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The paving was so hot it felt like it was striking Xingchen's feet instead of the other way around, and yet an unkind wind was still chilling his sweat to goosebumps. Being too hot and too cold at once was one of many things he'd never imagined about the world below the mountain, along with the way garbage rotted in every possible corner, or the sheer persistence of traffic noise that penetrated to the most private room.
He passed the last shop on the street, which boasted a display of vintage hats with feathers that were as wilted as he felt. Xingchen sighed, and checked his phone again, compared the street name on the screen to the one on the metal sign screwed into the wall, and then checked the road that crossed it for good measure. Once an industrial district, the old red-brick warehouses had been converted into apartments for young professionals who had never materialised, and the row of shops on the ground floor were not the artisan bakers or upscale art galleries that had been hoped for.
For the third time, he walked along the street, checking each storefront with close attention. There were one or two shops that suggested they might sell more than conventional items, but none of them seemed to be what he was looking for.
He walked past a narrow door, and then doubled back to check it. The paint was peeling, but when he tried the handle, it opened, and an old bell let out a clatter. Xingchen hesitated, and looked over the doorframe; there was no sign or nameplate. There was the faintest mark in the paint where a number might once have hung, which wasn't much use. In the dim interior all he could see was that the stair ahead was steep and narrow and extremely dirty. But the door was in more or less the correct location, and if it didn't look right it didn't actually look wrong. So he let the door fall closed behind him and picked his way up the stairs, lifting his pale hems out of the dirt.
The next door was equally narrow, but bright light stabbed through the gaps around it. Xingchen opened it, and squinted against the sunlight. There was so much of it, bright and clear, and with it came fresh air that tasted of life and not exhaust and rotting trash. For a moment he was sure he'd stepped directly into a garden, but when he shaded his eyes he made out the steel supports criss-crossing the sky, and the springiness underfoot was not brown earth but cork matting. The verdant plants that surrounded him and towered overhead were real, and his eyes wandered over the broad curves of leaves and the delicate vines of climbing flowers. As he watched, every trumpet-shaped flower on the vine turned towards him and spread creamy petals to reveal a deep golden heart. He breathed in the scent as they breathed it out, and felt the day's tension slide from his neck. This was the right place.
"Hello?" he called out, and the greenery around him drank up the sound, as it muffled the sound of the city outside. He could hear the faint hum of busy insects, and perhaps even the sound of water trickling. "Is anyone there?"
"Yes, what do you want?" said a voice somewhere ahead of him, and he edged past a boisterous fern that clung with interest to his sleeves, seeking out the voice's owner.
He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, white petals from the tree above him drifting in his black hair. His dark robes were mostly covered by an apron, and the sleeves were turned up, revealing earth-smeared forearms above leather glove. He looked up with eyes bright as black water, and then he said on a low breath, "Well, hello."
His gaze was not on Xingchen, who silently held his plant out for inspection.
It had been a last gift from Baoshan Sanren before he left her. At the time, it had seemed a very ordinary plant, and he had accepted it with ordinary gratitude, as a keepsake of a beloved teacher. He had not been long in the world before he realised that all things on her mountain were precious, and when they left it, they were rare and highly prized.
The stranger held out his hands, and then made an impatient beckoning motion. Xingchen said, "You're Xue Yang?" to confirm before setting the pot in his hands.
He had watered the plant whenever the soil seemed dry, and for several years that had been enough. But now its silvery leaves were faded, and it no longer smelled like the breeze that rushed down from the mountain's peak, and there was no one who knew anything about plants from an immortal mountain. He had traded on his reputation to ask several reputable cultivators of high rank for advice, and had been told with polite regret, that things that left the mountain did not long retain the mountain's virtue or purity. It might be coaxed along with qi infusions, or perhaps there were preservation arrays that would extend life, but they were merely delaying tactics in the face of the inevitable.
Wei Wuxian, whose mother had come down from the mountain and moved on before she had lost any of its virtue, had said, "Sounds like bullshit." He had poked at the leaves, which were starting to wrinkle and spot like any ageing thing, and said, "It just seems like a plant to me. I know a plant guy. I wish I didn't, sometimes, but he might be able to help."
Certainly, his plant guy seemed far more interested in plants than cultivators. Xingchen might have faded entirely from existence, for all the attention Xue Yang paid him. He held the plant up to the light; he sniffed it, and wiggled the leaves, and he stripped one glove off with his teeth and poked his fingers into the soil. Xingchen winced to see him force the leaves up; they seemed on the verge of breaking off entirely. Then Xue Yang deliberately dug his nail into a leaf, splitting the surface like a wound. Xingchen flinched, and tucked his hands under his arms so he couldn't reach out. Wei Wuxian would not steer him wrong.
