble out without sound, free and euphoric.

Maybe Xiao Xingchen knows he’s nearing what he can take, or maybe it’s the wrecked yelp Song Lan makes that clues him in, but his touch grows more insistent, more focused on providing the relief they all chase. When it arrives, it plummets into the pit of his stomach and pulls his breath with it, until he can do no more but gasp out both of their names, his vision going white around the edges.

He lets his head fall onto Song Lan’s shoulder and presses a dry, gasping kiss into the fabric of his shirt as he tries to remember how to breathe, and he shakes along with him as he comes. When it’s Xingchen’s turn, the temperature around them plummets into something this area must have never witnessed before, and Xue Yang scoots his cheek just a bit so he can take a look at him. There’s frost on Xiao Xingchen’s eyelashes, crystalline and gone in a heartbeat, leaving only the relaxed smile to stay.  

Xue Yang is content, resting against Song Lan, inhaling his scents all mixed together, until Xiao Xingchen presses a light kiss on his forehead, his lips slowly gaining back their human-like temperature now that his shadows are gone, and smooths a palm over his tear-streaked cheek.

“Let’s take a bath,” he says, and Song Lan hums in agreement. “Zichen, can you stand?”

“In a moment” the man sighs, then prods at his legs all gone numb. Xue Yang ponders if he should apologise as he gathers himself up, but the soft look in Song Lan’s otherwise strict eyes convinces him that there’s no need for any.

They slowly make their way to the water, and Xue Yang feels immense relief that they can at least wash up before heading back to their camp. The weather is hot enough to warrant it, but now he is absolutely drenched in sweat.

The water draws out his remaining strength though, once he is kneeling in the shallow area, so having both of his lovers – both! – wash him is not just a sweet gesture, but also very much necessary.

It’s Song Lan’s promise to make him coffee that finally convinces him to force his legs into obeying until he is trying to navigate himself into his damp clothes, but the goal makes the stumbles worth it.

They are on their way to the camp a while later when Xue Yang realises what has been bugging him ever since Song Lan apologised. He said they never lied, and he believes it.

“What about that sorry loser of a man, though? The one you said would come after us with his friends?” It’s a surprise, he can see, that he asks it, but not in any way that would be alarming.

“I'm not sure. We've been travelling at a rather relaxed speed, so it shouldn't have proven impossible to catch up to us. Maybe they have given up on pursuing you.” Xiao Xingchen answers first, and honestly Xue Yang would not be surprised if that half-wit decided that since he couldn’t hit a target even if his gun is right against it, maybe he should not pursue revenge with a pistol in hand.

“It wasn't a lie” Song Lan adds with his head hung in shame. “Although it did give us a good reason to come after you. I can see why it would look…”

Xue Yang grabs his arm and pulls him to a stop, then silences him with a short kiss, just a minute little touch of lips against lips.

“You just told me that you never lied, only omitted the fact that you knew of my wanted poster and that you wanted to see how much truth was behind the worst crime detailed on it. I believe you. You needn't apologise any further, okay?”

Song Lan nods, and Xingchen beams at the both of them, bright and joyous, and it is just as infectious as it is beautiful, and Xue Yang finds himself smiling back.

**

After that, things change just enough for Xue Yang to fall into a sense of security and joy he has all but given up on. He can see that the same is true for A-Qing as well – her laughter, along with that mischievous spark in her eyes, is returning slowly but surely as the days roll into weeks of travelling together, farther away from the memory of ghouls of slaughter and grief. Sometimes they sit together in front of the fire at night and they talk, sometimes with their tears flowing and sometimes with small laughs following their conversation. Xue Yang is sure they will mourn Thomas and Hattie forever, but he feels that remembering the good things is getting easier while the rawness of the horror they lived dim each time they talk about it.

Having Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen with them also makes him feel safer, so they decide to visit some more towns, mainly to get more rations to carry. Sometimes he puts on a whole show if there are no fast-draw competitions happening, and when there are he teaches arrogant competitors what hitting a mark looks like.

