Work Text:
Zhou Zishu opened the door and caught a knife between his fingers. It had been hurled through the bed curtains at his head, with excellent precision and impressive force. A lesser man would have been pinned through the eye to the doorframe. "Lao Wen," he complained, "is that any way to treat your husband?"
"Oh," came Wen Kexing's voice. It was reedy and weak. "Sorry."
Zhou Zishu set his tray down on the low table and ducked into the bed curtains to perch on the side of the mattress, looking down at him. Wen Kexing looked like shit. "It happens," he said, feeling magnanimous. He reached down to take Wen Kexing's hand and tucked the knife back into his sleeve. "You've been unconscious for two days. You think you can take solid food?"
Wen Kexing grunted noncommittally. "Maybe. 'm thirsty."
"I bet." Zhou Zishu stood, letting the curtains fall shut behind him, and poured hot water from the teapot into an earthenware cup. Unconscious, Wen Kexing was not a very pliable patient, refusing water even when it was kissed into his mouth. It had been annoying; Zhou Zishu was relieved that he would be easier now. He set the cup on the floor by the bed and ducked back in. "Hey. Sit up."
Wen Kexing looked up at him with bleary eyes. "Don't know if that's an option at the moment, A-Xu."
Zhou Zishu sighed and patted his cheek. "Aren't you supposed to be the fearsome Ghost Valley Master? Can't even sit up. Six-month-old babies have you beat. Lift your head at least."
Wen Kexing frowned, but made an effort to lift his head. Zhou Zishu slipped a hand under his skull to support its weight and tipped the water into his mouth. When Wen Kexing had finished, Zhou Zishu placed the cup on the bed beside him and kissed him. He hadn't meant it to be but it became an echo of that kiss under Long Que's puppet manor: surprising and soft; close-mouthed; but it was Wen Kexing, now, who was still and supine, too injured to resist or reciprocate. Wen Kexing made a wounded sound when Zhou Zishu pulled away. He whispered, "My breath is foul."
"I can't smell it anyway," said Zhou Zishu, straightening up again. "Try to eat."
"Mn. You'll have to feed me. Like a little baby bird."
"Right. And what bird are you, hm?"
"Mm." Wen Kexing blinked his dark eyes. "An owl."
"Don't get too self-important. You're a cuckoo at worst. Come here, you pest." He lifted Wen Kexing's head again, crowding close to support the weight of Wen Kexing's shoulders with his forearm. Wen Kexing made a sweet sound and nuzzled into the crook of his neck.
"At last — an embrace from my A-Xu… Tell me —," and then he gasped sharply, the fingers of his good hand coming up to scrabble against Zhou Zishu's shoulder. "Fuck! A-Xu, my ribs are broken."
"I know," said Zhou Zishu, who was busy wedging a pillow behind Wen Kexing's back. "Be careful, hm? Idiot. I sewed up your shoulder, but there's not much I can do for your ribs. Just don't wriggle around."
"But I like to wriggle," Wen Kexing complained. "A-Xu, kiss me again."
"Who kissed you?" Zhou Zishu said. "You're hallucinating. Have some soup." He eased Wen Kexing back down against the pillow and turned to fetch the tray. The broth was a deep, attractive shade of yellow, with sweet goji berries bobbing through the pools of oil at the surface. Ginger and salt ham and shredded chicken. Zhou Zishu fed him a spoonful at a time and watched the color return to his cheeks.
"Enough," Wen Kexing creaked, when the bowl was mostly dregs. "No more. Thank you."
"Mn." Zhou Zishu set the bowl and spoon on the floor, then lifted his legs up to sit crosslegged on the bed. "Let me know if you think you need to vomit. But also try not to vomit, it'll fuck your ribs up."
Wen Kexing grunted in agreement. "I won't vomit. 'm great at keeping things down."
"I know you are," Zhou Zishu sighed, sliding down sideways to lie next to him. A life spent in Ghost Valley. No restaurants down there, probably. Fortunately he was Zhou Zishu's person now, and Zhou Zishu only wanted to eat good food prepared by someone other than himself, so Wen Kexing would only ever eat well too. He looked up at Wen Kexing and found him already looking down to meet his gaze.
