Chapter Text
Xie Lian worked many types of jobs. He’d gotten a few regular cleaning gigs. He was a highly recommended house sitter. He had some connections in construction who got him on the occasional project. When none of those were having any luck for him, he fell back on food delivery, busking, and scouring the usual places odd jobs got posted that he could take up.
At his age, it really was far past time for him to get a more stable job, but he couldn’t do much about that. At least he didn’t have any family left to disappoint!
Besides, it kept him busy and made things interesting to do so many different jobs.
“Xie-xiong, are you gonna be good for rent this month?” Shang Qinghua asked as he wandered past Xie Lian’s current odd job project to get himself food.
“En. This job should pay the rest of what I need,” Xie Lian confirmed as he twisted the music box handle, breathing a sigh of relief when it worked.
“I didn’t know you could fix stuff like that,” Shang Qinghua commented, looking up from where he had started making the most edible thing that ever got consumed in their apartment: convenience store ramen.
“Me neither,” Xie Lian smiled, patting the box affectionately.
Shang Qinghua cackled. “How’d you even get the job then?”
“Remember when you told me to post my odd jobs advertisement online instead of just on bulletin boards? Someone saw it and requested I fix this.”
“Does your advertisement say you can fix music boxes?”
“It says I can fix things,” Xie Lian shrugged.
“You’re playing it more dangerous than me, Xie-Xiong.”
Xie Lian sat back to stretch. He’d have to message the client back to let them know it was fixed and then see if he could get any delivery jobs tonight. “What’s your word count so far today.”
“Only 4K still but that’s all the set up I needed for the 7k of papapa I was planning so it’ll be easy after I finish eating.”
“Good luck.”
“You too,” Shang Qinghua yawned as they went their separate ways.
Perhaps they were both regularly cutting it close to making enough to pay bills because of a lack of real jobs and didn’t really have social lives unless you counted the times their schedules overlapped enough to pass each other somewhere in the apartment (a rarer occurrence than you would think for such a small apartment). But it wasn’t that bad. Xie Lian had been through worse.
If he could lose his way of life, all his friends, his family, and his sanity and still come through the other side, Xie Lian was sure he could weather a few months of not eating as much or sleeping a little less to get extra jobs.
It had always worked out for him before.
Putting the music box on his shelf for ‘projects’ for now, Xie Lian decided to check his messages before getting ready to go out, glad to see another job offer had come in.
Until he saw how much they were offering.
This had to be a mistake?
***
Here was the thing about Hua Cheng: he was a romantic. A romantic in the ‘overly attached, only loved one person in all his life and was going to die loving them and probably never getting to tell them like some kind of second male lead’ way.
A romantic in the ‘fell in love as a child and remembered that person with a flutter in his chest even after more than two decades apart’ way.
A romantic in the ‘would probably give the keys to his house and all the money in his bank accounts to the person he loved’ way.
So it was. A lot.
But most people didn’t actually know that about him.
Most people knew Hua Cheng as ‘that asshole who got things done’. He got things done well too, and with such ruthless efficiency that he had risen and risen from a newbie in the urban planning department of his architecture firm to the sole senior partner when the old one stepped down.
Which meant instead of the work he’d actually wanted to do, he mostly spent his days figuring out who to task what to.
But it wasn’t terrible. Hua Cheng had a decent life now, though it hadn’t always been that way. There were really only two problems plaguing him.
The first: he was an insomniac. In spite of now living in a very safe apartment, he still could not sleep through the night, seeming to wake almost every hour with a need to do a sweep of the house. Never sleeping long enough to dream. The last time he’d ever had a full night’s sleep had, infuriatingly enough, been when He Xuan had had to crash at his house for a night.
And since there was no one among the very small pool of people Hua Cheng knew or suspected this trick worked with that he could actually stand to live with full time, he had more or less accepted that he would constantly have an absolutely wrecked sleep schedule.
The second: his aforementioned love. After decades apart, Hua Cheng had accidentally found him again. And still didn’t know how exactly to approach him.
The glittery, badly designed advertisement sparkled on Xie Lian’s Weibo which seemed to have been created solely to put up this ad and a very motivational memes.
Odd jobs and services! I can fix things, take care of pets, plants, or kids, and much more! If you have a need I will fill it!
And so. The dilemma.
He needed a service that Xie Lian could do for him on a regular basis. His apartment wasn’t spotless, but it wasn’t so dirty that he’d need a weekly service really. With the way his job hours were he didn’t eat at home often enough to need a chef unless maybe Xie Lian could pack him lunches? He put a pin in that one. It wasn’t the worst he could come up with. But it still wasn’t quite right.
The answer came in the form of He Xuan’s partner.
“They’re called professional cuddlers, isn’t that wild? It hasn’t taken off here yet but I think I’d be really good at that, you know?” She chattered over their shared lunch. A terrible time to ask He Xuan any questions really, considering how little he seemed to pay attention to anything else when he ate.
She seemed to take the slurp of his food as acknowledgment though. “Can you imagine being so lonely you have to pay for cuddles though? He-xiong, think about how sad all those people must be. I have to start the trend here. There’s a whole secret group of touch starved people out there just waiting for someone to hug them.”
“Rich ones who would pay you?” Hua Cheng raised a brow.
“I wouldn’t charge that much. I mean, I guess it gets pretty expensive in America but this is for the public good. Everyone should have access to someone to cuddle. Like I sleep way better when He-xiong cuddles me. It’s scientifically proven that cuddling reduces stress levels and helps you sleep better. This is a medical need.”
Hua Cheng snorted.
“Grumpy because you aren’t being cuddled?” He Xuan joked.
“Cocky because she’s paying for your meal today?” Hua Cheng shot back.
He Xuan shrugged, shoveling more food into his mouth.
But the seed had been planted.
Hua Cheng had two problems.
Was it possible they could solve each other?