Chapter Text
The basement reeks of damp mold. The counselor seated in front of Mu Qing smiles like she’s being paid to do it. Funny, considering this half-hour session is covered by his mandatory student insurance.
Hung on the brick walls are shining posters with motivational quotes like Don't Sweat It, It's Just a Stepping Stone! and Breathe Deep, You're Alive! Mu Qing rolls his eyes at this last one. If he sits here any longer, nobody in this building will be alive.
The counselor clears her throat. "I have a coworker I'd like to refer you to."
Ah. Of course.
"It has nothing to do with you," she says, quick to reassure Mu Qing of something he already knows is false. "Don't even think that for a second. But with him, I think you'd make some real progress, hm?"
Mu Qing meets her gaze evenly. They both know he hasn't said a single word in the past three sessions, not since he shook her hand the first time and she proceeded to fill the air with endless chattering about stress relief and forgiving yourself. Mu Qing is not the one who needs to forgive.
Silence. The counselor shifts in her oversized armchair. She's not even a real therapist. Of course she can't help.
"Okie dokie," she says, and Mu Qing actually feels himself cringe. "Just give our office a call."
With that, Mu Qing gets up and walks out of the room without so much as a wave goodbye. The office beyond the door is empty, reflecting the reduced occupancy now that spring semester has ended. He should be glad, he supposes, that the college even offers services like this over the summer.
More than anything else, he thinks about his last therapist years ago, and the no-nonsense approach she gave to the sheer melodrama he bemoaned of his life at that point.
Up the stairs and out the front door. Fresh air greets him with the warm, heavy weight of humidity. It's the time of year for short sleeve shirts and daring hemlines. At least, that's what he wrote yesterday for this week's fashion assessment in the shitty, low-brow magazine paying him for the summer.
Today, who knows what he'll write. Who knows if he'll have time between the end of his internship hours and his obligations later tonight to sit at his desk and try to put some of his observations into action. The tread of the sewing machine humming underneath his hands, the heat of the iron felt against his skin, and still he's just here, existing, a tangible object trying to hold tight to some semblance of life.
But it's summer. And it's changing. And it has to change.
-
Xie Lian's text comes through just as Mu Qing is gathering his hair up high on his head. He leans forward and reads Best wishes for tonight!!! Wish you were here <3 <3 <3 while wrapping an elastic around his ponytail. His stomach turns, again, and he regrets everything that has lead up to this point.
The thought of going on a date with a near stranger is just as appealing as sitting in silence with his useless counselor. It's good, he tells himself. It's good.
The familiar strings of his neighbor's guitar ring, muffled through the wall. Mu Qing grits his teeth. In the mirror, his reflection is almost grotesque, badly backlit by his dim bedside lamp and jaw visibly tight from all this goddamn bullshit. It would be one less thing if Hua Cheng hadn't left their shitty, well-loved apartment to move in with Xie Lian. It would be one less thing if Mu Qing wasn't renting a single room month to month with neighbors he only knew through obnoxious late night sounds radiating through walls far too thin.
Mu Qing doesn't know shit about music, but he knows that guitar needs to be tuned. Mu Qing doesn't know shit about growing older, but he knows that all the stress will help him die young.
Happy thoughts.
Mu Qing picks up his phone. I'm not going on a second date, he texts Xie Lian.
You haven't met him yet! :) comes Xie Lian's reply within seconds.
It really doesn't matter. Mu Qing looks at the reflection of his sewing machine in the mirror. Beside the old desk it sits on is a box overflowing with poorly folded fabrics. Most of them he's gathered from school, but some he purchased recently with money from his internship. His hands itch to manipulate them into something new.
Fuck shitty counselors and shittier men. Mu Qing is working more than he has since he started his degree. Somehow, in some way, that has got to be a sign of something good.
Twenty minutes later, Mu Qing is locking his bedroom door and heading down the long hallway towards the stairs, passing by the shared bathroom and the sharp, narrow turn that leads into a dark kitchen that has seen better days. There are certainly things to miss about living with Hua Cheng. Privacy, for one. Peace and quiet, for another.
Possibly he should be angrier than he is. That old feeling of abandonment threatens to creep up at times, staved away by Xie Lian's constant barrage of texts and calls and forced hangouts.
