bad vibes only

by brawlite

Fandom: 魔道祖师 – 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī – Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Pairing: Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen/Xue Yang
Rating: Explicit
Wordcount: 20,600
Description: When Song Lan travels to an unfamiliar town to search for his ex-boyfriend Xiao Xingchen, whom he hasn’t seen in years, he ends up trapped in a haunted house with Xue Yang. The two of them must work together to find a way out, solving the mystery of what happened to Xiao Xingchen along the way.
Tags: alternate universe, modern setting, horror, dubious consent, fear, food, food insecurity, injury, entrapment, claustrophobia, mystery, break ups, haunted houses, loss and regret, touch-averse song lan
Published: 2021-12-12

---

Three years have passed since Song Lan last saw Xiao Xingchen.

Three long years since they fought, since they broke up, and since Xiao Xingchen packed up each and every one of his worldly belongings and moved them — and himself — out of their apartment.

Song Lan has felt the length and breadth of each and every one of those years, each one heavier than the last.

He never even apologized.

—

Xiao Xingchen left him a forwarding address for his mail. Not that Song Lan has used it once. Not that Xiao Xingchen has ever received a single, solitary piece of mail that Song Lan ever needed to forward. Just magazines and political flyers for local candidates that Xiao Xingchen can no longer vote for. Just junk.

Still, Song Lan has it, though. A hand-written address on the back of a postcard he keeps on his fridge, the only thing there except a menu for a pizza place that went out of business a year ago. Every day he sees that card, that familiar handwriting, and only three years later does he wonder about the distance from here to there, consumed by the growing weight of the long-overdue apology sitting heavy on his soul.

—

Once the idea has crept into Song Lan’s mind and made itself a home there, he can think of nothing else. He can barely breathe through the what if’s.

He packs a backpack and gets in the car when the sun is already mid-morning high.

—

The door is old and wooden, lead paint peeling and flaking off onto the ground below to litter the ground like bugs. Aphids. There are dead leaves and cobwebs tucked into every corner of the porch. The mat underneath his feet so faded that only the ghost of the word Welcome is visible, more a spectre than a greeting. There is no doorbell, so Song Lan knocks.

The face that opens the door is not the one Song Lan hopes to see. But three years is a long time. Long enough for Xiao Xingchen to have come and gone from this place.

He tries not to let the disappointment open its maw and eat him whole.

“Hello?”

The person at the door is a man around his own age. His face is friendly enough, with bright and open eyes, though his smirk looks sharp enough to cut. When he smiles at Song Lan — after looking him up and down for a second like they’re in a bar — his teeth look even sharper than his smile. After looking his fill, the man cocks his hip against the door frame and tilts his head at Song Lan; an almost pushy invitation to explain his presence.

That brand of overt and performative friendliness typically tends to rub Song Lan the wrong way, but he steels himself; he has answers he’s looking for and he doesn’t have time to be annoyed by someone he’s only just met.

“Hi,” Song Lan says, “I’m wondering if you can help me. I’m looking for a friend of mine, Xiao Xingchen. He left this as his forwarding address.”

The man in the doorway frowns. He looks almost a little disappointed, like maybe Song Lan was here for him.

“I don’t know what to tell you, pal,” he says. “I’ve lived here for two years. It’s just me in this house.”

The street is quiet. Deserted, almost. It’s late in the day, evening drawing close, and none of the street lights are on yet. Or they’re broken, maybe.

“Fuck,” Song Lan says.

He looks down at his feet. At the dirty, faded mat. He drove seven hours to get here. He hadn’t actually thought about what he’d do if Xiao Xingchen wasn’t here, which is stupid. Ridiculous, really. But the weight of potentially seeing Xingchen had been too heavy, and had eaten up too much of his thought process. He hadn’t allowed himself to consider anything else.

He’s not sure where he’s supposed to go from here.

He should probably leave. Just get back in the car and drive home. Maybe find somewhere to eat on the way back and hope he doesn’t fall asleep while behind the wheel.

“Oh,” the guy says, before Song Lan can even think about shifting his weight where he stands. “Hold on. When I moved in, there were some boxes left from the previous tenant. Do you wanna look through them and see if anything belonged to your friend?”

“Sure,” Song Lan says, stomach feeling as hollow as his head. “Sure, why not.”

—

The house is decently sized and clearly old. The front door leads into a narrow central hall with a staircase and doorways to what look like a living room and dining room on opposite sides to one another. Presumably a kitchen, at the back. Every old house is the same, in a strange way — familiar, but not. The hall is dark, lit only by an old yellow bulb doing its best to light up the shadowed space. With the light of the day dimming outside, it feels even darker, still.

“Xue Yang, by the way,” the man introduces himself as he leads Song Lan down the corridor and then begins walking up the creaky stairs. The wood underneath his feet is faded with time, scuffed and scratched.

“Song Lan.”

Without even thinking, Song Lan glances into the living room before he follows Xue Yang up the stairs.

The couch looks familiar. Xiao Xingchen owned one item of furniture, which he inherited from a distant relative. He took it with him and Song Lan had to buy himself a new couch.

“You okay with spiderwebs, Song Lan?” Xue Yang asks.

“Sure,” Song Lan says, preoccupied by the haunting of vintage floral. “Is the couch yours?”

Xue Yang barks out a laugh. He sounds a little bit like a hyena. Or what Song Lan assumes a hyena sounds like, given that he’s never seen one in person, before. Either way, the bite of his laughter is sharp, piercing. Kind of annoying and definitely grating. Song Lan clenches his jaw and tries not to let the immediate distaste show in the set of his shoulders.

“Nah, this place came fully furnished when I moved in.” Xue Yang lingers at the top of landing, spinning to face Song Lan and bouncing on his toes, full of energy. “Wait, do you think it’s your buddy’s?”

“I don’t know,” Song Lan says, knowing full well he saw that couch every day for three years. He could trace the flowers on it in his sleep. “Just thought I’d seen it before, but it’s hard to say. A lot of old couches like that look the same.”

He doesn’t know why he doesn’t want to share the truth with Xue Yang, but he doesn’t. It feels right, to keep something to himself from this stranger.

“You’re telling me,” Xue Yang says with a laugh. His voice is just as sharp as his smile. Cutting, in a way Song Lan isn’t used to. It sets him on edge. “This place is like an antique show. Nothing matches, but I’m pretty sure just about every decade’s got something. If I wasn’t so broke, I’d ditch it all for new shit.”

Song Lan hums noncommittally and then follows Xue Yang around the landing on the second floor to a door in the space above the staircase they just walked up.

“The attic’s kind of spooky,” Xue Yang says. “I’m taking you at your word that you’re cool with spiderwebs.”

“I am.”

Xue Yang opens the door there to reveal a smaller set of stairs that lead to the attic. Song Lan pokes his head in and peers up them: Xue Yang wasn’t kidding when he mentioned cobwebs — the stairs look like they haven’t been cleaned in years. They’re dusty enough that Song Lan knows the two of them will leave footprints, and cobwebs cling to pretty much every available corner.

“You’re tall as fuck,” Xue Yang says when Song Lan steps back again — just in time for Song Lan to notice Xue Yang giving him another appraising glance. A once-over so obvious that Song Lan has to look away from it with a frown. “You’re gonna wanna watch your head up there,” Xue Yang says, unabashed to be caught checking Song Lan out. “There’s cobwebs, but also beams with exposed nails and shit.”

Song Lan nods, Xue Yang laughs, and then he leads the way into the attic. Song Lan follows, wondering for a moment what the hell he’s doing, following a stranger into such a strange and secluded space. It’s surreal. That doesn’t stop him, though.

At the top of the staircase, Xue Yang pulls a chain and a couple of bulbs flicker on. Not that it does much; the faint light only shows Song Lan where he shouldn’t step for fear of falling straight into insulation and then through the ceiling below. It doesn’t illuminate much else.

The space smells musty. Like old hardwood and dust.

Xue Yang teeters on his toes for a second — short enough to not have to worry about the height of the rafters — and then he’s moving again, following the path of sparse floorboards over to a small stack of boxes. Song Lan follows after him, a little more slowly, ducking as he goes.

“There’s a lot of old shit up here,” Xue Yang says, gesturing to some decrepit boxes shoved near the corners of the space. They look like they haven’t been touched in decades, given the amount of dust and debris coating them. Then, he gestures to some closer, cleaner boxes. “But I put these ones up here myself, so they’re the newest. I’m pretty sure this place has been a rental for forever, so I guess everyone just leaves shit behind.”

Sound carries strangely in the attic. With all the insulation and in such a tight space, it’s all muffled, dampened. Xue Yang’s voice sounds softer, here.

Song Lan moves closer — to the boxes and to Xue Yang — closer than he’d usually like to be to anyone, but there’s not much space up here, so he makes do. He needs a better look, and having to stand close enough to Xue Yang that Song Lan can feel his body heat is unfortunate, but necessary. Appeased by the look of them as new enough, Song Lan crouches next to Xue Yang to pry one of the boxes open.

The thing about Xiao Xingchen is that he doesn’t like things. All of his earthly possessions were packed up into about five boxes, two of which were clothes. Song Lan didn’t help him pack; he didn’t need to. It took less than an hour.

There are five boxes here that look newer than the rest. In their own little stack.

Song Lan knows with a sinking in his gut before even looking inside the box that these are Xingchen’s. Still, he confirms it anyway by tearing inside.

“This is his,” Song Lan says after one look, closing the lid. A little cloud of dust rises up and he closes his eyes to it.

He had hoped.

“So, he left some stuff,” Xue Yang says. “Wanna take it with you for when you track him down?”

“He left all his stuff,” Song Lan says, chest feeling tight.

He stands quickly, shoving up to his feet, suddenly needing to get away from the boxes. From this useless, oppressive, dead end.

Except he stands too fast: immediately, Song Lan slams his skull into a low-hanging rafter. Pain blooms bright and vicious on the right side of his head.

He ducks down just as fast, a curse on his breath. His hand goes to his head, covering the spot he hit, dizzy and jolted.

“Shit, shit,” Xue Yang says. “Are you okay? Let me see.”

And then Xue Yang is there, pressing even further into his space, murmuring something about it being too dark to see shit. With surprisingly careful fingers, he pries Song Lan’s hand away from his head.

Song Lan lets him, teeth clenched to the pain. And the contact.

Xue Yang’s fingers card through Song Lan’s hair, touch soft and light, looking for the point of impact. It takes Song Lan a second to realize this is the most anyone has touched him in — years. He swallows down something sour, throat tight.

“No blood, that’s good,” Xue Yang says, finally.

“Good,” Song Lan echoes, not feeling very good about it at all.

He feels a bit better when Xue Yang steps back. He lets his eyes fall to the boxes again, at the half-open lid of the one he’d opened. Xiao Xingchen’s clothes are in there. The impulse to take something is strong, but Song Lan doesn’t have a chance to think about it much before Xue Yang is interrupting his thoughts with a hiss and a curse.

When Song Lan looks back at him, Xue Yang is staring at the rafters where Song Lan hit his head. “Shit, there was a nail, like, an inch from where you bashed your head. You almost fucking died, what the fuck.”

“My lucky day,” Song Lan says through his teeth.

—

Song Lan feels dazed, sitting in Xue Yang’s kitchen with a bag of frozen peas pressed to his head.

The sun has long since disappeared, leaving a moonless night in its wake.

Xue Yang’s kitchen — once Xiao Xingchen’s kitchen — is dated. Black and white tile on the ground, on the backsplash, too. Enough contrast to make Song Lan dizzy. Or maybe it’s just the head injury.

“Look,” Xue Yang is saying, gesturing with a spatula. He’s wearing an apron. It says Kiss the cook. He’s making eggs. He looks — nothing like the sharp man who answered the door, the one who immediately grated on Song Lan. He also looks nothing like the shadowed, softer version of the Xue Yang who combed his fingers through Song Lan’s hair in the attic.

“Ugh, nevermind,” Xue Yang says, before Song Lan can even catch up with his thoughts.

“What?”

“No, it’s stupid.”

Song Lan squares his jaw and clenches his teeth. He takes in a breath and then lets it out. “What is it?”

“I just think — well, you probably shouldn’t drive with a head injury.”

“It’s not that bad,” Song Lan says. It just hurts like a bitch. And he has a throbbing headache the size of his regret.

“Yeah, say that to the semi-truck you’ll swerve in front of because you’re concussed or your brain is bleeding or something. I’m just saying I’ve got a guest room, if you wanna crash for the night. But I also realize that’s a serial-killer kind of thing to say.”

Song Lan imagines it. He thinks about how much his head hurts, how tired he is and how dark it is outside. He thinks about having to go home without any clues about where Xiao Xingchen is, empty car and empty heart. He sighs and feels the resolve slip from his bones.

“Fine.”

