Chapter Text
Xie Lian lies there motionless as Jun Wu grunts above him. Sweat flicks off his moving limbs and ricochets on his soft stomach. Between them, his limp cock goes unnoticed, uninterested, unimportant. It makes sense since Jun Wu likes to wait to get Xie Lian off in other ways, and when something happens so frequently it practically Pavlovian trains your body not to respond during the other bits.
"Was it good?"
Xie Lian is staring up at the ceiling, counting clusters of unintentional popcorn constellations above them. He initially panicked when his cock had remained uninterested, but Jun Wu had been too preoccupied with painting him in come to remember anyway.
"God," sighs Jun Wu, and Xie Lian isn't... digging for some sort of praise, but he's kind of expecting it when Jun Wu starts a sentence like that. So it's entirely out of left field when instead he says, "You're a loose fuck, you know?"
Abruptly, Xie Lian snaps back into his body.
I'm sorry, he wants to say and twenty other variations of it, whether it's to apologise or do something so bizarre like question Jun Wu. Instead, Xie Lian spots lumpy Polaris and recalls how an old friend in college had told him once how it always leads back home to north. Home, he'd said. It's a nice thought.
"I can't do that again." Jun Wu lazily turns to give Xie Lian a look that makes it feel like he's saying something more, but Xie Lian's too busy feeling like a sheet blown through by the wind, unravelling at its perfected hem, to understand what more might be. "We're done."
Popcorn ceiling, Polaris. Xie Lian shuts his eyes. "Okay."
He doesn't even try to convince Jun Wu to stay after that. For someone who seems to impulsively speak their mind without filter, Jun Wu's word has always been impressively final. Xie Lian wouldn't be surprised if Jun Wu made it a point to stick to his first opinions out of principle, with how much he chastises Xie Lian for changing his mind like the weather.
He doesn't remember going home that night, but he wakes up to the faded glow-in-the-dark constellations of his childhood bedroom.
For Christmas, as a joke probably, his friends chip in to sponsor Xie Lian a few sessions with a therapist at a clinic downtown. It doesn't take much detective work to figure out who spread the news about the breakup, but the group chat has been eerily tame and Xie Lian's phone has been buzzing a lot less than usual. Even Mu Qing and Feng Xin seem to be on not-screaming terms for once.
In a dainty fabric bag—also Qingxuan's influence, no doubt—is an innocuous mint-green gift card, or as close to a gift card as paid-in-advance therapy could be. As soon as he gets home from their gift exchange, Xie Lian chucks it into the back of his wardrobe and crawls into bed.
Xie Lian attends his lectures and goes to work after not because he's resilient or anything like that, but because he still has rent to pay and a stomach to fill. No matter how much he might want it to, responsibilities like that don't go away just because he's falling apart at the seams.
The days pass, Xie Lian doesn't remember his winter break.
Someone brings grapes and makes everyone eat twelve at the strike of midnight—one for each month of the upcoming year. While the couples get to sit at the table, Xie Lian is cramped under it with the other single guys at the party. It's a Spanish tradition they said, but with the way his year ended, Xie Lian would have eaten any god damn fruit to take what luck he can and store it safe and inside himself. He's greedy and wants every last drop he can get.
The grapes are gone in less than thirty seconds and Xie Lian feels no different for it. Maybe a little less hungry.
Then Xie Lian gets in his car and there's a smudge on the windshield that still won't go, and like every other year, there's a part of him disappointed that it doesn't all miraculously feel any different. He's still the same person he was an hour ago before the countdown, left behind in some arbitrary concept of time.
His drive back home is silent but not quiet. The playlist that connects to the stereo is just background noise as tipsy driver after tipsy driver zip past him on the foggy backroads. There’s one, two, three police checks—thankfully never on his side of the road—and then their song comes on.
The fog thickens.
When had Jun Wu stopped adding to their playlist? When had the car rides gone from picking him up with handmade bouquets to being told off for making too much noise in the passenger seat?
Jun Wu was right, he'd always been too sensitive, never really able to appreciate what he had. That's why he'd moved out of his parent's place too, spoiled into a privileged rich kid beyond belief. What Xie Lian would do to be scolded in that passenger seat again. His grip tightens around the steering wheel.
