Archive of Our Own

Under the splintering back porch is another face of the bar. Nothing like its front façade, well-lit; radius of a street lamp angled on the tarmac and BURIAL MOUNDS!! rigged high on the roof. Bubble font, the red and white neon making the bike racks glimmer.

“It’s like, a deep cut back there,” Wei Wuxian had joked into the crowd once, as the door slammed shut, knocked almost off its hinges. Hips encased in shredded black denim and angled into the mic stand. “For friends, fans and family only!” But he’d wrung his hands later, offstage. Doesn’t really like to know what it is that Song Lan does, when he takes someone out under the stairs, by the scruff of their neck or their arm twisted behind them. Averts his gaze whenever Song Lan returns solo; from the flesh of his knuckles scraped open, the scratches veering down his biceps. Turns the PA up against the noise.

Xiao Xingchen purses his lips. It’s hard not to notice the way Lan Wangji’s eyes start to narrow, if what trails back inside involves any trace of blood.

But they always deserve it. Rot makes things soft. It’s the same with racists. Cowering once the filth’s been kicked from their mouths. Men like that all look the same when they’re sprawled on the concrete, whether they’ve cut themselves from Proud Boy navy or decked themselves in stars and stripes. And these two jerks aren’t any different. Especially not now, dragged into a stilted pile by Xingchen’s feet. Clearly hazy from a few stray punches and yet puffed with bravado. Black band tees with their hair greased back; Skrewdriver and Whitehouse, no imagination at all. Only there seem to be more and more of them these days, barging into the Burial Mounds and looking for trouble, brandishing slurs or baseball bats or both. For all his queasiness, Xingchen knows Wei Wuxian’s grateful Song Lan’s there to help keep them out.  

That’s the thing about under the porch. It’s not exactly part of the bar, so house rules don’t apply. Hidden from plain view, it’s almost an enclosure, rickety in the dark. Moss spattered against the backs of wooden steps. Anything could happen, in this echoing quiet. A beam could crack. The structure above might give. It could bury them all. Xingchen finds it comforting, the apprehension that spikes the air. He smiles directly at the two culprits. Keeps his face open and knows it’s unnerving, the genuine sympathy for them that he’s put on display. Watches their throats bob with detached interest.

After all, there’s a reason Zichen’s moved them outside, and it’s not just for privacy. More for… convenience. These assholes, their eyes darting side-to-side in hopes of making an escape—

One of them jolts upright. “Listen, you fobby sons-of-bitches—” he tries.

Too bad. Xingchen doesn’t have the patience. “Take your pick, Zichen,” he chews his thumb lazily, right by the quick. “Go right ahead.”

And it’s pathetic really, how little of a fight they put up. Song Lan’s a shadow, but Xingchen would know where he was with his eyes closed; the air around him stirs like a caress. Song Lan throws a cool left hook; it makes a furious dent on the first man’s cheek as he reels. Counterpoint to how he nudges Xingchen out of the way. Gentle, proprietary; his elbow pressing low on Xingchen’s hip.  

He’s so beautiful like this. Xingchen can’t get enough—the efficiency with which Song Lan lands each hit. No turmoil in his movements, only brutal economy. Rigid sweep of his leg as he knocks one man’s feet out from under him before putting the second into an arm bar; using the leverage from how he struggles to send him fucking flying.

The moonlight’s dense tonight, buttery, catching golden on drifts of humid air. It makes Song Lan pale in contrast, like a wound sliced blueish before first blood, until—yeah, there it is—frothing red and volcanic from one scumbag’s nose right as he starts to beg. Song Lan’s deaf to it, wipes his hand off brusquely on his jeans, but the sound of pained gasping goes straight to Xingchen’s dick. Thump of meat against wooden decay. Something achingly simple about Song Lan hauling two unconscious bodies past the dumpsters and out to the street. It makes Xingchen jealous to watch. Because—

Racists don’t deserve the space to fucking breathe.

Song Lan believes that. Xingchen leans on it, the ruthless certainty of his protection. No mercy where he himself might waver. A spot of blood near Song Lan’s flexed thumb. Xingchen would lick it from his fist.

He’s shaking now, and not with cold. Above him, he hears the door bang open. Wei Wuxian’s hesitant breathing, trying to figure out if it’s all over yet. “Hey what the fuck is up out here? Do y’all need like, uh, I don’t know, a beer or something. Or anything?” he calls.

Song Lan scoffs. It isn’t not fond.

Music plays, as the world drifts back in. Not live though, it’s too tinny, reaching them in bursts. Low chatter, Lan Xichen, Nie Mingjue, whatever. In between sets; and Xingchen can hear the intermittent ripple of the hi-hat, the whine of a jack finding its amp as someone fiddles with their setup. The world wobbles. Near the ground, in the soil. He feels—

“Okay?” Curt, but Song Lan’s hand is loose on the nape of his neck. Xingchen can feel the concern in his fingers so he looks up. Looks reassuring, or tries to. 

Song Lan doesn’t buy it, judging by the noise he makes. But he follows Xingchen’s lead anyway, emerging carefully out from under the porch. It’s sweet how he tends to bump his head.  

The bar’s backyard is lit by generators, running energy up strands of tiny glowing bulbs. Annoyingly romantic, and inside, the vibe is different but not much better. They’re well into a weekend show night now—clamp lights turned hazy by Huaisang’s experiments with holographic gel filter. Writhing loud with bodies.

There’s a crowd gathering by the stage, mostly younger black and brown folks in heavy eyeliner and queer clout haircuts. Friends of A-Qing, who’s scowling at the drums, and when Xingchen walks back inside, he can’t help it. His eyes, grown used to the dark, blink and tear in the spotlight, and he thinks of the first time she’d played Burial Mounds with the two of them—harassed onstage by some dude who’d crept behind the drum kit to feel her up. Obviously, Zichen had broken the creep’s nose immediately, seconds before Mingjue could get between them, but he hadn’t really needed to. A-Qing had been right at his throat with a broken drumstick, screaming bloody murder. A miracle, to be honest, that Xingchen managed to stop her from taking a switchblade to his balls.

Tonight, she’s wearing an oversized tshirt that reads ROT AND DIE LIKE GOD INTENDED. Hair in messy double buns and her neon acrylic nails so long they’re probably functional weapons. “Thanks for coming out,” she deadpans. “We’re Smoking Bedbugs Gets U High, FYI!” Gives her sticks a vicious twirl, before diving into an uneven four count intro that seems specifically meant to give Song Lan hives.

Terrible band name, but it makes Xingchen smile. And this new throwback-riot-grrrl three-person outfit of hers isn’t half-bad. The vocalist’s more dream pop than post-hardcore, not typically to Xingchen’s taste, but there’s something about the sweetness of her voice that floats along, narcotic, making it easy to enjoy the ride even if the rhythm section’s driving rough. A-Qing could stand to pull back a little, he thinks. Let the melody breathe. Aggression isn’t the same as being in a rush. The band’s more than holding it together though and by the time they’re done with a zippy cover of Bikini Kill’s Feels Blind, there’s a decent mosh pit going; the room sucked breathless, musky with the weight of combined sweat.

“Hey, is there water?” A-Qing yells into her mic. “There’s so many of you I couldn’t get any before we came on. If someone could just like, pass some up to me that’d be really fucking cool.”

“We got you no problem,” Wei Wuxian hollers from behind the bar. Starts passing solo cups full of water forward hand-to-hand, liquid sloshing from overhead right into the crowd so that wild shrieking ensues—part-horrified, part-euphoric. Either way, bodies start slamming into each other with renewed vigor.

Nie Mingjue’s standing close to the edge of the pit, keeping an eye out for those who need to be bowled back into the fray. Lets that warm, booming laugh of his rip as droplets starts to fly; shaken loose from wet hair and tinted with cheap hair dye, slip-sliding between bodies down to puddles on the floor. Next to him, Lan Wangji’s still in his blue work shirt, not one button undone, but a telltale smidge of Wei Wuxian’s red lipstick splashed across his collar. He soaks in the pandemonium around him, unmoved. Directs a questioning eyebrow across the room at Song Lan instead, who just shrugs, as if to say, if there was going to be trouble, there isn’t any more.

Xingchen watches Song Lan’s jaw work.

“If he was going to narc, he would have done it already,” he points out softly. “We wouldn’t even be here.”

“Lawyers,” Song Lan mumbles.

“He’s kept more than one of us out of jail.”

Song Lan makes a noncommittal noise. But they both know it’s less of a matter of liking Lan Wangji or what he does than it is trusting him. Which, when pressed, Song Lan has grudgingly admitted he does.

After all, there’s a reason racist scum keep showing up to this bar in particular—their reputations as activists or radicals of varying degrees of militancy do all precede them.

Burial Mounds had always tried to keep a low profile as the local lefty punk venue slash watering hole. But things really leveled up when footage of Wei Wuxian went viral; of him at a protest destroying a fleet of cop cars with a well-placed series of Molotov cocktails. The case had quickly gone high profile in the media—prosecutors and police eager to make an example out of him—and the legal battle that followed had been torturous for their whole little circle. Months of Wei Wuxian being denied bail, facing over 60 years in prison and relentlessly doxed on the internet. Lan Wangji, working desperately around the clock to prep in case they had to go to trial, while the FBI showed up fucking everywhere, from Huaisang’s performance space to Mingjue’s boxing gym. Anywhere his friends or family lived or worked.

Even now, with the charges dropped and things relatively blown over, there’s still definitely a hit out on the Burial Mounds somewhere on the wrong message boards, the dark internet.

It’s made Lan Wangji especially… cautious. For lack of a better way to put it.

“No escalated violence inside the bar. No drugs. If the police come, you cannot retaliate,” he’d told Xingchen and Song Lan grimly, right after Wei Wuxian got out and before they’d reopened the bar. “I repeat, you cannot retaliate. This is not a site of civil disobedience. This is a business.”

“Aiya Lan Zhan, there’s literally no need to be like that! It’s a community space, that’s not how it works. What are you going to do, remove anyone who accidentally whacks the person next to them? Tell the Sunday morning needle exchange they have to find another venue? Shit is gonna happen because shit happens and people fucking hate us for being poor or not white or weird, you can’t change it or control it. We’re just going to keep doing what we’ve always done. A broken window here and there isn’t going to hurt anyone—”

“Hitting a person intent on doing harm to us isn’t going to hurt anyone,” Xingchen had amended lightly.

“Assaulting a police officer,” Lan Wangji replied evenly, “is a felony.”

“And policing is racist,” Song Lan had muttered, in a tone of such finality that it had sent Wei Wuxian into hysterics and put a sheen of polite vindication all over Xingchen’s face.

They’d all come to a grudging détente though, none of them really the type to let ideological differences get in the way of the fact that they’re on the same side, and there’s a lot of fucking work to do. The don’t-ask-don’t-tell, if-I-didn’t-see-it-it-didn’t-happen approach’s worked well enough till now. At least Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji respect Xingchen and Song Lan’s perspective as a sign of commitment, believe in a diversity of tactics, and don’t get in their way. Which is more than Xingchen can say about some of the other show bookers and venue managers in town, who treat them as unnecessary trouble at best and political extremists at worst.

The truth is, even if Song Lan finds the law intrinsically oppressive and due process to be a waste of time; even if Lan Wangji can barely stomach property damage, let alone Song Lan’s practices of uh, community safety, the two of them are more alike than they’d care to admit. Both compelled by an urgent need to protect others. Both cleaving to their differing principles not out of simplicity or inflexibility, but security. A kind of necessity of belief—that so long as certain codes are followed, justice and safety can be guaranteed to those they love most.

Xingchen thinks it’s a form of survival. For Song Lan, he knows it might be, anyway.

Still, he likes watching it happen—the moments conviction settles into Song Lan's body. Shoulders rolled back, his elbows leaned on the bar. Seemingly relaxed, but just one swift movement away from getting into fighting stance. He’s wearing his old Suicidal Tendencies shirt tonight; a dent of worry creased between his brows and leather jacket slung from one shoulder. Combat boots and suspenders. All lean muscle, sure, but fine wrists and jutting ankles too. Contrast gathering at the angles of him.

It’s near 2AM. Things getting increasingly tangled and chaotic around them as the pit migrates and grows, A-Qing’s band’s gone for a trashy, bugged-out punk sound on their final song and the crowd’s thirsty for its speed, tripping over the tempo. Yelling with their tongue heavy and hearts pumping together; breath given and taken in rhythm with the world and its neverending season of death. Huaisang’s head tossed back, body trimmed with fishnets and leather. A-Qing shrieking like she’s Yoko Ono's illegitimate daughter. Dimples at the side of Mingjue’s catcall. The blinking lights.

Xingchen yearns for the split-second moments like this. Where things feel true; and he doesn’t have to exhaust himself questioning them.

Next to him, Song Lan’s got a bruise, purpling next to his mouth. He thumbs at it absently, head shorn and vulnerable like a lamb—and Xingchen’s heart aches with the paradox of him. How he’ll whittle abstract ethics down to a strike of his fist. The unflinching suspicion he displays with strangers and yet the childish way he’ll tilt his chin; let Xingchen buzz his hair.

“Zichen,” he says and sees the force of his tone travel the length of muscle in Song Lan’s shoulder. That involuntary shiver. “Come here,” Xingchen says, and takes his hand, closes Song Lan's fingers gently around the span of his neck.

Song Lan is trembling, his eyes dazed with florescent stage light. “Xingchen,” he tries, and fights to keep his grip loose. He always gets like this after beating someone to a pulp. Frightened to own up to his strength. Scared it’ll bleed into where the violence’s not meant to go.

“It’s okay,” Xingchen soothes. Shifts closer to show he’s unafraid; to feel the hitch of Song Lan’s breath, the heat rumbling through his body. Song Lan’s thumb twitches, digging into Xingchen's carotid.

It’s incredible to Xingchen—how even Song Lan’s want for him can be so natural, uncomplicated. Affirming in a way that tugs at his very core—

And he can’t help it, sliding his lips greedily against Song Lan’s. Pulling him into the storage alcove offside from the stage, where they’re mostly out of sight. Wedged between the mops and gallons of detergent. Empty kegs. Song Lan falls immediately to his knees, pressing openmouthed kisses to the skin between Xingchen’s cropped shirt, the waistband of his jeans. Xingchen lets his body stutter with sensation. Falls back into the wall.

Song Lan flinches.

“No, touch me, Zichen, I want you to touch,” Xingchen sighs and drags Song Lan’s hands up beneath his shirt. His palms are so big like this, laid over Xingchen’s ribcage. He’s panting now, quick gasps of air as his tongue draws a path from Xingchen’s bellybutton across to his hip.

Xingchen reaches down to catch a thumb between Song Lan’s lips and marvels at how striking he is when he’s consumed—with desire, with bloodlust. It’s all the same. Face gone lax and reverent. But Song Lan also gets ashamed, struggles to let anyone see the whole of him. Even Xingchen, who enjoys focusing the raw beam of his cold intensity and translating it for others. Who painstakingly smooths over the moments where Song Lan scrapes up against the grain of social grace, and loves him all the more for that honesty.

Xingchen, who sees the trust melting across Song Lan’s upturned face and presses his cock into the wet heat of his mouth; wants so desperately to ruin him.

He fucks Song Lan’s throat, agonizingly slowly, just to feel him clench and whimper. Pushes deeper and deeper till he sees tears spring to Song Lan’s eyes and his hands start to bruise where they’re digging into Xingchen’s waist. Till he can sense the strain in Song Lan’s jaw reach almost to breaking point.

He’s too obedient to ever stop or beg though.