Visiting a town also comes with the added bonus of being able to rent rooms and sleep in beds instead of on the ground. He's not one to complain, but when he first stretches out on a straw mattress after a long while on the road, he feels just a bit like cursing out his bedroll. The only thing that's enjoyable in both cases is the fact that he can share his space with his new lovers, be it a bed or a piece of fabric on the ground. Sometimes it's the both of them, and sometimes when the moon is exceptionally beautiful and draws Xingchen out on a late-night walk, it's only Song Lan. But even on those occasions Xingchen is back before they could wake, taking his place next to them.

It’s been two weeks since Song Land and Xiao Xingchen came clear and explained everything to him, but if those guys truly set out after them, he is sure they already turned back and went home to boast about their mediocre shooting skills and an adventure that might have only happened in their alcohol-haze filled dreams.

This particular morning finds them in a small settlement that has only started to grow itself into a proper stopping point with a saloon and a general store, the wares of which they made a considerable dent in the day before. When Xue Yang blinks open his eyes, heavy from a good night’s rest, he is greeted by the sun streaming in the slightly dirty windows, glinting off the dust motes swirling about in the room. He hums a content little sound into the warm flesh just beneath his face, listening to the slow, relaxed rhythm of the heartbeat of the man he’s lying atop.

“It’s a most welcome sound, isn’t it?” Xingchen asks from behind him, his voice barely a whisper. His fingers are cold against Xue Yang's sleep-warmed skin, and the path they trace over is now a routine. His back is still a raised maze of scars, but Song Lan said just a few days before that they look normal, on the path towards healing fully. He said the scarring would probably remain for life, but the tenderness around the worst ones would also fade with time. It’s a comforting thought that someday the pain will be gone, just like the ghouls that killed Thomas and Hattie and tried to kill him to get to A-Qing, but he – along with the damned scars – will still be there. If only the rest of them would appear already, so they could fight and win, and put all of this behind their backs.

Xue Yang offers a slow hum as an answer, not yet ready to break free from this peaceful, comfortable moment. He waits until Song Lan also stirs, dozing with Xingchen’s cool fingers now splayed over his chest, over his own heart.

Getting ready for the day is its own special kind of intimacy he’s only getting used to. Xiao Xingchen is sitting on the bed, his posture rigid and flawless, a serene smile on his face, while Song Lan stands behind him and braids his hair with gentle hands, and with a sleepy squint that will remain until he gets out of the door. It is such a stark contrast to how the two of them appear during the day – Song Lan with a severe and serious look, and Xiao Xingchen with an all but constant serene smile. He likes these moments, and he likes it even more when he finds that he fits into them. Song Lan shifts to him once he is done with Xingchen, and proceeds to comb his hair, longer than proper but too short to be put into a braid that would look good. On certain days, Xingchen will hum some tunes that are crystalline like the morning waves in a clear river, and on other he will tell them small stories, some of them made up and some of them detailing a life in a huge cave-colony that seems just as fantastic. When Xue Yang asks one day if he ever regrets the choices that got him sent away, Xingchen looks at him and at Song Lan behind him, then slowly shakes his head.

“I’m where I want to be the most,” he says, and Xue Yang wishes he had a camera to capture that brilliant smile that he gives them.

Whenever he thinks of that answer, he thinks of where he’d want to be – and a small part of him regrets that he cannot say it with the same conviction. He is happy, and he is beyond sure he is where he is meant to be, where his home is forming, day by day – and yet he wishes he met them under different circumstances. They could have stopped at the Walkers’ homestead to ask for lodging for the night, or they could have run into him at the store when he was picking up things for Hattie. He knows he’d have been drawn to them even then, without a doubt. If only fate did not take away a family to give him another.

He notices that as time goes on, both him and A-Qing look back at the good days more readily than at the bad. He knows it’s bound to happen, and he welcomes the lessening of grief, still ever so minute, with open arms. Even if it still carries the sting of loss, reminiscing about their life at the homestead does bring the both of them joy and laughter more easily. After a while, when Song Lan or Xiao Xingchen asks why Hattie said something or why Thomas decided to keep that three-legged calf, Xue Yang has a realisation. He wants them to know his employers-turned-parents as he knew them, as he strives to remember them even through the grief he feels – happy and full of life, ready to offer help and a loving home.

A-Qing and him are talking, detailing a market day they went to with Thomas, where almost everything went to shit due to some pigs that got lose, and which was still nothing short a very delightful outing, when she suddenly stops laughing and Xingchen looks at something in the distance.