The eggs are good. Xue Yang serves them with garlic scapes and chili oil and then some reheated rice leftover from lunch, apparently. Song Lan always liked his food spicy, Xingchen never really cared for it. Xue Yang’s cooking is good. Simple, but full of heat.

Xue Yang is a chatterbox. An annoying one. But it takes up the time and the space, and it makes the kitchen feel warmer, cozier. In a way, his talkativeness — Song Lan’s annoyance aside — makes him feel more familiar, like they aren’t complete strangers. The time passes quicker than Song Lan might have thought, and then he’s pushing Xue Yang out of the way to wash the plates at the little sink, making some polite-but-hollow argument about washing the dishes because Xue Yang cooked.

It’s really that he wants something to do. Something to keep his hands busy.

“I could argue, but I’m not gonna. I hate washing shit, worst part of cooking hands down,” Xue Yang says. He leans against the counter a few feet away and watches Song Lan work.

The water is hot on Song Lan’s cold hands, but it’s nice to have a task, something to focus on. Something to distract himself from Xue Yang watching him, too.

Opposite the sink is a little window that looks out over the back yard. It’s too dark out to see much of anything, not that it matters. All he can see are some trees shifting in the wind, dark shadows against the dark sky.

He washes the plates, the silverware, and the spatula — handing it all to Xue Yang to dry, and then picks up the pan to run it under the water. He catches sight of movement in the window and looks up, tracking it with his eyes. It’s startling to see: the reflection of someone standing right behind him at the sink. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up and his heart thuds in his chest. Quickly, Song Lan twists around to look behind him at Xue Yang, an annoyed question on his tongue — only to find him leaning against the counter still, toweling off a plate. Not behind Song Lan at all.

“You missed a spot, big guy,” Xue Yang says with a smirk and gestures at Song Lan’s hands.

Song Lan looks down at the sudsy pan, at his pruney fingers. He looks back at the window and sees nothing there. Just dark trees, a dark sky. And his own reflection staring back at him with tired eyes.

—

Xue Yang sets him up in the guest room — or one of them, anyway — after Song Lan ducks back to his car to grab the backpack he packed and threw in the back of his car before his trip. It doesn’t have much, but it does have the essentials; he had hoped he’d at least be able to spend the night on Xiao Xingchen’s couch or even his floor before he had to make his way home again.

“It’s a big house,” Xue Yang had said, when Song Lan had said something about imposing. “I barely use even half the rooms. But rent’s cheap as hell so I don’t feel bad about it. Hey, think of it this way: you having to crash here for the night really makes me feel like it’s less of a waste, you know? At least this way you don’t have to sleep on that shitty couch.”

Song Lan didn’t mention that he has slept on it before.

The guest room is sparse but decent enough. It has that antique mis-match of furniture that Xue Yang had been talking about earlier. The sheets don’t match the quilt and the pillowcases are two different colors. The dresser looks about five decades older than the bedframe. Still, and maybe because of it, it feels oddly homey.

Song Lan sits down on the bed, exhausted.

It should be strange, staying in a complete stranger’s house for the night, but Song Lan can’t bring himself to care. Maybe it helps that Xiao Xingchen lived here once upon a time, or maybe Song Lan is just too wrung out to remember how to feel about things anymore. He certainly doesn’t know how to feel about Xiao Xingchen being completely gone with the wind, nor does he know what to do with himself now. Where to go from here.

He wakes up in the middle of the night, sprawled out on his back halfway across the bed, clothes still on.

“Fuck,” Song Lan says, dragging his hands down his face. He feels run over, depleted. His head aches so much that his mouth tastes like metal and his thoughts feel off-center.

His room is dark and so is the hallway, but he navigates to the bathroom at the top of the stairs just fine regardless. He closes the door and flicks the light on. For a moment, it is blinding, searing and painful. Then, like with everything, it fades.

He splashes his face with cold water and looks at himself in the mirror. He’s looked better before. Not that it matters; it isn’t like he’s trying to impress Xue Yang, with his hyena’s laugh and knife-sharp grin. It’s not like he’s trying to do anything at all, anymore.

He stares at the bags underneath his eyes, at the dark fatigue in his own expression for so long that his face starts to look unfamiliar. He breathes in and then out, shoulders rising and falling in his peripheral vision. He stares at himself in the mirror, unblinking, until his vision begins to go black around the edges. Until the room starts to tilt.

“Xingchen,” Song Lan says, gripping the porcelain sink below him like a lifeline. It is cold beneath his fingertips. “Where are you?”

He wakes up in the morning in his bed, sunlight streaming across his eyes. He doesn’t remember going back to bed, nor does he remember pulling a blanket over his body.

His head hurts just a little bit less.

—

It is easy to say goodbye to Xue Yang, who laughs when he holds up his wiggling fingers in front of Song Lan’s face and makes Song Lan count them, who stands too close to Song Lan to try and get another look at the bump on his head. It is so, so easy to tell him to fuck off and say turn his back on this strange and annoying man.

“I’m fine,” Song Lan snaps, flinching away from his too-casual touch.

“Sheesh,” Xue Yang huffs. “I’m just trying to help, don’t get your panties in a twist.”

It is less easy to say goodbye to the house, with Xiao Xingchen’s couch in its living room and his stack of boxes still in the attic, but Song Lan can’t take either of those things; they won’t return Xingchen to him. And they won’t tell him where Xingchen went.

“Drive safe, or whatever,” Xue Yang tells him at the front door.

“You left this locked,” Song Lan says, as the doorknob refuses to budge underneath his hand.

He twists left, then right, and back again. It goes nowhere.

“Ugh, come on.” Xue Yang strides towards the door, shoulders Song Lan aside, and gives it a little kick at the bottom. A practiced motion, clearly. “It gets stuck, sometimes,” he says.

Song Lan watches as Xue Yang fiddles with the locks on the door. As he kicks it again. As he pulls, what seems like dramatically, with all of his weight until he’s at an impressive angle to the door. It doesn’t budge.

“Fuck, sorry,” Xue Yang says, turning around. “I know this sounds weird, but this has happened before. Old houses, I guess? Let’s try the back door. Sometimes this one’s a little bitch.”

Song Lan follows Xue Yang down the central hall and toward the back. There’s a door there, near the kitchen. Unassuming, with the same chipping paint from the front.

“Uh,” Xue Yang says, hand on the doorknob.

“Let me try.”

Song Lan tries. The door doesn’t budge. Annoyance — and dread — begin to rise in his gut.

“Look, I know this probably looks bad,” Xue Yang says, lightning-fast. “But I swear I’m not, like, an axe-murderer trying to keep you here or whatever.”

Song Lan probably should have thought of that earlier, but he hadn’t. Now, he can’t help but start to feel a little concerned. After all, he had thought Xue Yang looked dangerous, right? Maybe he should have been more careful.

But, before Song Lan can even take his hand off the doorknob, there’s a sound from upstairs. It’s loud. Like a door being slammed.

Xue Yang is suddenly right there next to him, pressed against the long line of Song Lan’s body. He’s not shaking, but he’s strung up tight. Tense.

“What the fuck,” Xue Yang says.

Song Lan steps away from him, annoyed. He shoves Xue Yang as he goes, enough to leave Xue Yang wobbling on his feet, a little off-balance.

“Let me out of your house,” Song Lan says.

“Would if I could,” Xue Yang replies. Despite the joking words, his voice is just as tight as his muscles.

And then he turns, rounding his way back to the front door to try it again. Song Lan follows him, stalking in his footsteps with long strides. Xue Yang tugs at the door. Switches the locks from locked to unlocked again and again. Song Lan shoves him out of the way, elbow to his ribs, and tries the door.

It’s locked. Stuck. Jammed. Still, he pulls.

Another door slams upstairs. The light in the hallway flickers.

Song Lan’s chest feels so tight.

“Okay!” Xue Yang suddenly shouts, turning on the stairs to look up them. “We get it!” His voice is as sharp as razors, but his eyes speak to fear. His posture, too. He keeps his back to the wall, like a caged and cornered thing. Song Lan can’t help but look at him like this and see a wounded animal, prey.

He looks scared. It’s a strange look on Xue Yang’s face. Unnatural. Disquieting.

Xue Yang’s words echo, ringing in Song Lan’s ears until they fade to nothing.

After that, the house stays quiet. Still. Like nothing happened at all.

Song Lan’s heart pounds in his chest. So loud, like a drum beat. A thudding base line. An echo of Xue Yang’s boot against the door.

“Lunch?” Xue Yang suggests, like he hadn’t just shouted his head off at a door, at a mysterious sound upstairs. Like he hadn’t just looked so scared that it twisted up his whole face into something near unrecognizable.

Like they aren’t just stuck in this house.

Song Lan doesn’t have any better ideas.

—

“We should try the basement. There’s a cellar door that leads outside, it’s just creepy as fuck,” Xue Yang tells him.

“Has this happened before?” Song Lan asks.

He’s washing plates again. His view of the garden is unobscured, this time. Outside, it is a beautiful day. Blue skies, spring breeze. The garden looks nice, if a little overgrown. There are flowers blooming on large bushes to the right. What looks like a fig tree right outside the window, no longer bearing fruit this late in the season.

This time, there’s no reflection of himself in the window. Just the view of the beautiful day outside.

“Hey, pass me that plate,” Xue Yang says.

Song Lan holds it just out of his reach and lets it drip onto the floor. “Has this happened before?” he asks again, voice firmer, more demanding.

Xue Yang’s eyes flick to the side. His shoulders square. “No,” he says. “Why would it have?”

“It’s just a question,” Song Lan says. He feels like he already knows the answer: a moot point, an inevitability.

Song Lan watches as Xue Yang crosses his arms, defensive. He’s almost pouting now, his dark features looking petulant. Looking younger than he is.

“Look, it’s just a weird house, alright? It’s old. It does stupid shit. That doesn’t mean it’s haunted,” Xue Yang snaps.

“I never said it was.”

The face Xue Yang makes in response is priceless. Stuck somewhere between affronted and caught-out. It’s almost cute, Song Lan thinks for a fraction of a second before catching himself. If anything, Xue Yang is an annoying stranger who talks too much and gets too close. A stranger who had the misfortune of living in Xiao Xingchen’s old house.

That’s the only thing that ties the two of them together — other than being trapped here, momentarily as it is.

—

Calling it a basement is flattering, Song Lan thinks. He has to duck even more so than in the attic, lest he graze his head against more exposed beams. Cellar is much more accurate. The floor is dirt and the walls can only generously be called stone. There are shadows and shapes of boxes and junk piled into some of the corners. What Song Lan can see looks old, probably older than Xue Yang or himself.

The air down here is stale and wet. Rich with dirt and iron. And about ten degrees colder than upstairs.

This time, Xue Yang brings flashlights. One for each of them. They look ancient, but they turn on, beams a salty yellow against the crumbling walls.

“Watch your head,” Xue Yang jokes. It sounds almost like he’s flirting, or it would if his tone weren’t so sharp, like it’s some kind of fight, a point to prove.

“This definitely isn’t up to code,” Song Lan murmurs under his breath.

Xue Yang barks out a laugh as he leads them across the small space, toward a cut-out where Song Lan can see a strip of light above and the suggestion of stairs leading to it. Song Lan thinks, if he were looking at it from outside, it would look like the entrance to a storm-cellar. Flat doors against the dirt ground, and a stairway leading into the earth. It just so happens that the earth is Xue Yang’s basement.

“He’s got jokes,” Xue Yang says.

“So, how do we open this thing?” Song Lan asks, coming to stand next to Xue Yang — or crouch next to him, anyway.

Xue Yang shuffles where he stands. He shines his flashlight at the door, and then at the ceiling, illuminating a bulb overhead.

“There are lights down here, but the bulbs went out a long time ago. I never replaced them,” he says. There’s tension in his voice. “You hold the light while I try the lock.” He turns off and pockets his own flashlight to free up his hands.

Song Lan does as he’s told and shines his flashlight at the lock on the door, keeping the darkness around them at bay. Xue Yang brought a key down with him. Something he dug out of a drawer full of junk in the kitchen, on a little key-ring of a half-dozen others. It looks ancient, almost. Long and nondescript in its age.

The beam of Song Lan’s flashlight doesn’t do much, but it helps enough for Xue Yang to pull the key out of his pocket and fumble it into the lock. The second he tries to turn the key, metal rubbing against metal, Song Lan’s flashlight flickers.

“Watch it,” Xue Yang hisses through his teeth. “Not funny.”

“Wasn’t me,” Song Lan says. His heart starts climbing up his throat. He wishes he were joking, that he dragged a sense of humor up from somewhere non-existent, he really does.

The flashlight flickers again. The room around them fades in and out of the light.

In the unsteady light, he sees the way Xue Yang tenses. The way, when he turns to look at Song Lan, his eyes look wide, scared. The flickering light casts strange shadows over the sharp cuts of his face, making them look more severe. Stark. He looks so much more scared than he did upstairs.