“Yeah, that’s it Zichen, you can take it,” Xingchen whispers, too-kindly, and snaps his hips up to meet Song Lan’s mouth; purple and stretched-wide. Tears his gaze away from the sweet way Song Lan’s eyes roll back so he can look out vaguely into the crowd.

Because it feels so good like this, delicious and perverse; to lean into the shadows and hear the wet sounds of Song Lan choking on his cock, the screech of the overloaded amps. To watch all the people he trusts and cares for gathered in one place, and know that even if their individual faiths might falter, they do everything they fucking can to keep each other alive.

There’s a small scuffle though, at the back of the room. Mingjue pulling some kid upright by the neck of his tshirt, legs kicking helplessly into the air. Nabbed from the pit for trying to start a fight.

“Aw come on Da-ge, I didn’t do shit,” Xingchen hears the kid scoff. His eyes are bright and contemptuous in a way that suggests he’s secretly thrilled; his grin shaped around a hunger so intense that he probably has no idea what he’s even hungry for. The fall of his hair out of his scruffy ponytail and into his face would be innocuous if not for the way he’s trying to twist out of Mingjue’s grasp. Sly.

Something about it makes Xingchen’s stomach drop.

Shit, he thinks, and pulls his cock out of Song Lan’s mouth. “Let me see your tongue,” he hisses and jerks it frantically; as pleasure starts licking insistently up and down his spine. As Song Lan waits patiently, hands on his knees. Trying not to cough; his tongue stuck out and expression wrecked, unfocused. He’s so hard, Xingchen can see the outline of his dick through his jeans.

But Xingchen’s eyes keep sliding back to that kid, spidery with tattoos and flush with provocation. He’s pretty, but in a cracked, unvarnished way, like he can’t quite find the right veneer. The sinuous way his body bends as he takes a backhand swing at Mingjue and misses.

All of a sudden, Xingchen can sense it—the exact moment that the boy sees him watching. Right as he’s being hustled outside—an unceremonious “and don’t fucking come back unless you’re willing to behave,” growled out on Mingjue’s part. The boy’s lips are red, parted on a half-shocked little-O, but a sneer rushes into his eyes—obvious, flirtatious.

There’s a gust of cold wind as the emergency exit slams shut.

Xingchen comes messily, with a sob. All over Song Lan’s mouth, his chin; and the boy’s ferocious grin charred into his brain.


*


It would be a cosmic mystery to Xingchen, how that same boy starts showing up in his life all the time, all of a sudden. But he doesn’t believe in fate or luck, for that matter.

Not that he thinks humans are wholly responsible for the things that happen in their lives either. For Xingchen, there’s something in between, something bewitched about the way the universe continues to guide things. Like no matter how depraved the world gets, no matter how listless he feels about his own life, there’s still some vital force—coursing under the drought-dry soil, the cigarette butts and tarmac, candy wrappers and used condoms. Still power to be found in the detritus of a fancy civilization about to collapse. Especially if it’s harnessed collectively from that destruction.

And maybe ‘bewitched’ is the right word for the thrill Xingchen feels, when he sees the boy slouching in an alley, dodging the farmers’ market sunshine. Behind him at the drugstore, palming cheap kohl eyeliner into his pocket while Xingchen picks up moisturizer. Smoking a cigarette outside the laundromat that’s adjacent to the practice space him and Zichen like to use.

It’s not really an obsession if the object of your attention is following you around, Xingchen reasons.

It’s just that he’s not even sure exactly what it is about this boy that compels him. He certainly looks like he could use a square meal. On the skinny side; he has the hunted look of half the queer kids who show up to the Burial Mounds from being kicked out or whatever. But he doesn’t look remotely lost, like how animals are never truly lost for the instincts that kick in to protect them. Hides his face under that long hair half the time and yet when Xingchen catches his eye he never looks away, not from self-consciousness nor embarrassment. Instead, there’s always a vicious kind of triumph in his expression, like he wanted to be caught looking, like they’re both in on a joke.

Xingchen can’t parse it. It makes him nervous.

But whatever. He doesn’t have to know. Because he believes in agency, sure, his prerogative to make the hard, lonely choices in order to do good. He’s lived his whole life that way. Ever since he left the numb remoteness of Baoshan A-Yi’s farm though, he’s learned that people can show each other remarkable amounts of kindness and generosity—especially under duress. Xingchen also believes that his every choice has been made easier by those who’ve unwittingly crossed his path. Who’ve taught him about their experiences through the intimacy he values and tries to forge. Who’ve helped him figure out the best way to fight for what’s right, Zichen more than anyone.

And if this boy is meant to be in his life, there’s probably a reason for it.  

It’s not long before he sees him again, through the window of the post office. My Chemical Romance tshirt and jeans, a lithe shape halo-ed by the stenciled letters on the glass. Studded silver at the ears. He gives Xingchen a ghostly little wave. He’s wearing a half-glove on his hand, a prosthetic finger that stays uncannily rigid as his other ones waggle. It seems he’s taken a shortcut, wading through a prickly bush to get from the street to the sidewalk. There’s a long cut on his arm from the briars.

For a minute, Xingchen gets the urgent need to abandon the line of customers and go outside. Offer this not-quite-a-stranger a bandaid, or a sympathetic smile, some concern, finally. But then the boy lifts his arm to his mouth. Sucks at the wound for a long, hot moment before spitting blood out in a scornful arc onto the sidewalk.  

In the second that he smiles; and before he slinks away, Xingchen can see the red staining his teeth.


*


It’s not really a priority for Song Lan and Xingchen to gig these days. Both of them happy to cede the time to younger folk for whom it feels more energizing or life-sustaining to scrape their knees raw, their lungs sore. Plus, getting onstage for them hasn’t ever been about big public declarations of emotion or prescribed politics. People are familiar with what they stand for by other means; their music has always been a little more intimate, diffuse.

But Coffin Town’s well-known anyway, even if they only throw the occasional EP up on bandcamp and for free. Probably because Song Lan and Xingchen both play bass—there’s no guitar, just A-Qing backing them on drums, and it’s wild to most audiences that the three of them can conjure so much in their sets from so little. The spareness of the whole setup leaning more gritty goth-noise than it is post-punk, shaded by Xingchen’s breathy vocals and Song Lan’s deep murmur.

It’s been a long time since they’ve played the Burial Mounds though, and Xingchen’s forgotten how magical that particular venue can feel. Like a shared secret, a malleable architecture—ever-morphing alongside what its inhabitants experience together but don’t have to speak. Built out of that collective alchemy, when music tears through the air and arcs between bodies.

Especially tonight—a mutual aid fundraiser, and the crowd’s in good spirits. But when Coffin Town takes the stage, a hush of recognition spreads through the audience.

No one counts them in. Instead—

Ready, Xingchen asks silently, a question in his smile, and Song Lan launches into a gnarly riff. Snarl weighing the left side of his mouth and collarbones already glossed with sweat from the heat swirling up from bodies below, rising to the stage.

A-Qing laughs like a hyena; hurls a beat carelessly into the fray.

And Xingchen loves it, when he and Song Lan play face-to-face, coaxing totally different sounds out of the same instrument. Xingchen’s head tipped back into the light. Song Lan’s tucked into his chest. Until he glances up with intent and Xingchen catches his cue like an insect by the wings, tosses it right back. Rhythm flying between them; Xingchen making the arc of the melody swerve, Song Lan surging back in to round out the curve of his departure. A-Qing’s drums, more an erratic, skeletal rattle than backbeat.

Yeah, Xingchen loves it, those minutes onstage, when he can live in the kind of anger and hopelessness that doesn’t have to come with meaning or message, or any clear agenda. Only pain. Only the thrum of his bass and the crunch of the crowd, swelling through his pores in recognition of it, its existence. Their existence.

By the time the last note shudders through his amp, Xingchen can’t see the crowd from being blurry with tears. Chest heaving and throat ribboned from shrieking. People streaming around him; jostling past to the bar, outside to have a cigarette. Next to him, Song Lan stoops down to start methodically taking their tangle of cables and pedals apart. Xingchen takes a breath, trying not to be obvious about steadying himself.

Song Lan’s big hand clasps around his ankle. An anchor.

“Need air?” he asks. “I can finish up here and get water. Meet you outside.”

“I’m fine,” Xingchen says, automatically. “…actually no. Actually, yes.”

“Yes,” Song Lan repeats firmly. 

“Okay,” Xingchen smiles, shaky. “You’re good to me, Zichen.” He runs a hand indulgently over the fuzz on Song Lan’s skull. Feels Song Lan tilt minutely into his hand. The end of an XLR cable skitters out of Song Lan’s grasp, giving Xingchen a lurch of satisfaction. “Where’s A-Qing anyway, she bolted the second we were done.”

“Talking to a friend,” Song Lan nods towards the back.

Xingchen finds her after a bit of weaving through the crowd, twin buns bobbing as she gesticulates expansively with one hand, the other planted firmly on her hip. Eyebrows knitted together and a dramatic frown on her face.

“What even is your damage,” Xingchen’s able to make out what she’s saying as he gets closer. “You’re always pretending you know shit when you don’t know anything, you’re such a creepy fucker. Making trash up, just pulling shit out of thin air, ever since the day I’ve known you.” Her one red, glitter-tipped nail waggling into some boy’s face.

Only it’s not just some boy. It’s that boy. Xingchen’s boy. Arms folded and hip cocked against the merch table. He looks haggard tonight. Pale. Shoulders concaved into a battered leather jacket but that canine-filled grin plastered over his face. The radiance of it looks misplaced against his spare wrists, moveable ankles. His jeans are torn, muddied and he’s got an ugly black eye, swollen purple, almost shut. Xingchen wants to feed him, or touch it, but he gets the sense it would absolutely not be in his favor to treat this kid as fragile.

Something petty in his stomach twists.

“A-Qing,” Xingchen hears himself say. His voice sounds feeble, fried.

“Oh gege, good, I’m glad you’re here so you tell this idiot how wrong he is, can you believe he’s dragging up that asinine drama from like what, two years ago now? Everyone was so wrong, like the last thing you need is anyone spreading any more stupid rumors—”

“A-Qing,” Xingchen says patiently, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The boy’s gaze swivels intently onto him. It sears. “I—”

“Gege,” A-Qing admonishes, in her patented tone of whiny consternation. “I’m defending your honor, Xue Yang said you murdered someone in cold blood—"

“Xue Yang,” Xingchen repeats, just to taste it in his mouth. Something in the boy prickles; the way he readjusts his spine.

“We were in foster together until he aged out. I must have told you—you know gege, every day he ruined my fucking life. The time he drank my wine spritzers and put vinegar in the bottles. The time he told everyone at school I was lying about having a disability—”

“You’re not special, get over it,” Xue Yang drawls. “Hate to break it to you but you just have regular old symptoms of living under late capitalism. I have nine fingers, that’s a fucking disability. You might be a pathological liar though. Don’t forget—every day I bought you cigarettes, meimei.”  He conjures a Marlboro Light between his prosthetic and thumb, holding it high above A-Qing’s head.

It’s funny in a perverse kind of way. How A-Qing’s forced to look up like a puppy angling for a treat. Xingchen laughs. The unpracticed sound of it surprises him, more a stutter or a wheeze.

But A-Qing doesn’t bite. “Don’t fucking call me that,” she hisses. “I hate your internalized ableism. I hate you.” She turns her wide kohl-lined eyes onto Xingchen. “Sorry that you had to meet this asshole.”

“We ah—” Xingchen says, feeling suddenly shy. “We’re old friends in a way, I suppose. Aren’t we, Xue Yang,” he says softly.

Rage twists immediately through Xue Yang’s face. It would be shocking, if not for the blush that spatters too, unevenly across his cheeks. He has freckles low on his neck; Xingchen wants to see if they run to between his shoulderblades, down his back. Fascinated by what’s unfolding in front of him. The bare, vulnerable mechanisms of Xue Yang’s face—how his masks flit quickly from one to another and yet to Xingchen, his true emotion’s obvious in the seconds between.

There’d been a kind of childish delight hidden in there. Unfettered and beautiful. Xingchen wants nothing more than to see it again. Even if he has to pry into Xue Yang with a knife, his nails. Song Lan’s long fingers, at his command.

“Yeah, I don’t do friends,” Xue Yang laughs, breezily tossing his bangs so his ponytail bobs precariously. Taking a swig of his beer. “Not my thing. Only rivals. Enemies. Interlocutors, if you will. You’re not my fucking friend.”

“Ah. Do you hate me then?” Xingchen asks curiously.

“I hate everyone,” Xue Yang says flippantly. Scorn in how his eyes drift over the crowd. To another, his dismissal might seem simple, but Xingchen can sense the complicated yearning layered underneath. Like he’s chosen to strike out with a generalization because hitting something, anything, is better than nothing. Throat tight and fingers fidgeting compulsively in his pocket. Maybe a lighter or something more dangerous, Xingchen can’t tell.

Everything about Xue Yang wants so badly.

It’s so easy, Xingchen considers, to recognize in others the things you wish you could change about yourself.

“Hate,” he replies lightly, “is an interesting feeling. Don’t you think? One could argue it’s more powerful than friendship, or love, even. More intimate.”

Carefully, he reaches out to touch his fingertips to Xue Yang’s black eye. “Is that from you hating someone, or someone hating you?"

Instantly, Xue Yang catches Xingchen’s wrist to stop him. Teeth bared in a snarl. He’s strong, his grip tightens almost to bruising. But up close like this, Xingchen can see his pupils dilate, a desperate, pretty contraction. The gasp he makes is small but audible.

The thing in Xingchen’s gut wants to bite at Xue Yang’s lips, just so he can soothe the wound.

“Gege,” A-Qing says, utterly appalled. "The fuck? This is gross. Y’all are gross. I fucking refuse to watch this.” She flounces away with an eye-roll of betrayal.

Their noses are almost touching now. Xingchen can see the shadows of Xue Yang’s eyelashes stroking his cheeks in long, dark brushes. Around them, noise blooms—the clink of ice, the chatter of people, but—

“You know, they say you killed someone,” Xue Yang hisses. “Did you?” And perhaps he meant it to be vicious, an insult, but it sounds plaintive to Xingchen’s ear instead. Hopeful. Like a wish.

“You’ve been watching me. Why?” Xingchen asks, calmly in return.

“You’re pretty, why not,” Xue Yang confesses, and his expression morphs. Doe-eyed and seductive. Wobble in his lip. But Xingchen can see callousness spark in his eyes. It’s a clever redirect, he has to admire the frank manipulation of it.

“Did you kill someone, gege?” Xue Yang breathes.

“Not quite, but I could have.” Xingchen says honestly. Because there’s something about this boy, the way he hides himself by diving face-first into the violence of being seen. It makes Xingchen want to cut through it and tell the truth. Plainly, just as it is.

Not that the truth is especially remarkable. Especially compared to the gossip that continues to shroud him. That he’d intentionally lured that jerk into the bathroom just to slide a knife behind his kidneys. That it was purely self-defense. That behind his spotless reputation, his relentless optimism, his contributions to his community, he’s a psychopath looking for an excuse to do the worst kinds of violence to someone else.

Xingchen doesn’t really care what people think of him, and Song Lan either. But the injustice of its consequences, of most of the venues in town enacting a public boycott on Xingchen’s presence, had really gotten under Song Lan’s skin.

“Did you hate him? Is that why you did it?” Xue Yang asks, with a measure of vindictiveness.

And hate isn’t right, Xingchen considers. Isn’t the feeling that had coursed through him, when he’d rounded the corner to see Huaisang crumpled, unconscious on the floor, his hair askew and nose clearly broken. Limbs all at unnatural angles, his lucite heels twisting off his feet. And that man standing over him, fist raised and screaming fucking faggot. Iron pipe on the floor. His spit in Huaisang’s face.

