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It’s been a weird day. Not one of Zhao Yunlan’s favorites. Waking up in Dixing had been… weird, and it had generally gone downhill after that. He’s not sure if it’s something about Dixing’s dark energy atmosphere or the more metaphorical darkness involved in a governing system dependant on public execution and life-sucking mind control but even with the success of unraveling an actual real life assassination plot he isn’t feeling very trumphant.
They can’t track the Merit Brush. The only real result of their efforts is slightly more detailed knowledge of how very fucked they are. And that pillar. That talks and absorbs people. Zhao Yunlan can’t help feeling like there should be some sort of warning sign up in front of it. Maybe a fence.
On the plus side, he gets to sleep in his own bed tonight, and he gets more of Shen Wei’s excellent cooking, even if Shen Wei has been … very controlled, ever since An Bai took the throne. Carefully distant. Like if Zhao Yunlan touches him he might break.
Which is fine. Everyone needs some time to themselves once in a while, right? He can keep his hands to himself for one evening. Even if Shen Wei’s admonishments to rest are starting to sound less like concerned instructions and more like a vicarious plea.
They’re eating dinner, a meal of spicy fried noodles and stir-fried vegetables that Shen Wei can apparently cook to perfection without ever consulting a recipe, and Shen Wei’s shoulders have finally dropped from that rigidly stiff posture and he actually seems like he might be happy, and so of course Zhao Yunlan goes and ruins it.
“It’s strange how uniform so much of Dixing is,” he says before he thinks to lay the topic aside for later. “Like everything was built at the same time. And it’s all huddled so close together. You’d think that would induce even more claustrophobia.”
Shen Wei hesitates, chopsticks hovering over his rice for a moment. “The histories say my people chose to live underground because they found the surface too open after the long voyage through space,” he says. “The caverns they carved out were supposed to be familiar, and safe, like the ship that brought us here.”
Zhao Yunlan watches his face. “You don’t agree,” he observes.
“The Yashou bear the same lineage, and chose differently.” Shen Wei shrugs. “I was fifteen, the first time I saw the stars.” His smile is wistful. “All I could think was that there must have been some point when my ancestors looked up and saw opportunity. And beauty.” He meets Zhao Yunlan’s gaze. “And a path home.”
It’s a strange moment. Shen Wei’s eyes are as dark and fathomless as the depths of space, and a shiver races down Zhao Yunlan’s spine. Most of the time he forgets that Shen Wei is Dixingren, even that he’s the Black Cloak Envoy, but there’s no avoiding the knowledge here and now.
Well. It’s not precisely that he forgets. He knows Shen Wei is the Envoy, and that the Envoy is Dixingren. He just … doesn’t connect that information to anything else. To the fact that Dixingren often live much longer than Haixingren. That the Black Cloak Envoy, in particular, isn't some hereditary title passed down through Dixing tradition the way kingship is. That it’s been the same man, decade after decade. This man, in front of him. Feeding him noodles and adding eggplant to his bowl and smiling at him with his glasses tucked away somewhere, no masks held between them. Shen Wei, who kisses like he’s trying to memorize the moment; who was fifteen the first time he saw stars, an utterly incomprehensible ten thousand years ago.
He shouldn’t ask, but the words are out of his mouth before he can stop them.
“What was it like, before the war?” Because surely, surely Dixing can’t have always been as it is now, shuttered and dark and not even knowing what they lack. He’s still not over that bartender’s expression when he’d mentioned hospitals, the first time.
Shen Wei looks surprised. He sets his chopsticks down and frowns at his bowl. For a moment Zhao Yunlan thinks he won’t answer, will brush the question off like he has so many others and that’ll be the end of it. But he doesn’t. He pushes his bowl aside and leans his elbows on the table, his arms folded carefully across his front.
“I was—very young, when the meteor hit. My parents—” he shakes his head, dark hair falling over his forehead. “The differences were not so stark, ten thousand years ago. Our technology was similar, even more advanced than Haixing’s in some areas. We—” he frowns. Shunts some emotion away before Zhao Yunlan can identify it. “When I first came to the surface many of the people I encountered had not learned to read or write their own language, let alone others, but that knowledge was routine in Dixing, even among the lower classes. I was accustomed to water piped into buildings rather than carried from a well or river, and gas-fueled stoves, and Dixing steel was the strongest and sharpest anyone could trade for. Most people thought that if I wasn’t part of the rebellion I must be a salt merchant, or a traveling tinker.”