The air feels colder now, a damp chill blanketing the space like a shroud. Time seems to stretch out, taking the fear like a tangible thing and elongating it, pulling it taut.

Song Lan’s flashlight flickers once more before going completely out. In the resulting darkness, he hears Xue Yang scramble and curse, feet shuffling against the dirty ground as he shuffles his way back and away from the doorway. Scrambling, like a wild animal.

And then Xue Yang is pressed up against him. Trembling. Something in Song Lan eases, just knowing that Xue Yang is there. That he has not been left alone in this darkness.

Song Lan hits his own flashlight with the palm of his hand while he hears Xue Yang fumbling in his pockets for his own. Once, twice. He thinks he hears something in his ear, but it’s difficult to place over the thudding of his own heart. After a third smack, Song Lan’s light flickers back on.

The darkness abates.

Song Lan tries to think of the oppressive darkness around them only moments ago: had it been quiet? Had they felt alone?

Xue Yang is breathing hard. It sounds so loud in the small space. He is pressed up against Song Lan so tightly.

“Let’s go back upstairs,” Xue Yang says. His words sound more like a question than they probably were supposed to. “The lock wasn’t budging.”

He doesn’t sound surprised. But Song Lan doesn’t feel particularly surprised, either.

“Sure,” Song Lan says. He tries not to focus on how tight his own chest feels. Or how warm Xue Yang is, pressed up against his side.

He lets Xue Yang lean on him until they reach the stairs. He lets Xue Yang climb up first, keeping his own back to the darkness.

At the top, he closes the door behind him and takes a long breath of air.

—

Song Lan’s phone is as dead and useless as a brick. Xue Yang’s too. The phone line, connected to a phone so ancient it looks certainly older than Xue Yang, doesn’t even grace them with a dial tone. It’s just nothing, silence, on the other end of the line.

—

“We could break a window,” Xue Yang says.

Song Lan had been thinking about it, mulling over the idea and how to bring up casual property damage to someone else’s home.

They’re sitting in the living room. Xue Yang is sitting on Xiao Xingchen’s couch, cross-legged with his feet pulled up underneath him. Song Lan is sitting in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable armchair, watching him. The room is bright and warm, the space starkly unrecognizable from where they had been only a little while ago in the cellar. It would be laughable, the difference — if not for the circumstances.

Xue Yang still has some dust in his hair. Song Lan thought about reaching out to brush it off after they had emerged from the cellar, but he had thought better of it. Now, he somehow can’t make himself look at anything else.

The thing about Xue Yang is that he’s oddly familiar, in a way. Not that Song Lan thinks that they’ve met before, or anything — but there’s just something about him that has shoved straight past all of Song Lan’s barriers, if only through sheer repeated annoyance. It’s not trust that Song Lan feels for Xue Yang, but it feels adjacent. Pity, maybe.

Or maybe it’s just easier to keep looking at Xue Yang than to think about Xiao Xingchen. Or about how they’re stuck in this old house, together against their will.

“Sure,” Song Lan says. “Do you have a preference for which window?”

“They’re all pretty inconvenient,” Xue Yang says. “But the one in the dining room is the biggest and we’d want to make sure you fit through it, huh big guy?” He leers at Song Lan, persistent as always.

Song Lan just manages to stop himself from rolling his eyes.

“Now?”

“It’s as good a time as any,” Xue Yang says with a shrug.

He pushes himself up from the couch, his movements fluid and feline. And then Song Lan watches as he grabs a cast-iron fireplace tool from where it hangs on the mantle.

Xue Yang looks dangerous with a weapon in his hand. He looks kind of dangerous without one, too.

It should stop Song Lan from looking at him, but unfortunately Xue Yang has got an odd sort of appeal. Like an out of control fire that Song Lan simply cannot tear his eyes away from, like a car wreck. Brilliant and disastrous, sharp and one of a kind.

Song Lan doesn’t really understand why. He’s never been drawn to that kind of thing before. Song Lan typically gravitates toward people like Xiao Xingchen. That gentleness, that altruism. Xiao Xingchen is ethereal and untouchable, like a being made of pure light.

Then again, when it all comes down to it, Xiao Xingchen is not particularly nice.

Maybe that’s why Song Lan can’t stop looking at Xue Yang. While Xiao Xingchen had been laced with a hint of playful meanness, Xue Yang is absolutely drenched in it.

“What, are you just gonna sit and watch?” Xue Yang asks.

Song Lan realizes that he’s just been staring.

Quickly, he pushes himself up and out of the chair.

“I mean, I don’t mind,” Xue Yang is saying. “A guy like you with his eyes on me? Not much to complain about,” he jokes.

“Shut up,” Song Lan tells him with a mostly-half hearted glare.

“Suit yourself.”

Xue Yang rolls his shoulders like he’s brushing off the flirty persona and meanders into the dining room with a different posture entirely: one of determined intent. It’s not a big room, but the windows are wide and tall and their curtains are pulled back, allowing light to stream into the space. Song Lan follows Xue Yang a few steps back, careful to keep out of range of the fire iron.

Xue Yang picks a window and winds up like he’s up to bat, fire iron hanging menacingly in the air over his shoulder. And then Song Lan watches, heart in his throat, as Xue Yang swings.

Somehow it’s not a surprise when the glass doesn’t break.

The sound the iron makes against metal is a strange one though, something Song Lan has never heard before. Or maybe he has, because of course he has — it’s just incomplete, a partial thought. Trapped halfway in-between. Lacking the crash of glass that always follows.

The sound leaves Song Lan on edge, goosebumps running down the back of his neck.

Xue Yang is frozen, staring at the window in horror. Trapped in the echo.

“Give it to me,” Song Lan says, grabbing for the cast iron tool.

Numbly, Xue Yang hands it over. Song Lan pushes him back, out of the way. And he moves so easily underneath Song Lan’s hands, probably as out of his mind as Song Lan should be, but currently isn’t. He should be afraid, he should be terrified. But instead, all he feels is numb.

None of this feels real.

Song Lan winds up and hits the glass himself. His ears ring with the clamor of metal-on-glass and the reverberation of the hit vibrates up his arms. The glass does not break.

Behind him, Xue Yang makes a frustrated, animalistic sound and lunges forward to wrench the fire iron out of Song Lan’s hands.

And then he starts wailing on the window, out of his mind. Again and again, that terrible sound somehow managing to echo louder and louder as he goes, until Song Lan’s entire head is buzzing with it, until he feels dizzy and out of sorts. It’s awful. Perhaps the worst thing Song Lan has ever heard. Song Lan feels each hit right in his chest, his lungs growing tighter and tighter with the growing inevitability of all this, the hopelessness. Each hit makes it worse and worse, until he finally breaks.

“Stop it!” Song Lan shouts in between the blows, but Xue Yang either doesn’t hear it over the clamor or simply chooses not to listen. Song Lan shouts again, and then again, but still Xue Yang tries to break the window — even moving to a different one when the first one refuses to give up the ghost.

It is probably not a good idea to try and take the fire iron from Xue Yang, but Song Lan doesn’t even think before he does it — he just needs the sound to stop. He’s consumed with it, with the need to throw himself at Xue Yang and wrench the weapon out of his hands.

And so he does.

It could go worse. Xue Yang is small and scrappy and very clearly panicked. But Song Lan is bigger, stronger. He gets an elbow to his ribcage and a shove in his gut for his troubles, but somewhere along the lines he manages to get the tool away from Xue Yang — and then, rather quickly, he also gets his arms around Xue Yang too, after Xue Yang decides to throw himself at the window, instead.

Xue Yang is breathing hard and heavy, squirming like a feral cat in Song Lan’s arms. Trying to get free. Trying to get at the fucking window again, like anything different will happen this time.

Eventually, though, the fight drains out of Xue Yang. Like water out of a sieve. Like a battery, exhausted. And then he sags in Song Lan’s arms, loose and limp.

He’s not very heavy at all.

“Fuck,” Xue Yang breathes out. His lungs sound wet, his voice wrecked.

“Yeah,” Song Lan agrees.

—

While Xue Yang sits on Xiao Xingchen’s floral couch with some hot tea, Song Lan dutifully tests all of the other windows. He doesn’t use the fire iron — he can’t stand the sound — and instead uses his fist. It would hurt, if the glass were to break, but Song Lan knows it won’t. He doesn’t even pull his punches.

“No luck?” Xue Yang asks when Song Lan gets back.

“No luck,” Song Lan says.

He sinks down onto the couch next to Xue Yang. The chair is free, obviously, but he chooses the couch anyway. Some small bit of familiarity.

His knuckles hurt. Idly, he works his fingers over them, trying to rub out the pain. He loses himself in it for a moment, eyes falling on the way Xue Yang bounces his leg. On the way it makes the couch shake underneath them both.

Upstairs, a door slams. Loud and sudden. The whole house rattles with it.

Next to him, Xue Yang jumps, startled. Song Lan does, too. He tries to pretend that he doesn’t, but he’s too tired now, too worn thin. Everything feels so much more real now, an inevitability.

Their shoulders press together. Xue Yang is trembling against him; Song Lan can feel it through that one point of contact. Small little aftershocks from their earlier tussle with reality.

He can also feel how warm Xue Yang is, too.

—

“Are we going to run out of food?” Song Lan asks.

Xue Yang makes a strangled sort of sound. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

He watches as Xue Yang wilts, as his eyes go a little blank and a little dark. As he stares off into space.

“Sorry,” Song Lan says. He feels it like a weight on his chest, every second getting heavier and harder to breathe.

—

“Good news is that I got really into canning over the summer,” Xue Yang says, after he shakes the cloud of melancholy from himself a little while later. “And I have a Costco membership, so I’ve got dry goods for days.”

“And the bad news?” Song Lan asks, as Xue Yang’s sentence trails off at the end, something unspoken hanging in the air.

“Bad news is that all the shit is in the cellar.”

Well shit, that is bad news. Song Lan doesn’t particularly want to go down there again. And it seems like Xue Yang is in the same boat.

In the intervening time, when things had fallen quiet between the two of them again, Song Lan had made more tea. It’s still hot in his cup now, nearly burning his fingers, but he relishes the feeling of it, the way the steam curls up toward the ceiling. He watches as Xue Yang sips his own tea. The way his slender fingers curl around the cup.

“I can go down if we have to,” Song Lan says.

Xue Yang laughs. “It’s my house,” he says. “I’ll do it. We can wait a few days, though. The fridge is full of food. We’ve got some time before we even need to think about that. And hey, maybe we’ll never even have to.”

“Sure,” Song Lan says, remembering the way Xue Yang plastered himself up against Song Lan’s side in the darkness, the way he trembled so thoroughly that it rattled right into Song Lan’s bones.

“We can figure it out later,” Song Lan says.

Song Lan hopes there won’t have to be a later. He hopes that maybe, tomorrow this will all seem like a strange dream and he’ll be waving goodbye to Xue Yang from the street, crisp leaves crunching underneath his feet.

—

That night, Song Lan helps with dinner. He stands in Xue Yang’s — previously Xiao Xingchen’s — kitchen, a floral apron tied around his waist, helping Xue Yang at the stove.

It is remarkably domestic. The house, for all its numerous faults, is a comfortable one. Cozy.

“Cut this,” Xue Yang tells him, and Song Lan does.

“Fry this,” Xue Yang says, and Song Lan does that, too.

“Try this,” Xue Yang asks, holding a spoon to Song Lan’s lips, offering up a taste of the sauce he has been reducing for the last half hour.

It’s strange how easy it is to fall into a routine with Xue Yang. How easy it is to stand with him in the kitchen and cook or wash dishes. How easy it is to sit across from him at the table, Xue Yang’s feet occasionally kicking into Song Lan’s with all of his constant movement, a perpetual motion machine.

After dinner they read in the living room. Xue Yang — or perhaps one of the previous tenants of the house — has a fairly substantial collection of books to choose from. Song Lan has always been an avid reader, and same with Xingchen. Apparently Xue Yang is, too.

Song Lan makes it halfway through a book before Xue Yang starts yawning next to him. They’re both on the couch. Song Lan remembers sitting down in the chair adjacent to it, but when a scratching, whispering sound began coming from the cellar door and Xue Yang’s posture got tight, eyes going wide as saucers, Song Lan had gotten up only to sit back down next to him. Not touching — just there. Not quite close enough to feel Xue Yang’s body heat, but near enough that the dip of the couch means he has to occasionally stop his body from folding to Xue Yang’s gravity.

He hates to admit it feels comforting, just knowing he’s not alone. Xue Yang had seemed to appreciate it, too. Shoulders going looser, body less coiled tight.

Xue Yang keeps yawning for about an hour before Song Lan finally closes his book.

