Work Text:
“What the fuck is this?”
Mu Qing hisses at his cubicle neighbor's computer screen, disgust slapped across his face. Pei Ming just shrugs, a comically large frown disfiguring his face as he tries to suppress his smile. Mu Qing glares at the words that dared to show up in his eyes.
Before them lay what could only be described as pure, unadulterated porn. Mu Qing's mouth dropped as he speed read paragraphs describing ginormous penises stuffing themsevels into orfaces that should have been torn to peaces, positions that had him tilting his head like a lost puppy trying to figure out the word “sit,” and something called a fountain. He would never drink water again. He read it over and over again, unable to rip his eyes away from it because it was all him.
Mu Qing moaned and whimpered,
Mu Qing humped the mattress like a dreanged animal.
Mu Qing, himself, was doing the most sexually charged things known to man. The world's first forever virgin–pissing himself for the umpteenth time because he was riding dick too good. He never even pleased a penis; he couldn’t, thanks to the parts god bestowed upon him. And yet, there he was, in filthy paragraphs with awful sentence structure and too many words for “dick,” a written porn star for the world to see.
“What. The. Fuck. Is. This.” He hissed, unable to think of any other sentence.
“It's a fan fiction,” Pei Ming says into his coffee cup, ignoring the murder in his coworker's eyes as he explains.
“What?”
“Fan fiction.” Pei Ming repeats, “It's like non-canonical stories made about characters people like–”
“I know what fanfiction is, you dumb fuck.” Mu Quin spits, barely holding back, punching Pei Ming square in his handsome jaw. “But this- this-this is just…why are you even reading this?”
“I’ve got a long lunch break,” he shrugged.
“I should call HR. This has to be sexual harassment.”
“Please no, that would be the fifth time this month.”
Mu Qing calmed down for long enough to wonder at that moment how this buffoon even stayed employed in the first place before his eyes forced back onto the screen, and the urge to break it over Pei Ming's head resurfaced.
“But why me? And why-why,” he stuttered, with hatred and embarrassment burning through his cheeks.
“Why Feng Xin?” Pei Ming smirked, allowing a chuckle to escape.
Five seconds later, he was lying on the floor, curled up into the pathetic little ball he was and clutching his crotch with a groan.
“You guys are a very popular ship,” he whimpered, “people love the whole enemies-to-lovers thing.”
He looked back at the sentence “Mu Qing pressed his hands harder, trying to squeeze his lover's big tits tighter around his sensitive t-dick.”
Mu Qing stared back down at him with his fist still balled up for his next strike. He didn’t get it. He got why people shipped to characters from a show. For God's sake, he's watched Naruto before. The need to see to people who clearly need to be together is fair. For characters. Cartoons. Fiction. But him? He was just some run-of-the-mill office 9-5 worker whose only exciting thing going on was morning runs. (He once saw a fox. Very rare, very exciting)
And why Feng Xin? The man had caused him nothing but problems and setbacks from the moment they both joined this company. Accepted into the same position, due to some computer error and a very intellectually challenged higher up, they fought for everything, from end-of-the-year bonuses to promotions. Thanks to him, for two weeks, he had to live off half a paycheck because they thought they were one person. So why was he moaning on his dick?
“What do you mean by popular ship?” He asked, grabbing Pei Ming by the collar and dragging him close to his face.
“Like on Twitter, um, hashtag Fengqing?” He chuckled nervously, his punched-balls voice making it sound more like a giggle. “I could show you the fan art?”
No, he didn’t know about any fucking Fengqing. But just as he was going to kick Pei Ming in the balls this time, the so-formentioned horse cocked coworker (even though with having a temper that huge, Mu qing could only imagine him with a micropenis; ignoring the sizable bulge in his always too tight pants) strutted into view, with a coffee cup that read “rise and grind” in bonixous red font that was sloshing to the brim with coffee and yet non of it spilling over.
“Hey, do you have–” he started before fully accepting the scene of chaos that he walked into. For a second, he just stared at the throttled Pei Ming, his tall body half limply placed on the floor, half dangling from Mu Qing's grasp, before sighing and shaking his head, giving up before he even tried to understand and pointing towards the cursed, fanfiction-yielding computer screen.
