i'm looking at the cosmos

[starscaped]

WHO: xue yang and xiao xingchen. ( song lan later? )
WHERE: on a dirty, bloody road.
WHEN: sweats
WHAT: first meetings
WARNINGS: dont quote me, but probably nsfw knowing me

( if the moon had a voice, she'd surely tell xiao xingchen that he's out far too late tonight to be wandering the beaten path on his own. she might be wise, then, but she doesn't have the same natural inclinations that he does. she's a beacon, and the tides follow her call — xingchen is just a wave, searching for his moon in the chilly midnight air, the soulful creaks of the forest calling his name towards their depths.

his eyes remain devout, searching for song lan. the red string tied around his pointer finger glows eerily red in the bleak nightfall, illuminating a path onward, its shine detailing song lan has been wounded, somewhere. he follows the trail like so many waves chasing moonlight, mind alert on the surface but otherwise lost for what might've gotten him.

he doesn't, as a noteworthy mention, realize the string is tied to his opposite hand.

this is how he stumbles across a man in a field, looking bloodied and broken from what must've been a savage fight. xingchen can't explain the way the red knots of their fingers meet up like broken butterfly wings, or how looking at him is like seeing song lan for the first time — how strange and curious and concerning a world like this is, where so many pieces of a puzzle already aligned, fall directly out of place. a boy in his lap bleeding on shaking fingers.

it isn't a question to him about helping — in the cover of night and without much choice, he sets up a new camp somewhere further off a direct road, carrying xue yang in his arms and finding a shallow cave to spend the night in. when xue yang comes to, he's draped with xingchen's outer robes, the blood washed from the cake of his face, the wounds along his body sewn and wrapped as best as xingchen was able. there he is too, a collected stranger, tending to a fire that burns between them. )

Comments

[menaces]

[ This time, Xue Yang thought himself dead. He's not even sure by whose hand or why, his assailants overtaking him in the night, swords plain and faces shrouded. Maybe he finally messed with the wrong mark, or someone wants the last of Xue line snuffed out, or someone just didn't like the look of him. He'll never know because makes corpses of them all, four bodies alongside his in that field, but by the time the last one falls he's so dizzy with blood loss that he too crumples, finds himself staring up at the stars wondering if the heavens are laughing at him, if they've ever stopped.

If the entirety of his existence hasn't just been one long joke to those who look down on them from above.

Cold and darkness sets in, carries him from a world that's never spared him an ounce of love.

...and then warmth returns.

There's still a clammy chill settled in his bones, but the heat from the fire is the first thing he notices as consciousness returns. There's pain, but it's a dull, all-over ache that barely registers to someone who lives as recklessly as Xue Yang does. When he opens his eyes, it takes a few seconds for his vision to come into focus, and at first all he sees is something otherworldly and ethereal. He has to wonder if this is the other side after all, for something so soft, so light to exist, half dressed and tending the campfire.

Frowning, he tries to sit up only to let out a low hiss of pain as he puts pressure on his stitches, laying back again with a noise of frustration. Having fully given himself away, he trains his gaze back on the stranger, feeling exposed without his sword. Trust is not a thing Xue Yang knows. To him, it doesn't matter if this stranger brought him back from death's door, or if he's the singular most beautiful thing Xue Yang has ever witnessed. Danger is the only constant of his world. ]

...pretty strange hobby you have here.