“At fifteen?” Zhao Yunlan asks. His incredulity is obvious in his voice. Shen Wei just looks amused.
“In Dixing, fifteen was the age a journeyman might set off on his own, if he had proper training ” he says. “And I actually did do some tinkering work in exchange for food or a night’s rest. Before I found the Alliance.”
He meets Zhao Yunlan’s eyes again, holds his gaze for a moment that stretches in quiet intensity. Then he blinks and looks away. One hand reaches to his collar, and when it drops he’s holding the fiddly gold pin that often sits there. No, not holding. Stretching it like clay between his hands, thinner and thinner, longer and longer.
Zhao Yunlan is one hundred percent certain Shen Wei hadn’t been wearing it today, but he’s also seen Shen Wei manifest an entire glaive out of nothing so a collar pin is probably not worth commenting on.
“Before my parents died, there was a smith next door.” Shen Wei is looking only at his hands and Zhao Yunlan feels his own gaze drawn back there as well, watching him tie the pin into a knot and straighten it out again. “How to find metal, how to manipulate it—it was one of the first powers I learned. It was more common, in those days. Too common for a low-born boy to make a strong career of it.”
He pushes the wire into an arch, and then a wave. Zhao Yunlan looks back to Shen Wei’s face to find his expression softened, intensity exchanged for a fond tilt of his lips.
“The avenues were lit with something bioluminescent, a moss, maybe, or lichen,” he says, almost a murmur. “It changed colors. Blue near the heating vents, green near the aqueducts, a pale purple under lantern light. I used to collect it and hide it in jars under my bed.” He smiles. Under his fingers the pin sprouts delicate clumps of leaves. “It never lived long there. I didn’t know how to take care of it. We used to take lessons in the palace library. It was—less intimidating, then. Designed to inspire wonder and loyalty over fear. There was radiant heating in the floor and the candlelight was magnified by polished crystals. The throne was the last remaining relic from the spaceship we arrived on, a reminder of our history. Of the sacrifices our ancestors made, so that we could find peace on Haixing, and the sacrifices we continued to make, for all of Dixing. The way it’s used now...”
The pin crumples, and there’s that expression again. The one from the throne room, watching An Bai sit down and pick up his brush. Zhao Yunlan watches Shen Wei swallow and brush his hair out of his face and feels like an utter jackass for saying anything.
He sets his own bowl aside and pours them both more tea. “Sorry,” he says. “Poor topic. You don’t have to—”
Shen Wei shakes his head. Sighs. Straightens the pin to its original form.
“Someone should know,” he says. His smile, when he looks up, seems genuine. “I’m glad it’s you.” He returns the pin to his collar—or, more precisely, whatever pocket dimension he actually pulled it from—and settles his hands around the steaming teacup instead. “When I—returned—it had already been tradition for thousands of years. The Justicar insisted it was to ensure Dixing’s scant resources be allocated most equitably. That in the wake of the meteor, and the war, we had again chosen to sacrifice, for the good of Dixing and Haixing alike, but …”
“But?”
The teacup turns between his hands. “You’ve seen it. No schools. No hospitals. One, closely guarded library. Literacy is still common but opportunities for formal study are limited. Our most stable occupations are soldier, bartender, and miner. My people huddle in darkness and cling to Haxing’s underbelly like parasites. A sacrifice should be for a purpose.” For a moment he carries the full presence of the Black Cloak Envoy, even without the mask or cloak or glaive. Then he shakes his head, and adjusts his cuffs, and the feeling dissipates.
“You’d think they’d want engineers, at least.” Zhao Yunlan sips at his tea, contemplative. Dixing’s near a major vent, isn’t it? “I hear down south they do amazing things with geothermal energy these days.”
Shen Wei’s lips are a thin, tight line. “They can only do so because the Justicar insists there is no need to renegotiate any part of the treaty. That doing so can only cause strife and confusion that Dixing cannot afford.”