“Is that the revised draft about the advertisement plans for xx company?” leaning towards the computer screen to get a better look.
There wasn’t a lot of thought in the process of Mu Qing's next movements. There were thoughts, such as “holy shit” and the word “squirt,” that seemed to every third word of the damned Wattpad document, but there wasn’t any thought that would be considered necessarily productive or good. Rather, it could be perceived as quite the opposite. In a fit of panic, Mu Qing dropped the body of Pei Ming, rushed over to Feng Xin, trying to shove him away from the computer, tripped over the fallen body of his coworker, and smacked the cup of coffee directly into the white work shirt that was begging to be released from its peck-induced misery.
There was a beat as Mu Qing stepped back, crushing one of Pei Ming's balls in the process–the one good thing that happened during those 5 seconds.
The office slowed, and idle chatter turned into whispered gasps as the liquid created a train down to the rest of Feng Xin's shirt, turning the one pristine white a murky dark brown. Mu Qing blinked a couple of times, not wanting to grasp the situation of which just occurred. After a moment of silence, Mu Qing simply grunted, “I never said you could look yet.”
Feng Xin's eyes flashed with a thousand different emotions and landed on the one that stated “fuck you,” sucked in his breath, and crept away without another word.
Beneth his feet, now clutching his leg, Pei Ming, with an uncharacteristic sparkle in his eye for a person of his situation, whispers in his excitement.
“enemies to lovers. ”
***
Mu Qing wanted to die. He wanted to get buried alive, stabbed with 100 swords, or maybe just one big sword. He was already debating the quickest way to the nearest hardware store and Googling how much his ceiling fan could hold before it would snap. He sat on the corner chair of the break room, sipping on his coffee with liquid fury as he tried to ignore the feeling of stares and whispers that were so obviously directed at him. It would be fine, he dealt with it often enough anyway.
As he was savoring his cup of coffee, the sound of a creaking chair from his side announced Ming Yi's silent presence.
He tossed a sandwich in front of Mu Qing's limp body, and nodded before sitting in the seat right next to him.
Mu Qing grunted in response as he continued drinking.
There was a quiet air between them as they sat together, and for a second, Mu Qing hoped that the one person he tolerated didn’t know what had happened. If he did, he’d have to kill him.
“I heard about what happened.” He mumbled as he unwrapped his lunch of an array of almost every lunch food he had ever seen.
Mu Qing would have to kill him.
He wondered if he could get him to choke on his food; it could easily look like an accident since the amount of food he inhaled could only be described as inhuman. He often wondered how he was able to keep so much in his stomach at all times, since every time Mu Qing saw him, he was always munching on something.
“And saw it too,‘ he continued, picking at what looked like braised pork(could that even be considered a lunch dish?). Feng Xin was trying to wash off the stains in the bathroom, mumbling something about it being his last clean shirt or something…” He trailed off, glancing up at Mu Qing's scrunched-up expression with a quirked eyebrow.
“But, but, I'm sure it's fine,” He huffed sarcastically. “I saw him leave a couple of minutes ago, so im sure he’s going to change.” With that, Mu Qing took a big gulp of his coffee, making Ming Yi glance up as he slammed it down and sighed.
“He deserved it. He came up to me unannounced and spooked me; it was only simple defense,” he rolled his eyes with contempt. Why did he feel bad in the first place? It was Feng Xin, not his mother, he probably deserved it in one way or another.
Ming Yi stared at him for a second, studying his face as he chewed slowly, nodding, pushing the sandwich closer to him. “If you're not gonna eat that, I’m taking it back.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He waved off, “I‘m planning on eating–”
He was quickly cut off by the brightest thing to have ever entered his eyesight. Several other people squinted from the light, their eyes watering and retinas burning. There poured in Shi Qingxuan in all of their shimmery and sequinned glory. How they managed to get around the dress code enough to wear three different types of glitter was an office mystery. Like the winds, they quickly rushed up towards Ming Yi and Mu Qing, wrapping their arms around the former person's shoulders, holding him down as he tried to squirm away. They stared at Mu Qing with a determined gaze, their cheeks puffing up with words ready to spill out.
