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When Ganyu opens the door to her apartment, she’s only half-surprised to see her there. Shenhe perches on top of her writing desk, no doubt carelessly sitting on some important documents to a rumple. Ganyu would get a flare or anxiety, or flustered, or mad, even, because absolutely no paper on top of that desk is unimportant, but the other is already looking at her with a scowl on her otherwise beautiful face, and Ganyu’s tired. Exhausted, even, and she’s not about to add on more tiredness on her person.
So she simply sets down the scrolls she’s brought back home with her on the table at her foyer and circles past Shenhe towards the kitchen.
“Hello, Shenhe,” she says sleepily as way of greeting. Shenhe’s yet to move from her spot, and follows her with piercing eyes. “You’re staring. Do I have something on me?”
“The stench of overworking,” Shenhe answers snappily. Ah, there it is . Ganyu puts on her kettle to make warm tea, and prepares for the cups. “I waited for you at Mt. Aocang. Do you have any idea how tiring it is to endure the hag’s endless chattering on my own?”
Ganyu bites back a smile. “Careful. She’ll hear you.”
Shenhe scoffs and crosses her arms. She still hasn’t moved. Ganyu pours down the tea for both of them, and debates whether or not she should cool down Shenhe’s with her vision. She decides not to—if to have more Yin energy will amount to her having to work hard exorcising, she doesn’t want her to emit it now. She walks down with each cup in her hand and sits on her writing chair, facing Shenhe’s back. Shenhe is mostly unpredictable, as a person, or—perhaps, as she is now after their years, a half-adepti?—but predictably, the white-haired woman lets out an indignant sound as Ganyu all but forces her to abandon her silly post.
Ganyu drinks her warm tea, and sets Shenhe’s down on the desk, careful to put it on top of the wood instead of the scattered papers, books or scrolls. She really needs to tidy up.
Shenhe slips off of the front of the desk and circles around to where she’s sitting, and Ganyu smiles up at her as Shenhe glowers from her place, standing almost between her and the desk. Ganyu presses her knees together and moves it aside as Shenhe squeezes into the very space to reach and take the cup of tea she prepared.
“It’s too warm,” Shenhe complains, and opens her other hand. The teacup lifts from her grip as frost starts to form atop her open palm. Ganyu takes her wrist wielding the cryo energy gently, and Shenhe almost panics as the teacup staggers, the tea inside sloshing, slightly spilling a couple of warm drops onto Ganyu’s thighs. “Ganyu. If it’s too warm, my Yin—”
“Yes, yes,” Ganyu says, slipping her fingers to wrap around Shenhe’s hand, fingertips caressing her palm. She brings the hand to her face, and Shenhe lets Ganyu press her cold palm onto her cheek. “If you’re about to get angry at me for overworking, then I should prevent you from doing the same.”
The hand relaxes. Ganyu closes her eyes and nuzzles her palm close, feeling the cold slowly dissipate into a warm touch. She faintly hears Shenhe relenting and taking the tea to drink in her other hand, as her thumb caresses Ganyu’s cheek. Ganyu still holds her wrist.
When she opens her eyes and looks up, the heat in Shenheʼs eyes has gone away. It is now replaced with a familiar kindness, one thatʼs tinged with slight irritation, still—but even then the heat is a familiar thing. Shenhe, after all, is a familiar one.
Maybe not to everyone—even anyone—in Liyue Harbor, but to Ganyu, she always has been.
The taller woman sighs, and puts her teacup down, taking Ganyuʼs next to also set it aside. Both hands now free, Shenhe uses them to hold Ganyuʼs face in her palms. Both her palms are warm, Ganyu idly notes—too often her hold carry with them a juxtaposition, cold in one hand and warm in the other. Itʼs not always comfortable, though sometimes itʼs pleasurable. Tonight, Ganyu knows, what they both need is comfort.
“Theyʼre working you to the bone, the Qixing,” says Shenhe disapprovingly. Ganyu gives her a sleepy smile.
“They need me,” she tells Shenhe, “and I need to be needed.”
She knows Shenhe will find a hard time to refute that, and Ganyu is right again. Shenhe lets out another sigh and Ganyu peels off her hands off her face, takes them by the wrists. Idly she tries to run her fingertips on the insides of them, tries to feel Shenheʼs soft, thudding pulse.
Ganyu drops them, and plants her face onto the flat of Shenheʼs abdomen. Through the thin, sheer material, she can feel Shenhe tightens her muscles in a jolt of surprise, a slight ticklishness Ganyu often exploits. Smiling, she nuzzles on it, nose almost pressed right on the dip of Shenheʼs belly button as she circles her arms around Shenhe’s slender waist, half her forearms resting on the table.