“We’re going to have some company” he announces. He sounds calm, but there is a sharper edge to his voice, and Xue Yang knows he is not talking about anyone friendly. “A dozen of them.”

“Yeah,” A-Qing nods, and frowns in the same direction Xingchen is staring at, distaste much more visible in her expression. “It’s the smelly idiot.”

“The one from back… Oh crap,” Xue Yang laughs, then shakes his head in disbelief. “They are some of the most persistent fuckers, then.”

“And the most pitiful losers”

“That too,” It is true, and he simply cannot imagine how badly a loss can sting to motivate someone into such a long chase. Especially after he left a good portion of those winning at the local store, he has no idea what they could want from him. “How long until they get here?”

Xingchen looks at the horizon where the sun is just about to disappear behind the far-away line of mountains. “Not that long; they will still see just good enough to cause trouble.”

“Good,” he nods and pats down the dirt of his trousers as he stands. “I can answer in kind then.”

By the time the group appears, Xue Yang’s blood is boiling with anticipation – if they bring violence to his new family, he shall answer in kind. He has no illusions about their intentions; since a month has already passed and they are still on their trail, he is more than sure that they are here to do harm. What they don’t know is that if they start any trouble, they will be the ones who stay in the dirt for the vultures to feed on, and if for some reason his skills or Song Lan’s fail, Xiao Xingchen and A-Qing will grant them a slower, more painful end.

A-Qing looks out for blood, nothing showing on her face but grim determination, to kill them all or to restrict herself Xue Yang has no idea. She walks to his bags like she owns them and grabs his rifle. Xiao Xingchen is busy herding their horses to a tree a bit farther away, tying their reins around it loosely, while Song Lan checks his guns, then holsters them with a satisfied nod. Xue Yang checks his own, makes sure that his knife is securely on the other side of his hips. It’s quite an advantage, to know of their approaching presence, and he is very grateful to have it – but it grates on his nerves all the same to have them possibly lurking about in the semi-dark that has now fallen on the land.

In just a couple of minutes it turns out he was worried for nothing. They ride in with full speed and with no intention to hide at all, their horses kicking up the dust into a thick cloud around themselves. Now even Xue Yang can hear it all, not only the thudding of many hooves, but also the shouts of the men riding them. He can see metal glinting on their shrouded figures, but he knows better than to shoot first. Xingchen said twelve, and Xue Yang trusts both his senses and his word – but he can only count ten. It might be getting harder to see, but he is sure he has not missed any of them. He risks a sideways glance at the others, and while Song Lan is standing tall, staring at the incoming horde with an unwavering focus, Xingchen is looking at him with a sly grin – he also noticed it then. Behind Xingchen, rifle ready in her hands, is A-Qing. She is turning, ever so slowly around her axis, as if following something moving around their group just out of his sight. There are smaller patches of bushes, scattered about trees that that look sickly but somehow still manage to last, so he can’t be sure what she’s tracking, but he has an idea.

“I’ll watch them” A-Qing says, quiet, then turns back to the arriving rest of the dozen. It’s quite cunning on her part, not giving away that they know.

“You!” The one Xue Yang bested shouts even before he could bring his horse to a stop. “

"Is his money worth dying for? Money he doesn't even have?" Xue Yang yells back, and he is only guessing, but the amount he won from the asshole was quite substantial. And it has been over a month.

"Why do you care, little runt?" One of the more trigger-happy looking ones asks, and Xue Yang guesses he really is only there for the violence. He looks at his haggard clothes, the unkempt beard and hair on his head, and turns back to the sorry leader of the group.

"Oh, I don't" He laughs and watches the man who seems to be glancing behind them with barely veiled concern. A-Qing is still, as is Xingchen, so whatever the group planned must be going sideways. "I was simply kind, giving you an out. But if you don't want it... It's all the same for me."

His hand slides towards his gun, just a bit – but someone sees it, and the first shot rips through the cooling air like the first thunder of a storm. The ground somewhere between him and Xiao Xingchen shatters on impact, and Xue Yang feels like laughing again. If his friends are as good a shot as this man was at the competition, they might just get a nice shooting practice out of this. Although the ten against four ratio means they could simply get lucky and hit one of them, he trusts that they will be faster. And now that they shot at them, it is nothing more than self-defence to shoot back.

