Work Text:
When she tugs him down to lay on his side next to her, he goes: stiffly, but he goes. Something curls in her belly like a snake in the sun.She's unsure what she hopes to accomplish, but the simple truth is that she doesn't know how to be a wife. A doctor, a niece, a sister: this is what she's capable of. She used to do this for a-Ning, back when he was still the smaller one, and occasionally even after that, so she draws from the roles she knows how to perform.When she guides him to lay his head next to her lap, his hands are twitching in the air. She reaches out and gathers the thick mass of his loose hair within her own loose fist, spreads it across her thigh, and begins to run it through with the comb.At first, he looks as uncomfortable as if she’s trying to pull it on purpose, but after a little while the lines of his body seem to relax. His hair rolls over her knees down to hang over the edge of the bed, and it flows heavy through her hands as she works it through.
[...]
"...Are you angry with me?”
His shoulders hunch a little, as though he's been caught out in something. With Jiang Wanyin, you need only wait him out until he cracks. He's not the kind of person who can keep himself to himself. He needs someone to look at him and provide a verdict.
Maybe it was the wrong sort of question. She’s not sure he knows how to respond to something so direct, when it pertains to his feelings.
“Are you getting what you wanted?”
She thinks he’s going to ignore this one, too, but as she begins running her comb through the tangles at his ends, he mutters, “I just wanted you.”
It’s not, as such, an answer to her question; she wonders whether Jiang Wanyin means it as a yes or a no.
It’s hard to look Jiang Yanli in the face—she offers too much unspoken gratitude for Wen Qing to know how to take, and yet Wen Qing can’t leave. Wen Qing reaches out and pulls Jiang Yanli against her, holding Jiang Yanli fast against her own body with one hand on top of Jiang Yanli’s head and the other resting on the small of her back.
Within her embrace, time is sluggish. She thinks that Jiang Yanli’s tears have subsided, judging by the pace of her breathing and the fact that Wen Qing’s hair is only slightly damp where Jiang Yanli’s closed eyes are tucked against it. Wen Qing’s heartbeat is catastrophically loud. Her face is nestled against Jiang Yanli’s temple, and she can hear every exhale from her own lungs.
They have both become very still. Jiang Yanli’s hands came up to rest on Wen Qing’s shoulder-blades when Wen Qing first brought her close, and Wen Qing holds her fast, feeling the rise and fall of Jiang Yanli’s vertebrae under her palm. Like meeting a doe in the woods, Wen Qing can only have this moment for as long as she stays quiet. No sudden movements.
She carefully lowers her head to press her nose against Jiang Yanli’s neck. Jiang Yanli’s fingers curl against Wen Qing’s back, and Jiang Yanli’s gasp runs underneath Wen Qing’s skin. Jiang Yanli is all warmth, a silken throat and soft chest, and there’s a wet hitch in her voice as she whispers, “Wen Qing—”
Wen Qing parts her lips for just long enough to run her open mouth across the skin there for the length of a single heartbeat, and then she murmurs, level and polite, “I’d like to watch you finish the dish. Jin-furen is a good teacher.”