No, hate isn’t really the word for the unnatural serenity that has washed over Xingchen. The immense satisfaction he’d taken in the texture of his switchblade slipping so easily into wet flesh. The blood that had leaked over his hands, viscous and indelible like motor oil. He’s not entirely sure there’s even a word for it, that unspeakable sensation; or the terror that had followed, threaded with guilt.

Song Lan had had to pry the knife from his hands.

“He didn’t matter enough for me to hate him,” Xingchen says, wooden.

Xue Yang chuckles. “He mattered enough for you to knife him in the fucking back,” he says. “Whatever. If what Qing-mei says is true and he beat that Nie kid halfway into a coma, you should have fucking killed him.”

“He didn’t deserve to die. No one does. I would never—” Xingchen tries.

“Babe,” Xue Yang purrs, letting go of Xingchen’s wrist finally. Giving him a playful little push. “I’m not here to judge you. I bet you wanted to kill him. That’s fine, I don’t know, maybe you should have.”

Xingchen frowns, regaining his bearings. It’s cold, without the heat of Xue Yang’s palm. “It’s not about killing people, it’s about keeping us safe.”

“Now you sound like your boyfriend,” Xue Yang scoffs. “That boring one who thinks he serves vigilante justice or whatever. Batman. Yeah, I’ve seen him. He’s got a good left hook, I’ll grant him that, but he’s predictable. All those rules. Don’t you ever do what you want? Life’s too short and fucking bullshit to not have a good time when you can.”

“Killing someone,” Xingchen says firmly, “is not a good time.”

At this, Xue Yang just doubles over and howls. When he surfaces, wiping tears from his eyes, he seems genuinely delighted, shaking with mirth. “Oh, babe,” he tries. “Fuck. Babe. Death belongs to us down here in hell. It’s all we’ve fucking got. Don’t you know it, dressed like that?"

He gestures at Xingchen’s outfit. And it stings a bit, when Xingchen looks down—at his black jeans, the leather band buckled at his neck, oversized Cocteau Twins tshirt. The smear of black lipstick at his wrist, where he’d tested it before he left the house. It makes Xingchen feel like an imposter to himself.  

“Or maybe,” Xue Yang prods. Eyes glinting now that he’s caught the end of a thread. “Maybe it’s that you haven’t been around enough actual death to really know it. Let alone use it. Have you? Poor, naïve gege.” He shakes his head.

Xingchen’s lost for words. Flushes, under his makeup. “I—"

Xue Yang rolls his eyes. For a second he looks suspiciously like A-Qing. It’s familiar, how on her, the gesture never seems adolescent, filled instead with a worn disappointment, all too old and tired for her age.

It forces Xingchen to regroup. “I wanted to die once.” he says gently. On a hunch; after a long moment of steeling himself. “I still do, kind of. All the time. But the people around me keep me alive. Being loved by them. Sustaining them in return. Without them I’d be gone.” He looks Xue Yang square in the eye. “What keeps you alive, Xue Yang?”

There’s a small moment, where Xue Yang seems to freeze. When something large and lost expands through his eyes and makes his body crumble at the knees. But then it’s back again, that feral defensiveness. A wolf that’ll bite down harder for having lost a tooth.

“Some of us can’t afford to be alive,” he spits out. “Some of us only have enough to survive. Which part of that don’t you understand, you privileged fuck?”

“I know it’s not the same. But I’d really like it,” Xingchen says softly. “For you to be able to live. It matters to me."

“Jesus, no need to get sentimental. You don’t even fucking know me,” Xue Yang sighs. But Xingchen can detect a hint of wonder at the border of his contempt.

“Well. If you need anything, you know where to find me. Apparently.” Xingchen jokes awkwardly.

“Whatever, this is getting boring. See you when I see you.” He makes it sound like a threat.

Xue Yang turns on his heel and disappears into the crowd. Xingchen watches him go—the clomp of his boots and the rip in his jeans, right under his pert ass. That crescent of skin, white like a decoy flag of surrender. A good metaphor, for how he’d reeled Xingchen in, then winded him with a few well-placed jabs. Has to take a breath with how unnerved he feels, that their conversation had cored him, right down to the marrow.

Because Xue Yang’s not wrong. What could Xingchen even know, after spending most of his life tucked away in the pristine forests and mountains of Washington? What could he know, for all his militant politics, learned mostly from books and records? Not a half of the life Xue Yang’s lived probably, in the city or between beds, or in the streets. He’d left Baoshan A-Yi’s with nothing more than a backpack and a desire to change the world, even if it was a world he’d barely known.

His story felt so big, back then. He was so stupid and he would have believed anything. He would have joined any religion that smiled at him. And it’s lucky then, that the person he’d met was Zichen. The tall, indecipherable boy who’d set him on his feet when he’d taken a tumble in one of his first mosh pits. Who’d kept his distance but couldn’t stop looking at Xingchen’s mouth; the cleft at the bottom of it. Right up until the moment that Xingchen had asked him if he wanted play music together.

Song Lan had looked like he wanted to bolt. “But we both play bass,” he said incredulously.

“So what?” Xingchen had replied, and gone bone-meltingly weak at the subtle smile Song Lan tried hard to hide.

Just like that, it’s been years now, that they’ve talked and fucked together and tried to figure out right and wrong—reached for the same light and turned it full force on the injustices they think matter. Found others willing to do the same. But Xingchen would be lying, to say that he’s not sometimes confused by all the bureaucracy along the way—the collective decision making, the spreadsheet schedules, the mutual aid protocols that peter out and don’t always reach those who need it most.

Song Lan’s always cut right past the red tape with the confidence of doing the one thing he knows he’s best at, that he believes is most effective. Xingchen’s used to standing beside him, proximal enough that people assume he believes the same.

Not that he doesn’t. But sometimes, he can’t help but be jealous of Song Lan, the cut-and-dry logics that drive him. If you’re not with us you’re against us, he says. And it’s not that Xingchen doesn’t appreciate that clarity. It’s just that he’s less moved by keeping danger out than he is by making space for what’s unfit, the itchy places where the corners don’t align. He doesn’t think that always happens.

And isn’t that what punk’s supposed to be about? Whether queer or of color or poor or hurt, everyone at Burial Mounds knows what it’s like not to fit—and Xingchen thinks its wondrous—that they can bask together in the light that comes from burrowing into the dark. That they’ve found the same place despite their differences. A place that can stretch to accept the variations of experience and trauma and pain that they bring with them.

Taking it in, absorbing it; trying to accommodate it can be so crucial and overwhelming all at once.

Xingchen just wants to do good by people, which is complicated in the same way that people are complicated.

Is he doing that now? Has he ever? He can only say he tries.

Across the room, in the pit, he can see Xue Yang thrashing, a kind of manic quality to his movement. Limbs flung wide and battering. He’s magnetic, crammed with the endless energy of that body of his; that Xingchen’s quickly learning can’t be pinned down or memorialized, could never be pushed or put away from being too fast, too smart. The blood that animates Xue Yang seems to sing to some part of Xingchen, buried deep that he’s forgotten.

But then he sees it—Xue Yang curling his lip and throwing himself at a brick of a man. Over and over, an obvious taunt. And when that guy throws an elbow, trying to discourage him with a little intimidation, Xue Yang takes it as a cue to launch a full-scale physical attack. Fists flying in relentless patterns so the other man is forced to retaliate. By the time Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen cut in, Xue Yang’s head is lolling. He’s got another bruise on his cheek, a hazy glow in his eyes that makes Xingchen’s fist clench and his mouth go dry. He’s laughing maniacally, the familiar bloom of red in his teeth.

Nie Mingjue shakes him by the scruff of his neck. Lan Xichen’s already walking the other culprit, hands raised, to the door. There’s an exchange of inaudible words.

“This is becoming a standing date, Da-ge. Next time, won’t you buy me a drink first?” he hears Xue Yang wheedle. Shrill, as Mingjue shakes a fist in his face and starts dragging him to the front.

All of a sudden, Xingchen’s stomach is ice-cold with anger. He can’t stand for it—Xue Yang being mercilessly kicked out of a space that Xingchen believes so strongly should protect him, be kept open to him despite his faults. Aren’t they all fucked up in one way or another?

There’s too many people in the way to get over to the two of them in time, but Xingchen bolts for the back door, sprinting around the block to see if he can catch Xue Yang. Make sure at the very least he isn’t seriously hurt. But by the time Xingchen reaches the front, there’s only the bleached wash of neon on the concrete and a whoop from the smokers, lingering in the alley. A few telltale drips of blood leading away from the door. He groans out loud, teeth gritted. Frustration overflowing into tension in his limbs.

“What’s wrong,” comes a familiar voice. Xingchen doesn’t have to turn around to know it’s Song Lan, his chest cradling Xingchen from the back, like a wall that might go on forever. His arm comes into view. The glass of water he’d promised.

“Did you see that,” Xingchen asks, breathlessly. “What Mingjue did to Xue Yang?”

“The small one who pulled that stunt in the pit? A-Qing’s friend?” Song Lan frowns. “Da-ge said he’s been trouble. What’s his deal?”

“I’m not sure yet. But he—”

“I don’t like it,” Song Lan’s hands tighten instinctively at Xingchen’s biceps.

“I think it’s more complicated than that. He’s just a kid, Zichen,” he chides, leaning into Song Lan’s shoulder. Riding the wave of his muscle as he shrugs in response.

“Okay,” Song Lan says, and grazes Xingchen’s hair with a kiss, offers him a sip of water.

He takes it. It’s cold, going down his throat, the plastic cup jittery against his teeth. Stirs his insides and at that moment, he feels himself filled; with love for Song Lan. Love for the Burial Mounds and all it stands for. How despite everything—his anxieties, insecurities, this shitty world, his garden’s grown enormous from the drought.

He would eat his own heart to share it. With Xue Yang, with anybody. Why wouldn’t he?


*


Song Lan doesn’t mean to cut such a formidable figure at the bar. But whether it’s because of his height, the scrapes on his knuckles or his lived-in battle vest, he doesn’t mind; mostly glad to be left to his own devices.

The truth is that Xingchen is so fucking happy, he sighs to himself. Nursing a club soda as he waits for the show to start and audience members to trickle in. 

They’ve opened doors even later than usual punk time; everything running extra behind schedule. Wei Wuxian’s somewhere, negotiating with the sound guy, a perpetually harassed-looking middle-aged man with a family who wanted to get off at a reasonable hour and is probably throwing a fit about it. Lan Wangji’s begged off being around people, prepping a case in the back office or trying to get someone out on bail, Song Lan doesn’t know.

But that’s what happens, when everyone’s using the same multi-purpose space. The punks-with-lunch crew had gotten a larger number of houseless folks come through in the afternoon because of the rain, which made their kitchen cleanup late, which then meant load-in had fallen behind and before everyone knew it, the 8PM show had really become a 10PM start time.

Usually, Song Lan’s not too worried about a late night—he makes his own hours these days with handyman work. Carpentry and electricity mostly, for aunties and families in Chinatown. It doesn’t make much of a difference to him, especially when he’s at Burial Mounds helping out in most of his spare time anyway, shows or not. Likes making sure that folks can enjoy their night without being interrupted by the never-ending stream of bigoted assholes who seem to plague them these days.

He can’t deny it though, that he’s feeling uncharacteristically reluctant to be here right now.  

He’s tired, he reasons to himself. That’s all. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with Xue Yang,  currently cuddled right up to Xingchen in the far corner of the room, directly in Song Lan’s line of vision.  

They look good together, Song Lan thinks despairingly, tough and delicate all at once—Xingchen leaned against the wall, denim-clad legs for days and shredded tshirt barely clinging to his shoulders. Xue Yang in his ripped jeans and a gauzy leopard-print shirt that’s vulgar enough to be belligerent. Drug store lip gloss. They’re supposed to be helping setting up merch, but the tables are still stacked against the wall. Xingchen’s laughing so hard he hiccups softly, one hand held to his mouth. Xue Yang’s arm resting on his shoulder. Looking up at Xingchen with that adoring gaze reserved entirely for him, that’s part-predatory, part-helpless; makes Song Lan want to clock him in the face.

Not that Song Lan's jealous, per se. He’s used to Xingchen picking up strays, even if he himself lacks the people skills necessary to help make them safe, cared for. It’s just that Xue Yang is different. He’s no rabbit caught in the headlights or injured bird with a broken wing. From the first time Song Lan had seen Xue Yang punch someone unprovoked in the pit, he’d picked up the scent of someone dogged by nihilism, with no reason or method to their violence. Someone looking for any arbitrary reason to cause a maximum amount of destruction; to wreck himself and everyone around him in the process.

Xue Yang is dangerous, and knows it.

Song Lan’s certain of it. He can see it, in the pretty, mocking way Xue Yang will tilt his head towards Song Lan when Xingchen isn’t looking. Cheeks upturned and eyes lazily half-shut. As if Xue Yang’s taunting him. Daring him to punch or slap. As if he knows how furious he makes Song Lan by the mere fact of his presence.

One of these days, Song Lan thinks, he might just lose it and oblige.

Only he’s never seen Xingchen like this. Each time he returns from a walk with Xue Yang, or a movie or whatever, he’s lighter on his feet. It makes Song Lan both ache and delight to see him, flush with this new kind of pleasure. To hear him mutter excitedly about some totally outlandish idea that Xue Yang’s introduced to him; see interest spark so keenly in his eyes.

“Why do we shy away from death, Zichen,” he’d mused the other night, keeping Song Lan company in the kitchen while he made dinner. “I mean, it’s totally unknowable and maybe that’s scary. But isn’t that also the most hopeful and beautiful thing? That we know so little about it that anything could happen?”

“I don’t want you to die,” Song Lang had replied wearily, trying not to crush silken tofu with the force of his concern.

“But maybe it’s less about wanting to die and more about not being afraid of the possibility of it. Like, what might we learn from death if we looked at it that way? What if it could make us braver. Help us imagine beyond what we think we know?”

“Death is death and then someone is gone, Xingchen. That’s it. It’s not complicated.”

But despite all of Song Lan’s efforts, Xingchen hadn’t quite heard him. Just continued to chatter and Song Lan had let him. Hadn’t had the heart to remind him either—that Song Lan himself knows firsthand what it’s like to hold the fragments of someone’s skull together and watch their life seep through his very hands. That he’s never seen anything so banal or cruel or wasteful in his whole existence and he would do everything in his power to never see it again.

So yeah, all this talk is garbage to Song Lan.

And it’s strange to him, that whatever morbid, goth4goth conversation he and Xue Yang are having seems to be delicately undoing some of Xingchen’s old wounds. That theorizing death seems to be distracting Xingchen from his all too real compulsion towards it. Not to mention, Song Lan’s weak. Hard-pressed to give up any opportunity to see Xingchen laugh like that, the pure unadulterated joy that lights up his face and melts the gauntness of his cheekbones away.

It’s not something he’s ever been able to offer Xingchen, he’s painfully aware. And now Xingchen’s found it in Xue Yang, Song Lan’s would never deny him that either.

All he can do is keep watching from afar, assess the risks, keep Xingchen safe.

But it’s hard sometimes. It’s hard now, that Song Lan has to crane his neck away, or look down stubbornly, at the filthy linoleum floor, just because he can’t bear to watch the brightness bouncing back and forth between Xingchen and Xue Yang. Like he’s trapped in the shadows and the rays of their sunrise hurt his eyes.

For Xingchen, he’d bear literally anything though.