His gun goes off the same time Song Lan’s does. One of their opponents slumps forward on his rather spooked horse, while the one who took a shot at him and missed falls off of his. Xue Yang sees one figure stand up in the saddle and raise a rifle, but soon he is being tugged down and away from the animal under him until he is at Xiao Xingchen’s feet. Xingchen looks at him, and Xue Yang suspects that what is a most wondrous sight for him in this moment, might look like the worst devil to the man. He does not get to look for long though – the tendrils of dark snap his neck without mercy barely a second after his body stops moving.

There is a shout from the remining seven, yells about a devil and witchcraft filling the air around them, along with the scared neighing of horses and the cocking of several guns all at once. In the next few heartbeats, several more of them meet their end, but Xue Yang is still unharmed, and as far as he can tell, so are the others. He is ready to take the shot he’s been itching for, to teach to that idiot what it means to hit the target, when it happens.

A-Qing snaps her head around towards their backs, and the sound that comes from her freezes the blood in Xue Yang’s veins. He looks, and he sees from his periphery that Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen do so as well – and it is so much worse than what he could have prepared himself for.

Their eyes are gleaming in the semi-dark as the ghouls emerge; two of them carrying the corpses of humans in their bloodied maw. Xue Yang lets out a string of curses and tries to position himself so he can keep an eye on their human adversaries and the beasts alike, but soon it proves to be of no use. One flings itself at A-Qing, and it seems that Xiao Xingchen’s theory holds – it could have probably injured her, but that does not seem to be its goal. It looks like it is trying to grab at her rather than maim, not that she is letting any of that happen. She drops the rifle when the creature gets far too close for it to be of any use, and tackles it to the ground. They are far too intertwined and fast for Xue Yang to risk taking a shot, so he turns back into the fray and guns down the ghoul that is about to jump at Song Lan’s back. He is yanked to the side then, then he sees a particularly aggressive and ugly ghoul chomp down on their air just where his head was a moment before, and Xue Yang pats at the thing around his midsection that pulled him to safety. The shadow-mist gives way under his fingers, and leaves a familiar cold sensation in its wake as it disperses. He shoots, one – two – three bullets into the ghoul, then dodges the claws that were meant to severe his head from his neck.

It's only then that he hears the sudden neighing of a horse and an angry yell he chances a look towards the edge of the fight – he sees a human trying to bring one of the spooked horses to a halt probably so he can mount up. Even at first glance, he does not look like any one of the ten – he is far too well dressed, for one – and he is far too alive to have been one of the two the ghouls tore apart. It clicks just as the man flings himself into the saddle and urges the horse to turn in a language he doesn’t know – this man must not leave. This man must not live. His pistol is empty, and his knife would not travel that far, but A-Qing’s rifle is on the ground where she dropped it earlier, and Xue Yang makes a dash for it.

“He’s getting away!” He shouts, and hastens to check if the gun is loaded. This must be his luckiest day ever, because it still is. He hears an agonising scream, and knows that one more of their pursuers has fallen to the ghouls’ attack. It does not matter. What matters is stopping the sorcerer.

He raises the rifle and only allows himself the time it takes to take a deep breath to take the shot. It rings out loud, but it is almost nothing compared to the blood thudding through his veins. It is most certainly nothing next to the screech that comes from right behind his back. It sounds like all of the remaining creatures shriek at the same time, just as the rider’s body slumps to the side and off the saddle, lifelessly falling to the ground.

He swivels back towards the ghouls and sees most of their cat-like glowing eyes all trained on him. One is busy getting ripped to shreds by Xiao Xingchen’s shadows, and one is locked in a stare-down with A-Qing, paying attention to only her in their deadly stalemate. But the rest is all focused on him alone, blood and saliva dripping from their muzzles as they hunch on themselves, coiling like a spring, and he knows he is fucked.

In the next seconds, several things happen.

First, he feels a punch hit his left arm, then he hears a far-away shout from Song Lan, closely followed two shots ringing out of his pistol. He is sure no one stood close enough to hit him, so he looks down in confusion. There is a dark spot on his shirt sleeve, just below his shoulder, and the pain blossoms into a sharp focus just as the realisation hits him. There must have been someone still alive from their pursuers’ group – and he took a shot at him instead of the ghouls.