Outside, darkness stretches overhead. One lone streetlight casts an orange hue at the end of the street. Its brothers and sisters sit aside, copper wires stripped some past late night. In the distance, a group of drunk assholes shout obscenities at each other. If it weren't so normal to hear, Mu Qing would shout obscenities right back at them.
As it is, Mu Qing crosses the street towards the one car with the motor running. Within seconds he's made his judgments: new car, luxury brand, custom paint job, tinted windows. What a fucking douche.
The feeling increases tenfold when Mu Qing opens the passenger side door and the driver says, "There's the gorgeous man."
"If you would stop looking at your mirror," Mu Qing says.
Eyes wide, the driver grins ear to ear, as if to say who, me? Mu Qing reminds himself of what he told Xie Lian: there will be no second date. One and done.
With that thought, Mu Qing slips into the car and shuts the door behind him.
-
Pei Ming works a desk job and spends his free time at the gym. He lives in a studio apartment with a view of the city. He can bench 320 pounds and never misses leg day. He has endless escapades around town and wants to fuck that lady crossing the sidewalk in a short dress and tall boots.
All of this Mu Qing learns in the time it takes to drive to Pei Ming's restaurant of choice.
"Remind me again how you know Xie Lian," Mu Qing says with all the enthusiasm of a redeye flight with a six hour layover.
"Who?" Pei Ming laughs heartily as he turns into a crowded parking lot, narrowly avoiding hitting not just one, but two cars parked along the street. "Is he that tall man with the knuckle tattoos at the gym?"
"How the fuck would I know who goes to your gym," Mu Qing says.
"Hm?" Pei Ming parks and shuts off the engine. The world is plunged into darkness. For approximately two seconds, and then the interior light kicks on, and Mu Qing is uncomfortably aware of how small the car is, and how close he is to Pei Ming. "Don't we both go there?"
"Are you stupid?" Only Xie Lian would see the good in a guy this obtuse. Either that, or all Mu Qing's fears of Xie Lian hating him are true, and he's been playing the long con this entire time.
Pei Ming barks a laugh. "Well, how else would you know Feng Xin?"
The interior light clicks off at the same moment Mu Qing opens the door and gets out. He slams it so hard the entire car shakes. He presses his fingers against his temple. He takes a deep breath like that stupid goddamn counselor told him to do. But the air is humid down his throat, and sticky against his exposed skin, and of course Xie Lian would set him up like this. Of course Xie Lian wouldn't even think about it.
Half the reason Mu Qing agreed to go out was the stupid excitement Xie Lian showed, like he was solving a problem he only partly understood. Go out and move on. Go out and maybe it will all be normal.
Mu Qing has stretched his capability for endurance over and over, worn elastic shredding at the edges. He hasn't broken yet.
The driver's side door opens and shuts. Mu Qing allows himself one more moment, gaze unfocused on the brick buildings beyond the parking lot crowded with cars that cost more than his yearly salary, and then he faces Pei Ming.
"After you." Pei Ming gestures to the far end of the parking lot. "You ever been here before?"
I'm sure you have. Mu Qing bites his tongue.
Pei Ming smiles that wide, grotesque smile again as they walk towards the restaurant. His hand comes to rest on the small of Mu Qing's back, far closer than he has any right to be. Cologne rolls off him in waves. The stench curdles in Mu Qing's nostrils, so strong he swears it's viscous.
"Don't." Mu Qing steps to the side.
Pei Ming raises both hands as if it constitutes an apology.
The restaurant is crowded outside and inside. The gated area in front of the tall, wide windows is flooded with people seated and chatting. Mu Qing is all too aware of the frayed threads peeking out of the side seam of his shirt, the result of a botched french seam the previous summer. Someone like Pei Ming would never notice. Someone like Mu Qing can't forget.
Pei Ming holds the door open for Mu Qing. Inside, Pei Ming gives his name to the hostess, and Mu Qing follows to a small table exposed in the center of the room.
The hostess leaves them with menus. Mu Qing eyes Pei Ming from across the table. The lighting in the restaurant is dim, but still gives him the best view of the man he's had all night.
Pei Ming is not a bad looking guy. At the very least, Mu Qing can appreciate that. He's clean shaven, jaw well structured. His hair flatters him. The dim light casts his eyes into shadows as he looks down at his menu, accentuating the gleam in them. The button up shirt he wears has got to be made out of cotton or silk or some other lightweight material given the heat of the night. From the even stitches to the lack of ill fit anywhere across his broad chest, it gives all impressions of having been specially tailored to him.
