Work Text:
Sing slipped out of the soft silk sheets, careful not to wake the man lying next to him.
He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that their relationship had changed, but one night Yue had asked Sing to stay, and from then on Sing hadn’t found a reason to leave. Yue said that he slept better with someone else in the bed, but it took a few weeks for Sing himself to adjust.
They led the Chinese together, and with all the old connections of the Lee’s, had many advantages that Sing wasn't entirely used to having. Much of the East coast had descended into chaos with Golzine’s death and the collapse of his enterprise, but New York, the center of all the problems, somehow seemed to be thriving. A truce has been established between all the races, founded upon their undying respect for Ash, who had brought it about. Business ran smoothly as long as no hot shots started trouble, and things were surprisingly quiet in the sleepless city.
Without wasting endless time planning raids and managing his men's every movement, he had time to plan moments like this. Moments where he and Yue could be alone for a few precious moments without the outside world creeping in.
Sing walked into the kitchen and began preparing breakfast. Over the past few months, he had learned Yue's likes and dislikes. One morning when Sing was cooking, Yue had come down and said that it smelled like a dream, something long forgotten. But when Yue had taken his first bite, tears sprung from his face, which, Sing was beginning to learn, wasn’t an unusual occurrence.
“It tastes just like what my mother would make during the holidays, I had almost forgotten how good things could be.” Yue had sat there crying into the plate of food as he ate.
“You've never told me about her.”
“She had every reason to resent me, and yet she loved and cared for me like no one else ever has. Her father was a street vendor, had a little cart to sell food. A common girl who found herself in the arms of a madman. She tolerated him, I hated him.” Yue was surprisingly quiet as he had looked down at the food. “I'll be the last Lee to live, I’ve already seen to that.”
Soon after that morning, their work relationship began to turn into something more.
Sing found himself caring more and more for this boy. But he wasn’t a boy, after all, he never got the luxury of a childhood. Yet he wasn’t quite a man, neither of them were.
After compiling everything onto a serving tray, he headed back into their bedroom to attempt to wake Yue, who was anything but a morning person.
Sing placed the tray on the bedside table and sat on the bed. Carefully, he brushed his fingers through the long, dark hair that weaved around the sleeping figure. Sing found himself in love with Yue’s hair. It felt so soft, smoother than the silks that Yue wore. Sing couldn't help but smile as Yue woke up under his gentle touches, eyelashes fluttering slowly.
“Good morning.”
Yue stretched out his arms and turned to better face him, smiling a rare smile, “Good morning.”
“I made breakfast for us, the one you like,” Sing placed the tray with food on the bed.
“I know it will be as delicious as is smells,” he paused, “but what's the occasion? Sometimes you do nice things for me when you have bad news to tell me.”
“No bad news to speak of, but today is an American holiday so I thought we should celebrate it,” Sing flushed, “I've, uh, never had someone to celebrate it with before.”
Yue reached for his phone on the bedside table, and after a moment looked back at Sing, “It’s Valentine's day, isn’t it? February 14th.”
Sing averted his gaze, his blush deepening. Why had he thought that this would be a good idea? Making breakfast in bed is probably only done in those shitty American romantic movies, and Yue wasn’t some girl to be wooed. He was the co-leader of all the Chinese in New York.
But when he looked back, Yue was shyly smiling, trying to hide his own face, cheeks dusted pink, behind a waterfall of hair, “Thank you Sing. If I had known I would've done something in return.”
And then Yue leaned in, pressing his lips to Sing's. He was not prepared for the chaste kiss to quickly deepen, caught off guard by the other's sudden boldness. Yue tended to have mixed feeling about being physical that Sing respected.
Reluctant to pull away, but suddenly remembering his plans, Sing broke the kiss, “We should eat before it gets cold.”
They ate in relative silence with quick glances and intermittent compliments from Yue.
Sing had learned that Yue did not know how to cook. Growing up surrounded by servants to cook and do everything for him, he had never had a reason to learn. The one time Sing has tried to teach him, he had set the butter in the pan on fire. It seemed the laws of nature did not to apply when Yue tried his hand at cooking.
Thankfully, cooking was an act that Sing found himself enjoying. He liked cooking for Yue. It felt normal. Very few things in their lives have even been counted as normal. It was nice.
“Thank you Sing, it was delicious.” Yue’s hair had fallen into his face as he talked over the rim of his glass.
“You’re welcome.” He leaned over to brush his hand across Yue’s forehead and pushed the hair back behind his ear. “You really should put your hair up when sleeping. It looks like a rat’s nest all long and tangled.”
Sing smiled as he watched hands fly up to calm the long strands.
“If my hair annoys you so much maybe you can brush it for me.”
“Fine, but it looks like a pretty bad knot, so don’t complain if it hurts.” Sing moved behind Yue while they sit on the bed. His hand reached for the brush on the bedside table.
“Try using your fingers first, then use the brush last. It helps.”
Sing sighed, but he couldn't deny that he has long wanted to do this. His hands crawled up to start at the crown of his hair.
“You’ve clearly never had long hair before, have you?” Yue said, condescendingly.
“No, I prefer mine short. Less work to keep it up,” he laughed as Yue pointedly turns his head to roll his eyes at him before turning back.
“Start at the bottom and work your way up. That's the only way to make sure the knots don’t tie themselves up and ruin my hair. Honestly, you have watched me brush my hair endlessly. I shouldn’t have to tell you how it's done.”
Sing moved closer, pulling on the strands between his fingers, undoing small knots as he found them and working slowly up the length of his hair.
“And what if I like you telling me how to do things?”
“Then it's a good thing you work under me, and that I like telling people what to do. That's what it means to be the Boss, right?”
“You and I both know it is more than that.” Sing replied as he reached for the hairbrush and brought it to Yue’s hair, the sounds of the brush breaking the quiet of the room around them. But it wasn't uncomfortable as it may have been once. They had learned to read each other's moods without talking, and without words he knew Yue was very relaxed and happy in this moment.
When he finished brushing it out, Sing parted the hair and started on the fishtail braid that he learned from a Youtube tutorial. He hoped that it was tight enough and that he was doing it right. The video made it look a lot easier than it actually was with Yue’s hair in his hands.
“So Sing, is there anything planned for the day?”
“I’ve made a dinner reservation for us, but that's not until later this afternoon. We're free to do anything you want for most of the day. Is there something you want to do?”
Yue suddenly turned to face Sing, the half-finished braid falling from his hands, “I want you to kiss me.”
Sing blinked, shocked. Yue had never asked for this before in such a direct way, his dark eyes strong and unwavering, staring back into his own. He couldn’t keep himself from looking down to Yue’s lips, before he drew his hand to his neck and pulled Yue closer, pressing their lips together.
The warmth was soft, comforting as they moved their lips together, still so new to them that they didn’t fully know what the other wanted, but somehow they fit together naturally. Yue pushed his shoulder and he laid back onto the pillows. Long hair hung in a thin curtain around them as the braid unraveled.
Yue brought their lips back together and Sing was lost to the sensation of it.