“We should sleep,” he says.

He watches the way Xue Yang swallows. How his eyes dart to the stairs.

At night, the house is dark, the easy, warm comfort of the sunlight long gone.

“I’m reading,” Xue Yang says. “Right in the middle of a good bit.” He shakes his book at Song Lan, who hasn’t heard Xue Yang turn a page in far too long.

The house feels hollow around them, the living room a strange solace in the dark. Song Lan knows it’s just an illusion; this space feels warm because they are in it. Because the sounds don’t ever seem to come from whatever room they’re in.

“You’ve lived here for years,” Song Lan says. “Don’t tell me you’re scared now.”

Xue Yang bristles and bares his teeth. “Fuck off.” He closes his book and shifts in his seat, but makes no moves to get up. He looks away from Song Lan, eyes averted, before he drops his voice. Like he’s telling a secret: “It’s never been like this before.”

“You have to sleep,” Song Lan says. Maybe, if they sleep, the morning will bring something better. Maybe tomorrow this will have all been a dream.

“Fine, whatever,” Xue Yang says.

—

Song Lan wakes in the middle of the night again.

The room is still and quiet around him, silence almost deafening. He shoves the covers off of himself, the sound of the fabric practically echoing in his ears.

He doesn’t know what woke him, but he gets up to piss. He’s up anyway and his body feels restless.

The bathroom is dark, but Song Lan keeps it that way, not feeling like scalding his eyes with the bright lights. There’s enough light underneath the door anyway from the light downstairs Xue Yang refused to turn off. Song Lan had rolled his eyes, but he’s thankful for it now. That warm glow keeping away the brunt of the darkness, at least allowing him to piss in peace.

He empties his bladder and washes his hands afterwards, mouth tasting like sleep. At least his head hurts a little less, by now.

He looks at his dark reflection in the mirror. He watches the way his shadowed eyes blink, the way the bags under his eyes look like black holes, threatening to consume him whole. He closes his eyes for a beat and then opens them again.

The reflection is different. The hair longer, the eyes kinder. Too familiar.

“Zichen,” the reflection whispers.

Song Lan startles so hard that he slams into the wall behind him, towel rack digging harshly into his ribcage. He grunts, hisses out a curse, and looks back at the mirror, at his own startled expression staring back at him.

—

“I think he’s here,” Song Lan says, shoving a piece of egg around on his plate the next morning.

“Huh?”

“My friend,” Song Lan says. “Xiao Xingchen. I think he’s here, in the house.”

“What, like a ghost?” Xue Yang says. He laughs and the sound of it rattles Song Lan straight to his very core, settling into his stomach like shards of broken glass.

Song Lan swallows. Put like that, he hates the sound of it. The way the mechanics of it threaten reality. If Xiao Xingchen were a ghost, it would mean he was dead.

Song Lan feels sick. His head hurts again.

“I didn’t sleep well,” he says. “I’m going to go lie down.”

—

A nap doesn’t fix anything. And the morning hadn’t brought with it the resolution Song Lan hoped for, which leaves him feeling off-kilter, easily agitated.

It doesn’t help that Xue Yang continues being his annoying self, laughing at his own jokes and pressing into Song Lan’s space when he doesn’t even have a flimsy excuse for himself. Again and again he does it, dancing in and out of Song Lan’s bubble until Song Lan’s nerves feel worn far too thin.

It’s not a surprise to Song Lan when he snaps and shoves Xue Yang away from him in the hallway, but it looks like it’s a surprise to Xue Yang.

“What’s your fucking problem?” Xue Yang says.

“Stop touching me,” Song Lan snaps.

“What scared of a little physical contact?”

Xue Yang’s words are sharp, but his eyes are big, expression deep. If Song Lan didn’t know better, he’d think Xue Yang looked a little hurt. But while Song Lan hasn’t known Xue Yang for long, it’s clear that he doesn’t seem like the type to be bruised so easily. He probably is just annoyed at not getting his own way, Song Lan rationalizes. He probably isn’t used to being told no.

“I don’t like it,” Song Lan says, which is over-simplifying things, maybe. But Xue Yang doesn’t deserve the longer version. At least not now, when he’s snarling at Song Lan like a wild thing, the corners of his mouth turning up into a sharp and mean smile. Like he’s laughing at Song Lan’s misfortune.

Generally, what Song Lan said rings true: Song Lan doesn’t like to be touched. But sometimes it doesn’t bother him — if done right, if done by the right person. Sometimes, Song Lan even craves it, a deep yearning inside of himself, a hunger that feels like it will never be sated.

He liked it when Xiao Xingchen touched him, sometimes. A lot of the time. He misses that.

Right now, with his nerves worn thin, pain thrumming in his head and fear sitting heavy in his gut, he doesn’t want to be touched. Especially not by Xue Yang.

“You sure? Because you didn’t seem to mind so much yesterday,” Xue Yang says, voice lilted into a taunt. “Or did you realize that someone like you is too good for someone like me?”

“Get over yourself,” Song Lan says. “This has nothing to do with you.”

Except it does, kind of. Song Lan can’t lie and say that he doesn’t find Xue Yang annoying. But besides that, his whole existence here, at this house, instead of Xiao Xingchen, is wrong. In a perfect world, that door would have opened up to Xiao Xinghcen’s familiar face, to his laugh and his smile, and Song Lan wouldn’t be trapped here with Xue Yang, who is not Xiao Xingchen, no matter how nice that fantasy would be.

Xue Yang cackles. He steps into Song Lan’s space again like it’s a challenge but Song Lan doesn’t yield, even when Xue Yang pokes his finger against Song Lan’s sternum, even as he gets onto his toes to better snarl at Song Lan’s face.

“You keep telling yourself that, pal. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with me here. And I’m stuck with you.”

“Don’t remind me.”

It isn’t hard to walk away, to retreat up the stairs and into the guest room he’s been sleeping in. He hears Xue Yang laughing behind him, the sound devoid of actual mirth. It echoes for too long in the house, and even longer in Song Lan’s ears.

He sleeps. He reads. And he sleeps some more.

By the time Song Lan emerges again, the house is dark. It’s well past dinnertime, but Song Lan isn’t hungry. He isn’t sure if Xue Yang ate — he had tried not to pay attention to the sounds of Xue Yang moving around the house, until he heard him make his way upstairs, toward his bedroom at the end of the hall.

There’s a light underneath Xue Yang’s door. The hallway light is off. Everything is quiet.

Song Lan glances at the stairs, at how they descend into the darkness below. He could turn a light on and go find something to eat in the kitchen, but he’s still not hungry. Instead, he aims for the bathroom, to brush his teeth and get ready for bed.

A whole day wasted, just because Xue Yang annoyed him until he snapped. The thought irks.

Not that he has anything better to do.

Without the hallway light on, Song Lan is forced to turn on the bathroom light. For a moment he thinks about leaving the space dark, hoping to see something in the mirror again, but the thought leaves him unsettled, stomach strange and hollow. His own reflection stares back at him, looking just as distraught and tired as he feels.

He peels off his clothes and stands under the warm spray of the shower for a long time. Of course, the only shampoos and soaps are ones that smell cloying and sweet, like Xue Yang. Song Lan uses them anyway, preferring cleanliness over smelling like himself. It’s a worthwhile sacrifice; after he turns off the water and towels himself dry, he feels much more human than before. Much less angry and exhausted than before.

When he steps out of the shower, the bathroom is foggy with steam, the mirror all clouded up. But right in the middle of it, something catches his eye: a hand print, fingers splayed wide. The sides of it are still dripping, the center of it clear — like someone just put their hand there. Song Lan’s heart catches in his throat. As he looks at it, as he stares at it, feet and heart as heavy as lead, it begins to fog over again. It must have been so fresh.

Carefully, numbly, Song Lan puts his hand overtop the handprint.

Smaller than his own. Like Xiao Xingchen’s.

Or — like Xue Yang’s.

—

Song Lan storms into Xue Yang’s bedroom, too angry to think.

His towel is still around his waist. He doesn’t care. The handprint on the mirror must have belonged to Xue Yang. The air of the bathroom had even been a little cold — like the door had just opened, like someone had just slipped out on quiet feet.

“Get up,” Song Lan says, striding over to where Xue Yang has hidden himself underneath the covers of his bed. He must have just clambered underneath them. “Stop hiding, it’s not funny.”

Song Lan is so mad he sees red. Xue Yang doesn’t do more than shift under his blankets, curling closer into himself, so Song Lan does the only thing he can think of: he grabs the blankets and rips them off Xue Yang.

That, apparently, is what it takes to spurn Xue Yang into motion. He jolts upright in a rather good impression of panic, eyes wide. He looks ready to strike, which is partially comical, given that he clearly sleeps in just boxers. When he notices it’s Song Lan, he loosens, just a little bit. His acting is decent, at least.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Xue Yang hisses.

“You,” Song Lan says. “You’re my problem.”

“Care to fucking elaborate?” Xue Yang is breathing hard. Song Lan would admire his dedication to the charade, if he wasn’t so pissed.

“You came in while I was showering. Do you think that’s funny?”

“I was asleep,” Xue Yang says. It’s dark in the room, but Song Lan watches as he finally relaxes enough to fold his legs underneath himself. “You just woke me up.” He drags his hands down his face and groans. “I cannot believe — what, you thought I was watching you shower? Wow.”

The glare that Xue Yang gives him is cold, sharp.

“Well someone came in. What, you want me to think it was really a ghost?”

Xue Yang’s expression softens, just a little bit. He doesn’t reply.

“It’s not funny,” Song Lan says.

“Do you fucking see me laughing?” Xue Yang asks him.

It had to have been Xue Yang, Song Lan tells himself. There’s no other explanation. He seems like the kind of guy to do something like that, to try and push Song Lan’s buttons.

Song Lan glares at Xue Yang until Xue Yang rolls his eyes and fishes around for a loose blanket to throw around his own shoulders. Only then does he manage to notice that Song Lan is wearing nothing other than a damp towel.

“Wow, you must have been pissed to forget pants.” Xue Yang’s eyes do another sweep of him. “Can’t say I mind the view, even with the rude awakening. Worth it.”

Song Lan snarls. He has nothing to tug around himself, so he settles for clutching the towel at his waist, making sure it’s secure. With Xue Yang’s eyes on him like this, he feels far more naked than before.

“Stop pretending,” Song Lan snaps.

“I told you, I’m not pretending,” Xue Yang snaps back.

“Do you honestly expect me to believe –”

Song Lan doesn’t get to finish his sentence before a door slams shut in the hallway, loud and jarring. He jumps. Xue Yang jumps, too.

The sound echoes in the quiet of the room, in the silence left in its wake.

Song Lan swallows. That’s loud, too. His eyes are fixed on Xue Yang, whose body is now coiled tight again, that blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders.

Xue Yang’s eyes aren’t on Song Lan, though. They’re on something behind him: the door that Song Lan left open in his rush to get to Xue Yang.

Song Lan can’t bring himself to turn around and look, frozen solid on the spot, but fear shoots cold tendrils into his gut regardless. He feels an itching on the back of his neck, which gets worse as Xue Yang’s expression goes from scared to horrified.

He hears the creak of old hinges. The slow, crying whine of metal on metal. The sound of a door being pushed. It is a horrifying thing to hear behind him, when he knows that the only other person in the house is sitting in front of him, stock still and afraid.

“Song Lan,” Xue Yang whispers. His voice is barely even audible, so much softer than the sound of the hinges on the door.

Song Lan can’t bring himself to reply. He feels frozen solid, body unresponsive. All of the hair on the back of his neck stands up, goosebumps tumbling down his spine. He wants, desperately, to reply, but his tongue feels stuck in his mouth, heavy like lead.

“Song Lan,” Xue Yang says, faster this time, more fear in his voice.

The door creaks again.

And then: the floorboards. An unmistakable step, from right behind Song Lan.

He spins.

There’s nothing there.

—

“Don’t fucking leave,” Xue Yang says, fear palpable in his voice.

Song Lan is sitting next to him on the bed, both of them staring at the open doorway. Neither of them have gotten up to close it.

Xue Yang did turn on a light, though. A warm, yellow glow blankets the space around the bed, shadows running out long from its center.

The doorway is shadowed. With the light on, the hallway beyond looks even darker than before. Pitch black nothingness, with shadows that swirl in his exhausted eyes. Song Lan isn’t sure if this is worse than before, when everything was bathed in darkness.

But Xue Yang seems more comfortable with the light on.

“I’d like to put on pants,” Song Lan says. He’s been gearing himself up to go back to his own room for many minutes now. It seems stupid to sit here, almost naked and paralyzed in fear.

Xue Yang’s hand finds Song Lan’s wrist. He holds on tight.

“Please,” Xue Yang says.