Xue Yang looked at the resultant green-silver smudge on his hand for a while, and then he shrugged and settled the pot in his lap.
"It's pot-bound," he said. "Repot it, maybe an inch bigger all round. You ever feed it? Just put it in soil, then, from somewhere as uninhabited as you can. If you can get it stream water it'll prefer that, but if it's been managing on tap this long it'll be fine."
"I collect rainwater," Xingchen said, and then, a little shocked by the simplicity of it, "Is that all?" Xue Yang cocked his head in question. "It just needs repotting, not..."
"Plants are still plants." Xue Yang gave a laugh in which derision was far stronger than amusement, and then he looked down at the plant again, and his mouth took on a gentler curve. "You ever repot a plant? No? I'll do it for you if I can keep the pups."
"Pups?"
"Mm, look - " he beckoned Xingchen closer, and he dropped to his knees at Xue Yang's side, watched as he pressed his bare fingertips gently against the lower leaves. The undersides had lines dug into them where the pot edge had been pressing, and Xingchen felt a pang of guilt. If the plant had been a person, that would have been very sore.
Xue Yang tilted the pot into the light, and nestled at the base of the plant was a small shape, the plant itself in miniature. "It's trying to reproduce like it would in the wild, but it's got no space. They need to come off and then I'll put it in a new pot and plant the pups."
"Do you have the right kind of soil?" he said, and Xue Yang nodded.
"I collect it myself. I've got some mountain soil that'll suit this one. You can come back for it tomorrow."
Xingchen hesitated. He looked at the pot in Xue Yang's hands, his gloved thumb moving idly across the lunar-grey glaze, his bare thumb gentle on the wrinkled leaves. "How many pups?"
"Two or three, looks like. They might not all take."
"I want one of the pups, please. Can you replant it in that pot?"
Xue Yang's mouth curled up, mocking. "Do you know how to take care of them?"
Xingchen did not, and it must have been obvious on his face. Xue Yang said, "Why do you even have this plant if you don't know anything about it? A collector would pay through the nose for it, and you could get something nice in plastic."
"It was given to me when I left home," Xingchen said. His face was burning; it was not pleasant to think he had been so careless with his teacher's gift. "It... smells like the mountain I grew up on. Or it did."
Xue Yang's expression may have softened, or it may have been a trick of the dappled shade, as the leaves moved slightly and light freckled his nose and sparked in his black eyes.
"Come back tomorrow and you can have your plant back," he said briskly. "Come back in a few weeks, and if two pups have rooted, you can have one. If only one roots, it's mine, and if more than two, the rest are mine."
"Done," Xingchen said, and he took the plant out of Xue Yang's hands, and held it gently for a little whlle. He knew it by heart, the subtle fade of silver to lilac, the curve and point of the leaves, fitting so neatly together into a rosette. He cupped his hand around the leaves, and suppressed the urge to say something encouraging to it. Instead he looked at Xue Yang, and said, "You'll be careful, won't you? I love it."
"No, I'm going to pitch it like a baseball as soon as you turn your back." Xue Yang laughed at him, and the leaves didn't absorb that sound at all. It bounced off the glass roof and showered down around them, bright and sharp as sunlight, and Xingchen smiled back at him. Somehow, it was more reassuring than a promise. Xue Yang cocked his head like a bird, eyes narrowing.
"Come back tomorrow," he said, taking back the plant. He looked down at it and added, almost reluctantly, "Come back any time."
Their apartment felt oddly empty without the plant; or maybe it was just that after spending an hour in the lush, fresh garden, the apartment was poorly-lit and and poky and, despite Song Lan's best efforts, had a faint smell of cabbage at all times.
Song Lan was another thing that Xingchen could never have imagined about the world outside the mountain, and on the days that Xingchen became disheartened by the sheer scope of the work to be done, the certainty of Song Lan at his side made it all endurable.
"I was thinking we should get some more plants," Xingchen said, when Song Lan came in, tired and dusty. Song Lan looked at the empty windowsill and his expression shaded into dismay. "Oh no, no, it's all right! I left my plant with Wei Wuxian's expert - he says it needs repotting. But we have plenty of room for other plants, don't we?" They looked at the small windowsill together. It was the only one in the apartment that got direct light. "Well, at least two more."
"You just gave your plant to him?" Song Lan said dubiously. "What if he..." He hesitated, clearly unable to imagine what wrongs could be perpetrated on a plant, but sure they existed. He knew as little about plants as Xingchen, but he had taken the whole situation very seriously, because things that mattered to Xingchen mattered to Song Lan. Xingchen leaned against his side, and Song Lan kissed the top of his head, and then picked out a few tiny green leaves he thought must be from the clingy fern.