Zhao Yunlan stares.
“The same treaty that says Dixingren can’t come to the surface?” he asks. “That treaty?”
“It also addresses mining rights and permits.” Shen Wei picks up his tea and stares into the cup. “My people exchange gold, and iron, and copper, and anything else Haixing finds useful, for clothing, and food, and fuel, and never know that the ore they give up will be used to light and heat a thousand homes on the surface, or that it can be used in such a way.”
Zhao Yunlan had not been a particularly attentive student, and his approach to technology has pretty consistently been on the level of “can I use it” rather than anything close to Lin Jing’s expertise with machines and fabrication, but he knows some things. He can defuse a bomb, and short-circuit an electronic lock, and he knows enough about engines to keep his motorcycle in good shape. He’s aware, in a vague sort of way, that computers use gold in their circuit boards, and one time he watched a demolitions team saw into the wall of a suspected drug runner’s apartment and discovered exactly how much wire and piping can be hidden behind some truly eye-searing wallpaper. Also drugs, but that’s less relevant to the slow realization that he is sitting on a steel barstool, under an incandescent lamp, and the phone in his pocket only works because some clever person a hundred or so years ago figured out how to turn magnetism and conductivity into a new kind of engine, and every single one of those things requires metal to be dug up out of the ground, and worked, and shaped, and put to use.
“Can’t you tell them?” Zhao Yunlan leans forward. “If they knew—” But there is only resignation in Shen Wei’s expression.
“Who should I tell?” he asks, and the bitterness in his voice is palpable. “The Justicar is not interested, and the throne is not flexible in the king’s duties.”
“Tell the people, tell—tell everyone else! Go to Haixing Ministry, you’re the Black Cloak Envoy you have diplomatic status—”
Shen Wei sighs and sets down his cup. “The Black Cloak Envoy is an enforcer, in Haixing and Dixing both. The average Haixing citizen does not know I exist. The average Dixingren has been taught to fear me as much as respect me. And I have no authority to change the treaty.”
He is no longer looking at Zhao Yunlan, his eyes hidden behind long lashes as he stares into tea that has probably gone lukewarm. He looks ... lonely. And guilty. And tired.
Zhao Yunlan reaches for his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he says. Which is incredibly insufficient really. He is sorry, but he’s angry too. The anger just isn’t very useful right now.
Shen Wei turns his hands to grip Zhao Yunlan’s hands in return. He smiles, soft and sweet.
“Thank you,” he says, squeezing gently.
Zhao Yunlan snorts. He hasn’t done anything but eat Shen Wei’s food and make him talk about uncomfortable topics all evening. “For what?”
“For caring about Dixingren you’ve never met,” Shen Wei says.
Because everything is about other people, of course. Zhao Yunlan slips off his barstool and tugs on Shen Wei's hands, urging him to his feet.
“Come on,” he says. Shen Wei looks at him, and then at the dishes still scattered over the table. “Leave them,” Zhao Yunlan urges him. “I’ll clean up later.”
Still, Shen Wei hesitates.
“Xiao-Wei,” Zhao Yunlan coaxes, “you’re spending so much time taking care of me, can’t I take care of you a little?” And then, when Shen Wei looks like he’s going to protest needing to be taken care of at all, he adds, “Let me do this for you,” because Shen Wei rarely refuses him favors that don’t require revealing his secrets.
Shen Wei huffs a laugh, says, “You haven’t told me what you want to do,” but he stands, and leaves the dishes alone, and lets Zhao Yunlan lead him around the couch and past the fridge to the bed. He does look a bit confused when Zhao Yunlan sits down. It takes a bit more urging, and then some physical nudging, to get Shen Wei to sit, and then to get the both of them arranged comfortably with Zhao Yunlan sitting with his back against the headboard and Shen Wei next to him, just inside the curve of his arm.
Shen Wei sits stiffly and looks at him like he expects Zhao Yunlan to request something in return for the slow soothing brush of Zhao Yunlan’s hand over his lower back. It's like he’s never been just touched before, without expectations, which is a crime as far as Zhao Yunlan is concerned. A crime he’s participated in, since they’ve really only done this to the accompaniment of make outs or sex, so far. At least he can fix that much.
