Chapter Text
Yue Qingyuan wakes a shichen before dawn, as usual, but he won’t be catching up on paperwork today, or taking advantage of the early hour to practice moving meditation with sword drills. There will be no reading of the latest correspondence, or signing off on the new lesson plans, or taking a slow, solitary walk to breathe in cool morning air, because Xiao Jiu is still pressed up against his back, one long, warm arm slung over Yue Qingyuan’s side, one hand curled into his sleep robe.
Something fragile and sharp-edged is lodged in his chest, and he breathes through it carefully, makes himself pay attention to small details as it breaks and spills over. He’d redecorated this room after Xiao Jiu’s last visit. There are more pillows, plush and soft, and more blankets, stitched with warming talismans. His nightpearl still glows dimly on the floor beside the bed, giving the rest of the space faint definition: the familiar shape of the calligraphy scroll that hangs on one wall, and the low outline of the table, a small tea set still sitting at its center. Outside the window, a light breeze rustles the leaves of the garden’s mulberry tree. The scent of the herbal tea Xiao Jiu drank before retiring for the evening still lingers in the air.
Years ago—decades ago—Xiao Jiu’s bony elbows and clutching fingers had made their presence known at his back every night, his breath a spot of heat between Yue Qi’s shoulder blades as they both shivered on a cold dirt floor, a feeling more familiar and constant even than hunger. Most days, then as now, Yue Qi woke first. The time he spent lying awake with Xiao Jiu’s breath on his back had been the only quiet, semi-private moments he had in days defined by constant observation and ever-conflicting demands on his attention, and he’d treasured them because of it. Later, both the habit of waking early and the practice being observed had helped him keep his secrets in his early days on Qiong Ding, and he hadn’t shared his fellow disciples’ struggles in adjusting to a common sleeping room among strangers. He’d had a bed to himself, with a mattress and blankets, a night pearl hung near the window and warm food in his stomach. Novel and luxurious, every part of it.
But no Xiao Jiu.
The first night after Xiao Jiu was taken to the Qiu household, Yue Qi hadn’t slept. Every time he closed his eyes some new horror scene painted itself before him: Xiao Jiu beaten bloody, Xiao Jiu bound up and locked away in the dark, Xiao Jiu small and pale and cold and dead. During the daylight hours he’d performed his patrols woodenly, barely seeing any of the people on the street. He’d worried the bruise over his floating rib, and run his hands over the smaller marks left by pinching fingers on his forearms, and considered everything he’d ever heard about immortals who could move as quickly as a loosed arrow and silent as a hunting owl. The type of person who could protect both themselves and Xiao Jiu.
On the road, later, traveling as quickly as he dared toward the promise of twelve mountain peaks, he’d found loose threads in the back of his robe where Xiao Jiu had held it so tightly every night, and he hadn’t been able to leave it behind even when it would have been safer and smarter to steal new layers and bury it somewhere. It had been a symbol of his promise, something to remind him that Xiao Jiu still existed outside Cang Qiong’s high peaks in moments when the rest of the world started to feel far away.
The quiet pull of Xiao Jiu’s qi at his back, now, cool and deep and pleasing as a well on a hot summer afternoon, is a balm to wounds he’s carried so long he’d forgotten he even bore the scars. There’s a sharp, tight feeling in the base of his spine that loosens so suddenly it leaves him lightheaded with sweat on his palms. The memory of Xiao Jiu’s sleepy, disagreeable squint last night alongside the low, softly-slurred mumbles of, I wake up and miss you too, sometimes, and Go to sleep, Qi-ge, rise to the top of his thoughts.
He’ll have to meditate on these things later, when he’s alone and and can spare the attention for anything besides recording every detail of this moment: the heaviness of Xiao Jiu’s arm over his side, the contrast between warm breath on his back and warm legs stretched alongside his own and the chill touch of Qiong Ding’s morning air. Even his ever-present awareness of Xuan Su fades into the background against the feel of the slow rise and fall of Xiao Jiu’s chest and the faint pressure of his hand against Yue Qingyuan’s robe.
It ends too soon. A shift in breathing, a tightening of the arm over his ribs, released just as quickly. A whisper of qi stirs like a ripple. Slowly, carefully, the arm lifts and slides away, the sound of silk pulling against silk muffled to the barest whisper even to cultivator hearing. But a muffling seal can’t disguise the movement of the mattress as Xiao Jiu extricates himself and puts some small measure of distance between them, and Yue Qingyuan lets his breathing slip out of rhythm, as if he, too, might just be waking, his body shifting into the shallow hollow Xiao Jiu leaves behind.
If Xiao Jiu suspects otherwise, he doesn’t mention it. Instead, he makes a comment about how much quieter mornings are here than on Qing Jing, and stretches his neck, and his hands. Yue Qingyuan watches the line of his spine, the crooked folds in his sleep robe and the slide of his sleeves up his arms. There are crease marks pressed into the side of one of his forearms and faint impressions of stitching on his cheek, all fading quickly as he circulates his qi. He gripes about noisy students behind the dark fall of his hair—what is it that they think “be mindful of public areas” means, exactly—and then makes a frustrated noise and a signs an unfamiliar handseal, and his hair smooths out as if it’s been thoroughly combed.
“Allow this shixiong be of assistance,” Yue Qingyuan offers, sitting up, and Xiao Jiu looks at him with skepticism that carries none of its old, cold edge.
“Shixiong should see to himself,” he says.
There’s no bite to it. Yue Qingyuan is certain his own face shows nothing but well-intentioned helpfulness. Xiao Jiu huffs quietly and looks away, reaching for something on the small table at the foot of the bed.
He hides his face behind an unfurled fan, but he says, “I’ll be troubling Yue-shixiong,” and makes no protest as Yue Qingyuan rises and finds the laid-out comb, and a hair ornament—simple, suitable for travel, not one of Yue Qingyuan’s own gifts to him—and ties his hair up in a neat, close style that won’t whip in the wind during his sword flight.
“Thank you,” Xiao Jiu says, so quiet as to be audible only to cultivator hearing.
“It’s no trouble, for Qingqiu-shidi,” Yue Qingyuan assures him just as quietly.
He contents himself with making sure there are no lingering flyaway hairs, keeps his fingers quick and efficient, and leaves Xiao Jiu to dress alone with the promise of a light breakfast together. Clear broth, and a few eggs at least. Perhaps scallion pancakes, just in case. Not the sweet milk tea, for so early a journey, but he will have to make sure it’s available when Xiao Jiu returns.
Fourteen days. Xiao Jiu will return in fourteen days.
They have perhaps half a shichen before Xiao Jiu will expect to meet Shang Qinghua. Yue Qingyuan intends to make the most of it.