He tries to swerve a pothole but he’s blinded by the memories, gutted by the emptiness of being without Him. How does life go on? How can the sun continue to rise every morning without remorse? How can Xie Lian pull his foot off of the gas when all that awaits him out there is a life he doesn’t want to wake up to anymore?
It takes an alarming amount of self control for Xie Lian to ease his weight and let off the acceleration.
Physically, he does the right thing, he doesn’t max out speed on the highway and wait for it to all rush in and meet him faster than his eyes can process, but it doesn’t mean he doesn't want to.
There's a semi-regular at the cafe Xie Lian works at, who Xie Lian has probably talked to before and just forgot about.
Like some fae of the seasons, 'Semi' is either there for weeks without end or disappears for two months at a time. Xie Lian knows this not because he's actually able to remember faces for more than the thirty seconds it takes to serve an "iced cappuccino for George" and keep his expression as neutral as possible, but because Semi is one of their favourite topics of discussion.
"That's not even a medical eye patch, right? Aren't they supposed to be white, like in 'Another'?"
"Do you think he's just really into larp-ing?"
"What's larp-ing? Wait, they might just be white in Japan, I've never seen them here, actually."
"Hot cold brew for Yong." Xie Lian is neutral as beige, even when he can physically feel Ban Yue and Pei Xiu pulling expressions of horror from behind him where they're loitering by the syrups.
Thankfully it's that terrible service lull between New Year and Chinese New Year that he doesn't actually need to memorise some bullshit seasonal recipe requiring three different syrups per drink.
"Xie-ge, you're too nice." Ban Yue saddles up next to him and shakes her head at the retreating back of the dumbass customer and their dumbass order. "I would have just told the idiot about Americanos."
"Well, it wasn't an Americano." He turns to rinse out the used frother.
"No," Ban Yue gasps with a mixture of disbelief, horror, and pride. "Xie-ge!"
For the first time in months, Xie Lian cracks a smile.
The fact is that Xie Lian continues to drive to work and school as normal and the urge to slam his foot on the gas only grows more persistent. And while there are public transport options, why would he go out of his way to change his routine?
Mint-green gift card. Xie Lian tells himself things are fine the way they are, these kinds of thoughts are normal for people his age.
With a nickname as stupid as Semi, it’s not out of the ordinary for Xie Lian’s brain to start filling in what comes after the prefix. As the days of winter crawl by and Semi gets away with a simple ‘HC’ on his mobile orders, Ban Yue and Pei Xiu have apparently started making a game out of it too.
“Semi-truHCk,” Pei Xiu emphasizes so seriously that Ban Yue pauses to consider the spelling.
“You fucking idiot.” She hands him a matcha she can’t be assed to make and proceeds onto the very important task of picking at her nail polish. It's recently begun to match the dark colour of her raccoon eye-liner. Since when did she swear so much? Xie Lian wonders as he wipes down the frother, he’s always on the fucking frother that faces the customers. Because there’s always some fucking thing to fucking froth. Is all the cussing okay with the Manager?
Admittedly, it's probably a little out of the ordinary for his brain to privately settle on 'Semi-Hard-Cock', especially given he’s never actually participated in any of the conversations about him.
Apparently Semi-HC, for short, likes to online order an Iced Americano to takeaway in the mornings and something sweeter when he comes back to tuck into the sofa chairs on weekday afternoons, which is also the only time Xie Lian is ever on shift. Despite a giant pillar obscuring most of that corner, the varying shades of high-fashion reds make him kind of hard to miss. Especially during early February, when he dons a decorative scarf that trails behind him like a bloodied tail.
Which is why Xie Lian is stupefied when he comes up to the till on an innocuous Thursday afternoon.
"Any plans this Valentine's, Gege?"
Xie Lian looks up from the tablet he's been battling—he's used to fighting the frother, not the chip and pin machine. They couldn't possibly have spoken before because Xie Lian would have remembered that voice. Up close, he can see the red eyeliner artfully smudged around the corner of his eye and how it makes him look both more mystical and a little like he's been crying.
