Chapter Text
The first time it happens, the package weights a ton and it’s for Feng Xin.
Xie Lian has been staying on his and Mu Qing’s flat for only two or three days. He arrived in dire need of a place to sleep after an unfortunate and rather freaky accident cost him his job, which in turn gave reasons to his landlord to kick him out of the tiny room where he’d managed to stay for a blessedly long amount of time (at least for his standards). Xie Lian is pretty sure that what the landlord did is against the law, but he doesn’t have the means to fight back. If he couldn’t persuade his former employer to take responsibility and pay for the treatment of the three fingers he sprained during the accident, what hope does he have against the landlord? He doesn’t even expect to see a cent of his deposit.
At least, his injury sounded bad enough that Mu Qing, now a well established GP, agreed to check it for free. Once he arrived to the flat, and both Mu Qing and Feng Xin interrogated the whole ordeal out of him, Xie Lian got the offer to sleep in the couch as well. It’s heart-warming to know that, despite their troubled past, he can still call those two his friends.
He’s pondering on all of this in the shower when the intercom rings. And then rings again. And again, this time for so long that Xie Lian fears it got stuck. Unable to dry himself or do anything quickly with his forearm wrapped in a splint that Mu Qing very sternly told him not to get wet, he decides to cross the whole flat while dripping wet and naked. Hopefully, his damp footprints won’t mess the floors too much.
“Hello?” he answers.
“Post,” cuts a sharp voice, deep and irritated. The postman is probably in a hurry.
“Right!” Remembering that Feng Xin said he’s expecting a package, Xie Lian presses the buzzer, then realises he’s still naked. “Oh, can you please leave it by the…” he pauses when he hears the clacks of the building’s gate opening and immediately slamming close. “Hello?”
There’s no answer. With increasing horror, Xie Lian follows the sound of the postman’s steps walking away from the intercom, accompanied by some whirring. Then, there’s a faint clicking that gives way to the distant hum of the elevator. The high ding of its doors opening is what makes him react.
He has to be quick!
In a moment of inspiration, he recalls that Mu Qing started a fight the night before because Feng Xin hung his work-out towel in the small bathroom for guests by the entrance. Considering that he automatically tunes his friends out whenever they start bickering, it’s a miracle that he retained this now vital piece of information. Even if he had to remove the towel during the argument, Feng Xin most likely put it back in that bathroom again later, out of spite. Trusting that this is the case, Xie Lian runs to get it, and finds it right when the doorbell rings.
“Coming!” he yells, haphazardly wrapping the slightly too small towel around his hips, and then yelps in pain when his injured fingers get caught in the fabric, twisting as far as the splint allows.
Before he can recover, the doorbell rings again. Insistently.
“One second, please!” he almost whimpers, and sending a prayer to the heavens for the towel to remain in place, he blows on his fingers to soothe the pain while walking towards the door. He opens it just enough to peek out.
The postman is so tall that the first thing Xie Lian sees clearly is the lanyard hanging from his neck, where it says that his name is Hua Cheng. Then, he raises his head and meets his gaze halfway, noticing that he wears an eyepatch over the right eye. The left one is intense, drilling into what the door doesn’t cover of Xie Lian’s clumped and dripping wet hair, flushed skin due to the hot water, and eyes reddened by the throb of his fingers. While they look at each other, the postman’s expression morphs from hostile into something unreadable.
“Hello,” Xie Lian says to break the unsettling silence, forcing a smile. “Sorry for making you wait. I believe you have a package for Feng Xin?”
“That’s not you,” the postman, Hua Cheng, replies with a somewhat amused tone. A corner of his mouth lifts in the ghost of a crooked smile, and he subtly arches his sharp brow.
All his features are a bit sharp, actually. In a nice way. He’s very handsome, managing to look self-assured and imposing even while wearing the bright red jacket of the post service’s uniform. Maybe it’s the jewellery. He has a lot of silver piercings.
“I’m not, no, but he lives here,” Xie Lian confirms, opening the door a bit more to straighten up. “Do you need a signature?”