A broken laugh stumbles past his mouth, and pushing through the pain he grabs at his knife with his right hand. He can still fight. Him with a knife against several ghouls is not the best odds he’s ever had, but he has to try. He wheezes out a sharp breath, then lunges for the closest ghoul. He will not wait for them to take initiative.

His blade makes quick work on the first one, a stab into the eye, as deep as he can push it. Before he could move on, he is slammed into from the left, and the pain that erupts in his entire body is blinding. The scream he lets out is horrifying, even to his own ears, but the pain is worse. It radiates from his side, hot and wet and too much, and he stumbles away from his kill. His fingers slip from the hilt of his dagger, and he feels the whole world tilt around himself. It almost does not register that his knees hit the ground, it is such a small hurt compared to what is coursing through the rest of him. His right hand reaches toward the pain, and what he feels there makes him retch. He can touch blood, sticky and warm, and something that could be flesh if not for the mangled texture.

His vision returns, the white spots of pain slowly clearing away as his heart speeds up and his instincts start to scream at him to just live – and there is the ghoul that got him. It looks like a nightmare with blood, flesh and the remains of his short hanging from his teeth.

“Fuck you,” he seethes, and looks it square in the eye. He has looked death in the face many times before, and it has never been this ugly. “You utter bastard.”

The ghoul moves, and Xue Yang forces himself to keep his eyes on it – he will not cover, he will not go out like that, fuck these things – and still, the world goes dark. He knows he is still conscious with his eyes still open, the pain and his racing heart tell him so, but for a moment he sees nothing. Then, soft hands wrap around him, and the darkness pulls back, slow and sluggish like molasses, to reveal a right carnage. All the remaining ghouls are on the ground around him, blood pouring from so many wounds he can barely see their original pale complexion.

There is a broken, keening sound next to his left ear, it is pitiful and scared, and he lifts his hand from the wound on his side to caress Xingchen’s face with it. He turns his head and looks at him, at the utter horror on that elegant, pretty face, the eyes that are pure black and so incredibly full of fear.

“You got them,” he laughs, just a little because Xingchen should not be sad, but it hurts bad enough to turn the words into a cough that makes everything a lot worse. It is not funny, Xue Yang thinks, and squeezes his eyes shut. He knows Xiao Xingchen is supposed to be cold, especially in this state, but all he can feel is fire enveloping his entire body, even where he or his shadows are touching him.

“A-Yang,” he hears Xiao Xingchen whisper, and he feels the pain flare up in his side as something strong and smoke-like presses against the wound. “I’m so sorry…”

“Don’t,” he mouths the words, the pain keeping his voice back. It only gets worse when something touches his arm, moves it and prods at the flesh around the bullethole so insistently, he has to swat at it.

“We have to stop the bleeding” If there is anything more frightening than the level of pain and dizziness he feels, it is the dread bleeding through Song Lan’s words.

“But the bullet is still in there!” A-Qing’s shouting, and it would be annoying if it was not her, and if it wasn’t laced with concern.

“And it stays until a doctor can get it out,” Song Lan’s voice drifts through his head, but it is unusually far away. Is he not right next to him? He could have sworn it was Zichen who kept prodding at his arm. He almost laughs again when the words somehow come into their meaning in his brain. Doctors are pretty rare around these parts. He truly is fucked.

He listens to them talk and argue, and soon he loses interest in what they might be discussing. The most important thing is that he can still hear them. That means they have not abandoned him.

He knows he gets lifted on a horse, he even tries to help, but he feels both frozen and burning up at the same time, his legs nothing but a far-away weight he cannot control. He feels another body slide behind him, and the voice that speaks in his ear confirms it to belong to Xingchen. He feels safe even when they start trotting away and the pain thunders through all of his bones with each step the horse takes.

He doesn’t really know what’s happening by the time they stop – but he can hear voices, and for some reason he feels safe. At one point he’s pulled down somewhere and the swaying stops in his body but not in his head. It feels nice, for a while, and then the voices get a bit louder, a bit more in his ear – then the pain comes, but it is muted, in a rather familiar way. He tries to grab at it, but then his good hand, the right one – that is still intact, thank all the powers that be – is held back. There is more pain, a new kind, as if something was tearing at his flesh, and he tries to stop it, but his right hand is useless and the words feel fuzzy and weak on his tongue. Warmth trickles down his left arm, although it feels hot enough for that to feel impossible – but it is happening, and he does not like it at all. There is pressure after that, and Xue Yang likes it even less, and it doesn’t seem to stop. It goes on forever. Even as the voices fade, as the not-swaying place beneath him disappears, the crushing force around an arm that seems not his own remains, and the hurt becomes the only thing he knows.

