Chapter Text
“You want to come over today?” It was difficult to talk with a phone slotted between his chin and shoulder, one hand rolling up a button-down sleeve almost to his elbow, but Mei Hanxue prided himself on the art of balance—and smiled. “Mengmeng, that’s excellent!”
The voice on the phone sounded a little petulant. Xue Meng huffed lightly, and for as well as Mei Hanxue knew him, he could almost see Xue Meng’s little pout from all the way across the city. “I just happen to be in the area. It’s not like I’m making some special effort to see him or anything.”
“Right, right,” Mei Hanxue soothed. He moved across the room and gazed down from the second-floor balcony to the flower garden, where a single figure in a wheelchair could be seen between the rows of blooms. It must not have been easy to push the chair on grass and must have taken a lot out of that person. The thought settled in his chest like blood welling beneath the skin; a bruise. His gaze softened as he said, “He’ll be happy to see you.”
A small pause. “How is he?”
“No worse today.”
“But no better?”
“It’s been… difficult since the flare up began.” The cheerful note in Mei Hanxue’s voice was nowhere to be found now. The sky was overcast—the only reason Jiang Xi could even be outside today. His sensitive skin could not take sunlight during these episodes, and for the last two weeks or so, he’d been largely confined to the covered areas of the house, or had to wait until the sunset before it was bearable to venture without. It would have driven him stir-crazy if he wasn’t also exhausted, for once content to let Mei Hanxue tend to him as his joints swelled up and the tips of his fingers turned blue and frozen. “He’d been having trouble breathing. It hurts him, even if he hides it. We haven’t been doing much, but he still falls asleep pretty early in the evening. And he has a fever.”
“Is he taking his medications? He’s not overexerting himself, is he? I keep telling this stupid old man again and again that at the rate he’s treating his body, he’d—” but Xue Meng cut himself off before he could say more.
“Right on time,” Mei Hanxue assured him, already knowing what his friend wanted to say. He could almost hear Xue Meng frowning. “When do you think you’ll arrive?”
“Around three.”
It was one o’clock now, just about an hour after they’d sat down for lunch. Mei Hanxue had prepared the simple meal himself: abalone congee, served with steamed peashoots drizzled with a garlic oyster sauce.
It was also about the only thing Jiang Xi could manage to keep down, when he deigned to take a bite at all.
(He did unwrap a chocolate truffle from the box in their pantry when he thought Mei Hanxue was not looking; Mei Hanxue had made sure that the box was never empty, despite how long it’d been sitting in the pantry or how many times it’d been opened.)
“And… I’ll bring something,” Xue Meng said, sounding a little embarrassed. “He likes, um, sweet things, right?”
“The sweeter the better.” Mei Hanxue smiled. “Almost disgustingly sweet.”
“Ugh, I know, it’s so gross,” Xue Meng mumbled. “I’m not bringing a cake, that’s dumb. So don’t look forward to one.”
“Whatever you feel like bringing, I’m sure he’d appreciate it all the same,” Mei Hanxue said placatingly. “Are you also bringing my brother?”
“Who else is driving?” He could almost hear Xue Meng rolling his eyes. “He said he won’t say anything mean today. Okay, three o’clock. Be decent by then, Mei Hanxue.”
“Can’t promise anything, but see you then.” The line went silent; Xue Meng had a terrible habit of not saying goodbye, and Mei Hanxue could venture a guess for how this particular tendency had come about.
They’d all lost someone too soon. Too unexpectedly.
Before he could forget, Mei Hanxue sent a quick text to his brother, satisfied as the sound of the message going through dinged cheerfully. He stood there for a while longer, content to watch as Jiang Xi held out a pair of silver scissors and pruned the roses that had bloomed past their prime. Their heads hung heavy, their petals softened and browned at the edges, likely still silky to the touch. He held each bloom with care, but the snip of the scissors was exacting and decisive—the touch of a doctor still, if one who was kept from use of his scalpel.
Mei Hanxue smiled wanly, shook his head, and headed toward that awful, wonderful man who held his heart captive in those stiff, swollen hands.
If he stayed out longer than he should, it was because he felt better today, Jiang Xi reasoned. The last two weeks had been hellish—no sooner had they headed to this countryside estate in hope of a long-awaited vacation than this latest flare-up began. Jiang Xi counted exactly half a day of peace: a long, leisurely paced walk along the coastline with Mei Hanxue annoyingly clutching his hand, with a wonderful dinner that Mei Hanxue had presciently ordered from the best restaurant in the area. And that was all they managed to do. A quick reprieve before his lungs seized up that very night, and the fever and chills started to hound him as if he owed them a debt.
He’d spent much of the next few days in bed, drifting in and out of a delirious fever dream. Mei Hanxue had been by his side every time he opened his eyes—worried, and hovering, and smiling that stupid, concilliatory smile as if he could not bear for Jiang Xi to feel…
To feel what?
To feel bad that he’d ruined their trip? To feel… guilty? To feel…
Pained. That Mei Hanxue was worried for him.