Too bad he has to open his mouth. "Let me order for you, hm?"
"Absolutely not," Mu Qing says.
"It would certainly give you more time to look at me." Pei Ming flashes Mu Qing what he's sure is meant to be a winning grin. "You think you're sly, huh?"
Mu Qing opens his menu.
Afterwards, when the waiter has taken their orders and brought them drinks, when Mu Qing has snapped at Pei Ming that he doesn't drink, when Pei Ming has ordered him a drink anyway and Mu Qing has poured it into Pei Ming's water glass — after all of that, Pei Ming sips his cocktail and considers Mu Qing.
"What brings you out here with this much hate for it?" The question, while probably apt, catches Mu Qing off guard.
"Doesn't matter," Mu Qing says.
"Hm." Pei Ming sets down his drink. He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands. "Is it a fetish thing?"
Mu Qing stares.
"Well, you can't blame me for asking," Pei Ming says.
Mu Qing moves his water glass from one side of the table to the other. Condensation drips down the side, cold where it touches his skin. The sensation is not unlike that of stepping outside on a winter's day, one where the air is frigid enough to chill, but warm enough that icicles drip onto the sidewalk below.
Xie Lian asked. Xie Lian asked, and now Mu Qing is here, because Xie Lian would never do anything without a good reason.
"Xie Lian set it up," Mu Qing says, and that's enough.
"The gentleman with the goatee?" Pei Ming asks, leaning back in his chair. "The one who sweats over the cable machine?"
God, this man is an idiot. "Feng Xin's roommate."
Recognition sparks in Pei Ming's eyes. "Ah. Of course. With the sweater and the hair."
The assessment isn't incorrect. Above all else, Mu Qing is gaining frightening insight into Xie Lian's method of setting him up. He can see Xie Lian visiting Feng Xin's gym and getting a bright idea over the first man who's single and sweet talks.
It's been long enough that Mu Qing should not feel the way he does. That it's wrong, somehow, to sit here with someone in such close company with Feng Xin. There is no betrayal here, nothing that Mu Qing owes anyone, and still he's reminded of how tenuous it is these days. He can't be close, but he doesn't want to go. He can't forget it, but he's not the one who can do the forgiving.
He can sit here with Pei Ming, but he doesn't want to know what his days are like, seeing Feng Xin in a capacity closer than anything Mu Qing can manage right now.
"High school," Mu Qing says.
"Pardon?" Pei Ming says.
And here he is, communicating like nothing else matters but this. "I know Feng Xin from high school."
This seems to appease Pei Ming, who suddenly looks as though he's an actual human being with a genuine interest in the conversation. He picks up his cocktail but doesn't drink from it. "Were you close?"
To expect anything else is irrational. Of course this is where the dialogue continues to. This is what Mu Qing has set himself up for.
"Something like that," Mu Qing says, like fingers dragging against a healing scab. The discomfort doesn't bleed.
"Did you fuck?"
The dining room is somehow more crowded now than it was when they sat down. Two different waiters are struggling to navigate around a table where a man and woman are both trying to wrangle the same squealing toddler. If Mu Qing lets himself, he can blend into the din and think nothing.
Pei Ming raises his eyebrows when Mu Qing meets his eyes. Mu Qing's shoulders tense. "Are you ever not thinking about sex?"
"I sleep," Pei Ming says.
"Great." Maybe one of those waiters happens to be theirs. On the other hand, this is an unfortunate conversation to overhear.
"Why wouldn't I want to know someone intimately?" Pei Ming says, as if this is a normal dinnertime conversation. His tone is hardly flirting, even and serious as discussing the news. "It's a beautiful thing. You shouldn't feel shame over it."
Pei Ming might as well be speaking in tongues.
"We're in public," Mu Qing says, because he can't think about this here. Not about the last time, not about the first time, and not about every heavy-handed fumbling in the dark that occurred in the years between. If there was no shame, he would have done it with the lights on.
"Everyone in this room should be more open about the sex they're having. Why shouldn't we be?" Pei Ming shrugs. "Are you honest about it, Mu Qing?"
