Work Text:
By Wen Qing’s strict orders, Jiang Cheng has been kept sedated and sleeping. She cleaned and stitched the stab wound, perfect work as always, and now he just has to rest and heal.
“Do not bother him, Nie Huaisang,” Wen Qing told him when she finished. “He expended a lot of spiritual energy in the lead up to actually getting stabbed, the complete idiot, and he needs time to build it up again. That’s all.”
“Yes, Madame Wen,” Huaisang said as he saluted her with his fan.
She stared at him, sighed and laid the back of his hand on his forehead. “You should sleep, too,” she said, forgoing her usual acerbic commentary, and that, almost as much as Jiang Cheng’s wound, convinced Huaisang of both the seriousness of the situation and the care she had dedicated to his husband and to him.
So Huaisang slept on a cot set up beside Jiang Cheng’s bed and held his hand.
On the fifth day, Huaisang sits on his cot with a lap desk, reviewing correspondence that has backed up as he attended Jiang Cheng. The midmorning sun warms his face as he scans the reports Sizhui wrote following the incident with the bandits, and he sucks in a breath as he gets to the part describing Jiang Cheng’s actions. Sizhui’s prose is clear and measured, but Huaisang is nonetheless drawn into the moment, and when he arrives at the section describing how the juniors caught up with Jiang Cheng, his eyes swim with tears. The sheer, noble lunacy of the whole thing! He can’t—
“Are we home?”
Huaisang drops the scroll and tumbles off the cot in his haste to turn to Jiang Cheng, and Huaisang is selfishly grateful that no one else is around to witness his flailing.
“A-Cheng!” he gasps, dropping to his knees beside the bed and seizing Jiang Cheng’s hand. “You’re awake!” He surges forward to kiss him but holds back at the last second and gently kisses his forehead instead.
“Are we home?” Jiang Cheng asks again. He tries to sit up, but Huaisang holds him down, and he’s alarmed at how little force he needs to exert to keep Jiang Cheng still.
“Not yet,” he says, smoothing Jiang Cheng’s hair from his face. “Wen Qing wanted to wait to move you until you’d had some time to build up your spiritual energy reserves.”
Jiang Cheng winces. “But no one else was hurt, right?”
Huaisang huffs. “No, no one else was hurt. Just you. And all those bandits, of course, but Wei Wuxian and da-ge took care of the ones you didn’t manage to dispatch.”
“Oh.” He’s quiet for a long time, so quiet Huaisang is sure he’s gone back to sleep, but he whispers, “Jiejie knows, then.”
“Everybody knows, A-Cheng.”
“Are you mad?”
“Yes,” Huaisang says, though he had intended to keep that to himself. “Very.”
“I’m sorry.” His breath comes shallowly, and tears escape down his cheeks.
“It’s alright,” Huaisang says, wiping Jiang Cheng’s eyes with the sleeve of his robe. “We’ll deal with that later. Calm down now, or Wen Qing will come in, and then we’ll both be in trouble.” He kisses Jiang Cheng, a gentle brush of lips, and tries to stand, but Jiang Cheng catches his sleeve.
“Don’t go!”
“Shh, shh, alright, okay.” Huaisang spreads a hand over Jiang Cheng’s chest. “Shh.” He moves around the bed to Jiang Cheng’s uninjured side. There’s just enough room to stretch out beside him and hold onto his arm. Jiang Cheng relaxes the moment Huaisang takes his hand and rests his head against his shoulder. “Sleep, A-Cheng, just sleep, and we’ll go home soon.”
“Don’t go home without me,” Jiang Cheng rasps, squeezing Huaisang’s hand tightly.
“As long you don’t go anywhere without me,” Huaisang whispers, returning the grip.