**

It feels like nothing and it is over within an instant, like those nights of sleep one gets more tired from rather than less. When his eyes open, he is disoriented and uncomfortable, but he would not be able to find a good reason why.

Then, he notices that he is turned towards a wall – and he does not remember falling asleep next to one. Now that he thinks about it, he does not even remember wanting to sleep, or preparing for it. He rolls onto his back, and the sudden stab in his side slams every memory back in place. The ghouls – the one lone human who’d rather off him. He feels his pulse plummet as he yanks his right hand to his left arm – and it is more than simple relief when he finds the limb there, every part of it down to his four fingers intact. He lifts it slowly, just a little, and while it twinges with pain, it is manageable. He grins, then he starts laughing. It tears free of his chest unbridled and unstoppable, and lasts until his tears are rolling past his ears into his hair. He is here, and the ghouls are not.

When Xiao Xingchen comes to check in on him a mere few minutes later, with a cup held in his hand, he looks almost as relieved as Xue Yang feels.

“How are you feeling?”

“Parched,” he rasps, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. “Alive.”

Xiao Xingchen helps him drink, holds his head and tilts the cup filled with the best tasting water back away from him so he slows down and doesn’t choke. He still gives him a side-eye for it, but Xingchen is generous and warm-hearted and he just smiles at his antics. He presses a kiss to his brow once he’s horizontal again, and Xue Yang would demand more if this did not feel just about perfectly enough. He reaches out and runs his fingers over Xingchen’s braid, falling over his shoulder, and smiles at him until sleep claims him again.

Next time it’s a blanket that waits for him to wake up – it is next to the bed he just now realises is actually made of stone and outfitted with a straw mattress. He hums at the discovery. This is far too much stone to be where they were at the time of the attack.

“Where are we?” he asks the blanket, and it does not answer for a while. Then it shifts, and soon A-Qing’s head sticks out of it. Her hair is in a bun, messed up by the blanket, and Xue Yang spies a little fox-shaped wooden hairpin sticking out of it. Her eyes are a blood-shot pink instead of her usual white.

“Xingchen brought us to his home” she says finally, silent and withdrawn, just like after the Walkers’ demise. “His master saved you.”

“His home?” Xue Yang looks around, and it is the same stone walls he saw earlier, but now he is even more curious to learn more about it. Xingchen did mention caves, that’s where he found that ring, too, isn’t it? But was he not banished from there?

A-Qing nods, and bites her lip until it turns white around her teeth.

“Don’t be this stupid again” she says slowly, and Xue Yang hears the plea not to leave her alone in the tone.

“I won’t.” It is an easy promise to make – and he thinks it will be easy to keep too. He wants to stick around these three, wants to travel and then settle down, go to bed with his lovers and drink coffee with her on nights that are too cold and too full with shared ghosts. He wants the good and the bad and everything in-between, for as long as he can have it with them by his side.

Song Lan arrives once night falls, with a bowl of soup that smells like it’s rich in meat and vegetables, and Xue Yang’s stomach growls, impatient and empty to the point of pain.

“Slowly,” Song Lan advises after he props him up against the cave’s wall. He sits on the bed too, with the bowl and spoon in his ungloved hands and a fright not yet fully gone in his eyes. He holds out the first spoonful, and as much as he wants to swallow it right away, Xue Yang takes his time to chew the meat and the piece of potato. He savours the taste, the warmth of it as he swallows it down, and briefly he is reminded a time his ma fed him congee. He likes being cared for, he decides, and lays his hand on Song Lan’s thigh, then gives him a look he fears tells too much about his heart.

“I knew you wouldn’t leave me” he says, and feels his eyelids grow heavy with tears he did not even know were building up.