The touch should bother Song Lan. It should grate on him like usual, but it doesn’t. Xue Yang’s grip is panicked, heavy. The way he touches Xue Yang is firm and solid, leaving no room for Song Lan’s usual discomfort. He doesn’t jerk his hand away.

“I have pants. You can borrow them. Shirts, too. You can borrow whatever. Just don’t fucking — leave.”

His voice shakes. Trembling.

Which is how Song Lan ends up back on the edge of Xue Yang’s mattress, wearing a pair of pajama pants that are too short and a shirt that is a little too tight. Xue Yang sits next to him still, but keeps his hands to himself.

“I didn’t,” Xue Yang says. His voice is unwavering.

“Huh?” Song Lan asks. His eyes are on the doorway again. He watches the way the darkness plays tricks on his eyes, shifting in the hallway like waves beyond the doorframe.

“I didn’t come into the bathroom,” Xue Yang says. “That wasn’t me.”

“Yeah,” Song Lan says. “Yeah, I got that.”

—

When dawn breaks, they finally move, like frozen things thawing in the light of a new day.

They make their way downstairs together, Song Lan wearing Xue Yang’s clothes and Xue Yang wrapped up in a blanket like a shield. They move together into the kitchen, both of them with hands around cups of steaming tea.

This morning, Song Lan cooks. Xue Yang hovers next to him, almost close enough to touch, but not quite. It should bother Song Lan, but today, Xue Yang’s intentions don’t feel malicious or even facetious — instead, he just seems scared, on edge from last night.

Song Lan can’t blame him. He feels coiled tight, too. Spine drawn tense.

“How’s your head?” Xue Yang asks over breakfast. “Still hurt?”

Song Lan shrugs. “Not really.” There’s a bruise, but it doesn’t feel too bad anymore. Just background pain.

After breakfast, they try all the doors and windows again. But nothing has changed today, other than Song Lan’s mood. He can’t dredge up annoyance from anywhere at all anymore; he’s just tired. Tired and scared.

The fear sits in him in a strange way, unfamiliar. It is base level, like a dull ache. Not the acute, sharp thing that hit him in the gut last night, when the door creaked behind his back, not the dread that hit him in the cellar with Xue Yang scrambling to his side. It is a steady thrum now, laced in with his own heartbeat. A rhythm so intrinsic that it feels familiar, even though it hasn’t been with him for all that long.

“Hey, at least you aren’t the worst company,” Xue Yang tells him, when they settle back into the living room after making their rounds of the house.

“You were complaining about me just yesterday.” Not that Song Lan wasn’t doing the same, but still.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, your personality sucks. But you’re easy on the eyes, is all I’m saying.”

Xue Yang laughs and Song Lan bristles, but he doesn’t feel as annoyed as he probably should. Xue Yang’s relentless and barbed flirting is obnoxious, sure, but it is oddly easy to get used to.

There’s something about Xue Yang’s easy loudness that Song Lan almost appreciates having here. It makes the house feel less empty, their situation not quite so dire.

Song Lan tries his best to not think about their current circumstances, much. There’s no point in dwelling on it. Why waste his energy worrying when he could instead be focusing on staying calm, on keeping himself collected. It helps to have Xue Yang’s distraction, even as annoying as Song Lan can sometimes find it.

“Shut up,” Song Lan tells him.

“You gonna make me, big guy?”

When Song Lan looks at him, Xue Yang’s eyes are bright. The smile on his face is playful, edging toward brilliant. But more importantly, there’s no hint of malice Song Lan expected to find there. Sure, Xue Yang is teasing him — but not out of cruelty. Or it doesn’t seem so obviously like it, anyway.

Song Lan doesn’t know what to do with that. Doesn’t know what to do with the way his chest suddenly feels a little tight, his skin a little warm. So he shrugs Xue Yang off, rolls his eyes, and picks up a book and reads.

—

They start sleeping during the day, staying awake at night. It’s not particularly a conscious decision, but after both of them decide to take mid-afternoon naps which leave them awake until late into the early hours of the morning, it seems easier. And then it seems even easier still when, when they finally do go to bed at night, they are only awoken by a cacophonous crashing from downstairs.

The two of them meet in the hallway by the stairs. Sleep rumpled and fuzzy around the edges.

“Kitchen,” Xue Yang says. His voice is rough, tight.

They turn all the lights on and then venture down into the darkness below. Song Lan’s heart is in his throat, taking up almost so much space he can barely breathe around it. Xue Yang’s presence is steady at his side.

Xue Yang flicks on more lights as they go.

When they get to the kitchen, the lights are already on, but flickering ominously. All of the cabinet doors are open. A few dishes are on the ground, but almost none are broken.

“What the fuck, what the fuck,” Xue Yang is saying to Song Lan’s right.

He’s pressed up against Song Lan’s side, a long line of heat. The closeness is comforting, Wanted. Song Lan can’t help himself from leaning into that heat, taking a measure of solace in it. A reminder that he is not alone.

A sound to his left causes Song Lan to spin on his heel, but he’s not fast enough: he only catches the tail end of a shadow fleeing out the door. A dark wisp fading into the hallway beyond. Toward the hallway and the basement door.

“Hey, wanna never sleep again?” Xue Yang asks. He’s still at Song Lan’s side, his fist clutching the fabric of Song Lan’s shirt.

“Sure,” Song Lan says. His eyes are still on the doorway. Had his eyes been playing tricks on him, or did he just see something?

He feels kind of sick. He’s not sure if it’s the fear, or being jolted and dragged right out of a sound sleep, but his stomach feels queasy, his head too light.

They end up on the couch, every light around them turned on. Xue Yang had even lit some candles, but they hadn’t lasted long. Xue Yang had quickly extinguished them when their flickering in the still room unnerved him more than calmed him. Song Lan doesn’t miss them, the way they seemed to dance in a wind that wasn’t there, the way they occasionally flickered hard enough that they threatened to go out. The way that some did go out all by themselves.

“Is this fine?” Xue Yang says, pressed up against Song Lan’s side.

They’re sitting on Xiao Xingchen’s couch, Song Lan’s thumb worrying over a red flower on its stitched surface. He doesn’t know what kind the flower is supposed to be. A chrysanthemum, maybe. There are too many petals to count.

Xue Yang has stopped trembling endlessly, but he occasionally shivers against Song Lan. He doesn’t seem like the type to let fear get to him — but then again, neither is Song Lan. He’s never been in a situation like this before, has never dealt with something so unbelievable that he barely feels real anymore.

“It’s fine,” Song Lan says. It’s kind of nice, even.

Next to him, Xue Yang’s knee bounces, too much energy thrumming in his veins. Song Lan knows the feeling. He puts his hand on Xue Yang’s knee until he is forced into stillness. Into silence.

They fall asleep like that, hours later, exhaustion wearing thin on their bones.

—

“Zichen.”

Song Lan groggily comes to, consciousness slowly dragging itself out of sleep on tired feet.

“Zichen, wake up.”

Song Lan grumbles and tries to let himself be pulled back under by sleep, but the whisper in his ear is insistent.

And familiar. Too familiar.

“Zichen.”

Song Lan’s eyes snap open. He is in Xue Yang’s living room and Xue Yang’s head is pillowed on his shoulder. Was he –? Did he just call –?

But Xue Yang doesn’t know that name. And he’s still asleep, breathing steadily as he leans against Song Lan’s side. His body is loose, relaxed. Like this, his sharp edges smooth out. In sleep, Xue Yang looks almost soft.

Besides. That voice didn’t sound like Xue Yang at all. It sounded just like —

Song Lan looks around the room. Judging by the light, it’s probably some time late morning, or maybe even noon. The blurriness in his vision gradually fades, yielding to the crispness that comes after sleep.

His heart is pounding in his chest, thundering away at being awoken by such a familiar voice, such a familiar name.

Song Lan swallows. When he shifts, Xue Yang makes a noise in his sleep. His arms move, groggily, until he’s looping them around Song Lan’s arm and holding tight. Cuddling Song Lan in his sleep.

Song Lan feels over-warm but not uncomfortable. The itching in his veins usually present with physical touch is nowhere to be found. Song Lan never cuddled overmuch with Xiao Xingchen; Xingchen was always courteous enough to give him space, to never press too far against Song Lan’s boundaries, for which Song Lan had been grateful. But now, with Xue Yang trying to bodily barge straight past them at almost all times, he catches himself yearning for more memories of being so close to Xingchen. For more memories adjacent to this moment, for something to feel just as warm as this.

—

“I never even got to apologize,” Song Lan says.

He can see the moon through the open window, huge and full, sitting heavy on the horizon. It’s almost orange in color, so bright and vibrant it looks ready to be plucked right out of the sky, ripe.

The living room is just as orange around them, warm and pleasant with its many lights. Tonight they are steady, nary a flicker. The two of them are sitting on the couch, blankets over their shoulders, nursing a couple of beers between them.

Xue Yang doesn’t say anything, just shifts a little bit, an invitation to continue, so Song Lan does: “It seems so stupid now. I don’t even remember what we were fighting about. Just that I felt like something was his fault when it wasn’t, but I put the blame on him anyway. And then he left. And I didn’t stop him.”

Fights are strange like that. The details go blurry after a while; all Song Lan remembers is the anger. And then, more potently, the guilt that flooded in afterwards. The regret.

“Maybe he just needed time to cool down,” Xue Yang says.

“Three years?”

Xue Yang makes a strangled sort of noise. “I don’t know.”

“All of his stuff is here. Every last piece of it,” Song Lan says. “Including his stupid fucking couch.”

“This couch?”

Song Lan nods.

“Fuck,” Xue Yang says. He scratches at a flower. The sound is so loud, louder than even Song Lan’s heart.

Fuck indeed, Song Lan thinks.

“I know what the most likely answer is,” Song Lan says. “But I just — I don’t want to think –”

“You don’t know,” Xue Yang interrupts. “Anything could have happened. Maybe the guy just liked taking off when things got weird. Maybe shit went down and he took off again — except this time, he made a clean break, you know? A fresh start with new things.”

Song Lan laughs. While Xiao Xingchen was a huge proponent of leaving, of getting space when he needed it, he wouldn’t have just left all of his stuff. But still, it’s an easier thought than anything else.

“Yeah,” Song Lan says. “Maybe.”

—

“I can come with you,” Xue Yang says, bouncing on his toes in front of Song Lan. He does not sound resolved. His voice wavers, like he’s scared. He probably is.

“I’ll be fine.”

“I know where everything is,” Xue Yang says. “It’ll be faster if I’m there.”

“It’ll be slower, if you freak out and slow me down.”

Xue Yang grumbles, but he stops arguing. Maybe he knows Song Lan is right. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to go.

Song Lan can’t blame him. He doesn’t really want to go into the basement himself, but they need the big bag of rice, and at least a few of the jars of Xue Yang’s summer canning attempts. For the sake of botulism and his continued survival, Song Lan really hopes Xue Yang knew what he was doing, in regards to the canning.

He hasn’t been hungry, but cooking and eating have been good ways to pass the time. And the last thing Song Lan wants to do is die out of starvation just because fear has driven all the hunger right out of him.

“I’ll be right here,” Xue Yang says, from the open doorway of the basement stairs.

His voice already sounds faint, like he’s further away than he actually is, but it’s hard to hear much of anything over the pounding of his own heart in his ears.

The stairs creak as Song Lan walks down them. His own flashlight illuminates each step, though they are occasionally caught by the swing of Xue Yang’s too, as he attempts to help light the way for Song Lan. If anything, the unsteadiness of Xue Yang’s flashlight hinders more than helps, but his presence is comforting, at least. Knowing he is standing there, at the top of the stairs, makes Song Lan feel less alone.

It’s just a basement, he reminds himself. It’s fine. All he needs to do is pick up a few things and then return upstairs, back to the light. And back to Xue Yang.

Song Lan ignores the crack of light across the room from the door they tried before, the one to the outside, and turns right at the bottom of the stairs like Xue Yang directed him, into a row of metal shelving units cluttered with tools, goods, and other items long forgotten.

Song Lan shines his flashlight over the shelves as he goes, noting a few clean tools, cleaning products, and other trinkets that look like they’ve been untouched for decades. It’s a strange monument to the people who came before Xue Yang, all those who left their odds and ends for the next occupants. A graveyard of forgotten memories.

His feet kick up dust and dirt from the unfinished floor as he pushes forward. The air feels thick with it, unclean and grimy in his lungs.

The shelf he is looking for is obvious once he’s found it. It’s just as old as the rest, but there’s much less dust and grime on it. And, of course, it is stacked with Xue Yang’s more recent purchases and jars full of a variety of different things.

Relief is a pleasant feeling. A warm sunshine that lights up the very blood in his veins.

Song Lan sets down the empty backpack he brought with him and begins to grab different jars to fill it with, trying to snag a selection so they don’t have to eat pickled beets for every meal, back to back.