“Itʼs ticklish, stop moving around,” Shenhe scolds. Shenhe rests her hands on her temples, brushing Ganyu’s hair back behind her ears, and proceeds to rest them on top of her head, gently touching her horns. It sends shivers down Ganyu’s spine, as she expects Shenhe to grab them to retaliate against her tickling her stomach with her face, but Shenhe’s touches remain gentle, as she begins to stroke both her horns back fleetingly. The small jolts of pleasure smooths over into a steady flow of comforting touch, and Ganyu lets out a trembling sigh she buries in Shenhe’s toned abs.
“Don’t fall asleep on me,” Shenhe warns her, and Ganyu huffs a breath of laughter onto her stomach. Shenhe flinches. “I told you, that tickles!”
“Here I thought you came over to make me sleep and relax,” she says, loosening her hold and pulling back. Shenhe strokes her horns another time and lets her hands caress the back of her head, traveling down her neck and resting on either of her shoulders. “ Meimei, don’t get angry.”
Shenhe makes a show of sighing grandly, and Ganyu stifles a giggle. It easily turns into a drawn-out sigh as Shenhe’s palms start to give pressure, rolling her shoulders in a kneading motion to loosen her muscles up. “I can never be angry with you now, can I?”
Her house is cold—well, not so much cold as it would be rather unlivable, but there is almost always a shifting breeze in the air, a gentle cool that doesn’t move away with time nor summers, all thank you to her frosty vision. It probably doesn’t help that Shenhe, the most frequent visitor of the humble abode, also wields the very same element, but neither’s ever been too bothered by the cold. Spending your childhood, and for her—childhood and another eons that followed—in a treacherous mountain does that.
She’s tired, Ganyu realises. She can fall asleep right then and there, forehead pressed to Shenhe’s warm stomach as the other gently kneads on her taut muscles. Despite her chill to practically everyone, to her, Shenhe is a respite, the only one who would do this for her—the only one she would let do this for her. It is a testament of their many years, of her watching the other grow before her eyes, as they grow together.
Ganyu puts both her hands into the exposed parts of Shenhe’s hips, on the openings of her flimsy fabric of clothing. She knows Shenhe likes it when she does that, trailing her fingertips, dainty though calloused from hundreds of years of wielding her weapons, on the small exposed patch of skin. Ganyu slips four of her fingers on each hand underneath the cloth, and reaches her thumbs towards the middle, almost meeting them.
She must’ve truly, accidentally fallen asleep because when she comes to it’s with a jolt of surprise as Shenhe abandons her shoulders to caress on her horns again.
Ganyu blinks bleary eyes up at Shenhe, who holds a lot of fondness in her stare back. “Let’s not make a knot in your neck, now,” she tells her, and Ganyu nods, still gathering her bearings, thumbs absently rubbing circles on Shenhe’s lower stomach. She whines a little when Shenhe extracts her hands from the soothing touches on her horns, hands moving to her elbows to force her to get up. “Come, sleep.”
Begrudgingly, Ganyu complies, standing up with a soft grunt that earns Shenhe’s low chuckle. It adds salt to the wound as she only rises up to the exorcist’s chin; far, far younger and much taller. To get at her, Ganyu leans her full weight on her, keeping her grips on Shenhe’s hips as she nuzzles into the taller woman’s neck, nosing at the pulse. Shenhe shudders a little when Ganyu kisses her there.
“Get off me, jie ,” she groans, and Ganyu complies with a smile. Shenhe’s cheeks are darkening even in this dim light.
“Only if you kiss me,” Ganyu jokes, fingers moving on skin.
Shenhe does.
She cups Ganyu’s face in her hands, gentle and warm, unlike the fierce and frosty vanquisher of evil spirits that she normally is in the eyes of others. Her eyes gleam a soft orange-purple under Ganyu’s apartment light, like rainbows reflecting off of ice. She presses the tip of her nose to Ganyu’s first, then peppers soft, featherlight kisses on either of her cheeks before pressing her lips onto hers. Shenhe’s lips, too, are warm. So is the inside of her mouth, the soft swell of her breasts, pressed against her own. The slight arching of her abdomen to meet Ganyu’s body.
When they break apart, the apartment feels warm. Ganyu would move away from her—albeit reluctantly—so they can both retreat and retire to her bed, but Shenhe keeps her in place, squeezing one last, warm hug before they do so. As they undress each other and prepare for bed, littering each other with sleepy kisses and lingering touches, Ganyu offhandedly tells her how important the documents Shenhe’s been sitting on are. Shenhe petulantly tells her she doesn’t care; she’ll sit on all her papers if it’s what it would take for Ganyu to avoid her desk and rest.
Ganyu doesn’t sleep with her blanket when Shenhe comes over. She never does. Instead, she wraps her arms around Shenhe and feels her silk-soft hair flood her space, Shenhe’s lips pressed to her collarbone, her breath steady on her neck. Ganyu presses a lingering kiss on her forehead, a way to bid her goodnight.
Be it the caves of Mt. Aocang or here in a breezy top-level small apartment in Liyue, it feels warm when they sleep like this. It feels like home.