Chapter Text
“Husband.”
“Wife.”
Maomao stared up at the man. He stared back down. His eyes shone with delight, and a smile touched his lips in a way that made Maomao want to make it stay there.
“You look beautiful,” he said quietly, after a moment. His fingers reached out to brush over the braid Suiren had tied off with her usual beads. “Do you like your coat?” At Maomao’s nod, Jinshi let out a tiny happy noise. “I designed it myself. I know you like things on the more practical side.”
It was an excellent coat. Maomao ran her hands over the embroidery along the hem, noting the vines and crescent moons. A thought struck her, and she asked him, “Did you have a hand in creating my dress for the garden party, as well?”
Jinshi hm-mm’ed his yes. “I had time,” he said.
Maomao looked at him reproachfully. “You mean you procrastinated on your paperwork in favour of something less important again,” she chastised. “Stop doing that.”
“You’re always more important,” he replied. Maomao rolled her eyes. He offered her his arm and led her down the main paths, out to the back of the Royal Pavilion. Once they passed the point where the servants from the rear palace wouldn’t be able to cross, Maomao relaxed a little and shifted her hand from holding Jinshi’s arm to let him hold her hand. If he found it odd, he didn’t mention it.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation, holding hands with someone. Holding hands with her husband. They’d done this before.
It felt different, now.
Maomao could feel his heartbeat in a vein pressed to her skin, their palms flush with one another. There were calluses on his hands. She felt him thumbing at her gently, idly.
When they got there, she was still quite preoccupied with the feeling of him against her, until he whispered, “Look up,” his breath ghosting over the shell of her ear. Slowly, she looked up. Her heart caught in her throat.
In front of them was a greenhouse.
“It’s yours,” her husband said, behind her. She could hear the grin in his voice. “Well, it has attendants. You’d oversee the attendants. But it’s yours. You can choose which plants to specially cultivate and which to bring home to your workshop. I had some smaller things started, stuff you usually complain that you keep running out of when you’re making medicine, but once winter’s over, we’ll get more—”
Maomao threw her arms around him, trapping him in a bone-crushing hug before dragging him along as she ran into the greenhouse.
It was lit up with skylights, since the sun hadn’t set yet, but there were spaces where lanterns could be hung up so she could work into the night. And along the rows and rows of empty benches, true to Jinshi’s word, were pots of the most commonly used herb in her medicines. Maomao happily trotted over to check on them, turning the leaves over in her hands.
“They’re so healthy,” she noted, eyes wide. Maomao turned to look at him. “Who took care of them?”
“The attendants I had hired,” Jinshi replied, glancing around. “Some eunuchs and servant girls. They’re trained by the palace gardeners, but I’m sure you can correct any mistakes they’d learned easily enough.” Maomao stepped away from the plants and tucked herself under his arm. “So?” her husband asked. “Do you like it?”
“I love it,” she replied softly. “Thank you.”
Jinshi tugged her closer, fingers squeezing at her waist. “Our dinner is waiting for us,” he said. “Or would you like to stay here a little longer?”
Maomao tore her eyes away from the empty bench tops. “I can come back another time,” she breathed. She wondered if her face was as flushed and as widely smiling as it felt like it was. “I’m hungry, too.”
And off they went, to the same gazebo where they had their first ‘date’ dinner, and where they’d exchanged their rings. Maomao looked down at hers, letting it gleam in the sunset. It was hard to believe it’s almost been half a year since she and Jinshi had gotten married. Summer and autumn had passed by in the blink of an eye, and soon, winter would follow to its end.
“Do you have anything planned for our anniversary?” she asked. “In that little book of yours that I heard about from Suiren? She said there were years' worth of ideas in there.”
Jinshi flushed lightly. “I may have… an idea,” he admitted. “But I’m leaving it closer to the day of to see where we are in the grand scheme of things first before I decide on anything.” He guided her to her seat before sitting next to her, just like how they were that first time. “I hope the chefs remembered to follow the menu I wrote.”
“Let’s hope.”
Maomao licked her lips as the food was served, thanking the lady quietly as the rest of it was brought to the table.
Once the people were gone, they could start eating.
Except.
This had the opportunity to be one of the funniest things that could have happened to them.
Maomao picked up one of the dishes and inspected it. Her husband watched her, intrigued. She sniffed the food— it was a dessert, sweet, and very distinctly rich— and poked at it with her chopstick. A lick from the chopstick confirmed it for her, and Maomao hmm-mm’ed.