He knows this isn’t sustainable, but maybe if they can push through for long enough, they’ll outlast this nightmare. Maybe whatever it is keeping them here will simply — stop.

The jars clink together as Song Lan zips the bag up again and gingerly hefts it onto his shoulder. Then, he grabs a bag of rice from the bottom shelf and holds it close to his chest, standing to a crouch, careful of his head on the rafters. The last thing he wants to do is smack his skull again, especially when Xue Yang isn’t down here with him. He can’t even imagine what would happen if he knocked himself unconscious, and he doesn’t want to find out.

Carefully, Song Lan makes his way back down the row of shelving units and back into the main area of the basement, flashlight dimly illuminating his way. At this point, his eyes have grown at least partially used to the darkness. Now, with shapes clearer and more defined, the space doesn’t feel as awful and oppressive as it had before. Not nearly as terrifying. Now, it just feels more like a regular cellar: not somewhere he particularly wants to be, but nothing truly out of the ordinary.

It is just as he has that thought that his flashlight begins to flicker. But, holding the bag of rice in his arms as he is, he can’t smack the flashlight as he did before to get the light back on steady. There’s nothing he can do.

There is little warning, this time, before the light goes out completely.

Song Lan’s breath catches in his throat.

The basement is so, so dark. Impossibly so. The light from the top of the stairs seems non-existent. Like Xue Yang closed the door. Or maybe someone else did. Something else. When he spins, looking for the crack of light from even the cellar door to outside, he cannot find it. There is nothing. Just Song Lan and the pitch back.

In his arms, he clutches the bag of rice even tighter. He is crouched, uncomfortable. Too tall for this space.

He spun too much, looking for the light. Any light. He doesn’t remember which way is toward the stairs anymore.

He takes one hesitant step forward, feet shuffling against the ground. There’s nothing. But he didn’t expect there to be. He would reach out, to try and feel for shelves or a wall or something, but he can’t. Not without putting the bag down. Not without abandoning half of the reason he came down here in the first place.

Another step, heart thundering in his ears. He could call out to Xue Yang, but Song Lan already knows he wouldn’t get an answer. He already knows his voice would be eaten up by the hungry nothingness around him, the void.

The further he presses forward, the more untethered he feels. The more alone, the more terrified. He moves until he feels he must hit something, but instead there is nothing there. Just emptiness, vast and incomplete.

Then, suddenly, Song Lan stops. He doesn’t know why he feels compelled to, but he knows he must, as if his life depended on it. Fear freezes him, gluing his feet to the ground. A cold feeling of wrongness creeps over him, bitter and slimy unease.

In the darkness, something stands in front of him.

Song Lan doesn’t need to see it to know that it is there. He knows it with all the certainty he possesses: something stands before him, only a few inches from his own body.

Song Lan’s heart races, tumbling forward and tripping as he tries to control his breathing. He grips the bag tighter. He holds his useless flashlight against it with a grip hard enough to hurt.

The silence of the darkness is deafening. Like being under water, everything muffled and oppressive.

“Zichen,” the thing in front of him says.

Song Lan opens his mouth to reply, but can say nothing in return. Mute, speechless.

It feels so close. Not warm, but not cold either. Just a presence, pressing closer and closer to him, until Song Lan feels so terrified he might pass out.

“Zichen,” the thing says again. More insistent this time, more familiar. It almost sounds like it is trying to talk, but Song Lan can’t make out a thing other than his own name.

It can’t be Xiao Xingchen, Song Lan thinks. It can’t possibly be — can it?

Something brushes against the back of his neck. A hand. No — slender fingers. A grip tight enough to send goosebumps rolling down his spine. He feels heavy with it, trapped. He feels a pull, a yearning. A closeness he hasn’t felt in years.

Song Lan opens his mouth, Xiao Xingchen’s name ready on his tongue, before the space is flooded in light, dim but compared to the darkness it is sunlight, warm and bright: the door to the basement is open, casting the basement in the light from upstairs.

“Song Lan, you almost done down there?” Xue Yang’s voice comes ringing from the top of the stairs.

Song Lan startles at the sound of it. He blinks and looks around himself. There’s nothing, no one there at all. Just him, standing right at the base of the stairs. Nothing between him and escape. When he looks up, Xue Yang is there, waving a flashlight in his face, grinning almost a mile wide.

—

“That wasn’t so bad, right?” Xue Yang says. He’s brushing cobwebs out of Song Lan’s hair. “Next time, we go together.”

Shaken, heart still pounding loudly in his head, Song Lan is barely listening. He’s so shaken that his limbs feel light as feathers, tingly and untethered, like he could float away at any given moment. He barely even remembers making it up the stairs, though he has a sense-memory of dropping the bag of rice down on the hallway floor by his dirty feet. He remembers shrugging the backpack off and feeling even lighter, still.

Xue Yang is still talking. Blabbering about something or another. Mouth moving while Song Lan hears nothing at all. Not like anything much happened to him since Song Lan ventured into the basement. Not like they haven’t already exhausted pretty much every avenue of conversation to be had, by this point.

Xue Yang talks, loud and insistent, and Song Lan drifts.

Unmoored, without a single thought in his head, Song Lan leans forward and presses his lips to Xue Yang’s. It shuts him up instantly.

It’s not a nice kiss. And neither is it a good one nor a mean one. Just a desperate sort of thing, with Song Lan suddenly clutching at Xue Yang’s shirt like an anchor, hands balled into fists in the soft fabric. Before he knows it, he’s backed Xue Yang up against the hallway wall, pinning him there with his body, with his lips.

After perhaps too long, Song Lan pulls back, lips numb, head empty.

“Wow,” Xue Yang says. His lips are red, kiss-bitten. “That was unexpected.”

He looks more ruffled than Song Lan has ever seen him. He looks surprised, too, like he hadn’t expected that at all, no matter how many times he’s looked Song Lan up and down, no matter how many times he’s joked about Song Lan shutting him up.

But maybe Xue Yang’s teasing had truly been just that: only a joke.

Song Lan feels off-balance by that thought, by the surprise on Xue Yang’s face. By everything that has happened in the last few minutes.

What if he shouldn’t have –?

“Sorry,” Song Lan says. He takes a step back, unpinning Xue Yang from the wall, giving him some space.

Song Lan watches as Xue Yang’s countenance goes from warm to cold in an instant, eyes harding into anger. He looks about ready to start a fight. And if Song Lan weren’t already distracted by the taste of Xue Yang on his lips, he’d be felled by thoughts of Xue Yang in the middle of a bar room brawl.

“You’re sorry?” Xue Yang says. He steps forward, following Song Lan. Not letting him retreat. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“If you didn’t want –” Song Lan starts.

“Oh, I want,” Xue Yang interrupts. “I fucking want.”

Xue Yang’s fingers clutch at the collar of Song Lan’s shirt. He is surprisingly strong as he pulls Song Lan back in for another kiss.

—

Xue Yang straddles him on Xiao Xingchen’s floral couch.

He fits so easily in Song Lan’s lap. And Song Lan’s hands fit so easily on his hips, magnetized, like they belong there. Like maybe they always have.

It feels fast, to be doing this with someone who is virtually a stranger, but they’ve been trapped here together for long enough now that Song Lan feels like he knows Xue Yang better than most. Like maybe Xue Yang knows him better than most, too.

It feels strange, to take such a solace in the heat of Xue Yang’s kisses, when he came here looking for someone else, someone so different. Song Lan had wanted, desperately and ravenously, to fill up the hole inside of him that Xiao Xingchen’s absence had left. He’d been like that for so long that he felt empty, half-formed — he thought he’d never feel any different. But now, licking into Xue Yang’s mouth, Song Lan realizes that this is the first time in a long time that he’s felt close to whole.

He feels warm. He feels hungry. He wants Xue Yang so much that the desire burns painfully through his veins.

“Is this fine?” Xue Yang asks, clever fingers toying with the button of Song Lan’s pants.

Song Lan nods, dizzy. Xue Yang’s mouth is red from Song Lan’s biting hunger. He looks so good like this; messy and disheveled, all thanks to Song Lan. A thrill sparks through him, knowing he’s the one who caused this, he’s the one who left Xue Yang panting.

“Fuck, you’re so hot,” Xue Yang says. He leans down and licks a stripe up Song Lan’s neck while Song Lan lets his hands fall over the jut of Xue Yang’s hips.

It is easy to guide Xue Yang’s hips into a slow rock, coaxing him until he is grinding his hips down against Song Lan’s own hardness. It is good, so good, to have Xue Yang under his hands like this, shockingly pliant and easy to lead. Xue Yang folds to pleasure so prettily

Xue Yang breathes out a curse against Song Lan’s skin and then Song Lan kisses him again.

It is not long before Xue Yang is whining into his mouth and tugging at Song Lan’s shirt. “Too many clothes,” he gets out, seeming too preoccupied with kissing Song Lan to speak much anymore.

Perhaps kissing Xue Yang was an advisable method of shutting him up, after all. Mostly, anyway.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Xue Yang whines, tugging so hard Song Lan fears he might actually rip his shirt.

“Bed, then,” Song Lan relents.

And then he stands, picking Xue Yang up at the same time.

As if on instinct, Xue Yang wraps his legs around Song Lan’s waist. “Holy fuck that’s hot,” Xue Yang whispers, as Song Lan carries him out of the living room, up the stairs, and then down the hallway to Xue Yang’s room.

He tosses Xue Yang down into his bed and watches the way he bounces as he hits the mattress, the way his eyes go all dark, limbs splaying out around him.

“If you don’t fuck me soon, Song Lan, I’m gonna die,” Xue Yang says.

“Dramatic,” Song Lan tells him, and then follows him onto the bed, shoving him back down to catch his lips in a searing kiss.

Xue Yang’s kisses are just as sharp as his teeth. Song Lan feels drunk on them, head spinning as he licks into Xue Yang’s mouth for more.

Losing his lingering inhibitions is just as easy as losing his clothes. Before he knows it, Song Lan is lying naked on the bed with Xue Yang, bodily shoving him against the mattress like if he can just get close enough to Xue Yang, he’ll feel complete.

Song Lan pushes two fingers into Xue Yang’s squirming body, the way eased by lube Xue Yang had fished out of a bedside drawer. He opens up so easily for Song Lan, digging his nails into Song Lan’s back as his body arches up against the invasion, the pleasure. It’s like he was made for this, Song Lan thinks feverishly, the way he just yields and opens up.

He whines and Song Lan kisses the sound right out of his mouth. “Please,” he begs, and Song Lan eats that up too.

The way Xue Yang moves now is so unreserved, so pitifully pleading — like pleasure and desire have cracked him open and left him flayed.

It strikes Song Lan that Xue Yang is almost always putting on some kind of act, be it flirting or squaring his shoulders to make himself seem tougher, larger than life; but in this moment, Xue Yang is just himself. He is lost to pleasure, to need; Song Lan gets him all to himself, in his rawest form.

It’s hot. Xue Yang is so hot. Song Lan hasn’t felt this way about anyone since Xiao Xingchen. And then no one else, before that.

But Song Lan’s not thinking about Xiao Xingchen right now. He’s thinking about Xue Yang, spread out on his bed and on Song Lan’s fingers. He’s thinking about the way Xue Yang’s lips part when he begs for more — and then begs for Song Lan to fuck him, fuck him please.

Song Lan has never been much of a talker during sex. He doesn’t know what compels him to bite at Xue Yang’s jaw and say, “You’re taking me so well,” as he begins to push inside — but he does. And then the sound Xue Yang makes at the words, at the praise, is encouragement enough.

“Fuck, fuck, Song Lan.” Xue Yang groans deep in his throat as Song Lan presses in, inch by inch. Slow, but steady, never stopping. Xue Yang can take it — Song Lan knows he can. His body opened for Song Lan so readily before, like he needed it.

“So good for me,” Song Lan tells him.

He feels the way Xue Yang’s body reacts, the way he trembles and tightens around Song Lan’s cock. His hands are in constant motion, never stopping as they claw down Song Lan’s back, as he tries to grapple against Song Lan’s now-sweaty skin for a hold.

But soon, no matter his squirming, Xue Yang is full of Song Lan, his body almost impossibly tight as Song Lan fucks into him in short little jerks.

“Fuck you feel so good.” Xue Yang’s words are rough and wet against Song Lan’s lips, disheveled just like him.

It feels like a treat to see him like this: a rare opportunity to glimpse Xue Yang with all of his defenses down, with hunger on the tip of his tongue. It’s a rush. An addictive one at that. Song Lan is weak to it, utterly and completely bewildered by his own desire. Carnal, but greedy, too.

“Harder,” Xue Yang tells him, and Song Lan does, weak to Xue Yang’s demands, too.

