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Xue Yang is building a coffin when he feels something behind him.
Before he ended up in Yi City, he had never built anything before. Not like this, not with wood and his own hands. Now, though, he builds coffins. This one is large, larger than any single coffin has a right to be. But it’s what was asked of him, so it’s what he’ll build.
The thing behind him is not Song Lan, because Song Lan is helping him build the coffin and keeping the wood steady while he works. Because Song Lan - void of any black nails, gone for some time now since Xue Yang had been asked to remove them - is looking up with the slightest smile twitching over his lips. Xue Yang hates that he likes the expression on that cold, dead face. But it means that he knows exactly who is behind him before fingers brush against the back of his neck.
“Zichen,” Xingchen says in the softest sigh, hands like ice as he tenderly squeezes the base of his neck and the thin layers of his robes draping around Xue Yang as he leans over him to tilt Song Lan’s head up and press a kiss to cold lips. He gets his turn next when Xingchen tilts his chin and kisses him. “Yang-er.”
Xue Yang is expecting it when cold blood drips down onto his face; Xingchen’s eyes bleed constantly these days. It started shortly after he came back and always leaves the cloying, sickly sweet sweet smell of roses lingering in the air when he walks by. Perhaps that should have been the first sign that something was different, something he or Song Lan picked up on, but they’d both been too happy to notice. It doesn’t matter, Xue Yang decides for the hundredth time as Xingchen wipes the blood from his cheek and pushes his thumb against his lips.
Xue Yang laps the blood from the finger that slips through his parted lips eagerly, despite it tasting bitter, like medicinal tea with no honey. He does every time and he knows that if Song Lan still had a tongue, he would, too. It’s just so worth it when Xingchen smiles down at him serenely and pets his cheek for a moment before he draws away.
“Dinner is almost ready,” Xingchen says, and Xue Yang drops his hammer. Nails clatter against the ground when Song Lan drops them, too. They must be so well trained now, he thinks, and though the idea rankles against him, he thinks it’s worth it. Anything would be worth it, to have Xingchen back and gazing sightlessly at them with that smile.
Anything is worth it. Even when it makes his stomach drop out and coil unpleasantly, even when it makes him feel sick.
Xue Yang and Song Lan both stand and the three of them enter their little coffin house, two sets of footsteps filling the air. Xingchen’s feet haven’t made any noise since he came back and Xue Yang still doesn’t know why. He doubts he’ll have the chance to find out, he thinks, sitting on the small, round stool he’s sat on each day for the past week.
“Change his bandages, Zichen,” Xingchen commands of them as he returns to finishing making their dinner. “Yang-er, are you still bleeding?”
Xue Yang watches as Song Lan unwraps the layers and layers of bandages around the stump of his shoulder. He watches as they grow pink the closer to the end of the bandages they get. He swallows and answers honestly, because Xingchen always knows if he lies now, “Yes.”
“Good.” The wound, now a week old but still raw and refusing to close up properly, aches with his heartbeat. But Xue Yang can’t help but smile, can’t help but feel giddy despite the fear joining excitement in his stomach and making him feel sick. Song Lan finishes unwrapping the injury and cleans it with a cold, wet cloth that burns of rice wine mixed into the water, just as he has done twice daily for the past six days.
And then, just as he had the night before, Xingchen says, “Don’t rewrap it, Zichen. Come sit at the table.”
Xue Yang is the only one of them now that can eat. Still, they all sit and when Song Lan reaches out to carve the meat, Xiao Xingchen’s hand caresses his empty shoulder. It doesn’t really hurt, just a vague sense of pressure that makes his head swoop, but Xue Yang is mesmerized as he watches his Daozhang’s fingers play in the blood that drips from the wound.
“Is the coffin done?” Xingchen asks and he shivers as he watches blood coated fingers slip into Song Lan’s mouth. He doesn’t have a tongue to taste anything anymore, nor speak, but the look on his face like he’d just been given the best of sweets still makes Xue Yang’s stomach twist pleasantly. “A-Yang.”
He swallows thickly, forcing himself to redirect his train of thought to something other than Xingchen’s fingers on him, in him, in an entirely less bloody way. Or still bloody, he wouldn’t mind. “Just about done,” he says, trying and failing at not sounding as affected as he is, “There’s only the array left.”
“You should do that. Eat first, A-Yang. And the grave?” The last bit is aimed at Song Lan, Daozhang’s precious Zichen, who nods. It’s been done since lunch, Xue Yang knows, and he’d say as much if his gaze wasn’t drawn down to his bowl. He lifts his chopsticks and eats the rice and meat and doesn’t think about how he’s sure Xingchen is watching himself despite lacking the eyes to do so.
“How do you taste?” their Daozhang asks when he finishes the meal.
How do you taste? instead of, how does it taste? He’d known what it was, had watched Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen prepare his arm this morning, but it’s still surreal. He swallows, “Good.”
It’s true. Xue Yang has never eaten anything so good. And not came from him, lovingly made by two dead men who will stay with him forever. Their Daozhang laughs and stands, beckoning them both up as well.
“Of course. I thought you would be.”
Xingchen holds out his hands and Xue Yang takes one as Zichen takes the other. With ease, Xingchen leads the three of them out to where the coffin and its grave sit waiting. Xue Yang paints the array on the ground and the coffin and then all three of them lay in the dust and wood. Xingchen’s hand is a tight vice on his wrist and so is Song Lan’s on his hip on the other side of him.
Death, when it comes, feels like he’s being kissed by both of them at once.