“What is it?” Jinshi asked curiously.
Maomao set the chopstick down, smiling. “This,” she said, “is an aphrodisiac.”
Her husband choked on his sip of wine. “I promise I didn’t put that in there!” he spluttered, coughing. “I don’t even— I wouldn’t!”
“Relax,” she said, picking at the other dishes to make sure they weren’t drugged. “I know you wouldn’t. I’m just wondering who would care to put aphrodisiacs in our food, seeing as we’re, well—” Maomao gestured between the two of them— “us. Who stands to gain something by forcing the crown prince and princess to have relations? For all they know, we’ve already consummated. We’ve been married for six months by now.”
Jinshi peered at the discarded dessert. “Maybe someone who wants to change the line of ascension?” he suggested. “If we have a son, and I become Emperor, any son my brother has would be further down the line than our hypothetical son.”
“Yes, but again, who stands to gain having our highly hypothetical son further up in line for the Imperial throne?” Maomao asked, amused. “Maybe one of the officials wanted to gift you a blissful night with your wife?”
“Well, if they knew me at all, they’d know that every night with my wife is blissful, and no aphrodisiac would change that.” Jinshi obediently opened his mouth when Maomao lifted something to his lips. “What should we do with it?” he asked after he had finished swallowing. “Would eating it cause any damage?”
Maomao thought back to the tiny taste of it she had. “I don’t think it would be fatal to ingest, if someone truly just slipped it into our dinner for us to have a good time,” she mused. “Even if we decided to try it, it wouldn’t be smart to eat it here, out in the open.”
“Maybe they thought we’d cause a scandal if I couldn’t hold myself back?” Her husband swallowed some soup. “And forced myself on you in public?”
“Well, I suppose I wouldn’t be stopping you, if it were that potent.” Maomao shrugged. “Let’s just eat the rest of the normal food first before it gets cold and decide what to do about this later.”
They both stared down at the bowl of dessert that sat in front of them. They’d brought it back to their room, letting it sit there on its own while they cleaned themselves up after dinner and got dressed for bed. Now, it loomed at them.
Maomao picked up her spoon. “Well?” she prompted. “Yes or no? We can try it out or we can go to bed.”
Jinshi kept his doubtful look trained on the dessert. “Well, are we going to use it to… consummate?”
“I was thinking of it more as running an experiment,” Maomao said, nodding to the notebook on her desk. “Plus, if we ever encounter it again, we’d know the effects on men, women, how long it lasts and its potency, and we could even attempt to make an antidote for it! It’s a valuable learning experience, I think. You’re also free to not have any and record a separate set of notes from just observing me, since I plan on having some. Unless,” she added sullenly, “you don’t allow me.”
“Well, I’d rarely forbid you from doing anything,” her husband said lightly. “Would your experiment work better with me as a participant?”
Maomao nodded. “It would allow me to collect data for both men and women, and also a height and weight range.” Plus, she also kind of wanted to see him drugged on an aphrodisiac. She would never wish that on the public, not unless she wanted the country to go to war, but for herself, she thought she’d be able to handle it. “But if you don’t want to, it’s okay.”
Jinshi smiled at her, that smile that made her chest squeeze her heart in its place. “I’d like to participate in your experiment, my dearest,” he said, leaning closer.
Maomao huffed a tiny laugh and knocked his face away. “Are you still somewhat inebriated from the drinks we had earlier?” she asked, jotting down her own preliminary notes in her book. She noted down Jinshi’s shake of his head and clapped. “Okay, then. Let’s start.”
She spooned out a mouthful of the dessert and fed herself before feeding her husband the same. She let it sit in her mouth for a moment, swallowing it when she ran out of air. As it slid down her throat, Maomao felt it glide down smoothly, leaving a warmth behind, not unlike the wine they drank.
Maomao wrote these down, and handed over her notebook when Jinshi motioned for it. She quietly sat for a while, listening to the sound of the brush against the paper.
Like alcohol, the warmth in her throat spread from the inside out, creeping up her face and down her body, just under the skin.
“Should we have another bite?” Jinshi asked, looking slightly worse for wear than usual. Maomao brought his face closer, inspecting it. She cradled his jaw in her hands, feeling his pulse under her fingertips. His pupils were dilated, though she wasn’t sure whether that was because the room was darker, because he was looking at her, or because of the aphrodisiac.