With Xue Yang’s hands in his hair and his tongue in Song Lan’s mouth, it’s easy to lose himself, to forget everything around them — all of the fear and the regret fading to nothingness in the wake of overwhelming pleasure. Song Lan folds himself up in it, in Xue Yang’s warmth and his openness, and lets himself go.

He fucks Xue Yang hard into the mattress. With such force that the bed frame rattles against the wall, a thunking so fast it rivals the beat of his heart. Xue Yang is just as loud, his moans and cries without restraint or inhibition.

“Please, please, please,” Xue Yang begs him after so long that Song Lan has maybe lost track. “Touch me, fuck — please, Song Lan.”

Song Lan does, folding his fingers over Xue Yang’s cock to stroke him. He barely even touches Xue Yang’s cock before he is coming all over Song Lan’s fingers, body shaking and tightening around Song Lan with the ferocity of his orgasm.

Song Lan fucks him through and past it. Until he’s grinding his hips into Xue Yang, his own pleasure cresting like a wave as he spills himself into Xue Yang’s warmth.

He falls on top of Xue Yang, exhausted. He expects the shove he gets to the shoulder, as well as the grumbled complaint, and somehow finds the strength to roll himself to the side, eyes catching on Xue Yang’s face as he does.

He looks absolutely wrecked. A mess. His hair is damp with sweat, his lips are kiss-bitten and red, and his eyes are glazed with pleasure. He looks gorgeous. Song Lan wants to look at him like this for forever.

“Fuck,” Song Lan breathes out.

“Yeah,” Xue Yang agrees. “Fuck.”

Song Lan kisses the breathy word right out of his mouth.

—

Song Lan wakes to a gentle kiss at his temple. A soft brushing of lips against his hairline.

He rolls over in bed, reaching out for Xue Yang’s heat, ready to draw him in for a better kiss. Something less soft, something that will push away the tingling annoyance of being touched too gently.

Except the bed is empty next to him. And cold.

Song Lan pushes himself up in the sheets, muscles twinging with a hint of soreness from before.

“Xue Yang?” Song Lan says. And though he knows the room is empty, the sound of his voice echoes so strangely.

Xue Yang’s bedroom is illuminated by the glow of the afternoon sun. It looks warm and cozy, despite its emptiness. Song Lan wonders, briefly, if this is the room Xiao Xingchen chose. Did he nap here in the afternoons, only to be woken by the orange light of autumnal sun, just like Song Lan?

“Xue Yang?” Song Lan tries again.

He hears footsteps on the steps. He almost expects the telltale slamming of a door, or nothing at all to follow. It’s almost a surprise when Xue Yang pokes his head into the door, a bright smile on his face.

“Oh hey, you’re awake. Did you call for me?”

Song Lan doesn’t have a reason for calling out to him, he realizes. He just wanted to know if Xue Yang was there. He wanted — something, after waking to lips at his temple. Reassurance, maybe. Or maybe just another kiss.

“Aw, did you miss me, big guy?” Xue Yang says, pushing his way into the space, crawling onto the bed to meet Song Lan where he sits.

Song Lan rolls his eyes. He didn’t miss Xue Yang, he wants to reply — except he stops himself when he realizes that he did. Song Lan only spent moments without Xue Yang and yet he woke up wishing he was there.

“Shut up,” Song Lan says. He swallows then, a lump caught in his throat. Missing Xue Yang or not, Song Lan still woke up thinking he wasn’t alone. And then he was. “Thought you were here. Must have been dreaming.”

“Nice dream?” Xue Yang asks. His lips are curled up into a teasing smile.

Song Lan nods cautiously. It feels strange to admit that it had been nice, being woken like that, when it wasn’t Xue Yang doing it.

The question is glaring, bright: If it wasn’t Xue Yang who woke him, then who was it?

—

Of course, Song Lan is already sure he knows the answer.

—

“Do you think he’s haunting the house?” Song Lan asks over their next meal. Xue Yang’s experiments in canning aren’t actually all that bad.

He doesn’t want to think about Xiao Xingchen being a ghost, being dead, but he has to. He makes himself. It’s easier to talk about over the distraction of food.

“Who, your friend?”

Song Lan nods.

Xue Yang makes a face. “I mean, something is. Was your friend a dick who would keep you here against your will?”

Song Lan frowns. “No, he wouldn’t do that.” He can’t imagine Xiao Xingchen ever forcing anyone to stay anywhere.

“Then it’s probably not him, right?”

That’s true. Except.

Except Song Lan keeps hearing his name in his ear, a name that Xue Yang doesn’t know. And the face in the mirror looked so unsettlingly familiar. And whoever had stood in front of him in the basement had scared the life out of him, yeah, but in retrospect, Song Lan realizes that its presence hadn’t felt ominous or bad. If anything, it was just familiar.

“Probably not,” Song Lan echoes, though he finds he doesn’t believe it at all. It doesn’t look like he convinces Xue Yang either, if the face Xue Yang pulls is anything to go by.

“Hey,” Xue Yang says. “Your friend’s not dead, big guy. You can’t keep thinking like that.”

“How would you know?” Song Lan snaps. He can’t help it; the thought of Xiao Xingchen being dead makes him feel sick, angry.

“Wow,” Xue Yang says with a laugh that doesn’t sound very amused at all. “Don’t bite my head off, I’m just trying to help.”

“Stop, then,” Song Lan says.

“Fine, have it your way.” Xue Yang drops his fork down on his plate with a clatter and walks out of the kitchen, leaving his dirty dishes behind him.

Leaving Song Lan alone.

—

The house is not quiet as Song Lan does the dishes and cleans up from their meal. But he’s grown used to it at this point, the strange sounds, the phantom footsteps, the creaking of hinges.

Even the shadows that play at the corners of his eyes don’t make him jump like they used to.

When he looks at his reflection in the window of the kitchen sink and sees something behind him, a shadow standing at about his own height, close enough to touch, he barely even twitches. His heart still pounds heavily in his ears, of course — but he’s so tired. So exhausted, deep down and to the bone.

Song Lan just sighs and keeps washing the plate in his hands.

—

“Sorry,” Song Lan says.

It’s midday, which means Xue Yang is sleeping — or was, anyway — but he woke to the sound of Song Lan’s footsteps coming down the hall, the creaking of the floorboards giving him away.

Xue Yang looks soft, fresh out of sleep. His eyes are tired, almost feline as they blink slowly up at Song Lan.

“It’s fine,” Xue Yang says with a yawn. “You miss him. I get it. I’d miss him too, probably. From everything you’ve said, he sounds like quite the guy.”

“He was,” Song Lan says, sitting at the edge of the bed. His body feels heavy, tired.

Xue Yang drapes himself over Song Lan’s back, hooking his chin over Song Lan’s shoulder. His body is sleep-warm, comfortable. It’s easy enough to relax under his touch, to lean into it, too.

“Shut up with that past tense shit,” Xue Yang says. “He is.”

—

“If we were stuck here forever, would that be so bad?” Xue Yang asks.

They’re lying on their backs on the living room floor, staring up at the ceiling. There’s a circle of intricate molding in the center of the room, the plaster slightly worn and yellowed with time. Xue Yang’s fingers are laced in with Song Lan’s own. His hand feels so small, so fragile, even though Song Lan knows that isn’t true. Xue Yang is strong; in a fight, he’d be able to hold his own.

“We’d starve,” Song Lan says. And then they would be left here with whatever is haunting this house.

Xue Yang kicks at him, clumsy and sideways. “Shut up. Don’t be so realistic. It’s a hypothetical.”

“I think it’s a little more realistic than a hypothetical,” Song Lan says. They could die here. They might. Song Lan tries not to think of it, but the fear of it looms heavy around the periphery, worse than any shadow or slammed door. A shroud, blanketing the whole house, threatening to suffocate all trapped inside with little struggle at all.

Next to him, Xue Yang falls quiet. And still.

Song Lan can’t bear to break the silence. He doesn’t want to, either. He breathes and stares at the ceiling. A long breath in, a long breath out. His lungs feel strong, his heart steady. He wonders how long they have left until that is no longer the case.

After a long time, Xue Yang speaks again. He’s staring at the ceiling, voice softer than before. Contemplative, near-distant. “Would it, though? Would it be so bad, being stuck here with me?”

Song Lan huffs out a breath through his nose. “You don’t really strike me as the sentimental sort,” he says.

Xue Yang kicks at him again. He laughs, too, but the sound of it is hollow and a little forced. It echoes strangely in the room — or maybe it just falls flat against Song Lan’s ears. It’s easy to tell, now, when Xue Yang is faking. When he’s lying.

“No,” Song Lan says, finally. “No, I don’t think it’d be so bad at all.”

—

The days — and nights — become an even easier rhythm to live by, after that.

It feels right, cooking next to Xue Yang, reading with Xue Yang pressed up against his side, and then falling into bed with him, too. Some days, it is almost even possible to forget the fear, the dread that hangs over them like a shroud.

Sure, Song Lan misses the crunch of fresh vegetables and the feeling of sunlight on his face. But here, he has Xue Yang’s warmth, the taste of him on his lips.

Here, Song Lan has felt less alone than he has in years.

—

Song Lan wakes up to mid-afternoon light from the window and the sound of Xue Yang quietly snoring next to him in bed.

Song Lan rolls over and stifles the resulting groan. His muscles are pleasantly sore, his body peppered with reminders of just what they got up to the previous night and how much Xue Yang likes to use his teeth. Song Lan knows that Xue Yang is not without his matching marks; there’s nothing quite as satisfying as knocking the words straight out of Xue Yang’s mouth by biting him hard enough that he can only groan.

By all accounts and measures, Song Lan should be just as tired and knocked out as Xue Yang — but he can’t seem to fall back asleep. His mind is already racing, getting ready for the day. Not that there’s anything in particular to do, just fall into their normal routine. Still, his limbs itch with the need to move, the need to do something.

Song Lan pushes himself up from the bed, careful not to wake Xue Yang, who only huffs into the blankets and presses into the warm spot Song Lan just vacated and falls right back into sleep.

Song Lan stops to look at him for a moment and smiles. Like this, features smoothed out in sleep, Xue Yang looks so soft. And so strikingly handsome, too. Outside of Xiao Xingchen, Song Lan has never wanted to look at anyone for long enough to admire; from the beginning, Xue Yang has been a constant surprise.

Quietly, he shrugs on some clothes and lets himself out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him. He could make himself breakfast, but he’s not particularly hungry and Xue Yang is still asleep, so he might as well wait. Briefly, he considers going downstairs to read, but as he lingers on the landing, debating, his eyes catch on the door to the attic.

At this point, it is hard to believe that whatever is haunting this house isn’t Xiao Xingchen — but there’s still a part of him that hopes that maybe it’s all some horrible coincidence.

Maybe Xiao Xingchen’s boxes of belongings will shed more light on the subject. And maybe, just maybe, there will be a few things missing from the boxes, pointing to a different reality, one where Xiao Xingchen didn’t just disappear into thin air, leaving all of his earthly belongings behind — maybe one where he packed a few things and then left town, telling no one. An inventory, Song Lan thinks, will help.

It’s worth a shot, no matter how unlikely it is.

Song Lan grabs himself a flashlight and steels himself for strange occurances; they’re bound to happen. And he probably should let Xue Yang know where he’s going, just in case there’s an accident or worse, but Song Lan doesn’t want to wake him when he’s sleeping so peacefully.

And he doesn’t want to lose his nerve.

He opens the door and climbs the stairs on careful feet. The space is just as dusty and as cobwebby as before — at least he thought to grab his shoes at the same time as the flashlight. At the top of the stairs, he flicks on the lightswitch. It doesn’t do much, but the couple of bulbs do help illuminate his way to the boxes stacked in the corner of the attic. Better than the basement, anyway.

He settles down in the dust and dirt on the attic floor and tugs the first box closer. It’s the one he opened before, the one full of Xiao Xingchen’s clothes. On the very top is one of Xingchen’s favorite jackets. It doesn’t take much longer to sort through the rest of this box — and then the next — easily determining that this is at least the majority of Xiao Xingchen’s clothes.

The third box is full of other items. Xiao Xingchen’s essentials. Nothing missing there, either.

Song Lan doesn’t make it to the fifth box. He gets stuck on the fourth, which seems to contain mostly books and important papers. There’s no real point in looking through all of it in depth — Song Lan doesn’t need to see Xingchen’s transcript or his birth certificate. But he checks all the same.

A nondescript manila envelope sits shoved in alongside the side of the box and its contents, its corners partially folded — as if Xingchen had simply crammed it back in, forcing it to fit. Inside is a copy of Xiao Xingchen’s lease. A few pages worth of the lease agreement, it looks like. Nothing hugely interesting, there.

Song Lan shifts the papers and some photos fall out and onto his lap. He can’t help but chuckle: Xingchen was always extremely meticulous about these sorts of things. Obviously he’d take before pictures once signing an agreement, just in case. Song Lan puts the lease down and picks up the fallen pictures, shaking a couple strays out from the bottom of the manila envelope, as well.