“Yes,” Hua Cheng answers and pulls the handle of a cart Xie Lian didn’t see before, activating its brake. There’s a huge box in it, probably what Feng Xin ordered, “and the fee for having to carry this heavy ass thing all the way here, too.”
Xie Lian blinks. Feng Xin didn’t mention anything about a fee, and he hasn’t heard of something of the sort before either. Although, well, lifting very heavy objects can go awry in the blink of an eye, as Xie Lian and his sprained fingers learned recently. It’s nice that the postal service is applying measures to make customers consider other ways to get a hold of products too risky for mail carriers to handle.
There’s just one issue, of course, and it’s that Xie Lian has no money.
“How much is the fee?” he asks while racking his brain for a solution.
To his bewilderment, Hua Cheng smiles in a way reminiscent of a pleased fox.
“Your name and whether you moved here will do,” he says, leaning on Feng Xin’s package with a crooked grin. “I like to be ahead when it comes to meet new residents.”
A troublemaker! A bit amused, but mostly scandalized, Xie Lian feels himself blush, and that makes him blush even harder. He’s painfully aware of the fact that he’s practically naked, and that the pink colour will spread from his face to his neck and chest, hopelessly noticeable. Maybe focusing on the relentless throb of his fingers, which have been screaming all this time for some ice or a painkiller, will help curbing his rising embarrassment.
“I’m Xie Lian,” he answers with a wobbly voice, then clears his throat and tries a more casual tone. “I didn’t move here, though, so you don’t need to remember it.”
“I think I’ll do anyway. I have a good memory,” Hua Cheng counters while taking a small tablet out. “But just in case, I’ll take the easy route and call you gege.”
That makes Xie Lian laugh. This man is absolutely shameless.
“Does this mean that, if we see each other again, I should call you didi?” he asks, looking at how Hua Cheng updates the status of the delivery on his tablet.
“San Lang would be better,” Hua Cheng replies and offers him the tablet and a digital pen for him to sign. “And unless you leave tonight, I can promise you that we’ll indeed meet again.”
Xie Lian is intrigued by the mysterious nickname, but there are more immediate matters that demand his attention. For example, the fact that his injured hand prevents him from carrying anything. He can forget about telling Hua Cheng —San Lang— to leave the box in the hall and go away, so he can bring it inside later, once he’s decent. Granted, he could wait for Feng Xin to arrive and do it, but it feels rude to promise to receive a parcel and then leave it outside.
“Really? How so?” he asks while he thinks of something, extending his injured hand to grab the pen.
Upon seeing his splint, Hua Cheng retracts his arm and doesn’t allow it.
“What happened?” he asks back, changing his playful tone for a seriousness that takes Xie Lian by surprise.
“I injured myself at work, but it’s okay. I can write.”
“You shouldn’t force that hand,” Hua Cheng rebuts sternly. “Use the other one.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Xie Lian insists, and lifts his splint to show it to Hua Cheng.
He sprained the pinky, ring and middle finger, which are bandaged together and aligned with his forearm, but his index finger and thumb are free. He wiggles them to show that he can move them, ignoring the discomfort of the other fingers.
“This is my dominant hand, the signature will be more legible,” he reasons. “Besides, it’s the only part of me that’s dry at the moment, and I don’t want to get water over your device and maybe break it.”
Hua Cheng looks him up and down, as if actually assessing his situation for the first time. Embarrassed, Xie Lian hides a little better behind the door, and cringes when moving his feet makes him realise that a puddle of water has formed around him.
“You’re getting cold,” Hua Cheng sentences, and while Xie Lian doesn’t feel cold at all, he shivers under the sudden intensity of his gaze. “Go dry yourself and put on some clothes.”
“Oh, alright.” Xie Lian is thankful, but at the same time, he feels more awkward than ever. “It’ll be a second, sorry.”
“Take your time, I’m not in a rush.”
Then why did he ring as if he was being chased by demons?!