Xie Lian's knee jerk reaction is to say something to the effect of "I'm taken" but stops himself, on the off chance that he's just vastly misreading signals. Maybe it's just this guy's personality to act flirty. He's pretty sure Semi-Hard has seen Jun Wu come into the coffee shop before too.
Ultimately, he doesn't say anything to that effect because Xie Lian actually isn't. Taken.
"Have we met?" Xie Lian smiles his employee-of-the-month winning smile.
"Maybe," smirks Hard-Cock.
"Sure. For here or takeaway?"
"Peppermint cocoa for here, please. And your plans?"
He's unfazed by Xie Lian's dryness, which he has to admit is interesting. Unfortunately, Xie Lian is very, very tired. And so his filters aren't what they really ought to be when working in customer service.
"I'm going to order in some food, watch my favourite film, and then cry myself to sleep."
Jun Wu hated the film, he remembers. He hates anything musical and anything foreign, so it was kind of on Xie Lian for even wanting to watch it together. It shouldn't matter anymore, but it's hard to forget things like that, it sticks like glue and Xie Lian has misplaced the remover.
"I see." Semi says with a missing eye and Xie Lian snorts. He snorts at a half-blind man.
But the smirk on Semi's face is knowing and smug. It's distracting. "Is something funny?"
"No, no," Xie Lian busies himself with the transaction and doesn't catch how much the tip is. "I'm sorry. That was inappropriate." Please don't tell my manager, he adds telepathically.
"Was it?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Was it inappropriate?"
"…I'm sorry."
"Well," he takes long breath and Xie Lian sympathetically holds his own. "I'd be willing to overlook it if you make it up to me."
He is startled by the unexpected tactic, but the shock actually grounds him, it makes everything feel more real and defined than it has all week. Maybe all month. Xie Lian smiles, but it's a stiff expression. "And how might I do that?"
"Call me San Lang."
"And how might I do that, San Lang?"
A new expression of joy, amusement even, dawns Semi-Handsome's face and Xie Lian hysterically wonders if he would be inclined to show him some more. "No, that was my request. For Gege to call me San Lang."
Xie Lian's name tag is on his denim blue apron, so the guy is deliberately choosing not to use it.
He smiles his customer service smile and says, "Sure, San Lang. Next, please."
They're going on a trip with another friend group, is what Qingxuan told him.
Given how little information there is in the group chat about the plans, Xie Lian's fairly certain that there's another chat he isn't a part of. Recently he hasn't had the energy to to chip at his wall of unread texts, so it's probably for the best. It would have been nice if they'd asked him maybe, but it's fine.
They all meet at the house of some guy called Yin Yu. As he passes the sorry excuse of security and the bungalows come into view, Xie Lian contemplates why he even agreed to the trip. Who cares about sitting on the hot sand and melting away when nothing really matters anymore? Would being by the beach make it all marginally more bearable?
There's hardly enough space inside the gated driveway to park his car, yet he manages to without complaint, even when he has to squeeze out of the drivers seat and press up against a van to get out. He quite literally can't miss the giant red lantern and Chunlian already up by the door, it's getting closer and closer to Chinese New Year, does his family even want him to come back to celebrate?
He peels off his shoes and steps in. "Hello?"
Xie Lian knows he's at the right house when he hears a shrill scream round the corner and two people shouting after Qingxuan.
"XIE LIANNNNNNNNN!!!" Jesus Christ. There's a Shih Tzu barking along through the glass partition from what looks to be a laundry area.
"Qingxuan, don't run indoors!" Comes Feng Xin chasing after him, not as elegant at sliding in his socks as Qingxuan is. They're all approaching their mid or late-twenties, who hasn't got bad knees? Feng Xin catches on a tile inelegantly and nearly goes splat.
"Hi." Xie Lian and his backpack watch from the entryway.
"Well? Come on, come in!"
"Okay."
The place is about two times smaller than Xie Lian's house, and at least twice more of a home than his has ever been. There's a coconut to drop keys in, little figurines lining each decorated wall, and laughter. So much laughter. It's an unusual sound to find in a home, Xie Lian thinks as he follows into the living room.
There are two things that stick out most to Xie Lian then:
One, they must have personally commissioned the huge rug which spans the entire living room floor.
Two, sat on the sofa between two of his best friends is Semi-Hard.