"A-Xu," he whispered, "I was saying — tell me how much you missed me. I missed you terribly. I kept painting you. They must have thought…"
"What, that you'd gone mad?"
"That I was finally sane."
"Mn." Zhou Zishu closed his eyes, turned his face to nudge against Wen Kexing's uninjured arm. "I didn't paint you."
"My cruel husband didn't miss me at all," Wen Kexing interpreted.
"No. Just slept alone in my cold bed and cursed you," Zhou Zishu said. "You weren't even around to wear me out all day. I've been sleeping like shit. You bastard, I really got used to you."
"Oh," said Wen Kexing.
"Yeah," Zhou Zishu agreed. "So don't fucking die on me."
"Okay," Wen Kexing said weakly.
"Okay," Zhou Zishu said, and then was silent. His mouth was hot. It wasn't like Wen Kexing was dying anyway. He was just wounded, and he was strong and healing fine. Most of the blood hadn't even turned out to be his. But only a little of a lot of blood was still a lot of blood.
When he looked up next, Wen Kexing had fallen back asleep.
*
He'd buried Gu Xiang and Cao Weining by himself. Had sewn up Wen Kexing's shoulder and made sure he was stable, then slipped out and returned to Fengya Ridge to find them. He didn't want to take his chances with the sun or the vultures or the ghosts, so they had to get buried right away. It took all afternoon and most of the evening, and when he returned to the inn where he'd left Wen Kexing tucked in and unconscious, the innkeeper had taken one look at him and shrieked a little before recognizing her customer.
"I'd like a bath please," he had said to her, and she'd nodded mutely before scurrying away.
He remembered to make sound on the staircase and in the hallway, and when he opened the door to their room. But in their room he was silent. When Wen Kexing was awake, he did not need Zhou Zishu to make noise to know he was there; but Wen Kexing was not awake anyway. Zhou Zishu had stood in the center of the room like a ghost, covered in grave dirt and smeared with blood and worse fluids, until there was a knock at the door and his bath arrived.
When he was clean again he hadn't even bothered to get dressed. Just slipped into bed beside Wen Kexing's quiet body and lay naked next to him, their only point of contact his two fingers at Wen Kexing's wrist.
He didn't sleep.
Gu Xiang, he'd thought, and cast it out into the world. Your ge and I have business in Luoyang, but we'll come back for you. I'll make sure he doesn't carve too much garbage onto your gravestone. And he avenged you, so don't be too hard on him even if he does.
He had tipped his face, then, into Wen Kexing's shoulder. When he breathed in, he couldn't smell him, but the air was warmer where it lay against Wen Kexing's body.
Just let me have him for a while.
*
Eventually Zhou Zishu sat up again and went to eat his own dinner. He left the curtains pulled open around the bed so that he could watch Wen Kexing as he slept, an action which he rationalized as only fair given all the ways Wen Kexing had intruded upon his own sleep. The soup went down easier than anything else had in weeks, despite his lack of taste.
He had stubbornly not considered it — at Fengya, and before. What he would do if he were too late — if Wen Kexing said no — if it turned out there wasn't room in the world for them after all. He knew Wen Kexing had some sort of scheme involving hay and oil, if it was Zhou Zishu who died first. That was like him. Fire.
Zhou Zishu was not like that. He was so accustomed to the fact that he would die first that the sudden possibility of Wen Kexing's beating him there was a pin in the soft recesses of his mind, one that he steadily ignored until it became a pearl, made glossy by the vague certainty that Qiye and Da Wu would take Chengling, if he asked. And there was wine to be found anywhere; and what was one more frozen body on Ye Baiyi's lonely mountain peak?
He finished eating, unwrapped himself down to his underclothes, and slipped once more into bed beside Wen Kexing. The curtains closed around them, leaving a sliver of light to pool across the coverlet. It was just enough light to see by. Wen Kexing shifted in his sleep. In a tree outside there was a warbler singing, and they were both going to live.