“Song Lan, hey,” comes a gruff voice, jolting him out of his thoughts.

“Da-ge,” Song Lan greets quietly. Shifts over for Nie Mingjue to join him, making room for him to lean his bulky forearms on the counter.

Song Lang’s definitely not one for talking but he’s generally glad for Mingjue’s presence. Finds him relatively easy, in part because he boxes at the Qinghe gym and Mingjue has always respected his boundaries. Never tried to act overly bro-ey or push any kind of masculine camaraderie onto him.

It helps too, that out of the core Burial Mounds crew, Song Lan knows Mingjue’s the least likely to hold a hard line when it comes to responding to potential threats. He’s a simple man, a pragmatist who Song Lan’s come to rely on for any kind of help that a situation might call for. He doesn’t overreact either. Always happy to be lenient with any kids who’ve just gotten overenthusiastic with their roundhouse kicks, or to deescalate fights that aren’t borne out of anything serious, that are simply overblown personal spats. Song Lan can appreciate that.

“Listen, Huaisang called—his show’s closing and he needs some help getting all his crap out of the gallery. I said I’d swing by with my truck and I was wondering—Xichen’s already in bed and there’s no one here who can really—” Mingjue rubs the back of his head ruefully.

“It’s no problem, Da-ge, I’ve got it,” Song Lan says immediately. Maybe being officially on security shift will be good for him tonight; a distraction. Give him something to focus all his fraught energy on, instead of thinking so much, getting so fucking paranoid.

“Thanks,” Mingjue says, clapping him on the shoulder with a grin so sincere it’s arresting. “Sorry it’s so last minute, and on a weekend, fuck.”

“I’ve got nowhere to be,” Song Lan reassures, nodding towards Xingchen. “Anything I need to know?”

Mingjue shrugs. “The usual. It should be fine. Just a few minor things. You already know to watch out for that kid, the one Xingchen’s taken a shine to, god knows why. He likes the difficult ones, doesn’t he,” he nudges Song Lan’s shoulder sympathetically. “I think he’s harmless, to be honest. Crafty though. You notice yet that he likes getting a lot more than he’s doling out?”

An image of Xue Yang flashes through Song Lan’s mind—the last time he’d started something and gotten knocked flat on his back, someone’s boot pressed down hard at his throat. The ecstasy that had shuddered through him, as his eyes rolled and his lids fluttered.

Song Lan keeps his face impassive. “Yeah. Anything else?”

Mingjue hesitates. “Ah. The other thing, well. I don’t like to ask you but—”

“It’s okay,” Song Lan says, even as his gut drops, suspecting what’s coming.

“That jerk Wen Chao’s been coming around. Wen Ruohan’s son. Think he’s here tonight. Listen, I’m sorry to ask you about triad shit, but if the Wens are running drugs, I’d rather we be careful.”

Song Lan does a quick scan of the perimeter, and sure enough, there he is. Long greasy hair and flashy red tank top, with a girl on his arm. Tiny booty shorts and dark lipstick, her hair and heels high enough to reach heaven. And of course, the elaborate Wen tattoo, its swirls of flame weaving around a sun, placed prominently on Wen Chao’s bicep. Song Lan doesn’t like the way his face is contorted with a kind of sadistic glee, the rough way he’s gripping the girl’s waist.

“Hm,” he says. “It’s been years since I left Baixue Temple, Da-ge.”

“I know,” Mingjue says quickly. “But you still have a better knowledge of the Chinatown scene than any of us. Is there any reason he’d be here other than… family business?

Song Lan sorts through the dregs of his memory. The Baixue Temple he’d been raised in had been one of the more respectable triads back then. Less organized crime than a means by which resources could be… redistributed to those in need in their community. A trusted group that local Chinese families could approach for help when it came to finances or worries about their safety, especially if the police were a concern. The Wens, on the other hand, were known loansharks who ran several gambling circles and got good folks into unimaginable degrees of debt. Drugs were only of a passing interest to them in his day, but Song Lan wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where they’ve recently chosen to expand. Wen Chao though—

“I know Wen Chao’s a coward. His father doesn’t trust him. That probably hasn’t changed. Maybe he’s here to sell drugs, maybe he’s sick of his regular haunts. Could be that he just wants to show off. Antagonize me,” Song Lan admits. “I’d be surprised if it’s anything significant. But he’s an asshole. He shouldn’t be here.”

Mingjue frowns. “Yeah, cowards like to overcompensate. Okay. Well, let’s not worry Wei Wuxian or god forbid, Lan Wangji about it for now, but keep an eye on him, won’t you? If you can get him out without a fuss, try to.” He takes a pause, as if going through a small internal struggle.

Then; “listen, Song Lan,” he continues. Leaning in close. “You and Xingchen are good ones. I’ll never forget what Xingchen did for Huaisang. If he hadn’t, I’d probably have done the same myself. You know that. But I don’t want to drag Wen Chao out by the ear just yet. It’s not worth the force of the Wens coming down on us. We have more important battles.”

“Okay,” Song Lan agrees, after some consideration. “But only for now.” Unconsciously, his fingers start worrying at the Baixue Temple tattoo on his forearm; its delicate pattern of snowflakes set around curls of cloud and wind, sneaking up to the crease of his elbow. He’d meant to get it blacked out, or removed, but—

“Song Lan,” Mingjue says kindly. “It was a long time ago. You were young. You grew up in it. And you’re not him.”

“Yeah,” Song Lan says, with finality. Severing the conversation. “I got it. Go.”

Mingjue searches his face. Decides to let it rest. “Right on,” he jangles his truck keys. “Call me if you need me,” he says and whistles as he heads out.

Song Lan takes a long sip of seltzer. Lets out a breath. He hates when this feels difficult.

Because it’s not that he’s ashamed of what he grew up in. No, he’s proud, actually, to admit that so many of the principles he stands by now—sharing amongst the community, the use of violence as protection, his loathing of the cops—have come from what he learned from his family, his martial uncles. He could never disavow that.

At one point in his life, he’d believed in Baixue Temple, the good that it did, with his whole soul.

But there’d come a point, where Song Lan had read enough and seen enough that he could no longer deny it. The tumor inside the whole operation, something unsaid, apart from in casually offensive comments dropped here and there by his elders. Their careless dismissal of other black and brown communities, whatever it was, whether intended or not; an infection. There’d come a point where Song Lan had to come to terms with the fact that he could no longer be part of an organization that prioritized the needs of one group over another. That there was no sugar-coated way to recognize it apart from simply calling it what it was: racist.

He’d left soon after and never looked back.

And Song Lan could never regret that decision, especially not now, looking around him. All the weird flourishes and disparities of the people at the Burial Mounds, their collisions, conspiracies. The way they swarm together, unquestioningly, into a single weapon when they need to defend themselves.

But Baixue Temple had been harder to let go than he’s ever admitted out loud. To Xingchen, even. Sometimes, he remembers that.

The show’s started now, moving into full swing and suddenly, there’s a flash of leopard print into his field of vision. Fuck. Song Lan really should have been paying more attention. He gets to his feet quickly enough that he almost trips, frantic to make sure that Xue Yang isn’t recklessly dragging Xingchen into some petty shit they could both stand to avoid. Looks around, tensing, in case he needs to jump in—

—then sees them both, and the relief that rushes in is gigantic. Xue Yang, deep at the center of the mosh pit. Xingchen skirting the edge of the crush in that charming way he has—not really moshing, just letting his body go, falling into those around him and being propelled by the force of their movement. Drifting. But despite Mingjue’s confidence, there’s a lot going on at Burial Mounds tonight. A lot of dicey variables, given what he knows about Wen Chao, and Song Lan doesn’t really feel like taking any chances, so he strides over, teeth clenched. Ducks into the fray and manages to grab Xue Yang firmly by the shoulders. Frog-marches him out, dodging bodies neatly as they go.

“Well,” Xue Yang pants, when Song Lan turns him so they’re face-to-face. “It’s you. The boyfriend. What the fuck do you want, or are you just trying to ruin my night more than you usually do.” His hair’s a mess, tendrils of it sticking sweaty to his neck, his temple.

Song Lan can't help but think it’s funny, that he and Xingchen won’t stop talking about death because Xue Yang’s just… so alive. Luminous with the vigor that’s spreading in pink patches over his skin. His pupils sprung wide and that trembling twist of a mouth. He looks too young, too alluring for his own good. For anyone’s good.

“Look,” Song Lan says, folding his arms and trying to seem unmoved. “I don’t want to fuck around. You’re going to get into a fight later, because it’s what you always do. I’m going to pull you out and break it up and maybe even throw you out entirely, because that’s what I’m supposed to do. Fine. Pick whoever to antagonize. I can’t stop you. But do me a favor. Avoid that one dude, okay? Red tank top, total creep, ten o’clock.”

“Why, Zichen,” Xue Yang purrs, with delight. “He must really be important for you to deign to talk to me personally. Wow.”

His gaze is piercing. Song Lan refuses to meet it. Looks up at a point in the wall somewhere above Xue Yang’s head instead. “Yes or no,” he persists. “Answer the question.”

But Xue Yang moves so fast. He’s twined around Song Lan all of a sudden, hips flush with Song Lan’s side. Arm slung over his shoulder. On his tiptoes and hissing into Song Lan’s ear. “You know, we could skip all this foreplay and you could just punch me in the face like I know you want to. I bet Xingchen would like it. I bet you’d fuck me up real good.”

His breath is warm, mocking. Song Lan can’t help it, letting out a growl, his fist itching at his side. He tries to catch Xue Yang by the wrists, to keep him there. Keep him out of trouble, but he slides easily, eel-like, out of Song Lan’s grasp.

“Come on, Zichen, you can do better than that. Who is he anyway?” Xue Yang calls, making a beeline for Wen Chao, who’s sitting at the bar, his girlfriend standing between his knees. Disgusting.

Xue Yang taps Wen Chao on the shoulder.

At first, Song Lan’s confused, by how Xue Yang’s rearranged his face into a friendly smile. Hails the bartender over, ordering a drink. Strikes up a conversation with Wen Chao and seems to be trading jokes with him, maybe even complimenting Wen Chao’s girlfriend on her hair? He can’t hear. Song Lan sees Wen Chao relax, throw his head back with that sniveling laugh and get out a stack of unnecessarily large bills to make a show of paying for Xue Yang’s drink.

Could Xue Yang really be doing all this just to fuck with him?

Then Song Lan sees it. The moment Xue Yang catches a glimpse of Wen Chao’s tattoo.

And sure, he’s watched a lot of expressions move across Xue Yang’s face—the boy is basically a chameleon—it’s what makes him so frustratingly obvious and inscrutable at once. But he’s never seen what’s come over Xue Yang now. Not the faux confrontation he puts on when he’s picking a fight, not the flippant derision he likes to show Song Lan, or even the cheery bravado Xingchen so loves.

Song Lan can see, crystal-clear, that the look on Xue Yang’s face is one of cold, unmitigated hatred.

“No,” he whispers in horror, almost to himself. Realizing he’s made a terrible, awful miscalculation.

He watches it happen in slow-motion.

Xue Yang takes a dive for Wen Chao of such intensity that their drinks go flying. Glass shatters somewhere, he’s not sure where, but the girl is screaming and Xue Yang’s fists are a blur. Straddling Wen Chao, who’s prone on the floor; landing punches willy-nilly all over his face, his chest, his ribs.

Song Lan’s already moving towards them, taking it at a run when Wen Chao manages to flip their positions and bash his skull into Xue Yang’s forehead. They’re a mess of blood and meat and strewn alcohol. Song Lan hears the sick crack of a chair as the girl throws it and it breaks heavily across Xue Yang’s leg.

“Hey. Hey!” Song Lan yells, once he’s struggling to pull them off each other. Skin and cloth slipping in and out of his numb, clutching fists. Thankfully, Lan Wangji shows up just in time to help, grabbing Wen Chao immediately out of Song Lan’s hand and pinning his arms neatly behind his back.

“Out,” Lan Wanji says, calmly. “I won’t stand for this.”

Xue Yang can’t seem to keep upright; he’s concerningly boneless in Song Lan’s arms. Not even fighting back. Like this, leaned back against Song Lan’s body, he feels so breakable—the pop of his skinny hipbones against Song Lan’s belly. Song Lan sneaks his arm awkwardly around him to prop him up and realizes strangely, that he’s certain he could get his hands all the way around Xue Yang’s waist if he wanted to.

There’s a large splinter of wood sticking straight out Xue Yang’s thigh, cracked at a painful-looking angle.

“Zichen,” he laughs, reedy and mean, and Song Lan can see the unmistakable cloud of a concussion blowing out his eyes.

“Oh my god,” Xingchen rushes over. Hands pressed to his mouth with shock, but his body braced iron, ready to respond. Telltale sign of someone good in a crisis. “Yang’er—What—Zichen how could you let this happen?” he cries out.

“I didn’t—” Song Lan says. “I don’t—” There’s something warm and liquid slipping through his fingers. He didn’t think Xue Yang would be hurt enough for there to be this much blood. He’s not sure he can even answer Xingchen’s question, when he was just trying to avoid—

“Well, well, well,” Wen Chao spits out. Neck straining and hair flopping oily in his face, trying to muscle himself away from Lan Wangji. “If it isn’t Song Lan. Song Zichen. The pride and joy of Baixue Temple. Or not anymore, I guess. Look at you in this dump. What even are you now? Fucking nothing, if not your shifu’s greatest disappointment.”

It’s a cheap shot. Hits Song Lan slant, where he wasn’t expecting. And he’s so overwhelmed by everything that’s happening. So full, suddenly, of the kind of fury he’s not sure he can contain. He can feel it, lighting up his nerves and threatening to explode from his fingertips. His forehead feels so tight it might burst. Xingchen’s looking at him with the trepidation of someone who knows full well what he’s capable of when provoked and is readying himself to deal with it. But he can’t—he won’t—

“Get him out of here, Wangji,” Song Lan manages. “Or I—”

“Out,” Lan Wangji repeats, and manhandles Wen Chao towards the door, his girlfriend trailing in their wake. Strappy heels dangling from her wrist. Amidst her hysterical crying, Song Lan can make out Wen Chao’s endless stream of threats—

“You’ll fucking pay for this, you fucking freaks! You commie sons of bitches, I’m never going to forget this shit. You’re all fucking dead, when my dad finds out about this, you’re all fucking fucked.”

Song Lan collapses to the floor, Xue Yang a dead weight against him. “Call an ambulance,” he tells Xingchen urgently. “He’s bleeding. His leg—”

Xingchen’s fingers are cool against Song Lan’s forehead, his neck, then move nimbly down to Xue Yang’s injured thigh, feeling at the wound. Xue Yang jolts from the pain. “Shh—it’s okay, Yang’er. It’s not broken, it’s fine, but we should probably—”

“No hospital,” Xue Yang mumbles, near incomprehensible. “Insurance.”

“Fuck,” Song Lan says, with feeling.

“It’s okay,” Xingchen says, and Song Lan has never been so grateful for the calm certainty of his voice. How he’s shifted most of Xue Yang’s weight against his body and started soothing him now with sweet touches, kind words. How Xue Yang’s curled towards him instinctively, like a sprout to the sun. There’s red spreading in a stain against Xingchen’s oversized, frayed shirt

“Xingchen, I’m sorry,” Song Lan tries. “I didn’t mean—I was hoping he wouldn’t—”

He pulls himself together, finally. Gets to his knees and leans over Xue Yang. Tries to keep his touch gentle as he cups his face, pulls his eyes open to check his pupils. He’s so pale. There’s an egg-sized swelling forming on his forehead. Song Lan runs a hand over it carefully.