“You can bring the box inside in the meantime, if you want,” Xie Lian offers, deciding that opening the door completely —and pretending that he’s not wearing the towel equivalent of a miniskirt— is better than rudely closing the door on Hua Cheng’s face. “You can leave it next to the couch. Just be mindful of the wet floor.”
He distantly perceives that Hua Cheng tries to say something, but he opts to ignore him and flee the scene, hoping to reach the back bathroom before his whole very exposed body turns tomato red. Once he’s safely hidden, he does his best to wrap his long hair in a towel with his good hand, gives up when he realises that it’ll take him ages, and clenches his jaw to endure the pain while he uses both hands to do it. Then, he pats himself dry at the speed of light, throws on the clothes he’d left on top of the cistern, forsakes the socks, and runs barefoot back to the entrance.
When he arrives, the box has been neatly placed next to the couch. Hua Cheng is leaning on the threshold with the cart behind him. The floor is mysteriously dry.
“Better?” he asks upon seeing Xie Lian.
“Yes!”
“Do you need help putting on socks?”
“No!” Xie Lian doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “It’s okay, San Lang, really. It’s just some sprained fingers. I can do most things just fine.”
Hua Cheng squints as if he was doubting Xie Lian somehow, but ultimately gives him the digital pen when Xie Lian extends his good hand towards him.
“Be sure to put some ice on that hand later,” he says while Xie Lian painstakingly tries to sign properly.
“I will,” he agrees mildly, frowning at the ugly signature that now shines on the screen.
When he gives the pen back, he notices that Hua Cheng looks somewhat upset, and realises that he doesn’t like it. However, he doesn’t know what he can do to improve his mood, and anyway, he has made him stay for way longer than needed.
“So, until next time?” he asks, and Hua Cheng arches a brow. “You said we’d see each other again if I didn’t leave tonight, and I won’t.”
Hua Cheng seems to relax at that, at least a bit.
“Yes, until next time, gege,” he says with a little smile that makes the tips of Xie Lian’s ears tingle. “And sorry about having disrupted your shower. Knowing it might be you answering the door now, I won’t ring like that again.”
“Well, it’s on me for deciding to shower at three in the afternoon,” Xie Lian says, scratching his cheek. “I will admit that you sounded a bit impatient, though. Did something happen between you and Feng Xin?”
“Nothing much, just that he and his flatmate are notorious at the post office,” Hua Cheng replies with an easy shrug. “We all hate them.”
“What? Why?”
“For starters, they get parcels almost every day, and while they’re never available to receive them, they always have time to cause a ruckus and complain about how we handle the crap that they leave at the office up till the last moment.”
“They both work long hours,” Xie Lian explains sympathetically.
“And yet they find the time for daily screaming matches that scare their neighbours to the point that they refuse to receive any of their parcels,” Hua Cheng insists, his face lighting up as if he was telling Xie Lian some funny gossip. “Although it’s not as if the paranoid of Mu Qing will allow us to leave his crap with anyone, anyway.”
“He’s always been a little mistrustful, yeah.”
“That’s a very generous way to put it.”
“I’ve known these two since we were kids,” Xie Lian explains with a smile that quickly turns pained. “I know they aren’t exactly easy to deal with, but they’re good people.”
“If they were, we at the office wouldn’t have placed bets to decide who’d have to come when we noticed that they marked themselves available for home delivery,” Hua Cheng rebuts, then sizes Xie Lian up with his dark, singular eye, and smiles. “You know? I was very surprised to have lost because my luck is always great, but now that I’m here, I understand what happened.”
It’s great to see Hua Cheng back in high spirits, but that means that he’s also being shameless again. Instinctively, Xie Lian reaches for a lock of his hair to fidget with, like he always does when he feels shy. As it’s all wrapped up in a towel, he has to settle for rubbing the back of his neck.
“I guess they changed their status after I offered to receive their packages while I’m here,” he says, just to say something. “I heard them discuss how they could pick some of them up the day I arrived, and I thought it’d be a nice way to pay them back for their help. I didn’t think they’d be as many as you describe, though.”
“You have no idea,” Hua Cheng’s smile is now a wide grin. “Pray gege doesn’t mind seeing me every day.”