"He liked it," Xingchen said. "He won't hurt it. No one else knew. I should have started with a gardener; it was nothing to do with cultivation or the mountain."
"He thinks," Song Lan said, even more dubiously, finding yet more leaves clinging to Xingchen's sleeve. "It's not fixed yet."
"Come and meet him. Tomorrow." Song Lan raised an eyebrow at him. Xingchen smiled, and maybe flushed a little. He'd like to see Song Lan raise an eyebrow at Xue Yang like that. Xue Yang wouldn't blush as easily as Xingchen did.
"It's like that, is it?" Song Lan said, the soft curve of his mouth deepening subtly.
Xingchen said, "It might be," and then, after consideration, "I liked the way he touched my plant. He has nice hands."
That was enough for Song Lan, because things that mattered to Xingchen mattered to Song Lan. He wrinkled his nose at the muddy stairs, but followed Xingchen up, ducking his head to avoid the low ceiling. Xingchen turned at the top of the stairs and backed through the door, so he could see Song Lan's face dazzled by the light and then delighted at the jubilant disorder around them. A few breaths of the fragrant air, and his eyes went soft. Xingchen had almost forgotten that he didn't always look just a little bit strained,
"We should spend more time out of the city," he said, and Song Lan gave him a wry smile.
"There are so many things we should do."
It was true, and most of them were far more important than self-indulgence. But it was good and necessary to stay in harmony with the flow of the natural world, and it was also good and necessary for Song Lan to smile easily, once in a while, and breathe sweetness instead of smoke.
Xingchen linked their fingers together, and they went hand in hand into the garden.
Xue Yang was not where he had been yesterday, and Xingchen looked doubtfully around at golden flowers and corrugated bark. Song Lan had leaned in close to a green plant whose leaves shone like polished stone. They shifted slightly under his inspection, preening.
"Which way is the door?" Xingchen said, and Song Lan looked about and then laughed, low and rueful. The foliage clustered around them without gaps.
"Your new friend is a human, isn't he? You haven't bargained with a spirit?"
"I'm almost sure I haven't," Xingchen said with dignity. "And if I have, I want my plant back, because that was the bargain."
There was a narrow space that wasn't quite a path beside a stand of silvery grass that grew in a trough; he had to turn to slide past, but then it fitted Song Lan easily enough, and then there was a welcoming cool shadow that turned out to be a series of iron arches grown over with vines. There were no flowers, but dozens and dozens of buds, some showing just a hint of purple at the tip. Beyond the arches, the bottom step of a wooden staircase peeked out from behind a towering stand of bamboo. It didn't seem as though the stair could lead anywhere, but the bamboo was tall enough to hide a mezzanine that ran along the length of the interior brick wall, which glowed with absorbed heat. Trees and vines were spread against the wall like so many pinned butterflies, and there were banks and banks of succulents, arranged in patterns like enamel tiles. There must have been thousands of them.
The sun felt very close here. When Xue Yang looked up at them with eyes narrowed against the sun, he was luminous as a festival lantern, brows and lashes the vivid black of ink. Sweat stuck his hair to his damp neck, and there was a smear of mud over his cheek and nose.
"You're multiplying," he said, gaze flicking between them, and his mouth curled into a small smile. He sat back on his stool and set his knife down on the low table, laid out with dozens of pieces of plants in an array of colours and shapes. His empty hand reached out over the table, and then tapped his lower lip in apparently deep thought. "Which one's yours again?" He arched an eyebrow in silent challenge.
Xingchen leaned over the table, hooking his hair out of the way when it would have slipped down. There were so many of them, amber and red and green and almost-blue. He wanted to pick up and inspect them one by one, but he doubted Xue Yang's patience ran long. He pointed to a shape he knew as well as his own face, though he was used to seeing it larger, and said, "I thought you were going to plant them?"
"Lucky I didn't just hand it over," he said, his smile bright and vivid as a flower. "They do better when they're allowed to dry out before planting. There's a wound where they're separated from the mother. When it heals over I'll plant them, and wait til they grow roots. So who's your friend?"
"Song Zichen," Song Lan said. He watched Xue Yang with steady interest. "Where's Xingchen's plant?"
Xue Yang said, his mouth settling into a mock-solemn expression, "Would you believe me if - "
"No," Song Lan interrupted. He looked very slightly amused, and Xingchen wondered if Xue Yang saw it. "Hand it over."
Xue Yang let out a put upon sigh, and curled to his feet in a smooth movement. Xingchen turned to watch the swagger of his walk, and wondered idly how his swordwork was. Wei Wuxian hadn't mentioned anything but the gardening, but Xue Yang moved with an interesting assurance that stopped short of grace.