Xue Yang feebly bats his hands away. Chokes on a wet laugh. “It’d be more fun if you’d just hit me, Zichen,” he slurs.

“Yang’er,” Xingchen admonishes. “Now is not the time for jokes.”

“What can we do,” Song Lan asks, helplessly. He can’t seem to stop touching Xue Yang, checking his limbs, his pulse, his ribs, just to make sure there’s not more damage to him that he can see with his own eyes.

“It looks worse than it is, it’s not actually in so deep,” Xingchen says. He pulls the splinter out without warning; a startlingly firm tug.

Xue Yang fucking howls. Xingchen presses the corner of his shirt to the wound to staunch the bleeding.

Song Lan can’t help but wince. “He’s got a concussion,” he reminds Xingchen.

“I know,” Xingchen says, looking up at Song Lan. Resolve written into every line of his thin, worried face. “That’s why we’re taking him home.”


*


Xingchen really only has free clinic training, so Song Lan’s not sure if it’s that basic knowledge or Xingchen’s self-assurance that eases the sick feeling in his gut.

Either way, there’s something about the confidence of his hands—the taut snap of his latex gloves, the solemn way he counts out paper towels—that signals to Song Lan that he can breathe again. Not that everything is going to be okay, but Xingchen’s good at making it feel like there’s at least a plan. There probably is one. Song Lan doesn’t know. He’s always relied upon Xingchen for this kind of direction. To turn the blunt force of him wherever it needs to go. Especially now, when he feels marred by the events of the evening, like he’s gotten lost to the ferocity inside him. Accidentally let it loose from the bad prison of himself.

Xingchen turns their shitty little desk lamp onto Xue Yang’s thigh and tweezes wood remnants out of torn flesh. Washes out the wound with an irrigation bottle he scrounges from his street medic backpack and stitches it up with not even a single tremor. Talking to Xue Yang all the while. Just silly, random stuff—telling bad jokes and spewing facts about newts, gerber daisies, California land history. Anything that comes to mind to distract him.

Xue Yang’s still slack around the edges; making small mumbles, petulant moans in response. Begging for vodka to dull the pain. Xingchen won’t give it to him. Song Lan hates seeing him like this, actually. So mild and manageable. None of that fitful heat to form the angles Song Lan’s familiar with, that makes him want to tear Xue Yang apart. Reach into his insides and figure out what’s lethal about him, finally. Get to the root of what he’s about.

Song Lan feels useless, a big voiceless block. Taking up space, but nothing to do with his hands. Doesn’t want to get in Xingchen’s way, so he puts the kettle on and steeps the tea he likes, an earthy Pu’er. Strong; since they’ll probably be up all night.

“I’ve put him to bed,” Xingchen says, closing their bedroom door behind them. “But we should probably keep him awake for a few hours till the concussion settles down. Or wake him every hour at least."

Song Lan hands him a mug with an unsteady hand. The tea sloshes.

“Xingchen,” he mumbles. “I was trying to keep him away. Wen Chao, he—”

“I believe you, Zichen,” Xingchen says firmly, tilting Song Lan’s head up to meet his eyes. “I saw how you reacted. You didn’t want to hurt him.” Song Lan’s throat closes a little, to see the trust there, that he thought might waver.

“Anyway, if that man was a Wen, I’m honestly not sure you could have done anything to stop him.”

Song Lan frowns. “What? I don’t—”

“I’m going to try to get the blood off some of these things before they stain. Will you do me a favor and sit with him? Just for a bit?”

“I can do the laundry,” Song Lan offers. “He likes you. I’m no good at shit like this.”

“Yes, you are,” Xingchen smiles encouragingly, gathering sheets and clothes into a laundry basket. “Look, I’ll be right back. Talk to him.”

Song Lan makes a helpless noise.

It’s not as dark in the bedroom as he expected. Xingchen’s got a thing about mood lighting—he’s turned on the bizarre bedside lamp that he bought at a yard sale a few years ago. A cracked 50s thing in the shape of a crocodile. The fairy lights draped over their bookcases are glowing a weak amber. Song Lan tries to keep his tread light, but his weight and the old floorboards don’t do him any favors.

The lump under the bedsheets stirs.

“’M not dead,” Xue Yang says. “You can go back to hating me whenever.”

He looks so slight after Xingchen’s ministrations. Bundled up like something precious. Song Lan’s not sure what to say. He’s got none of Xingchen’s loveliness when it comes to words, and he loathes to lie. As usual, he can only use what’s left to him—fact.

“You’re important to Xingchen,” he says, settling into the cozy reading chair that Xingchen’s move next to the bed.

“Don’t worry, I hate you too, you boring fuck,” Xue Yang scoffs in response. It’s got no venom to it. He tries to turn his face away.

Song Lan won’t let him. Grips his chin to take a solid look. Because if he’s going to play nurse for Xingchen, he might as well do a good job, make sure Xue Yang’s actually fine. “You look better,” he says, satisfied. Pupils are still unfocused but the color’s coming back into his cheeks. “Do you want some tea?”

“Fuck off,” Xue Yang’s legs kick out sulkily, as if to emphasize his point.

There’s an uncomfortable silence. Song Lan drumming his fingers nervously on his thigh. He’s not sure how to negotiate this without Xingchen acting as the fulcrum to their conversation. Especially when as far as he can tell, the two of them are so essentially different, have near nothing in common.

“Why did you do that,” he asks uncertainly, for no reason other than he genuinely wants to know.

“Why not, I don’t have to have a reason,” Xue Yang mutters. “God, do any of you in that godforsaken bar know how to have fun? So fucking self-serious all the time with your rules and your politics and your fucking savior complex.”

Song Lan grits his teeth. “Generally, if you’re going to do physical harm to someone else, it’s polite to let them know why. Otherwise it’s just called being a dick.”

“That,” Xue Yang decides, “is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”

This isn’t going well.

“I saw your face when you clocked his tattoo,” Song Lan presses. Clinging to the shreds of his patience.

“Yeah well, that’s what you get for being in that fucking Wen triad,” he hisses

Song Lan’s surprised at the reassurance he feels, to hear the acrimony back in Xue Yang’s voice.

“So you did have a reason.” He tries not to sound too smug. “What is it about the Wens?”

But Xue Yang refuses to budge. Seems intent on getting into some stubborn war of silence. And it’s weird to Song Lan, that he can’t stand this awkward quiet when it’s usually his favored mode of interaction. Usually hates talking of any kind, because who gives a fuck about what someone ate for dinner or how their pets are doing or whatever. So it’s even weirder that—

“I was in a triad,” he says. It comes out raw, uneven.

Because he rarely talks about this part of his past, even to Xingchen and there’s literally no reason for him to be talking about it now. Especially to Xue Yang, who he’s certain he can’t trust farther than he can throw. So why—

Xue Yang half-sits up with interest. “I know you’re a cop, I’m not an idiot,” he says, eyes narrowed and suspiciously alert for someone who's supposed to have a concussion. He nods at Song Lan’s forearm.

“I’m not a cop,” Song Lan stutters, taken aback.

“Triads, cops, punks, it’s all the fucking same," Xue Yang waves a hand of dismissal. "All of you and your valuable community, it’s all bullshit. Just arbitrary groups of people sticking together to make yourselves feel important, find made-up reasons to justify your existence. Always meddling in shit that’s got nothing to do with you. Acting like you do have something to do with other people’s lives when at best all you are is an excuse for incestuous drama, and at worst your in-crowd bullshit leave folks out in the cold."

Song Lan goes so immediately hot it's dizzying. It all sounds ridiculous to him. Goes against the very heart of his beliefs, in fact, that Xue Yang can’t see the clear differences, the disparities in power and intent between each of those operations. Not to mention, to hear the Burial Mounds lumped in with the goddamn police department is the ultimate fucking insult when all they’ve ever done is to try to protect vulnerable folks from the violence of the system. He tries to tamp down the rage brewing in his belly.

“The incest,” he bites out, “or whatever, suits me just fine. There’s strength in numbers. Sticking together—it’s the only way to keep each other safe.”

Xue Yang's laugh is derisive. “Zichen,” he says sweetly. “What is policing if not deciding who’s allowed in and who’s left out. Enforcing those boundaries with physical intimidation. Don’t romanticize your shit. Whether it was at Baixue Temple or the Burial Mounds, you’re still a fucking cop. Get over it."

“It’s different. Can’t you see that?” Song Lan says furiously. “There’s nothing wrong with carving out a place to take care of those who’ve been fucked over and disenfranchised. Making sure that that space is safe from racists and homophobes so they can thrive. Xingchen believes that too. There’s nothing wrong with—”

“Yeah, as long as you think they’re the right kind of people,” Xue Yang’s sitting up now, eyes ablaze and his mouth a cruel twist. “Because who gets to decide? You? That jacked bully Nie Mingjue? Aren’t I fucked over too? Haven’t I been, for my whole goddamn life? Only I get kicked out of the Burial Mounds every chance you get, and those Wen fuckfaces, don’t even get me started—"

Vaguely, Song Lan realizes that the word he’d use to describe Xue Yang, his conviction in this very moment would be righteous.

And yet he’s wrong, he’s so utterly, absolutely infuriatingly wrong.

“You,” Song Lan says, darkly. “Are destructive. If the Wens come for us, that stunt you pulled with Wen Chao could put all of us who’ve worked so hard, everything we built, everyone who relies on the Burial Mounds, its resources, all at risk—"

“Oh yeah? Well, look at this!” Xue Yang interrupts. Yelling now. He raises his hand and points at his worn prosthetic. “Courtesy of Chang Ci’an. A Wen minion back in the day. No one important. Just a hanger-on, just some affiliated idiot. But my mom got in debt, mahjong, gambling, whatever. She couldn’t pay so he decided to take my fucking finger instead. Put the cops on her and I never saw her again. So I’m sorry, fuck me, but any time I see a Wen I’m going to beat them ten feet into the ground. That’s my prerogative. I don’t give two shits about you, or the Burial Mounds or the triads or the cops or anyone else. Because guess what, as far as I can tell you all fucking owe me!”

Song Lan freezes; falls silent. The air around them hangs, precariously. Too stagnant, apart from Xue Yang’s ragged breathing.

And it’s a horrible story. He wishes he could rebuff it. But even at Baixue Temple, Song Lan’s seen things—done things—that he’s ashamed of. Even if his shifu and his martial uncles had done a lot of good for the families around them, he knows all too well that sometimes that good had come with a hefty pricetag of hurting others. Mostly they deserved it, but sometimes they didn’t. He can’t imagine what the Wens, less ethical, more greedy, power-hungry, might be capable of.

Song Lan’s aware that what he does under the porch at the Burial Mounds is nothing compared to what used to be asked of him in the name of Baixue Temple. The bones he’s broken and the blood he spilled.

“I’m sorry. I left for a reason,” he says helplessly. It sounds so thin.

The outburst seems to have taken a lot out of Xue Yang though. Curled up in a ball now with his knees to his chest. Head tucked into himself, his matted ponytail fanned out against their faded bedspread.

“You don’t get it, it’s not about you,” he mutters. “Dumb fuck.

Once again, Song Lan’s at a loss. Not sure what to do now. To stay or to leave, maybe even to call for Xingchen. But he can’t bear to leave things like this.

He might not like Xue Yang, or agree with a single thing that’s come out of that twisted, swollen little mouth. Might not be able to entirely follow along the impossible tangle, warped maze of his logic. His contrary brain. But he’s had a lot stolen from him, that much is true. Song Lan can see how that bitterness, that resentment might consolidate itself into a single undifferentiated mass, a scar.

You all fucking owe me, Xue Yang had said. Rattling around in Song Lan’s brain. But there’s simply no way for him, for anyone, to make it right. And he doesn’t know how to express it—the potent, contradictory cocktail of anger and remorse that’s seeping into him now. That he’s not sure where to direct. That he’s just feeling, both at and on behalf of Xue Yang.

Song Lan only knows to dig into his pocket and take out his folding knife.

It’s old, but well-kept. The spring always oiled and the blade whetted sharp, but knives are really a better look on Xingchen. Song Lan prefers to get his hands dirty, only wields it when he’s backed into a corner.

He presses it into Xue Yang’s hand. Offers up his forearm, his Baixue Temple tattoo.

“Always meant to get rid of it,” he says roughly.

And he’s not sure what he’s asking for. He’s not sure what Xue Yang’s capable of, with a knife in his hand. It looks familiar there, like Xue Yang knows how to use it. Like he could peel the skin off Song Lan in long, narrow strips. Stab it deep into the network of veins mapped blue in Song Lan’s wrist; bleed him out in a steady stream onto the floor. Like he could hold it to Song Lan’s neck, press him into the wall and make him beg.

The thought of it makes Song Lan’s breath shallow and his lungs contract.

“Fuck off,” Xue Yang is saying, but his eyes are awed. Dazed, like he’s drunk with the possibilities. He flips the knife open a few times; testing. Clearly practiced. Runs his thumb against the blade and it breaks skin like butter. Comes away beaded. Wet.

“Go ahead,” Song Lan says, bracing himself. He can’t keep the tremor from his voice.

Xue Yang reaches for his forearm, his grip, unexpectedly loose. Song Lan expects him to be impatient, to cut into him right away. But he doesn’t, he treats it like a gift. Ghosting his fingertips gently up and around the fine linework of Song Lan’s tattoo. The clouds rendered like a classical Chinese painting, the intricate calligraphy. Xue Yang dots his nails against each of the tiny inked snowflakes, still distinct, but slightly smudged after so many years under Song Lan’s skin.

Song Lan hears his breath hitch.

“When did you get it,” Xue Yang asks, lip caught prettily under his canine.

“Sixteen,” Song Lan replies, and tries not to shiver, at how his touch tickles, both too much and not enough.

Xue Yang spins the knife.

The first touch of the blade is surprisingly light, just a scratch, like he doesn’t even really want to do it. But then Song Lan sees something flash in Xue Yang’s face; malice in the way he bares his teeth, and then the pain hits. Clean and high and ringing in Song Lan’s ears, searing through his chest.

Xue Yang doesn’t slice neat, but runs two long, jagged lines over the Baixue Temple symbol. He isn’t quick either, catching the knife point cruelly on Song Lan’s skin so it drags. Slowing down in the middle, so he can take a minute to admire the suffering on Song Lan’s face—pale from sensation, the sweat beading at his forehead, his jaw clenched tight.

And it feels good, Song Lan thinks, hazily, like something’s been lifted. Like something heavy’s been torn away.

When Xue Yang’s done, there’s a large, childish X drawn over Song Lan’s tattoo. The dark lines of it separated forever, shifted apart. Blood on Xue Yang’s fingers, lurid against his chipped black nail polish. He won’t take those wide, impenetrable eyes off Song Lan’s face. Traces one fingertip lightly over the wound and brings it to his mouth. Licks the red off; quick, kittenish.

His throat moves. Song Lan has to bite back a moan.

“All done,” Xue Yang says, breathily. Letting go and wiping the knife off on a sheet. But then he hardens. “This doesn’t change anything,” he warns. “This doesn’t make us even.”

“Hm,” Song Lan tries, then clears his throat. He can feel blood start to creep in slow, hot drips, down between his fingers. “You should sleep. Just for an hour though, Xingchen will probably make me wake you."

As if on cue, Xue Yang yawns. “It’s dark,” he says, and the protectiveness that spreads illogically, insensibly through Song Lan could keel him right over.  

“Yeah,” he says. “It is. I’ll sit here and keep the light on.”


*


Wen Chao makes good on his promise.