“Good afternoon, Shi Qingxuan, how has your day been–”
“I heard you slapped the shit out of Feng Xin today,” they spoke, without contempt, their body vibrating with curiosity.
A beat of silence hit the room before Ming Yi coughed, poorly hiding a snort. “Shi Qingxuan, I believe you are mistaken; he accidentally spilled coffee on Feng Xin.”
“Ooh,” they purred, settling down and reaching for a bite of food. “Wanted to see what was under that tight button-up up huh?”
Mu Qing began to choke and cough at Shi Qingxuan's raised eyebrow.
“God no–it was, the computer screen–I didn’t want him to see–” he managed to stutter out, glaring at them.
“Computer screen?” Ming Yi questioned, “What was on there?”
Shi Qingxuan’s face paused for a second in thought before their eyes widened and they jumped up, pointing an accusatory finger at Mu Qing. “Wait, wait, wait, was it Fengqing?”
The sudden flush that entered his face was an answer all on its own.
How do so many working adults have enough time to read about to men fucking?
“Fengqing?” Ming Yi asked to nobody in particular. Of course, he wouldn’t know. But he was a rare case in this office.
“OMG, Ming- Xiǎo, I didn’t tell you yet?: jumping at the opportunity to spill some drama.” Okay, so it all started when Feng-(xiānsheng?) Xin and Mu Qing were fighting outside of a KFC… ”
A rush of memories and shame hit Mu Qing square in the back as he shot up from his chair.
“I have to go!” he blurted as he rushed out of the break room, not able to listen to that story.
“Your sandwich?” Ming Yi called out, unable to see any food going to waste.
“Ming- Xiǎo, I'll eat it,” Shi Qingxuan smiled, “he probably has too many butterflies in his stomach to even think about food…”
Mu Qing blocked out the rest of that conversation from his ears before it messed with his head.
How did Shi Qingxuan know about that argument? How did anyone know about it? Sure, it was in a public space, but nobody remembers public arguments for that long. Right? Plus, it happened more than 5 years ago, when he was still in college, so why did people remember it in the fucking first place?
***
“Where do you think you're going?”
Feng Xin yanked at his wrist, pulling Mu Qing back to face him. The look in his eyes wasn’t fury; it was sad and begging, his pupils dilated with desperation as he pleaded. Mu Qing twisted his face into his shoulder, unable to look at those eyes.
“I need to go,” he whispered, struggling out of Feng Xin's grip, but it only got tighter.
“Why?” Feng Xin asked, almost begged as he tried to catch his friend's eye. “Xie Lian needs you, his parents need you, I-” his voice cracked, “they need you here with them. For you to support them. After all they’ve done for you. Don't leave them behind just because of a simple rough patch.”
Mu Qing let out a rough laugh and looked him in the eye.
“Rough patch? Feng Xin, there is nothing left. There is nothing to get back, nothing to save. This isn’t just a rough patch,” he spat, “haven’t you seen them? Haven't you seen yourself? Nothing but a goddamn shell of what they once were.”
“Don't say that,” Feng Xin muttered, but they both saw how Xie Lian slumped, and they both could smell how desolate he was, how the bags under his eyes dragged down his porcelain face.
“Don’t say that. Don’t say that after all they’ve done for you. ”
“After all they’ve done for me? “ Mu Qing sneered, “Right, because doing the bare fucking minimum was all they did for me.”
“They gave you a roof over your head, food.”
“No, my mother did that when she made them promise to take care of me. They did it out of obligation and guilt, you and I both know that.” He growled, out of anger or denial, he didn’t know. “If she didn’t, they would have kicked me to the streets the moment her heart stopped beating.”
Feng Xin stared at him, his expression unreadable, searching Mu Qing's face for something. Under his intense gaze, Mu Qing fluttered back tears, biting his cheek until he could taste metal.
“She’s the only reason you guys even wanted to stick around. Because she asked you to.”
“That's not true–” Feng Xin started, but was quickly cut off by Mu Qing's scoff.
“Please, I may be a lot of things, but im not deaf. I know how people see me, how they talk about me. How they treated me was tell-tale enough.”