“Sure,” Maomao decided. “Open up.”
Dutifully, her husband opened his mouth and let her slip another mouthful of it down his throat. She was acutely aware that she was still handing his jaw like she would feed medicine to a dog. He obeyed like one, too, Maomao found herself thinking as she gulped down her own bite.
Ah. It’s started.
The previous gentle warmth under her skin returned tenfold, sparking into a fire. Every breath she took felt like five, which would probably lead to her brain being over-oxygenated…
Maomao reached for her notebook and wrote something down, glancing up to see her husband faring worse than she did.
Makes sense. He wasn’t very immune to alcohol nor did he test poisons on himself almost daily since he was a child.
“You alright?” Maomao asked, setting her brush down after recording what he looked like. His cheeks were flushed, and when she checked, he seemed antsy. She got up to stand closer, and oh, she liked when they were skin to skin. It felt like… relief. She ran her hand through his hair, the hair that was catching the light, pulling her attention from him.
She tugged lightly, and her husband made a little noise. Not quite a complaint, not quite encouragement. “Husband? You still with me?”
“… ‘m hot,” Jinshi mumbled, fidgeting. “It feels… warm. And my muscles are all tensed, somewhat. I’m a little light headed, I think. And I’m…”
“Aroused?” Maomao hummed, tracing along the side of his face with her finger, watching as he shuddered into her touch. “That would make sense, yes, since we just knowingly consumed a stimulant.”
Surprisingly, her head was still clear. Maybe it was because her blood didn’t need to immediately rush south since she didn’t have a particular organ for it to flood into. Maomao lifted her husband’s face, leaning down to press kisses to his forehead, to his temples, between his eyebrows, on his cheekbones, his nose, anywhere but his mouth. She wanted to save that for later.
When she kissed the corner of his lips, she felt more than heard a whimper escape them. Every inch of skin that had she had in contact with him was searing and warm and good and she wanted more.
More of him, more of his love, his kisses on her hair, the way his hands always seemed to find their way to her waist. The security of his arms around her, the care he showed for her…
Wait a second. These weren’t the thoughts she was expecting. These weren’t thoughts of ravishing the man in front of her.
She reached under her underskirt to run her fingers through the slick that had gathered there, jolting as she sent sparks shooting behind her eyes. She expected that reaction, the physical one, but she had guessed that her thoughts would follow that pattern too.
“Hey.” Maomao nudged him with her knee, wiping her fingers on her leg. “Jinshi-sama.”
Jinshi blinked slowly at her. “Hmm?”
“What are you thinking about?” she whispered. “What kind of thoughts are you… having?” Her eyes watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, transfixed by its movements, before looking at him properly. “Mine are strange.”
“They’re…” Her husband cleared his throat. “Of touching you. Having my mouth on you, pleasuring you. I keep imagining… hearing you say my name—”
Maomao clapped her hand over his mouth. His sweet-talking wasn’t helping her physical reaction by much. Even then, the places where she could feel him were like fire. But his train of thought and hers were completely different. Hurriedly, hands shaking, she dipped the brush into the palette of ink and scribbled down what she noticed. She rubbed the tops of her thighs together as she finished up her sentence, dropping the brush as soon as she was done.
“Maomao…”
She froze. Was that the first time he’d said her name? To her? To her face? And the first time he said it, it was a moan?
Jinshi tugged at her sleeve. “Dearest,” he murmured. “I think we should… if you want…”
“No, yes, I think…” Maomao was struggling to form words in her head. “We should. Yes.” She managed to pull him to his feet, stumbling into him as she went weak-kneed. “Woah.”
They lost their balance and Jinshi landed on his back on the bed, her falling on top of him with a soft ‘oomph’. Maomao gazed down at him, her ethereal beauty of a husband.
His hair fanned out around his head, a halo of purple serving as a backdrop. The dim light reflected off of his face, his eyes. Maomao thought she could see galaxies in them. She couldn’t help but dip her gaze down to his smile. His smile… was something she wanted to protect. She wanted to keep him smiling for the rest of the time they were together, as unrealistic as that was. All she could think about was him and his voice and how safe she felt with him. How much she trusted him.
She knew she could stay with him forever and she would be happier for it.
Is this love? she mused, half dazed. Because if it is, then it’s…
Well, it’s pretty nice.