Being honest has gotten him shit.
Five months and Mu Qing has just started being alone with him again. Whatever distance brings, whatever benefits there are to being friendly without being friends, it's not enough. Xie Lian gets to live with him and Mu Qing gets to wonder if it will start to feel normal. Pei Ming gets to see him and Mu Qing gets to sit here, hearing the noise of the restaurant without truly listening, and want a version of himself that hasn't manufactured such a useless situation.
If he's being honest, it's still his fault.
"We've fucked," Mu Qing says. "Happy?" He waits for the gratification, for Pei Ming to make some face like he's surprised that Feng Xin would have wanted him, that Xie Lian would have the gall to set this up anyway.
No such thing happens.
Pei Ming grins. "Absolutely. Now, describe this for me." He leans forward, although his voice is loud and booming as ever. "I've always wondered. When Feng Xin has sex, does he start to —"
"I will walk out of this restaurant." Mu Qing sets his hands against the table, pressing his feet into the ground.
"Ho, I don't think you will." Pei Ming nods towards something behind Mu Qing.
Mu Qing turns to see their waiter navigating across the busy floor, balancing dishes on both arms. He has half a mind to leave anyway, food or no food, but the momentary lapse in conversation reminds him that he lives on the other side of the city now, and it will take three buses and two hours to get home from here.
So he waits, and he refuses to meet Pei Ming's eye. The waiter smiles as she sets down their plates.
Pei Ming unrolls the napkin holding his utensils and places it on his lap. He sets his utensils in the right places, as someone who grew up with manners would do. Mu Qing remembers learning. His mother's hands, always cold and weathered on his, would guide everything to the right spot.
As if sensing the weight of Mu Qing's gaze, Pei Ming looks up at him. He lets out a hm, picks up his first bite of food, and pauses.
"I wouldn't feel any certain way about it," Pei Ming says, and Mu Qing hardly has to guess what he sees in him at that moment. "We're all just animals, aren't we?"
Wouldn't it be easier that way.
—
Pei Ming drives him home and turns off the motor. Mu Qing has a box of leftovers in his hands and a night of small talk to forget. No second date, he'd told Xie Lian, and now he knows how true it is.
It's close to 10pm, and still the street is hardly quiet. Even inside Pei Ming's car, Mu Qing hears the constant traffic of the nearby highway, the same noise he's learned to fall asleep to. That, and the frequent footsteps outside his bedroom, and the lone streetlight shining through his window, and the smoke alarm in the bathroom going off when his neighbors sneak cigarettes.
It's all this, and nothing more, that leaves Mu Qing hesitating to leave the car.
"Hey." Pei Ming's hand slides over the dashboard, landing on Mu Qing's denim-clad thigh. "Do you want to have sex?"
Mu Qing stares at Pei Ming's manicured fingernails. He's got a signet ring on his middle finger, and a half-lasered off tattoo snaking along the side of his hand. He probably sleeps around enough that it would be easy. In, out, and no fucking feelings to think of.
It would be the first person since Feng Xin. The first person he hasn't cared about since his college days, screwing fast and then staying up late to finish essays about determinism. It felt more like psychology than philosophy sometimes, to think that every action could be out of his control. Was it the past that kept him wanting, or has he always been destined for it?
Mu Qing's therapist at the time called him out on how self serving the thought was. If there is no control, then there is no reason to hold himself accountable.
"No," Mu Qing says. "Not really."
Pei Ming moves his hand back to the steering wheel. "I wish you well, Mu Qing."
With that, Mu Qing gets out of the car. He's reached the front door of his building before he realizes that he never even said goodbye. Halfway through fishing for his keys in his pocket, leftovers in one hand, he looks over his shoulder. A wave is acceptable. Expected, even.
Pei Ming is already gone. Mu Qing rolls his eyes and unlocks the front door.
The stairs are steep. By the time Mu Qing reaches his room on the second floor, making a pit stop in the kitchen to put away his leftovers, taking care to write MU QING! on the box with a red sharpie, he's finished with the day. He can't take one more conversation. If he exchanges pleasantries with any of his neighbors, he'll end the interaction with a foot to the shin.
Mu Qing shuts his door behind him. He turns the lock, and sets the deadbolt. Every bone in his body wants to collapse into bed and turn out the lights. But it's not even midnight, and he can't stand the drudgery these days, so he sits at his sewing table and runs his hands over the fabric pinned underneath the needle.