“But they aren't Xie Lian, they aren’t me.” He dragged Mu Qing closer to him. “Please just come back, Mu QIng, you don't have to talk to them anymore, it can just be the three of us, trust me.”
Mu Qing stumbled back into Feng Xin’s grace, bumping into his body for a second before pushing off, hands tightly pressed to his chest, glaring at the ground, begging for his tears not to fall before he could run away.
Feng Xin loosened his grip just a bit, rubbing his thumb on the underside of Mu Qing's wrist, mumbling something about new beginnings and staying strong that got muffled under the ringing in his ears.
Just as he was about to plant another hand on Mu Qing's shoulder, a fist landed square in his face, knocking the grip from his wrist. Feg Xin stumbled back, ignoring the dribble of blood seeping from his nose as his broken stare dug into Mu Qing's soul.
Mu Qing stepped back, panting and still clenching his fist. His anger looked fake, but firm on his face. At Feng Xin's bloody nose, he stood up straighter, holding his eye as he slowly turned around.
“Trust me,” he mocked, “It’ll be better this way, you’ll have him all to yourself again.”
With that, he turned fully, his heart drumming in his chest, pushing past people to get as far away from Feng Xin as possible, to run from the burning he got from his gaze. He heard the familiar quick inhale and marched forward as he heard him scream,
“If you come back mu qing, I swear on your mother's life–I'll fucking kill you.”
***
As his mind swam through unwanted memories washing over him, Mu Qing's nose crashed into a firm, warm crevice. As he was about to tell this buffon of a person off, his eyes landed upon the questioning gaze of Feng Xin, now in a crisp, clean, still tight blue shirt, staring down at him like he was an anomaly. The shout of annoyance filling up Mu Qing turned into a pathetic squeaking sound as he stepped back and spun around him, almost graceful if he didn't trip over his own feet, and continued to stumble towards his desk.
He bit the inside of his lip and squeezed his eyes shut as he tried very hard to ignore the chortling from the cubicle beside him, where Pei Ming decided to manspread with an ice pack on his lap, ripping off the little face he had left.
(*^-^)／＼(*^-^*)／＼(^-^*)
Mu Qing tumbled into his apartment, placing his suitcase to the side as he stomped towards his couch. He pounced on it with practiced ease, as the thoughts of dinner or if the lack of it would ruin his performance for the days to come.
He felt the overfamiliar pang of guilt in his chest as he sat in his living room listening to the warble of engines, watching the light show of passing headlights as streetlamps drag across his dark walls. He wondered if this was how Xie Lian had felt, all those years ago, as he watched his whole world fall apart into thosands of pieces that he so desperately tried to scoop them all up into his hands. The recurring wonder: If he had stayed, would it have changed anything? Anything at all?
He shook his head, trying to vibrate the thoughts of guilt out of him as he fished for his phone. A distraction would be nice, anything at all to try and stop the memories of Feng Xin's and Xie Lian's broken faces as he turned away.
He found himself on Twitter against ungodly reason, scrolling through thirst traps and rage bait. He pressed the search bar after he saw something so horrid that he needed to get more opinions that agreed with his disgust.
There, he saw it. On the trending searches, he saw what Pei Ming had been talking about. #Fengqing
Mu Qing shifted up a little, curiosity taking over the reasoning part of his brain as he clicked on it. Immediately, his eyes were met with fan art of him and Feng Xin, dressed in rich, ancient robes. He was covered in black and silver, his shaggy, grown-out hair now long and silky, pulled up into a high ponytail, clasped by a silver headpiece with a lengthy saber at his side. Feng Xin was also lavishly dressed, with browns, greens, accented by copper golds that made his skin tone pop. By his side, in a casual grip, stood a black longbow casually held by him as he–Mu Qing squinted and stuck his face closer to his phone screen–tilted the art Mu Qing's head with a gentle hand, pressing his thumb into his cheek to look at him with a brazen smile that danced across his face. The real-life Mu Qing copied his artistic expression as a surprise blush sprouted onto his face. The only difference was that he wasn’t looking away like some giggling schoolgirl!
He looked closely at the poses the artist had made, how Mu Qing grabbed at Feng Xin's clothes, still wanting him to be near, how the artist somehow made Feng Xin's eyes drag across his body even in a still image. Even the real, cynical Mu Qing couldn't say it wasn't a bad piece of art. No matter how much it suggested of him.