This was altogether too much. At some point in those hazy days, Jiang Xi had begun to thank his blasted fever for giving him an out whenever the atmosphere got a little too indulgently and sickeningly comforting for his liking.
Because he shouldn’t feel so indulged, so treasured, when he fell sick.
The experience was not something that’d ever visited him—until Mei Hanxue.
Jiang Xi blinked. Either his vision was going this time, or the sky was darkening rapidly—a quick look overhead revealed that it was the latter. He’d lost track of the tine with how pleasant the early afternoon breeze was, and although the gardener he’d personally vetted had done a beautiful job with the ground, there was nothing like tending to his own beloved flower garden to lighten his mood. His flowers were, as a rule, beautiful—proud heads of peonies, massive blooms of roses, fragrant stems of lavender, and delicate branches of white pollia covered the neat rows of his personal garden just below the window of the study. They’d all needed a trim—deadheading, he’d once said to Mei Hanxue, who’d raised one eyebrow in an unspoken question.
“No, it’s not too violent. You’re just sensitive.” Jiang Xi had sniffed, and Mei Hanxue had chuckled, and they’d both returned to what they’d been doing—the conversation dissipating like a warm puff of air between them.
They’d grown so… comfortable around each other.
It should make Jiang Xi uncomfortable to admit that—but it’d been years, hadn’t it, and his musician had stayed when others would have long departed.
There were hangers of Mei Hanxue’s clothing in his closet; Mei Hanxue’s musical instruments in his study; Mei Hanxue’s records mixed in with his own; Mei Hanxue’s laptop and sound-editing appliances in his basement.
Come to think of it, Mei Hanxue hadn’t… actually left to go home for a while now.
Maybe even… years.
With a jolt, Jiang Xi realized that without counting the days, Mei Hanxue had been in his life for far longer than that ill-fated arrangement with Wang Chuqing had lasted—which, for almost the entire span of his adult life, had been the longest he’d ever been with somebody. And this time, Jiang Xi found that he did not wish to leave, nor did he wish for Mei Hanxue to leave, no matter how caustic their fights could get at times—no matter what kind of nigh-abuse Jiang Xi threw at the younger man.
They’d work through it: painfully, awkwardly. They’d apologize—or Mei Hanxue would, and Jiang Xi would stiffly say something that would imply he was taking responsibility for whatever had transpired, with the unspoken promise of change between them like a lantern lighting the windy road under a moonless night.
And the make up sex was always spectacular.
The errant thought brought a light, yet furious flush to Jiang Xi’s cheeks. He coughed, threw the scissors down on the ground, and covered his mouth with the sleeve near his elbow. The attack was sudden—tears sprang to his eyes from the force of the fit. His body doubled over until Jiang Xi felt as if he was choking, his hands twisting into the soft cashmere pooling around his chest, clawing at his throat—
“I’m here.” Someone was crouching in front of him. They pressed their forehead against his, a cool flush against his burning skin. “Xi-er, I’m here. Slow your breathing, my love.”
He didn’t have to be told; he knew what to do, he was the doctor here, but Jiang Xi clutched that person like a lifeline as tears blurred his vision. He forcibly took a longer breath through the coughs, held it in his lungs, and exhaled as slowly as he could.
A hand on the back of his neck, another cool balm. Jiang Xi blearily blinked away the tears to find that Mei Hanxue had not successfully hid his worried face this time, with an umbrella haphazardly discarded next to him as he presumably ran to Jiang Xi from inside the house when he’d heard all the commotion.
“Idiot, you are worried.” The words came out about as scratched up as the records he still kept from high school, out of undeserved sentiment. He coughed again, a brief spell, and swallowed hard. “C-caught you.”
“Yeah, you caught me,” Mei Hanxue said, smiling tiredly. “Xi-er, don’t blame me. I know you don’t like it—”
“At least you’re not lying to me; I don’t like it when you lie.” He chose his words carefully; his heart still raced from the attack, and all of a sudden Jiang Xi felt so incredibly lightheaded that he allowed Mei Hanxue to slowly push him all the way back in his wheelchair, so that his back was supported. His hands were held in front of him, and then pulled to cup around Mei Hanxue’s cheeks—the coolness permeated through his swollen, overheated fingers, and Jiang Xi sighed.
“You’re okay,” Mei Hanxue said, but it sounded more like a plea.
“I’m always okay,” he replied, lifting a corner of his mouth. “Not dead yet, at least.”
“That’s not funny.”
Jiang Xi arched an eyebrow and pettily threw the head of rose he’d kept on his wheelchair seat at Mei Hanxue’s face, who only scrunched up his nose and took the assault with grace. “I seem to recall you think I’m hilarious,” he drawled, though the effect was somewhat lost from the hoarse voice. “Every time I tell you there’s poison in your tea, and you laugh and drink it.”
“One of these days, you’ll do it for real. I know.” Mei Hanxue planted a kiss at the corner of his mouth, then a quick, darting lick at the tip of his nose when Jiang Xi was still lost in the sensation of their lips touching. Before he could yelp, Mei Hanxue continued, “Mengmeng is visiting today.”