And then Xue Yang turned back with Xingchen's plant in his hands, and Xingchen's smile lit without thought. He could smell it already, that familiar alpine scent he'd missed. He stooped to inhale it, and Xue Yang laughed at him, a sweet sound laced with only a little mockery. The new pot was silver-grey and round, too, not quite as lovely as the one he'd carried down from the mountain, but a good match.
"It's so much better already," Xingchen said happily, straightening up. He put his hands on top of Xue Yang's, curved them round the new pot, and smiled down at him. There were only a few inches between their heights, but with Xue Yang's face turned up, his eyes were huge,. They were so dark, barely a distinction between iris and pupil even in this blazing light. He smelled like his garden, green and earthy, hot with sunlight. The hollow of his throat gleamed with sweat. "How can I thank you?"
Xue Yang arched one eyebrow, and then cut a glance at Song Lan, who looked back steadily. It could be a challenge, if you chose to read it there. Xue Yang held his gaze for a long moment before he let it slide away. He smiled, lashes coming down to veil his eyes.
"I'm sure you'll think of something before your pup's ready," he said, and then he slid his hands deftly out from under Xingchen's and stepped back. He tossed his hair over his shoulder, and turned his whole attention to one of the vines that crept and clambered up the brick wall. "Come back in three weeks," Xue Yang said, and reached into his apron pocket.
"Or any time?" Xingchen prompted, and Xue Yang hesitated. His gaze drifted to Song Lan again, and then he smiled. He reached out and pinched a flower from a vine, the pale purple of the sky just turning to twilight, and then he turned back to Xingchen, close enough his breath fanned over Xingchen's jaw. Xingchen bent his head so Xue Yang could tuck the flower behind his ear, letting the thin green tendril wind around a strand of hair as he began to make a braid.
"Do you like plants, Song Zichen?" he said, not looking up. Song Lan's feet were silent on the soft floor, but his robes whispered, and Xue Yang's smile widened as Song Lan touched his shoulder, turned him.
He wiped the dirt off Xue Yang's cheeks with a damped handkerchief, and then refolded it to pat away the sweat on his neck. Xue Yang let out a little sigh at the cool touch, tipping his head so his neck arched into Song Lan's hand. His eyes fell closed as if his heavy lashes were weighting them down, and Xingchen carefully set his plant down on the table, making sure it was well away from the edge.
When they left, Song Lan had three extravagant lily blossoms pinned around his neat bun, pollen falling gold onto his black robes. People did double-takes at him the whole time they were in the grocery store picking up dinner. Every time he turned his head, Xingchen caught the floating scent, and smiled.
Four weeks later, Xingchen was woken by the click of ceramic on wood. He opened his eyes to see the moon-glazed pot, with a tiny precious plant held in a smaller pot within. He smiled up at Xue Yang, who said, "Pleasure doing business with you, Xiao Xingchen."
Song Lan muttered, "It's so fucking early," behind him. Xue Yang's bed was on the mezzanine, and so they woke with the sun whether they liked it or not. Xingchen brushed flower petals out of his hair every morning, and was wondering how soon they could feasibly propose moving in. He had already moved his plant in, and Xue Yang had rearranged his succulents to give it pride of place. It looked lovelier than ever in the mass of colour and life.
"I looked online and I should have been repotting it every couple of years, poor thing," Xingchen said, reaching out. Xue Yang resisted the pull long enough to peel off his t-shirt - one of Song Lan's, by the way it hung on him - and then let Xingchen tuck him close against his body. Song Lan made a slightly more awake noise, and curled in turn around Xingchen, one long arm reaching out to grip firmly onto Xue Yang's bare hip.
"What, you're seeing other experts now? Rude."
"Well, you were right," Xingchen said. "I shouldn't have it if I don't know how to take care of it. Without you, it would have died."
"You took care of it just fine," Xue Yang said, and he laid his hand on Xingchen's wrist, brushed his thumb back and forth over the pulse. His hands were cool; he'd been watering plants. "If you hadn't, it wouldn't have grown, would it? That's what plants do, when they're getting what they need. They grow and they need more space."
"All the other experts said it wouldn't survive long off the mountain," Xingchen said, mostly to see Xue Yang's magnificent disdain. His nose was made to sneer.
"Watch it prove them wrong," he said, and he propped himself up on his elbow and pressed his lips to Xingchen's cheekbone, then his jaw, and then his neck. Song Lan made a noise of faint interest, his fingertips walking up Xue Yang's ribs.
"Will you repot it next time?" Xingchen said, before they could get too distracted. Xue Yang snorted against his collarbone. "You're the only person who has experience in it, after all."
"Wouldn't want anyone else fucking it up for you," Xue Yang said.
Song Lan said, "You should probably just do all the repotting."
"Don't push your luck," Xue Yang said, but Xingchen could feel his smile, and Song Lan's, and his own.