“How could we?” Song Lan asks, and he is saying it as if he was asking how could the sun not come up in the morning, or how could the seasons not roll around in the right order. It makes something in Xue Yang crumble, and he continues to eat as Song Lan feeds him the entire bowl, letting his tears roll over his face in silence. They both seem to understand that they are not tears of grief or sorrow, but of relief.

**

It takes weeks for him to get fit for travel, and during those weeks he has little more to do than rest. At first, he is advised to take small walks around his own cave-room then get back to bed by a severe-looking woman, whom Xue Yang cannot imagine with a smile at all. She remains tight-lipped about everything; the place, the state of his wounds or his recovery, and most importantly about her person. It's A-Qing who tells him one day, that the woman is supposed to be the master who sent Xiao Xingchen away, and that is enough to have him stop pestering her for a conversation when she next checks his wounds and applies a fresh layer of salve and bandages. He feels conflicted, as he is more than thankful that he got to live where most people would have perished – from the blood loss, from infection, from the severe dehydration he arrived with, and yet he feels troubled that she has to be the recipient of said gratitude. It is indeed an interesting thing, he observes as the days turn and he catches more instances of Baoshan Sanren stepping past Xiao Xingchen without a word, a nod of her head or any other sign of her acknowledging his presence. It stings that he now owes his life to someone who refuses to see the wonder that this man is, fully human or not.

He shares his thoughts with Song Lan one day, coffee held both in their hands, steaming peacefully into the cool air of the cavern. The man nods at the notion, and takes a sip of his drink instead of answering right away.

“She wanted to turn us away, at first,” he finally speaks, and Xue Yang is not surprised by what he hears. Banishments are usually for forever. “But then Xingchen told her that if you died because she refused to help, it would kill something in him too. She had you taken to this room then, and laboured over your wounds for hours.”

“She was still worried about him? She could fool me with her lack of reaction whenever they are in the same room.” Once again, he thinks of the times they went past each other, with no reaction from her, and only a wistful look from him directed in her direction.

“No,” Song Lan sighs, and takes hold of Xue Yang’s hand. “She looked afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of Xingchen. What he could do if his humanity was completely gone.” He speaks it without fear, as a simple explanation for her behaviour, but he never denies that he believes it a possibility.

“He’s too good to let that happen,” Xue Yang leans his head against Song Lan’s shoulder and slides his thumb across his knuckles gently, pulling his hand up his mouth. He kisses the bare skin and delights in the small hitched intake of breath from above his head. “You know that. Xingchen is powerful and different, and so much more than you or I – but above everything, he is good.”

“It’s a shame she doesn’t remember that. It’s a shame he can no longer come home here.”

“Wait until we find your perfect place,” Xue Yang grins, and pulls away so he can look at Song Lan with all the confidence in the world. “And then we’ll build him a new one.”

**

The perfect place exists. It is a piece of land next to a river where the sunsets are golden, the wind fresh and playful and the ground fertile enough to cultivate.

The house goes up soon, and then the barn; building them is about child’s play with Xiao Xingchen around.

It is a new beginning for all of them, unfamiliar and challenging, but also theirs to form however they see fit. They start a garden, mainly for their own sustenance, and Xue Yang keeps prodding at Xingchen to share his knowledge on how to cultivate it into something bountiful and healthy until a whole notebook is filled with advice. He spends most of his time there, caring for the plants while A-Qing is doting on their newly acquired animals. It is both baffling and a pleasant surprise that it wasn’t only the Walkers’ animals that took to her, but he is not complaining. Absolutely every creature in the barn adores and trust her, and she protects them and cares for them in turn. Xiao Xingchen busies himself with turning the bare bones of the house into something pleasant and warm, and takes up needlework to do more than simply mend his own clothes. The first curtains and bedsheets show that knowledge is good but not enough, but he is more than determined to gain the experience needed for making them better. The quilt A-Qing receives on what she assumes to be her birthday stands to prove his success at it. The kitchen almost solely becomes Song Lan’s domain where the wood takes on the smell of coffee and spices after a while. Their kettle and four travel mugs hang from a beam, and when they are in a reminiscing mood, Song Lan brews them a drink and they sit around the table, A-Qing bundled in her new quilt.

It is a good home, Xue Yang thinks as his eyes grow heavy with sleep after they are done celebrating their first year there, his head pillowed on Song Lan’s arm and his back cooled by Xiao Xingchen’s chest, and a good life.