Immediately, he stiffened. “Did you tell him…?”
“He already knew,” Mei Hanxue said, not a hint of guilt in his expression. “When you told work that your vacation needed to be extended.”
Ah. When he sent a cryptic message to the CEO of Guyueye Pharmaceuticals to inform him that its chairman was otherwise indisposed.
Xue Meng and Xiao Song had been… texting. Last he heard. And of course, there was Mei Hanxue, Xue Meng’s self-proclaimed best friend in the world.
How did he ever think he could hide this from Xue Meng?
“I always knew you were a spy feeding my enemies information that would be detrimental to my interest,” Jiang Xi muttered, rubbing his forehead as he felt a headache incoming. Mei Hanxue moved behind him, placed those wonderfully cool fingers at his temples, and began to lightly knead them in a circular motion. “I can’t let the brat see me like this. He’s going to raise a ruckus and call whatever doctor he can think of—Hua Binan, even, perish the thought. As if I can’t take care of my own condition.”
“Joints are still sore?”
“A little,” he admitted. Mei Hanxue had begun to push him toward the house when he was not paying attention. The umbrella was forgotten, likely to be retrieved by the maid tomorrow morning. The cool breeze followed them into the back foyer, then into the sunroom he’d had constructed from when he first bought the place. Without a word between them, Mei Hanxue leaned down to lift him out of the chair, and like a practiced dance, Jiang Xi’s arms immediately went around those wide shoulders, his head fitting into its designated slot in the crook of Mei Hanxue’s neck, his legs dangling from one of Mei Hanxue’s arms. They stood there like that for two, three seconds of perfect peace before Mei Hanxue gently placed him down on the long settee between two massive ferns perching on wooden stands.
The room was all green plants and warm wood and crystalline glass; it was meant to be his perfect space.
Which was strange because Mei Hanxue fit in so well in this scenery, as if everything had actually been designed around the golden hue of Mei Hanxue’s hair and the long, lean lines of his body, framed by elegant beams of cherry wood and verdant green that reflected his eyes.
And that was how Jiang Xi knew he was still feverish.
Jiang Xi leaned back, groaned lightly as his tired limbs settled into the memory-foam cushions, and shifted a little when Mei Hanxue sidled up to one side of him and rearranged it so that Jiang Xi’s head ended up squarely in his lap.
“This is somehow a better position for the brat to find me in?” Jiang Xi asked, a little incredulous. “Like a… a dissolute, licentious, perverted lush?”
“He’d already thought I corrupted you—I’ll prop you up when he arrives, how’s that?” Mei Hanxue stroked his hair back; the motion was so nice, so soothing, that Jiang Xi let his eyes drift close despite how very put-upon he decided he was feeling. “There’s time yet to relax until then. Would you like me to read a book?”
“Your pronunciation is bad. You’d just butcher it.”
“You can correct me along the way,” Mei Hanxue said agreeably even as the both of them knew that there was nothing wrong with Mei Hanxue’s impressively prodigious command of the Chinese language. “I think I saw a copy of Songs of Chu on your bookshelf.”
“Mei Hanxue, do you really think I’m that old?”
“Dream of the Red Chamber?”
“Read it,” he begrudgingly admitted.
“Chiung Yao’s Fire and Rain?”
“Read it.”
“Princess Pearl?”
“Trashy.” Jiang Xi opened his eyes when the silence stretched a beat too long to see Mei Hanxue’s face lifted in an expression that could only be called incredulous. His face heated up. “I didn’t read it. I heard it was trashy.”
“So you’re saying… you watched the drama,” Mei Hanxue ventured. “And I saw that book on your shelf, too.”
Sometimes, no answer was the best kind of answer. Jiang Xi sniffed.
“I’ll go get Princess Pearl, then,” Mei Hanxue finished smugly, and made to leave.
Against his best judgment, Jiang Xi tugged at his sleeve and blurted out, “Not yet. Just…”
Stay.
Just stay with him a while.
But Mei Hanxue clearly did not have any intention of leaving; Mei Hanxue would not leave, would stay even when pushed away, would return to him again and again like a homing pigeon that’d been released into the winds, finding its way back no matter the changing of the seasons nor the time of day.
So Mei Hanxue stayed, bent down to brush their noses together, and Jiang Xi let out the tiniest of exhalation, allowing that now-familiar feeling in his chest to blossom like a summer rose under the midday sun.
“Anything for my birthday lover. We’ll celebrate properly when you’re better.” The whisper painted a light smile on his face, hidden by the proximity of their faces and the shadow cast by Mei Hanxue’s long ponytail shielding them from the world. “Take a little nap, if you’d like. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”
“Does he really have to come?” he sleepily replied, already half drifting off.
“He’s bringing mooncakes.”
He made a face. They’d received so many boxes of mooncakes, all exquisitely wrapped—all mixed nuts, like Jiang-laoban was someone’s venerated grandpa. But the next words from Mei Hanxue were the perfect lullaby, and Jiang Xi fell asleep just like that with a contented ease that was not easily won even when he was not beset with fever.
“They’re all chocolate-filled. I made sure.”