“Just relax,” he murmurs. He slides his fingers through Shen Wei’s hair and over the back of his head and drags his nails down the nape of Shen Wei’s neck in slow, gentle motions until some of the stiff uncertainty bleeds out of Shen Wei’s muscles. “Just be here. You can set everything down. You’re not acting alone anymore.” He sweeps long lines down Shen Wei’s spine, watching the side of his face for signs of discomfort. “Let me take that load off your shoulders, just for a little while.”
For a long moment Shen Wei is very still, and very quiet. Then he sort of lunges sideways and crawls over Zhao Yunlan’s lap and buries his face in the crook of Zhao Yunlan’s neck. His breathing is shaky, and his hands tremble a bit where he’s holding onto Zhao Yunlan’s shirt.
Zhao Yunlan steadies him with one hand spread flat against his back and keeps the other on the nape of Shen Wei’s neck, stroking through the soft short hair there. He’s not really sure what just happened but it’s okay, it’s okay, he can adjust; he can follow his own advice and just—be here. Telling Shen Wei that he’s safe.
It’s not the most comfortable position in the world. It’s pretty uncomfortable, actually. Shen Wei is surprisingly heavy. But he’s also pretty sure that if he says anything he’ll never get to hold Shen Wei like this again.
He waits it out. Waits until Shen Wei relaxes again, his fingers loosening and his forehead balancing more naturally on Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder. He runs his fingers through Shen Wei’s hair and over his back until he sighs against Zhao Yunlan’s collarbone and his hands go fully limp.
Zhao Yunlan brushes a kiss over the bit of Shen Wei’s skin he can reach.
“You keep telling me to rest,” he says low and soft. “How about we both rest, hmm? We’ll just stay right here, and rest.”
Shen Wei sits up enough to look him in the eye.
“There’s still food sitting out,” he says, because it was, in fact, too much to hope that Zhao Yunlan could distract him entirely.
“So I’ll go put away the food. Right now. And you’ll stay here, and I’ll come back”
Shen Wei is already trying to get up.
“Xiao-Wei,” Zhao Yunlan says again, mostly because he likes the little blink Shen Wei does every time he says it, and the slight flush of his ears. He grabs Shen Wei’s wrist and rubs his thumb over the heel of his hand and gives him his best pleading expression.
Shen Wei looks more annoyed than charmed, but he shifts to sit on the other side of the bed, instead of moving off it. Zhao Yunlan will take what he can get.
“Back in a minute,” he says. He has to hobble a bit because his leg is asleep, and he doesn’t dare even look in Shen Wei’s direction as he does it. Two minutes. Maybe five. That’s how long he has before Shen Wei gets tired of waiting, probably. He starts the kettle, wraps the serving dishes in plastic and shoves them in the fridge, and dumps the dishes into the sink. He even rinses them, only because he knows Shen Wei will huff at him about it later if he doesn’t. He steeps new tea. Valerian and rose, because they both need to sleep tonight.
When he returns, two steaming cups in-hand, Shen Wei is sitting cross-legged on top of the bed covers with his eyes closed like he’s meditating, still in his slacks and his vest and his button-up. The pillows have been aggressively fluffed and the top blanket precisely straightened, and Zhao Yunlan can’t help but smile at the sight, so out of place in his messy apartment, but so very welcome at the same time.
Shen Wei opens his eyes and smiles back. Takes the offered tea with both hands.
“Thank you,” he says, and this time Zhao Yunlan’s pretty sure he’s not thinking of random Dixingren or the future of Dixing when he says it, but he shrugs it off just the same.
“There’s honey if you want it,” he offers, but Shen Wei shakes his head, so instead of ducking back around the corner he settles himself at Shen Wei’s side, close enough that their shoulders touch and their knees brush, and drinks his tea. In a little while he’ll coax Shen Wei into maybe stripping off the vest, at least, and lying down, and then into cuddling, and he’ll do his best to stay awake until he knows Shen Wei is asleep, and tomorrow their problems will rear up again, no smaller than today.
But that’s for the future. For now, he lets himself just—sit. With Shen Wei’s warmth against his side. And rest.