Xingchen had really been hoping that the Wens and that absurdly messy night would just go away, somehow. If only he could close his eyes and sink into the blotting dark and have it disappear. But as usual, his idealism is no match for the inevitable.

It starts fairly innocuously, graffiti appearing in scrawled red and orange over the metal doors of the Qinghe gym, the windows of the pro-bono office of the Lan family law firm. The Wen symbol, a bad omen.

“Fucking cowards,” Wei Wuxian sighs, power washing spray paint off the front wall of the Burial Mounds. “Who’s weaponizing property damage now? It’s so rude. I’m just going to assume it’ll probably end here, if we can wait it out. Right?”

“It won’t,” Song Lan says. “I’ve seen this before.” A furor of emotion in that one twitch of his lip.

And Xingchen knows that Song Lan feels terrible about it. Thinks it’s his fault somehow, between being on security shift that night, pointing Xue Yang towards Wen Chao and the triad connections that continue to dog him. But he doesn’t know how to tell Song Lan, his overdeveloped sense of responsibility, that sometimes things just happen because they have to. Sometimes there’s a rupture when the planes shift and pressure has to release.

Because that’s what change is, and not everything that comes out of that kind of rift has to be bad. Like what’s working itself out, in fits and starts, between him and Xue Yang, for example.

Song Lan hasn’t told Xingchen anything. But it’s been impossible not to notice the X scarring its way, red and mottled, over Song Lan’s ruined Baixue Temple tattoo. The way his jaw’s started softening around Xue Yang. How Song Lan pushes food on him at the bar when he dips out for the taco truck with a brusque “eat it or don’t, I don’t give a fuck,” mumbled out before striding away. It used to be difficult for Xingchen to tell Song Lan when Xue Yang was coming over. Not because of any objection, but for the crease of disappointment that would appear between Song Lan’s eyebrows and nibble away at Xingchen’s guilt. Now though, Song Lan just replies, “okay,” with a carefully constructed look of blankness before going back to whatever he’s doing.  

And if he doesn’t want to tell, Xingchen won’t ask. Much like their music, their mode of communication is a series of tenuous threads left unspoken, but interlaced nonetheless. Mutations of an instinctive, subterranean language. It’s always been their way.

So Xingchen lets things simmer.

Nothing calms though.

Nie Huaisang shows up one night, shaken and hysterical from someone breaking into his gallery and destroying an entire show. Installation TVs and projectors smashed, canvases ripped open and sculptures bashed apart.

Wei Wuxian gets spotted by Wens in a movie theater and doused with two buckets of popcorn and a jumbo-sized coke. Shows up at Burial Mounds looking so miserable and ridiculous that even Song Lan barks out a startled laugh. 

Lan Xichen breaks two shredders from the number of death threats they’ve received by mail at the law firm. The whole company forced to evacuate from their building one day, after a bomb threat gets called in. Cops and firefighters everywhere and a harried look starting to creep into Lan Xichen’s perpetually mild expression.

“The Wens. The police are in their pocket, I did some digging,” he says at the next Burial Mounds planning meeting. “I’m not sure we have many options here.”

“They’ll get tired,” Lan Wangji says stoically. “We can’t retaliate. It’ll only start a war.”

“If that’s what they want, maybe that’s what they should get,” Nie Mingjue mutters under his breath, restless from inaction. It’s unnatural for him to do nothing, especially with Huaisang caught in the mix. Has him cagey to the point of his composure fraying. Xingchen’s seen the symptoms in the way his temper flares—yelling orders at the barbacks, losing patience even with Song Lan on bad nights, who just walks away, refusing to engage.

“Don’t, Da-ge,” Huaisang makes an elegant motion, silk robe a cascade down his shoulder, over the strap of his tank top. “They’re philistines. They don’t deserve an ounce of your attention.”

“But we can’t go on like this,” Wei Wuxian groans, head in his hands. “My shoulders are sore from the power washer! Like, what’s next, they smash all the glasses in this place? They steal the PA? We can’t afford that! We have jobs, we can’t patrol our shit all night!”

“Look, what exactly is it that they do want?” Xingchen muses. “Maybe that’s the real question. If we can give it to them, or maybe meet to arrange some kind of truce? We’ve never had a problem with them before.”

He’s met with strained silence amongst the group. Because sure, they’ve faced all kinds of threats in the past. Racists and homophobes and their overly simplistic minds are easy game, their actions and responses easy enough to predict. Even the cops have a pattern of harassment that they can track, that they’ve gotten skilled at dealing with over the years. But the Wens are a different case altogether. With their motivations so personal and murky, it’s hard to know what to avoid or where next to tread.

Song Lan clears his throat. “Wen Ruohan is old-fashioned. Petty,” he says crisply. “If he feels disrespected, could be a turf war in response.”

Lan Wangji lets out a noise of such derision that anything within ten meters of him might as well shrivel. “What,” he says, “a pointless waste of our time.”

Wei Wuxian stifles a giggle.

Then Song Lan hesitates. “Or… Xue Yang,” he says softly, an indecipherable look coming over his face. “They might be after Xue Yang.”

Xingchen’s skin prickles, ice-cold.

“Zichen,” he says. “What? Why—”

Song Lan turns away from him. “Revenge. Wen Chao’s definitely not over what happened. And from what I can tell, Xue Yang’s been a thorn in the Wens’ side for years—”

“For good reason,” Xingchen bites out.

“That troublesome little fucker.” Mingjue sighs sadly. “It’s a shame, but—

“Look, no one’s saying we have to do anything dramatic, let alone dangerous, like hand him over to the Wens or anything. But can we at least keep him out of the bar?” Lan Xichen suggests, placating.

Naturally, everyone looks to Xingchen.

“I will not,” he lifts his chin haughtily. “Where would he go instead? No, I will not keep him out of the one space meant for him. Where he can be protected. With us. By us. Isn’t Zichen always saying there’s strength in numbers? Jesus, we’re his people.”

“Xingchen, let me remind you that if this keeps going, the Burial Mounds might not exist for much longer. Others might get hurt. Really, actually hurt. And to be frank, that would have a lot to do with Xue Yang. Not just his past, but what he’s done in our space. Actions have consequences. Should everyone here suffer because of the choices he’s made?” Lan Wangji asks bluntly.

“That’s not what you said when it came to Wei Wuxian,” Xingchen points out, cutting.

He can’t believe this is happening. That a group of self-professed activists would exile one of their own; propose sacrificing him for the sake of what? Their own convenience or comfort? The survival of a venue? Spaces can be rebuilt, with effort sure, but not without people. To Xingchen, Xue Yang is emblematic of the exact reason the Burial Mounds exists. Someone who deserves not condescension or pity or disproportionate blame but real solidarity. Needs it, in fact, more than any other person here, more than Xue Yang himself would ever admit.

And that they would all choose to give up on him so willingly—it hurts with the force of real betrayal.

“Wei Ying’s done more for the Burial Mounds than all of us put together,” Lan Wangji replies with cautionary force.

“Is that gremlin even one of us anyway?” Huaisang fake-whispers to the side, trying to cut the tension. Flips his hair casually. “What’s he done for us apart from wear those atrocious shirts and make drama?”

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Xingchen shakes his head. More upset than he knows how to express with his body, the wavering lines of it. Wracked with how weak and outnumbered he feels.  

“Xingchen, it would be for his own protection.” Song Lan mutters. “The Wens, they know to find him here. There’s plenty of other venues.” To the others he probably sounds stoic, quiet as usual, but Xingchen can tell he’s almost begging.

“You should all be ashamed of yourself,” Xingchen says coolly, directly into Song Lan’s face. Gets to his feet and stalks out of the bar; the hurried scrape of Song Lan’s chair right behind him.

“Let’s table it,” he hears Wei Wuxian trail off, weary. “Collective work, more like collective headache. Hey, do you ever wonder why we can’t get anything done—

It’s raining outside. Not the usual delicate drizzle, but fat droplets. It hits the trees sluggishly, an eccentric tapping in time with Xingchen’s uneven heartbeat, stuttered breath. He thinks of Xue Yang, streaking through the crowd like a river, a laughing power line. Above him, the sky swirls with the storm, half-lit and flooded with lightning.

Song Lan emerges next to him, a dark pillar of heat. Unyielding, so rigid that Xingchen wants to shove him till he cracks on the concrete or stumbles. But instead, Song Lan reaches out, gathers Xingchen into his arms and the press of him feels suddenly strange, like Xingchen’s no longer sure if he’s known it before; or if he’s known it too many times to count.  

“I can’t have him put everyone at risk,” Song Lan says, into Xingchen’s hair. His voice sounds coarse.

“We can’t put him at risk, Zichen, can’t you see that? He means something to me,” Xingchen replies desperately.

Once it’s out of his mouth, Xingchen knows it’s world-splittingly true.

And he’d thought Song Lan had understood it, in his own way. Thought he must have, a few weeks ago, when Xue Yang had been over. Catlike in their bed. The reflection of the laptop in his pupils and lip caught between his teeth from suspense. Some action movie he’d been watching. It had seemed like the most natural thing in the world, for Xingchen to touch his thumb to Xue Yang's lower lip. To dig his fingers into the hinge of Xue Yang’s jaw and turn it into his own mouth, already wide to take him. It had seemed like the most natural thing in the world, for Xingchen to press his tongue, hot between Xue Yang’s teeth; feel him shudder against his sternum. Find the seams to split him apart and make him moan. 

Xingchen had heard Song Lan come in at some point, then retreat; shut the door quietly behind him. “You’re happy,” he said later that night, without acrimony, and Xingchen had nodded shyly, and so he thought Song Lan must have understood.

But now—“Xue Yang’s not… I don’t know. He’s not… bonded. To you, to anyone,” Song Lan is saying, with a wildness around his eyes. “I’m not sure he can. I don’t think it’s what he does.” He says it as if Xingchen knows what it’s like to be indelibly tethered in that way; nourished within that kind of community. Like being bonded means something to him. 

It doesn’t. Xingchen, who grew up in the middle of nowhere with next to no one around him, yearning for kindred others. Who can’t help but be grateful and welcoming to anyone who might choose to enter his life, and respectful of anyone’s decision to leave it. Who by principle gives all of himself over to the people around him; does everything he can for them, and would never, ever tie them down or expect anything in return.

Not like Song Lan, who grew up in a pack and feels those obligations and sacrifices in his very marrow. Who holds in his mind a complex system of checks and balances. Does what he thinks is best for the group, and knows in each moment exactly how much his actions might cost him and those he loves.

Xingchen would like to think that Song Lan left Baixue Temple behind years ago, but perhaps he’s simply substituted it with a different ideology, a different form.

“You and I, we’re not bonded either,” Xingchen whispers, and Song Lan reels. “Don’t. We choose to be together every day. We choose the Burial Mounds, too. It’s different. You know what I mean. Or do you?”

Song Lan looks like he’s been hit. Like someone’s cut his strings with the way he’s leaning against the wall, the slump of his shoulders. Pain is burning through his eyes; where they usually flame’s gone dark and dense, like marble.

All of a sudden, tenderness swells inside of Xingchen; crashing in, chased with regret. It’s hard to see Song Lan like this. Especially when it’s not that Xingchen doesn’t agree with him, not entirely. He can see his side. It’s just that he won’t compromise what he’s so certain he believes. Won’t drain himself of the love and possibility he feels, that he wants to give to Xue Yang, yes, but Song Lan too; that he wants to build his whole world from, even if others at the Burial Mounds don’t think it’s possible.

Xingchen traces his fingers to the raised scars on Song Lan’s forearm. Gentle; reproachful. “You value him Zichen, don’t you? I know you do. Why isn’t that enough?” he asks.

Song Lan doesn’t answer.


*


Ever since the shit with the Wens got started, Song Lan’s had the ambient feeling like his phone’s off the hook. Not that he’s not present necessarily because that’s not who he is. Always on alert, tuned in to danger in a manner he thinks is crucial, ready to absorb or repel it so others don’t have to. He’s caused enough harm in his day after all—it only seems fitting that he pay it back by diverting it from others.

For years, the Burial Mounds has been a fitting place for him to do exactly this. A place where communal ethics are built into the cheap vinyl of the booths, the laughter around him, and the music. Ripping through the electric cords and sizzling the air. Where he feels held; drawn along by its current of shared belief and the reassurance of Xingchen by his side.

But somewhere along the way, the signals have gotten all confused. Coalesced into an uncomfortable static that leaves him not simply uncertain but outright terrified. It’s an unfamiliar feeling—nothing like the steadying anticipation of fear before a fight. No, it’s insistent and dissembling, eating out his insides. Every time there’s a flash of Wen red in the crowd, or a glint of teeth in the corner of his eye, he’s paralyzed. At a loss as to how to respond.

Probably because the Burial Mounds crew hasn’t quite managed to come to terms about Xue Yang’s presence at the bar. And it’s not like Xingchen to be spiteful, but he’s rarely seen there without Xue Yang anymore, the two of them slim, persistent wraiths in the dark. Whispering in each others’ ears. Sliding their mouths together, too-slick and obscene; making a point. To be fair, and to Xingchen’s credit probably, Xue Yang hasn’t started a fight for days. But the others have started treating them like poison nonetheless—Mingjue will barely acknowledge Xue Yang apart from thundering a warning at him every so often, Lan Wangji’s eyes are continually nailed on him with dangerous precision. Even Huaisang’s coy smile’s started becoming edged with something sly, nasty.

Song Lan studies the hairs wisping vulnerable at the back of Xue Yang’s neck, escaping his ponytail and wonders why he doesn’t feel like gloating at the thought of him disappearing from their lives forever.  

Not that they’d be able to keep him either. Xingchen seems intent on his vision of Xue Yang submitting effortlessly to being a part of their community. And Song Lan gets it. He doesn’t know anyone who could be faced with Xingchen’s shine, ever-generous and radiant, and not want to be near it forever. But he also knows boys like Xue Yang, who’ve lived their lives too-mobile from too-young. Finds it hard to believe that it could be that simple. That he wouldn’t end up ultimately driven by the impulsive, animal strings that tune his insides.

And as much as Song Lan doesn’t want to see Xingchen heartbroken, he also doesn’t want to see the Burial Mounds go down in flames. Doesn’t want to see it marred by the worst kind of triad conflict—trivial and unnecessary. In so many ways, at Baixue Temple and beyond, Song Lan’s been failed by collectivity, but he’s poured his life into this place. It’s saved him in return. It seems impossible to him, that his loyalty to it could be misplaced.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t see it coming. Why it’s surprising, really, when it does.  

It’s a regular weeknight, at an early 5PM all-ages show. A few of the summer rock camp bands on the bill, so Song Lan had let himself relax a fraction. Watch the teens screech their tiny lungs out about racists and climate change and toxic relationships; feel that specific pride of marveling at how maybe the kids are all right after all.

Xingchen’s bopping cutely to the beat, A-Qing’s made rainbow signs covered in stickers and glitter marker to cheer them on. Even Xue Yang’s been unexpectedly good with the teens all day, telling exorbitantly fake stories about his own life to make them bug out even as they slouch, pretending to be cool. Helping Huaisang paint their faces with kohl and makeup for their big moment onstage. It’s a rare moment of unblemished hope and Song Lan revels in it, so much so that he almost doesn’t notice when Nie Mingjue bursts through the door.

He’s a mess. Song Lan’s immediately tight with concern to see the jagged cut on his scalp, like a bottle’s been broken over his forehead; a swelling black eye. He doesn’t like at all the way Mingjue’s arm is hanging. Grotesquely loose, like it’s been yanked from his socket.

