Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Tianzhen?” Pangzi calls out as he arrives home. 

No answer. 

He throws his keys in the bowl near the door and toes off his shoes to replace them with his slippers. Then he calls out again. 

The lights are on everywhere, yet Wu Xie is nowhere to be found. Typical. He switches off the lights as he makes his way through wushanju. 

“Tianzhen, are you home?” 

Still, no answer. Maybe he went out and forgot to tell Pangzi. That happens often enough. Sometimes Pangzi wonders if he should start calling him scatterbrain, but madaha doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as Tianzhen.

He calls out one last time. Immediately after, someone pads down the hallway heavily, walking straight into Pangzi’s side. 

Some kind of liquid spills on Pangzi’s feet as arms wrap around him.

“Pangzi,” Wu Xie slurs as he presses his face into Pangzi’s arm, “Pangzi, you’re finally home. I missed you.” 

Beer. Wu Xie spilled beer on him. Looking at the state of him, the beer he’s currently holding definitely isn’t his first of the night.

Pangzi wrenches his arms out of Wu Xie’s hold, spilling more beer in the process. He wraps an arm around Wu Xie’s waist before he carefully takes the bottle out of Wu Xie’s hands with the other one and places it on the nearest surface. 

“I was only gone for a few hours, Tianzhen, did you really miss me this much?” 

Wu Xie presses himself closer to him. He presses his face into Pangzi’s chest, squeezing him as tight as he can get. Then he nods.

“I had nobody to drink with,” Wu Xie murmurs. Then he holds up the hand he was holding the beer with earlier, slightly confused when he finds it empty. He pulls up his other hand, finding it empty too. He frowns at Pangzi before shrugging and wrapping his arms around Pangzi again. 

He pats Pangzi’s chest to get his attention as he says, “Pangzi, Wang Pangzi. My best friend. My best friend, Wang Pangzi.” He presses his face against Pangzi’s chest and takes a deep breath. When he looks up again, his eyes are wet. “Do you know you’re the only one who has never left my side?”

“Tianzhen,” Pangzi tries to stop him. He can already feel his throat go tight as he swallows his tears away.

Wu Xie just shakes his head and continues, “You always support everything I do. You never gave up on me, never left, even when…” 

He doesn’t have to say it, Pangzi knows exactly what Wu Xie means. They never talked about it, but he knows Wu Xie is sorry for the things he said and that he didn’t mean it. 

“You are the most important person in my life,” Wu Xie confesses, “you can’t ever leave me.” 

He won’t. There’s no way he will ever leave Wu Xie’s side, the only thing strong enough to tear Pangzi away from him is death. As long as Wu Xie will have him, he will accompany him. 

“I won’t, ever,” Pangzi promises , like he promised him a decade ago.

“Prove it,” Wu Xie says, as if Pangzi hasn’t proven it over and over again. “Marry me.” 

Oh, we’re here again. Pangzi chuckles warmly as he recalls a similar moment ten years ago. A drunk Wu Xie confessing his love to him, proposing to him on the spot. 

“I already have, Tianzhen.” 

He pushes Wu Xie’s fringe out of his eyes, uncovering a confused gaze.

Wu Xie whines as Pangzi lets go of him for a moment to reach for his wallet. He pulls out a crumpled, dirtied napkin with some words scribbled onto it. 

“Look.” 

He shows Wu Xie the words on the napkin. He shows him the promises he made a decade ago, to stay by his side, to love him like a husband loves his wife, to take care of him and support him. Most importantly, the promise to legally marry Wu Xie as soon as it is possible for them, with at the bottom both their signatures. 

Wu Xie takes the napkin out of Pangzi’s hands carefully as he reads it over and over again. He sniffs loudly as a few tears roll down his cheek. 

Of course he doesn’t remember. Back then Wu Xie was just as drunk as he is today. That explains why Wu Xie always brushed it aside when Pangzi brought it up. But that’s all right, when they make it official some day, Wu Xie will remember.

“Did I do as I promised back then?” Pangzi asks carefully. 

Wu Xie nods as he wipes away his tears and puts the napkin aside carefully. He hugs Pangzi tightly again as he keeps nodding. 

When he pulls away, he smiles at Pangzi and decides, “We should renew our vows.”

Pangzi chuckles warmly as he nods. “You’re right, Tianzhen, we should.” 

The way Wu Xie smiles at him then and there brings him back to the old days. To when he still really was just a naive boy. 

Pangzi can’t help himself, he brushes the hair that had already fallen back into Wu Xie’s eyes aside once again and presses a kiss to his forehead. 

When he looks down at Wu Xie again, he falls in love with him all over again. He’s staring up at him, cheeks warm and eyes bright and warm. 

The stars in Wu Xie’s eyes put even the most beautiful night sky to shame. Pangzi praises himself lucky every single day that he gets to stare into them whenever he wants.

“Sit down, Tianzhen, I’ll go get us a proper piece of paper and a pen,” he whispers.

Neither of them moves. Pangzi traces his thumb over Wu Xie’s face, over his cheekbones, down to the curve of his bottom lip. He resists the urge to kiss him again, even though it’s difficult when Wu Xie tilts his face further up, mouth slightly falling open. 

“Let’s get married again, Tianzhen.” 

Pangzi helps him to the couch, ignoring his pout as he leaves him there to grab a sheet of paper and a pen. 

The paper gets snatched out of his hands as soon as it’s within Wu Xie’s reach, who sloppily tears it in half and hands one half of the paper to Pangzi. 

“Write one for me, I write yours,” Wu Xie says and eagerly starts scribbling onto his paper. His handwriting is even more illegible than usual and the lines are wonky, but Pangzi doesn’t doubt his words are genuine and straight from the heart, even in this state. 

As his chest fills with warmth, Pangzi starts writing on his own piece of paper. His wishes are simple but all he ever wants from this. To be by Wu Xie’s side, to take care of him for the rest of their lives. 

When he looks up, he finds Wu Xie asleep on the paper, his pen still trailing over the paper in memory of the words he was writing. 

Pangzi writes his name on his own paper and gently takes Wu Xie’s from where it’s trapped under his cheek and threatening to be drooled on. He writes his name on that one too and then pulls out his seal. He presses a stamp on both papers without even reading what Wu Xie wrote. Whatever he wants, Pangzi will give it to him.

When Pangzi wakes up the next morning, Wu Xie is already out and about. The bed Pangzi tucked him into last night long cold already. 

The two sheets of paper and the napkin are still on the coffee table. The only thing different from last night is that there are now two red stamps decorating each of them. One reading Wang, the other Wu.