In the dim light, Song Lan can’t see much in the pictures, but the flashlight helps. They’re out of order, not that it matters. It’s a little strange, seeing pictures of the place he’s been trapped, but it’s just another reminder that Xiao Xingchen was here too, once upon a time. At this point, Song Lan has traced over his footsteps countless times.

Every room looks relatively the same, which makes sense. Xue Yang said the house came pre-furnished with all kinds of furniture and items. The only thing not in the pictures, of course, is Xiao Xingchen’s floral couch. Even the attic looks the same — just a strange, dark picture of a dusty place, full of dust motes and spider webs.

It’s the picture of the basement that makes Song Lan do a double-take.

He blinks hard and then shines his flashlight over the picture in different angles, trying to make the image make any kind of sense.

The basement looks completely different.

It’s not at all the cellar with a dirt floor and low rafters that Song Lan has been in. This space is finished, with tile floors, drywall, and ceilings of a normal height. It is clean. It is bright. It is welcoming.

For a second, Song Lan tries to rationalize it: this must be a picture of a different house, a different basement.

But everything is all in the same place. The stairs, the walls, even the door to the outside. The storage too, off to the right. It doesn’t make any sense at all.

Song Lan swallows down his confusion, a strange tightness in his chest. He feels a little cold, a little off-balance.

He picks up the lease again. Maybe there are some clues there.

The flashlight helps illuminate the page as Song Lan reads.

The lease seems to be only for one room. One room in the entire house, with use of all of the amenities. Which is odd, considering Xue Yang seems to rent the entire house, not just a room. But agreements and situations change, Song Lan tells himself.

His eyes dart down to the bottom of the document, catching on Xiao Xingchen’s familiar signature where it says tenant. Even after all these years, Xiao Xingchen’s name in his own handwriting looks almost as familiar as Song Lan’s own.

But that’s not what startles him, what has his blood going cold in his veins.

Next to Xiao Xingchen’s name, alongside the word landlord and owner, is Xue Yang’s.

—

When Song Lan makes it back downstairs, Xue Yang is still asleep.

Song Lan stands in the doorway and watches him where he lays, sprawled out across the bed, arms wrapped around Song Lan’s pillow. In sleep, Xue Yang looks harmless.

But now, Song Lan doesn’t know what to think.

If Xue Yang were Xiao Xingchen’s landlord, if he maybe even lived in the house while Xiao Xingchen rented a room — that would mean Xue Yang was lying the entire time Song Lan has been trapped here with him. It would mean he knew Xingchen, and almost certainly knows more about what happened to him, especially if he was the one who packed up all of Xingchen’s belongings.

And if that’s the case, who knows what else Xue Yang could be lying about.

Song Lan shudders, stomach twisting with anxiety, and quietly closes the door to the bedroom.

The hallway feels empty and vast around him. Cold, almost, but without the chill.

He makes his way downstairs, absolutely unsure what to do with himself. His whole body feels light, untethered to reality.

He tries the front door. It doesn’t open, but he didn’t think it would. Worth a shot, though.

The living room and kitchen feel so empty. Hollow, like the inside of his chest. The dining room too. Song Lan finds himself walking circles around the house, looping through it in strange patterns, like a needle threading through complicated knots.

He doesn’t have anywhere to go. Every place he treads reminds him of the photos he found in Xiao Xingchen’s boxes. Everything looks the same. Even Xiao Xingchen’s couch doesn’t feel like a known entity anymore; it’s just something else Xue Yang lied about.

As Song Lan makes another pass through the back of the house, passing the door to the basement, he hears something behind him — the quiet creak of un-oiled hinges. He turns, heart in his throat, to see the door to the basement easing itself open, right in front of his eyes.

It feels surreal to watch. But by now, it also feels normal. An inevitability.

Song Lan still has his flashlight. By the time he has situated himself in front of the doorway, the door has opened itself all the way.

Beyond the threshold of the doorway, the stairs descend into darkness.

Song Lan steels himself and then steps into that yawning void, heart in his throat. The flashlight does little to combat the darkness, but his feet find the first step with surprising ease. He stands there, legs steadier than he thought they would be, and makes the decision to close the door behind him. Trapping himself in. Somehow, it feels safer: an odd thought, when the light from the top of the stairs had felt like such a beacon before.

Now, it feels like reality has upended itself, leaving Song Lan directionless. He doesn’t know what to think anymore.

When the door clicks closed behind him, his flashlight flickers once and then goes completely out. And then the darkness swallows him whole.

He is slow as he descends the rest of the steps, hands on the wall for guidance and stability. Dust and grime and cobwebs are everywhere, gathering on his fingertips and in his hair, but he doesn’t care. There’s only one thing he cares about anymore.

“Xingchen?” Song Lan whispers once his feet fall on the flat, dirt floor of the basement — so different from the finished floor in the picture.

Xiao Xingchen must be here, Song Lan thinks. He has to be.

“Xingchen?” Song Lan whispers again, stepping into the nothingness in front of him, leaving the stairs behin.

He stops when he feels — or perhaps more senses — something in front of him. A shape, a presence. Something darker than the darkness all around him, though perhaps his eyes, without any light, are playing tricks on him.

It is not until Song Lan feels a hand on the back of his neck and a breath at his ear that he shivers.

“Zichen.”

Song Lan chokes on a sob. He feels his knees buckle as he falls to the ground, the dirt floor. The presence — Xiao Xingchen — follows him, the touch on his neck never breaking contact.

“Xingchen, please,” Song Lan says, voice thick with a painful tightness in his throat. “Please tell me that’s you.”

“Zichen, it’s me,” Song Lan hears, though the words are garbled, far away. He hears other words too, other sounds — but cannot distinguish them. Everything Xiao Xingchen says sounds underwater.

Song Lan turns, hands grappling to try and make contact with Xingchen. He doesn’t even know if it is possible, but he has to try. Even if all he has is this one moment, he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t try to touch Xiao Xingchen one last time.

“I’m so sorry,” Song Lan says, reaching, reaching — and then Xiao Xingchen is lacing his fingers through Song Lan’s hands, holding them, holding them.

Song Lan sobs again, unable to stop the tears from gathering in his eyes and then tracking down his cheeks.

Xiao Xingchen is there, in front of him and whole, holding onto Song Lan’s hands like an anchor. Song Lan wishes he could see him in this moment, but he fears that too, the reality he knows to be true. He doesn’t know what he’d see.

“I’m sorry,” Song Lan says, and he knows Xingchen is talking, saying something, but he can’t hear it, can’t make out the words.

Xingchen’s grip is strong and solid, and almost warm. Song Lan relishes it, holding onto Xingchen’s hands just as tightly as they are holding onto him. And then Xiao Xingchen squeezes his hands harder and even starts tugging on them, almost frantic. The pitch of his words gets louder, too. Song Lan can hear his name, Zichen, Zichen, almost shouted — but he can’t tell what Xiao Xingchen is trying to say.

And then the lights flick on.

Song Lan is momentarily blinded by the harsh brightness, the contrast. He shuts his eyes with a hiss and watches patterns bloom and blossom on the insides of his eyelids.

“Such a touching reunion,” Xue Yang’s voice calls out from the top of the stairs.

Fear grips Song Lan’s heart. Xingchen’s hands are still in his, clutching just as tightly as Song Lan is clutching back.

Song Lan pries his eyes open, fighting against the pain.

Xingchen is not there. He’s all alone. But Song Lan can still feel Xingchen’s touch, the grip of his hands.

Song Lan’s eyes water and burn.

“Whatcha doing, Song Lan?” Xue Yang says. He’s standing now at the bottom of the stairs, only a few metres away from Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen. He is smiling, wide and bright and sharp. His hip is cocked, relaxed — like he doesn’t have a care in the world. It reminds Song Lan of the way he looked when Song Lan saw him in the doorway for the first time; like a hyena, full of teeth.

Song Lan swallows. Goosebumps cascade down his spine.

“You own this house,” Song Lan says.

Impossibly, Xue Yang’s smile grows even bigger. It looks almost unreal on his face. “I’ve owned this house for a really, really long time.”

“Zichen,” Xiao Xingchen whispers.

Song Lan looks down at his hands, tearing his eyes away from Xue Yang, from the threat. It’s just enough to realize that the basement looks different. It looks like the one in Xiao Xingchen’s picture: the floor underneath them is clean and finished, the walls are plastered, and everything around them is bright and orderly. This is not the space Song Lan went into before. This is not the basement he knows.

“You knew him. You knew him the entire time,” Song Lan says, looking at his hands but talking to Xue Yang.

“Of course I did.”

“You know what happened to him,” Song Lan says. He looks back at Xue Yang and his sharp smile, at the way he can see the laughter in those dangerous eyes.

“I happened to him,” Xue Yang says.

“You killed him.”

Xue Yang cackles like Song Lan just told a particularly funny joke. The sound makes Song Lan shiver; it echoes in the unfamiliar space, off the clean walls and spotless floors. He feels sick. He feels angry. He feels dizzy with it all.

“You are to him as he is to you,” Xue Yang says. “You’re both in this house. You’re stuck here either way.”

Song Lan feels a tug on his hands, and then hears a whisper in his ear, clear as day, “He’s lying.”

Song Lan startles. He furrows his brow and holds onto Xiao Xingchen even more tightly than before. He feels Xingchen squeeze him back, those hands so familiar in his own even after all these years.

Xue Yang chuckles. He takes a step forward and then another, crossing the space between them both. Song Lan braces himself. At this point, he doesn’t know what Xue Yang is capable of, other than atrocities. Everything and anything.

“He’s right,” Xue Yang says. “I am lying. Worth a shot.” He chuckles. “Here’s the truth: You can leave. Your precious Xiao Xingchen can’t. He’s been here with me too long.”

Song Lan swallows down fear and grief, a sheer cacophony of emotion, more than he’s felt in years, all built up, a jumble of it right in his throat. He doesn’t know what to say. He wants to push himself off the ground and run for the exit, even though he’s not even sure of his chances. But he can’t leave Xiao Xingchen. Not after all this time. Not when Xiao Xingchen makes him feel so complete.

“Xiao Xingchen is mine,” Xue Yang says. He looks at Song Lan, his eyes bright and crazed. And then he smiles again. “But you could be, too.”

Song Lan swallows. He shivers.

“You liked it. You liked your time with me,” Xue Yang says. “You wanted me.”

Song Lan clenches his teeth. Xue Yang isn’t wrong; he can’t hide how he felt, how much he hungered. Or how much he still, despite everything, looks at Xue Yang and —

“Maybe what you need is some motivation,” Xue Yang says.

And then Xue Yang snaps his fingers, and suddenly Xiao Xingchen is there. In front of Song Lan, on his knees in this unfamiliar space. He looks — he looks the same as the day he left Song Lan. Ethereal in his beauty and perfect in every way.

And, most importantly, he looks alive.

Song Lan’s throat hurts with the need to cry, to sob, to say something, but fear keeps that at bay.

Here, in front of him, is the man Song Lan loves. The hole in Song Lan’s heart.

“What do you say, Song Lan?” Xue Yang asks.

“Leave,” Xiao Xingchen whispers. “Zichen, you have a chance to save yourself.”

Song Lan looks back at Xue Yang, somehow managing to drag his eyes away from Xiao Xingchen and watches the way Xue Yang looks between Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan, at their hands still clasped together.

Despite all the lies, all the deception, Xue Yang has gotten easier to read after all the time Song Lan has spent here, with him. He looks playful. And jealous. And a little hopeful, too.

Song Lan thinks of the gentle ghosts of kisses at his hairline, and then of nails clawing at the skin of his back. He thinks of hope and longing, and the way the light cascades across the living room of this house. How comfortable and domestic everything has felt here. He thinks of how scared he was at the beginning, how much he fought to leave this place. And how much he regretted not fighting harder for Xingchen, too.

“Are you going to leave?” Xue Yang asks, “Or are you going to stay here with him? With us?”

The choice, Song Lan thinks, is the easiest he’s ever made.

—

The day that Xiao Xingchen pulls up in front of the house is bright and sunny, with blue skies above and not a cloud to be seen for miles. Auspicious, Xiao Xingchen thinks.

Room for rent, the ad had said. The house itself isn’t new or even particularly well-cared for, but it looks loved. And interesting, with peeling paint in colorful layers and shimmering glass windows that speak to their age. There’s a vegetable garden around the side and a welcome mat below the door. A gnarled cherry tree out front is just about ready to blossom.

But perhaps what strikes Xiao Xingchen most of all is that it looks like a home. Somewhere he could put down roots.

With hope in his heart and the rental flyer clutched in his hand, Xiao Xingchen knocks on the door and tries not to think about what he might be leaving behind.