“Get the kids out of here,” Mingjue roars. “The Wens, I caught them on the way. Tried to stop them, but—”

Xingchen’s already at his side, trying to test the give of his shoulder. “Fuck, no time!” Mingjue growls, wrenching himself away. “They’re coming. Now!”

Xingchen, usually so good under pressure, makes a horrified noise.

Song Lan’s frozen in place. His mind’s teeming with all the things he knows he could do—bar the doors, hustle the kids out back, call for the Lan brothers, at the very fucking least—but he can’t seem to bring himself to move an inch. Can’t seem to pull his eyes away from Xue Yang, who’s trapped in place too, by some invisible force. Face white and bobbing like a strange balloon mounted on a stick. It’s weirdly affecting, how boyish he looks. Not that much older than some of the teens who’d been on stage. It forces something open in Song Lan, that he doesn’t want exposed, something tender and wrathful all at once—

He doesn’t have time to think about it though, because before he knows it, there’s red-shirted men streaming into the bar. Not that many, he calculates frantically—he can see four, no maybe six—but enough to be a real problem. Where the fuck is everyone else? Wei Wuxian might have gone out to get pizza? No doubt Huaisang’s cowering, hidden somewhere. A-Qing flings herself on the children, shrieking, and Xingchen’s vaulting in their direction, calling as calmly and authoritatively as he can for them to follow her and leave through the back door, which, thank god, because Song Lan finds himself suddenly occupied with multiple Wen henchmen.

Finally, his reflexes kick in.

This, at least, he knows how to do; hones his soul with the adrenaline of it. Thud of his fist, sweat-tight. The blossoming pain between his fingers that echoes upon impact to his bones. He fights, and it’s like hot sunlight is flowing out of him and splashing itself in wide, violent blotches onto any face or body unlucky enough to veer into his sight. He can’t tell where anyone is, what else it is they’re doing. The haze that’s come over him, the crush of bodies, the thought of the Wens destroying this place he calls his—

“They timed it well, the slimy fuckers. An all-ages show? Seriously? That’s low,” Nie Mingjue grunts, somewhere else in the fray, doing his best with only one arm. Groaning theatrically as one man lands a hit to his ribs and then falls, dislodged by Mingjue’s smooth kick to his calf

“Xingchen made fliers,” Song Lan yells despairingly, jabbing another man efficiently, twice in the face. “The Lans?”

“I don’t know—What?—” Mingjue shouts, frustratedly. And then Song Lan’s stomach drops even further than he thought possible. Right through the floor, because the sound that pierces the air, round and deafening, is chillingly familiar.

Police sirens.

What is happening, his brain yells nonsensically at himself, as he flips another Wen off his back. This can’t be happening.

But it’s all too real. The sirens stop. Footsteps at the door.

“Thank you, sir,” comes that sleazy drawl of a voice. “Yeah, I had to report it, as a concerned citizen, you know. I just felt it was my duty.”

There’s a cool breeze by Song Lan’s elbow. The relief he feels to see Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen hurrying straight past him is so strong he’s nauseous with it. A-Qing must have called them—the firm’s only round the corner. They’re both breathless and in court suits. Lan Xichen’s tie slightly askew. There’s a shadow close to the back door. Xingchen—a grim look on his face, shaded by a nonchalant flintiness that Song Lan doesn’t see often but is aware doesn’t bode well.

And then there he is, Wen Chao, at the Burial Mounds entrance, facing them down. Revoltingly triumphant and surrounded by cops, badges glinting, silver and menacing in the evening light.

“What can we do for you, officers,” Lan Wangji says, austere and unruffled, as if it were just an ordinary evening. As if he weren’t surrounded by battered Wens groaning and picking themselves one by one off the floor.

“Clearly—uh, clearly there’s been an assault here,” blusters the policeman next to Wen Chao. “This is unacceptable. We’re going to have to take uh—the person who started this in. At least.”  He’s loud, trying to cover up his hesitation. Just some dumb shill, acting on Wen command. He can barely remember his lines.

We’ve been baited, Song Lan thinks furiously to himself. A trap. Automatically, his hackles raise. Loathing to yield. If only he could get them out of this. If only he could turn that clamoring force in his body loose—right where it wants to go, right in Wen Chao’s vindictive, awful face—

Song Lan glances at Lan Xichen, who shakes his head imperceptibly. No getting into it with the cops. They all know it. House rules. It’s so fucking stupid. He sees Mingjue’s eyes flash, his face twist before he raises his hands slowly. With an exhale that twinges to the bottom of his chest, Song Lan reluctantly does the same. There’s no way either of them won’t be taken in and charged. A night in jail at least, and even that would be lucky. He curses. Can’t believe they walked right into it. That he’d been so utterly and totally unprepared—

There’s a tense pause.

Then a Wen on the floor raises one trembling, accusatory finger, and points it directly at Xue Yang. “It was him! He started it,” he howls. Blood pours from his mouth.

Shit, Xue Yang, Song Lan thinks, panicked. He’d lost sight of him somewhere, early on in the scuffle. Maybe he’d been shoved to the side, or sidled away, but Song Lan had been busy, just sort of assumed he’d know how to take care of himself.

But there he is now, perched on the bar with the collar of his tshirt ripped almost all the way open. Fresh scratch marks on his cheek where a Wen must have clawed at him and face contorted into the exaggerated sneer of someone backed into a corner, but knows he’s about to lose. The wilted curve of his shoulders is strangely small, resigned.

It hurts Song Lan somewhere he doesn’t understand.

“No,” Xingchen says, determinedly. Moving to step in front of Xue Yang. “Officers, it seems there’s been some mistake.”

Song Lan’s throat goes dry.

“Oh, no mistake,” Wen Chao smirks. “Seems exactly right to me.” He spreads his hands in a gesture of mock-magnanimity. “I think the instigator can come with us and we can all call it a day. How does that sound?”

It’s a surprisingly reasonable proposal. Based on what Song Lan knows of old triad rules, it’s fair. Blood for blood, an eye for an eye. The Burial Mounds, mostly unrelated, gets off with a series of warnings and a show of force on the Wens’ part; Song Lan and Mingjue roughed up enough to pass for punishment. He sees the Lan brothers exchange a series of complicated microexpressions. Mingjue relaxes visibly. But Xue Yang—

“What are you waiting for?” Wen Chao roars, and the cops lurch forward, a sea of blue. Xingchen tussles to shield Xue Yang, but he’s just one person, tossed easily to the side.

“Zichen,” Xingchen cries.

And Song Lan’s so lost, doesn’t know what to do. Searching around him for cues from someone, anyone. But Mingjue’s looking away, fists clenched. The Lans are watching on, impassive.

Xue Yang isn’t going easy, kicking and screaming insults. His face is red, vicious. Teeth and collarbone bared and brittle. A cop nabs him in the face with his baton to stop him struggling, and Song Lan sees the panic rise in him. How he starts to hyperventilate and his pupils go starry. His arm twisted behind him at a painful angle, one big hand rough on the back of his neck.

No one moves.

Song Lan’s whole being yearns for Xingchen, to grab him and run. But to take one step out of line with so many cops in the vicinity—

“Zichen,” Xingchen sobs, pleading.

Then Song Lan hears Xue Yang start to laugh, a weak cackle. It’s a token bit of resistance, and something in Song Lan shatters at the sound. He’s so livid, suddenly, at the people around him. That they would let this happen—this abuse of power, this coercive violence—right in front of them and do nothing. And yeah, Xingchen was right—it’s fucking hypocritical. Contrary to all the things they’ve ever said, everything they’ve promised one another. But the truth is, Song Lan is a lesser man than Xingchen and maybe in this moment, for him, it’s not that high-minded or complex.

Song Lan looks at Xue Yang, scared and slight, and thrashing. At Xingchen, tearful on the floor, and every fiber of his being refuses to accept it. Utterly rejects it; has to.

Mingjue yells out a dismayed “Don’t!”

But a piercing clarity blisters Song Lan’s body; blasts the terror, his doubt away. The static stills. His mind goes very, very quiet. Song Lan feels the power he keeps sealed close to his chest well up inside him and churn, and welcomes it. Because for one perfect, suspended second, he’s sure. He makes his choice.

“Fuck this,” he growls, and leaps forward.

With all the strength he can muster, Song Lan punches the cop holding Xue Yang square in the face.


*


The gravity of what Song Lan’s done only hits him once they’re back at the apartment. Steaming clean through him, with nowhere else to go in the ringing quiet.

“Wangji will keep the cops away from here if he can, I think. He owes us that much,” he grits out, willing himself to stay focused. “But we can’t stay long. They’ll be after us.”

Frankly, it’s a miracle that all three of them had managed to get out fairly unscathed. Bits and pieces still whirling through Song Lan’s mind like some grotesque ballet. Three cops wrapped tight around his torso, the claustrophobic weight pulling at his neck, his pelvis. Flash of a knife and Xue Yang’s contempt as he’d lodged it into the fat width of a navy shoulder. The vengeance icy on Xingchen’s face as he’d stepped neatly out of the path of the cop coming for him and elbowed him in the back of his head. Cotton feel of Xue Yang’s tshirt in his fist, Xingchen’s sleek hair, whipping in the wind as they’d made a run for it through backyards and alleys. Jumping fences when they’d had to. Hyperalert to any smidge of a siren, their own muffled gasps.

It’s lucky they don’t live too far away, but—

What the fuck are we going to do now? Without the scaffolding of the Burial Mounds to back them up, it all comes crashing down on Song Lan’s shoulders. The brutal energy that had crammed itself into him just a few minutes ago dissipates rapidly. He’s stuck on the memory of Lan Wangji’s face—resolutely closed, but edged with condescending pity. Mingjue’s blunt disappointment

“Zichen,” Xingchen says, low and careful. Fingers at his shoulder.

Underneath Song Lan’s skin, his heart moves. Chest slowing at the familiar touch.

Song Lan takes a deep breath. Tries to identify the objects around him, one by one as they surface in his field of vision. His oven mitts, burned from overuse, Xingchen’s dog-eared copy of No Future, their empty coffee cups from this morning, sitting in the sink because Xingchen never does the dishes, even when he asks. But—

“You know what, fuck you,” Xue Yang says, shaking his head. He’s leaned against the wall, the thin bones of his ribs shifting as he pants. The disgust on his face looks plastic, ugly, set against the tears smeared at the corners of his eyes. His plush lower lip. Song Lan is hit with an overwhelming urge to put his fist in Xue Yang’s face.

“I—Shut up,” he spits. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“No! What the fuck is wrong with you,” Xue Yang hisses. “No one asked you to do that. Can’t resist being the fucking hero, huh? Well, I’ve got news for you. Once I get the fuck out of this town, this… whatever you did will be meaningless to me. And as for whatever happens to you two idiots, I don’t care, I don’t—”

Song Lan can’t believe what he’s saying. It’s so harsh, so thoughtless, so unnecessary—

He lifts Xue Yang by the shirt and slams him once, hard into the wall. He can’t wipe the snarl from his face. Xue Yang’s teeth rattle in his skull.

But the little shit won’t let up. “Where’re all those polite ethics of yours now,” Xue Yang goads. “Where are all your comrades, where’s that solidarity you’ve been preaching this whole goddamn time,” He won’t stop laughing, a high, cruel sound. His hipbones crushed tight against Song Lan’s thigh and the heady smell of his sweat.

The chip of restraint that Song Lan had been clinging to plummets into the background. Not that he was expecting any thanks. But Xue Yang can’t possibly understand how bereft he feels in this moment. How vast his grief is as it expands—

Song Lan hits him, open-handed across the face.

It makes a sick crack. Song Lan’s wracked with hunger to see the glaze come over Xue Yang’s pupils, the pink staining his cheek. He wants to do it again. He wants to tear that poisonous mouth apart. He wants to sink his teeth into Xue Yang’s neck and rip the vessels right out of the meat of him. He want to—he can’t—

He lets go immediately. Shaking now; so ashamed like this, to lose control. Xue Yang crumples into the wall.

“Sorry,” Song Lan mumbles. “I didn’t—I don’t—" His stomach flops, like it’s been cut out of him entirely, and what lives in his ribcage instead is a whole slew of different, hungry human hearts that want a hundred contradictory things.

He’s exhausted suddenly, none of his muscles wanting to cooperate. Can’t do anything but stumble away. Let himself sink to his knees at Xingchen’s feet. Forehead pressed into Xingchen’s lower belly. Begging silently for what, he doesn’t know—punishment, absolution, anything, just—

“It’s okay, Zichen,” Xingchen whispers, and long fingers rub soothingly at his temples. “You’re okay. You’re done. You did so good.”

Song Lan can’t help the sob that tears itself from his throat. Xingchen doesn’t stop touching him; a lifeline, a salve. His shorn hair, his cheekbone, his chin—constant and reassuring. Feels good, but Song Lan can’t sink into it. Too much has gone wrong too fast. He’d be shocked if even Xingchen knew what to do next. Between the threat of the Wens and the reach of the cops, city-wide, there’s nowhere safe. No way to tell what's coming. They’ll probably have to run. How far? A few towns over doesn’t seem like enough. And as for—

“Yang’er,” Xingchen says sternly, and it’s a tone Song Lan’s never heard come out of his mouth before.

The hairs on the back of Song Lan’s neck stand. Anticipation smokes the air. He’s not sure what’s brewing, but it doesn't seem right and the register’s all wrong.

Gently, Xingchen pulls away from Song Lan and stalks over to Xue Yang. Close, right up to his face, like he’s walking up to the end of the world and isn’t afraid to face it. Song Lan sees the line of Xue Yang’s body yield instantly. His expression softens, as if put in a trance.

“I don’t think that's very nice of you,” Xingchen is saying. His mouth’s drawn close to Xue Yang’s now, sweet and pursed. It radiates danger. Xue Yang licks his lips and the moisture from his tongue grazes Xingchen’s skin.

Against his will, Song Lan’s caught off guard by how beautiful they are like this, how the air crackles between them. Both injured—split skin and their clothing torn apart, but flush with the expectation that any touch shared might make them whole. The light intent in Xingchen’s face, the darkness underneath Xue Yang’s eyes.

The dread empties itself from Song Lan’s brain. He swallows. Struck, suddenly, with a desire to be near them

Xingchen tangles a hand into Xue Yang’s ponytail and pulls down hard. The gasp Xue Yang lets out; so soft and desperate it goes straight to Song Lan’s dick. “Zichen worked very hard to protect you today,” Xingchen says evenly. “Don’t you think you should thank him?”

“No,” Xue Yang immediately bites out, but the glow in his eyes is unmistakable. The way he’s gone slack to increase the strain of Xingchen’s grip. How willingly he bares his throat. It looks too plain, like it needs a bruise put on it. Like he wants to give in but doesn’t know how. Like he’s daring Xingchen to do it for him.

“I—Xingchen,” Song Lan stutters, unsure of his place in all this. Choked up with how foreign he feels.

“Come here, Zichen,” Xingchen beckons, in a tone that brokers no argument. Trust me, says the curl of his mouth, tipped upwards

Wordlessly, Song Lan gets to his feet. Walks over. He could never resist. He could never not obey.

“Look at him,” Xingchen runs one finger through the blood still streaked on Xue Yang’s cheek. Digging his nails into the scratches there. “Don’t you think he’s pretty?”

Xue Yang jerks. Feral, hissing, trying to pull away. But he can’t, really, with Xingchen’s hand pinning him in place. His back arches to compensate for the tension.

The want in Song Lan’s belly grows, so hot he can barely stand it. “Yes,” he breathes, because he’s tired of pretending it isn’t true. He can’t take his eyes off Xue Yang’s face. The print his hand had left earlier, starting to swell. The quick flutter of his eyelashes.