He scrolled down and saw that the post had nearly 20,000 likes with the impudent account's caption saying, “I just had to draw them like this.”
Mu Qing scrolled down even further into the comments, hoping that at least one humane person would see how ludicrous it was to ship two real people together.
–stop girly, this is sooo good!!!!
–you're literally killing me OMG
–What id do to get into THAT sandwich pleeease
–THE HAND PLACEMENT LIKE???
–two holes. for a reason.
He quickly scrolled to the next posts without a second thought.
All there was was him and Feng Xin. Them kissing, fighting, snuggling, and having s-sex. They as baristas, assistant college professors, and their students (which Mu Qing found highly unprofessional) them as old lovers and scared teenagers, as man and wife, as women.
Mu Qing glanced at one that seemed to be pregnant, with Feng Xin pressing their bellies together. He shuddered at the thought, horrified by the idea that Feng Xin would put his thing inside him.
He chose to ignore the next picture of him riding Feng Xin’s penis with the belly bulging as the art him threw his head back and seemingly moaned. The sight of Feng Xin biting his lip and gripping Mu Qing’s hips, and he looked up at him like a pathetic dog, didn’t make his pants feel tighter, and a warm feeling rippled into his stomach.
After what seemed to be an eternity of clicking, scrolling, and blocking user after user until all that was left were the posts with 5 likes at most expressing joy or hatred of this ship.
His finger stopped on a simple post with no likes and just a simple link with the caption: “Finally finished this week's chapter.”
Normally, Mu Qing just scrolled past those posts with the war flashbacks of Pei Ming's computer screen, but this one seemed different. Quiet. He clicked onto the account, only to see a profile picture with nothing, not even something to signify that they were even a part of this cult like group. Every post was just the same thing: an announcement of the newest chapter and a link to a website.
Against his better judgment, he clicked on the newest link, posted only a few minutes ago praying his phone wouldn’t end up having a virus, and was shown a page with the title, “A few steps at a time” he scrolled down past the tags, his heart beating uncersitacally fast as he read the first few words.
“The delicious scent of coffee wafted through the breakroom as Feng Xin filled up his mug to the brim. Some people would call it selfish, but since it was his third double shift of the week to catch up on rent after some higher-up fucker gave him only half of his paycheck, he needed the pick-me-up.
“Besides,” he thought, “there's still a tiny bit left.”
He jogged out of the breakroom, hoping people wouldn't think it was him who took the last bit, and if anyone asked, it was Pei Ming. Besides, he's probably done that before. Probably.
As he trotted through the office, counting the things he still needed to do before the work day ended, his ears caught onto the tail bits of a conversation.
“What do you mean by popular ship?” A snarky voice growled, a voice that Feng Xin would know anywhere.
“Like on Twitter, um, hashtag Fengqing?” A wheezing-sounding voice replied to Mu Qing, “I could show you the fan art?”
Fengqing? Feng Xin couldn’t help but be curious as he rounded the corner, landing him straight into what looked like a one-sided beatdown with Pei Ming dangled from Mu Qing's Grip.
Feng Xin pressed his lips together at the violent sight and leaned over to look at the document on Pei Ming's computer. He was doubtful of his colleague's ability to finish a work assignment on time, but this seemed actually fully polished. His eyebrows furrowed at the words “he dragged his slicky cock from one hole to the other, slamming his fat boypussy down onto Feng Xin’s fat member.”
Before he could ask or report them to HR, the hot splash of burning coffee ran down his button-up shirt. He looked up to see the glare of Mu Qing and the words
“I never said you could look yet.”
”
His phone fell with a hard crack as it fell right into his face, and Mu Qing's hands locked up in shock.
He shook off the slow beat of pain as his mind raced through question after question of what he had just read. How did the internet person know what happened this morning? Did he have a stalker? Someone with whom he worked so closely that they knew his every move? But that wasn’t possible, since–
Mu Qing froze as he scrolled back up to the tags to study them more closely. And it was just as he feared, between “Slowburn” and “childhood frenemies”, there, the words leered back at him.
“POV Feng Xin”