Crimson and Clover

The Ghost Holds a Wedding - Part 7

Morning comes hidden in San Lang's touch and whispers of love and devotion he's mouthing into Xie Lian's back.

The night brought them no sleep. They clung to each other, filled with desperate longing and overwhelming relief. Never before had San Lang spoken Xie Lian's name so openly, so often; as if he feared the world would disappear if he didn't, as if he hoped to shape it as he wished, as if no other words mattered. Xie Lian, in turn, held him in an embrace so tight that the sensation of it dulled every other sense but touch. His godhood didn't matter, constrained by the shackles as it was, and the flux of ghostly nature he couldn't even grasp yet was irrelevant – not now, not when San Lang was shaking in his arms.

Everything changed, but San Lang remained the same and Xie Lian was more than happy to build himself anew around him. He's a god who is a ghost, he's a contradiction made out of mistakes and regrets, he's the one who walks hand in hand with misfortune and decay and who holds those who got lost between the time and the passing.

It's about time he stopped running away from it.

"San Lang?" he asks, safe and content in the embrace. Now that he knows about the divinity underlying the foundations of San Lang's power, he feels it thrum against his skin; gently, quietly, like a distant roar of an incoming thunderstorm.

Would it grow if he fed it with belief and patient devotion? Would San Lang even want that?

"Yes?" San Lang stops what he's doing and just presses himself to Xie Lian's back. The soft fabric of their nightclothes is a luxury Xie Lian still can't get accustomed to. "Is something troubling you?"

"Do you know what happened to Ming Yi?"

San Lang's faux breath tickles the skin on the back of Xie Lian's neck. Distantly, he realises his own breathing is fake. He's been breathing out of sheer habit, out of the lack of awareness he didn't need to. Even now his mind rebels at the thought of stopping and the lungs he no longer has constrict painfully at the prospect of no air.

He knows he's too calm about this. He's always been too calm with whatever new calamity the world decided to throw at him. Every time he's taken it in stride and emerged on the other side, battered and bloodied but victorious. If he's dead, then so be it.

It's not like it changes anything.

"Someone killed him but I haven't found out who it was yet." San Lang's voice is a gentle rumble against Xie Lian's back. He could listen to it for hours. "Whoever it was, they sure had the guts to do it on my doorstep."

"Do you have any idea who it could be?"

"Someone either incredibly stupid or powerful enough to disregard the consequences. Both possibilities are just as problematic."

And Xie Lian can't even help, with his spiritual powers locked away in the shackle around his neck. Maybe that's for the best – the last thing San Lang needs right now is a rapid wave of misfortune unravelling his efforts to keep the situation under control.

So he turns around instead and buries his face in San Lang's neck, holding onto him just as tight as he did at night, and for a moment neither of them say anything. There's no need for words. Xie Lian lets his body speak instead – he forges consonants from the slide of his fingers over San Lang's back and invokes vowels to life under his lips on San Lang's neck. San Lang gives him back broken sighs and sharp intakes of breath he doesn't need; responds with touch and heated glances, reading Xie Lian as expertly as a scholar would a book.

There's a beast growing in Xie Lian – a sluggish behemoth greater than any battle-induced bloodlust. It wants to pull San Lang to itself and never let go, wants to crawl all over him and mark him as his. Xie Lian shudders what would happen if he let it.