“Do you want to touch, Zichen?” Xingchen asks.

Song Lan hesitates.

“Yes,” he murmurs, a confession.

“Good,” Xingchen smiles. He twines Song Lan’s hand in his and brings it right up to Xue Yang’s lips.

“No biting,” he says, firmly. Xue Yang scowls, incisors on display.

But Xingchen just laughs, casual and mean. Takes the opportunity to push Song Lan’s fingers into Xue Yang’s mouth. Not gentle; and Song Lan’s brain whites right out at the wet heat of it. At being so close,  suddenly, to Xue Yang’s insides. The grain of his tongue, the keen edges of his teeth. Song Lan drags his fingers slowly—in, out. Xue Yang’s eyes roll back with the intrusion and Song Lan can’t help himself, pushes in deep to test his gag reflex. Xue Yang chokes so prettily. Spit dribbling from the corner of his mouth. The quick pulse of his throat. Song Lan wants nothing more than to feel it around his cock. But this isn’t—he’s not meant to—

“Xingchen,” Song Lan says helplessly, pulling back like he’s been burnt. He’s so confused, can’t tell what’s happening, he—

“Shhh, it’s okay, Zichen,” Xingchen says. “Won’t you thank him, Yang’er?” he tries again, and his voice shifts, mean. Yanking at Xue Yang’s hair, a warning. “I really think you should. Won’t you let Zichen fuck your mouth? He’s done so much for you. For us. Don’t you think he deserves it?”

Song Lan feels his pulse in his entire body. 

“No,” Xue Yang whines, but everything about him screams yes. He’s sunk right under. Song Lan can see it in the lax span of his eyes, the boneless slouch of his chest. He’s blurry, tuned into Xingchen’s every cadence. His mouth is red, shiny with spit.

“Yang’er,” Xingchen says. “You don’t have a choice. You’re going to be good for me. I’m going to make you. If you don’t want to do that anymore, I’m going to need you to tap out. Can you show me?”

Xue Yang taps a rhythm out on Xingchen’s wrist; clearly something they've established.

“Well done,” Xingchen says, and Song Lan chest clenches once, at the easy fluency of what passes between them. But then he stops thinking, because Xingchen’s twisting Xue Yang’s head back, cruel. Stepping down hard on his inside calf and bringing him to his knees with a yelp, right in front of Song Lan.

And he seems small, looking up like this. Brow furrowed and fidgeting restlessly. Trying to toss his head, but Xingchen’s grip is unremitting. Xue Yang’s scalp is probably starting to burn.  

“Take it out, Zichen,” Xingchen says, breath ghosting in Song Lan’s ear. Open-mouthed kisses grazing his neck and a bite that makes him gasp. All teeth; throbbing, possessive. Song Lan’s so hard, pressing at the front of his jeans. It hurts when he pulls his cock out, the cold smack of night air.

Xue Yang’s eyes go round. “Fuck,” he mutters, eyeing the size of it.

“Oh dear. That,” Xingchen says kindly. “Didn’t sound anything like thank you.” His fingers hook into Xue Yang’s bottom teeth with force, pulling his jaw wide open. “Try again, Yang’er.”

“No,” Xue Yang garbles, fighting it, but Song Lan can’t stand it any longer—the flush down Xue Yang’s neck, the encouragement in Xingchen’s nod. Sinks his cock deep into Xue Yang’s throat and groans with the relief of it. Pleasure licks up his spine, uncontrollable and demanding.

Xue Yang flails, gagging, but Xingchen just pulls him forward, inch by inch, till his lips are pressed to Song Lan’s skin.

“You can be rough, Zichen, he can take it,” Xingchen says sweetly, and Song Lan forgets how to breathe. He snaps his hips back and forth, tentatively; sinks his fingers into Xue Yang’s hair. The strands of it feel smooth, silky. Xingchen’s hand right next to his, clamped tight. Xue Yang whimpers and Song Lan’s insides blaze with how good it feels. The noise he lets out is fractured, hauled right out of him.

“That’s good. Very good. Look at how much he’ll let you, Zichen,” Xingchen urges, and Song Lan’s giddy with the sight. Xue Yang, tears streaming down his face, pupils blown wide. His clavicles heave every time he chokes and Song Lan wants to feel them shatter under his hands, wants to find every weak spot in his body that’ll make him cry out and splinter.

Xue Yang’s hard too, it’s obvious. Hand twitching, like he wants desperately to press it to his cock, but knows Xingchen won’t allow it. Despite all his protests, he’s trying so desperately to take the full length of Song Lan into his mouth. So eager it’s almost clumsy.

“Sweet boy,” Xingchen soothes, stroking Xue Yang, gentle now, at the nape of his neck. “You like it, don’t you, taking care of Zichen. Just like he took care of you. Threw it all away, everything he’s worked for, just so he could protect you.”

Xue Yang responds with one long, trembling shudder.

And maybe it’s the praise that makes him honest, maybe it’s just the sensory overload, but just like that, Xue Yang cracks open. Freezes, for a second, then nods stiffly, just once. Almost shyly. Eyes closed, like he can’t stand to face the truth. Tears are dripping down his chin, onto the freckles dotting his chest. Song Lan wants to eat them off him.

“That’s right,” Xingchen continues. “You like that Zichen did that for you. And you’re taking it so well, Yang’er, but I know you can take more. I know you can do better for him. Can’t you?”

The way Xue Yang bends into Xingchen’s voice makes him look soft, pretty. Song Lan’s head goes light. Can’t help but clench his teeth, buck his hips harder into that hot mouth, and Xue Yang just… opens for him. Swallows him all the way down.

“Fuck,” Song Lan says, voice thick.

Because it’s so much. Too much. That Xue Yang would admit to it. That he would sink into this perfect compliance, not simply for Xingchen, but because of something that Song Lan did for him. Because Song Lan chose him, over the Burial Mounds, over everything he cares about. As prickly and ferocious as Xue Yang is, as he’s had to be to survive, that he would trust Song Lan enough to let him use him like this in return—

It’s all building in Song Lan’s gut, the sparks behind his eyes, the ache squeezing taut around his lungs.

“Come on his face for me, Zichen,” Xingchen says, softly, and Song Lan pulls out with a groan; does what he’s told.

He comes all over Xue Yang’s eyelashes, his nose. It’s dripping from his chin. Xue Yang coughs, heaving with it. And when he reaches one hand up to swipe his knuckles across his lips, suck them into his mouth and swallow, it streaks violent, red.  

Song Lan recalls the spray of blood from the policeman’s shoulder when Xue Yang had pulled his knife out. All over Xue Yang’s hands and staining his neck when he’d stabbed that fucking pig to help Song Lan get free.

“Fuck,” Song Lan says, with vehemence, and collapses to his knees. Gathering Xue Yang to himself and slotting their mouths together. It’s not a nice kiss, acrid with come and blood and the clash of teeth; too much tongue, but Xue Yang licks into Song Lan’s mouth like he’d rather die than let go.

“Zichen,” he says foggily. “Zichen, I—”

Xingchen’s looking down at them with a kind of benevolent awe. He runs his fingers quickly over Song Lan’s skull, tugs fondly at Xue Yang’s hair.

“Beautiful,” he sighs, and there’s a quaver in his voice. “You’re both so—”

“Come here,” Song Lan says, and pulls him down to join them.

Xingchen folds, gracefully. Xue Yang is a dead weight in Song Lan’s lap. The surrender in his body, so vividly languid it makes Song Lan’s heart ache.

Makes it seems ridiculous, Song Lan thinks, that he’d wasted so much time worrying about all the potential threats that Xue Yang might pose. That he’d busied himself taking danger at face value, instead of trying to see Xue Yang for who he really is, what he might need. How it only takes a bit of straightforward kindness, or acceptance, actually, for Xue Yang’s intensity to start tempering itself. 

Xingchen’s always had a knack for that. He’s made Xue Yang drop so exquisitely hard now, a star too ripe to stay in the sky; he’s invited Song Lan in. Song Lan’s not sure he deserves to witness it but he can’t tear his eyes away.

Xue Yang wriggles in his arms. “Wanna make you come, gege,” he says, tilting his head up to Xingchen, who rewards him with a kiss. Slow and thorough, biting the bitterness from his mouth, worrying his lower lip.

“You taste so good,” Xingchen murmurs, tinged with disbelief. “You taste like Zichen.” 

“Won’t you fuck me, gege,” Xue Yang says, arching his hips into Xingchen with small, frantic movements. “I’ve been so good, please, I need—I want—”

“Shhh, sweetheart,” Xingchen says, and leans in to touch their foreheads together.

Song Lan watches, rapt, as Xingchen rummages in the bedroom for a washcloth and lube. As he wipes the mess off Xue Yang’s face. Undresses him with unbearable tenderness; kissing down his thin arms, biting the soft insides of his thighs. Lifting his stained, barely held-together tshirt. Torn jeans and underwear. Song Lan watches Xingchen get Xue Yang on all fours, press lube into him with two fingers at once, just to make him cry out from the stretch.

“What does he look like, Zichen? Tell me,” Xingchen commands, twisting his fingers so Xue Yang stutters, collapsing down onto his elbows. “Up,” he tells Xue Yang, with a vicious slap to his inner thigh. “I want Zichen to see your face."

Xue Yang whimpers, but pushes himself back into position, arms trembling.

Song Lan reaches out to cup the angle of Xue Yang’s jaw, the fragile skin of his eyelids. Traces the curve of his upper lip, bitten raw. The cut of his cheekbone, the shell of his ear. Xue Yang nuzzles into his palm.

“He—” Song Lan tries, but can’t bring himself to describe it. How could he? Xue Yang’s too gorgeous, too mercurial. Holds every emotion and none all at once, in that naked way that Song Lan finds irresistible, unbearable.

“Use your words, Zichen. How does he look?” Xingchen says, unbuttoning his pants.

And there’s so much that Song Lan wants to say but doesn’t know how. So overcome, with this fierce, involuntary feeling that he’s felt for so long now. This feeling of rightness—that three of them are fated to be close, that they should never stray apart—and yet that he’s insisted on questioning. Turned over in his mind, over and over. Hated and resisted, but not quite understood—

Xingchen pushes his cock deep inside Xue Yang without any warning. “What about now,” he asks. 

It’s too soon. Xue Yang almost screams, his back curling painfully and his knees clutching together. Song Lan can’t stop looking at the shapes his mouth is making as Xingchen starts to fuck him; hard, relentless.

“He looks incredible,” Song Lan manages finally, and presses his fingers down on Xue Yang’s tongue.

“Fuck,” Xingchen mutters, drawing a hand down Xue Yang’s spine, tracing his ribs. Then he brackets Xue Yang’s hips with his palms and pulls him back, so hard onto his cock that he’s probably going to bruise. Xue Yang breaks apart on a moan. “Yeah. you’re tight, sweetheart."

Song Lan makes a noise of sympathy, strokes the inside of Xue Yang’s cheek. Plays with the back of his throat just to feel it flutter. Xue Yang chokes on Song Lan’s fingers and Xingchen hisses at the clench of him—and then Song Lan feels—

There’s no question about it, Song Lan thinks. He's certain.

He’d felt so murky, so adrift before. But now he can only wonder, that the three of them could come out of the mud of tonight, its hurt and betrayal and violence and find… something in the residue of it. Something, he thinks, that he can’t say out loud, or describe as a politics or a set of ideals but knows intuitively that the three of them share. That he believes at the truest part of his being. Rage and want—for better from others, from the world—all twisted together and impossible not to act on.

Song Lan realizes now, that perhaps he’s tried to live in the flawed utopianism of the Burial Mounds for so long that he’d lost sight of the ways it had constrained him. Ignored the expectations placed upon him that he’d found hard or even harrowing. Running from the cops tonight, shearing so close to danger had been oddly clarifying—for what he’s willing to sacrifice, or unwilling to give. And perhaps Song Lan doesn’t know what it is about death that Xingchen and Xue Yang find so compelling, but with the two of them here, next to him, he gets the sense that maybe he’s no longer afraid of it.

All Song Lan knows, with a lucid ravenousness he finally lets free, is that he’d give anything over for the possibility of keeping them. Known it from the moment his fist hit that cop’s face. That for Xingchen and Xue Yang, he’d willingly kill, or die and wouldn’t give two fucks about the consequences.

Song Lan watches Xingchen fuck Xue Yang, panting and riddled with pleasure, and thank you, is what he wants to say. To Xue Yang, his sweet mouth, and acid tongue, and the way he’s taking everything Xingchen’s giving him with his legs spread and eyes glistening with the pain. But all Song Lan’s mouth can manage is “you’re good,” muttered low into Xue Yang’s half-open mouth. “You’re so good,” tongued into his ear. “You’re doing so well,” pressed with kisses into the damp curve of his neck; a prayer.

Song Lan wraps one big hand around Xue Yang’s neck and squeezes. Not to stop his breath, just to watch Xue Yang’s eyes go glassy and his breath rattle. Kisses him deep and dirty and Xue Yang comes on a gasp, with Xingchen buried deep inside him and Song Lan’s tongue in his mouth. Xingchen not long after him, his spine an elegant, beaming arc.

It takes a few moments for all three of them to come to, huddled together in a mess of flesh and blood and jutting bone. Xingchen’s head on Song Lan’s shoulder, Xue Yang pressed close to his side. The thrum of their three heartbeats juxtaposed. Song Lan can feel it all. Each lone punctuated thud, each phrase of sustained patter. Separate, but still building and building together, somehow.

Like a really good song.  

“What now,” Song Lan asks, and for once, he isn’t scared of where it might lead.

“The cops aren’t here yet,” Xingchen mumbles hazily, tossing hair from his face. “Or the Wens. We’re probably alright for now. Maybe they won’t come.”

“Well, we’re not going back to the Burial Mounds,” Xue Yang grimaces, with spite.  

“Yeah, we probably can’t trust anyone there anymore,” Xingchen sighs and Song Lan’s surprised at how little it stings. How easy it is to let go. Xue Yang’s warm, curled into his side. Xingchen’s expression is so serene it seems to hold limitless possibility.

Song Lan thinks back to the Burial Mounds, how it had always felt like a doorway into a place he wanted to live, but if he’s honest with himself, never really materialized. And sure, there had been good times. A lot of good done, too. But in the face of this new present—Xingchen’s compassion, Xue Yang’s impetuousness, this delicate tightrope act that he’s found himself a part of and doesn’t ever want to let go—those times feel like lies. It’s hard to believe he’d ever thought of them as his.

“We should probably get out of here though,” Xue Yang yawns. “Just to be safe.”

“We could go anywhere,” Xingchen smiles indulgently. “Where do you want to go, Yang’er? What about the ocean?”

And they could, Song Lan considers. They could go to the mountains, where Xingchen’s from, or travel the coast. They could get in the car right now, take nothing with them and go wherever they wanted. Nothing is perfect, or permanent, but people take root in each other’s hearts and grow like weeds. Xingchen did in Song Lan’s, and Xue Yang will too, he can tell. Maybe there’s nothing to do but inhabit the world together and learn. Do their best for others, keep themselves accountable in the ways they can. Love while they can and see what lasts and what doesn’t.

"Wherever. I don’t need much. Never have. Never needed anyone. Not friends, or allies, or fucking anything.” Xue Yang sits up, laughing. He sounds young, suddenly. Bright.

“You have us now, though,” Xingchen says, teasing. “Or will you throw us away too.”

“No allies,” Song Lan says, “only us.” And Xue Yang grins. Unruly, blazing.

“Only us,” Xue Yang repeats slowly. “Yeah,” and the words sound warm in his mouth.

Song Lan can tell he means it.