The shirt Mu Qing wears is made with a pattern his mother had held onto even after her sight went. His internship would probably drop him if they knew that. They like to say vintage is vogue, but they don't mean the vintage that reminds people that the world has been going on for an awfully long time, and will continue long after everyone alive is dead and gone. History, but not memories.
Mu Qing runs his hands along the pins holding together the two pieces of fabric laid out on the table. He pinned the whole seam yesterday, yet his mother's advice always rings in his head, that it's better form to check twice than to seam rip once.
Right as Mu Qing is about to turn on the sewing machine, his phone vibrates. He flicks the switch anyway, his other hand slipping his phone out of his pocket and answering the call.
"Go to sleep," Mu Qing says.
"San Lang is brushing his teeth," Xie Lian says, his cheer evident even garbled through the phone. "I'm glad to catch you. I'd hate to interrupt anything of importance."
"I didn't go home with him." Mu Qing sets down his phone and places it on speaker. If he has to listen to his neighbor badly play guitar, his neighbor can listen to Xie Lian.
"Ah, well, I uh, well —"
Mu Qing twists the hand wheel until the needle is poised above the fabric clenched beneath the presser foot. "Moving on."
"Isn't he honest? I thought so." This is why Mu Qing can never let go of Xie Lian. A fucker like Pei Ming doesn't get on his nerves, doesn't make him avoid areas that he might be. Instead, Xie Lian sees honesty. He sees the good side.
His naivety is almost obnoxious. "Did Hua Cheng kill anyone yet?"
Xie Lian lets out a laugh that's more nervous than anything else. "It would have been a better night with you," he says, which Mu Qing takes to mean that his interference is necessary when it comes to Hua Cheng and Feng Xin. "Promise me you'll come on Saturday, okay? Say you will."
"I never said I wouldn't." Mu Qing feels for the foot pedal under the table. He orients it to a comfortable position, resting his foot in front of it. He'd never be so rude as to make Xie Lian listen to the sharp blare of his sewing machine on a phone call.
"It's different without you." Which could mean anything, really. Thank god you've been distant, or it's a shitshow when you're gone, or maybe it's a nothing sentiment, something to say when silence is too noticeable between friends. "Promise me."
"I promise," Mu Qing says. There was never a question about it.
"Oh, great. I'm so glad." It's incredible, how earnest Xie Lian sounds. From all the effort he's gone through lately, setting him up and coming over unprompted and inviting him regardless of who is around, Mu Qing has started to let himself believe that Xie Lian really means it. And then he says, "Feng Xin will be happy."
Mu Qing sits back in his chair. The memory of dinner earlier, how fucking desperate he sounded talking about Feng Xin, is an unwelcome guest. "Don't say things that aren't true."
"Well, maybe he hasn't said it, but does it really matter?" Xie Lian could speak anything into sounding honest.
The feeling hits Mu Qing again. He's finished. One more conversation and he'll start breaking down the brick walls of his own goddamn building.
"Goodnight, Xie Lian." Mu Qing says it because he has nothing else to say.
"He will be," Xie Lian says.
"Okay."
The wall beyond the sewing machine is blank apart from the one small, smudged window badly set into the painted brick. All it shows is the darkness outside. Mu Qing stares at it through the silence, fabric smooth underneath his fingertips, the weight crowding his shoulders.
"Well," Xie Lian says again. "Sleep well, Mu Qing."
Mu Qing hangs up the phone. For a moment, it's all he can do to sit there and breathe.
Slowly, like it's not even a choice at all, he begins to sew. The hum of the sewing machine fills the room, shaking the table and tingling his hands. He sews, and he doesn't think, until the neighbor starts banging on the wall shouting about the goddamn noise, and Mu Qing shuts off the sewing machine and shuts off the light, and Mu Qing crawls into bed and listens to the traffic outside, and Mu Qing stares at the ceiling and thinks. About his internship at first, and then he thinks about the uncertainty at the end of spring semester when he thought he'd have no job at all, and then he thinks about how Hua Cheng told him he was moving out, how he sounded regretful for the first time in his life, and then he thinks about how everything moves on, and then he thinks about Feng Xin.
And then he falls asleep.