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Wen Kexing twitched awake: a door had opened down the hallway. Zhou Zishu shifted in his arms, waking too at the approaching footsteps. His hand flexed against Wen Kexing's chest.
At the door there was a meek knock, and then a muffled, "Shifu?"
Zhou Zishu took a long time to answer. At last he cleared his throat, batted a hand out to part the bed curtains so that his voice would carry, and croaked, "What."
"... There's a mouse in my room…"
Zhou Zishu rubbed his face into Wen Kexing's shoulder and groaned. "This is your fault somehow," he muttered, and then he levered himself up creakily.
Wen Kexing turned over underneath him as he climbed out of bed. "Think of it as a bonding experience," he said helpfully, his own voice rough with night air. He wiped his mouth on the back of his knuckles and leaned his head out the gap in the bed curtains to watch Zhou Zishu move in the dark. That person who was so graceful during the day was clumsy now with sleep and stiffness. It was both cute and worrisome in a way that made Wen Kexing want to scoop him up in a quilt and bully him back into bed, and it lasted until Zhou Zishu planted his feet on the floor and arched his back dramatically, twisting his arms behind himself with a vocal sigh and an orchestral cracking of joints. After that his movements were looser, closer to normal.
Zhou Zishu ignored Wen Kexing's gaze on him, took an outer robe from where it had been laid over a chair, and left their room on silent sock feet. He exchanged a few words with Chengling as they drifted back down the hall — but quietly, as if there were someone else in Long Que's ghostly manor to wake.
Wen Kexing sighed and settled back into bed, neatening the quilt where it was loose around the absence of Zhou Zishu's body. It was already colder without him. When he focused, he could hear their voices still several rooms away; and the creak of the floorboards under their feet, and of the building settling around them; the soft static sound of wet snow falling outside, and below it all the tiny rhythmic click of Longyuan gears: in the walls, in the floorboards, layer upon layer, down and down.
Wen Kexing sat up, feeling dizzied and wide awake. And why should Zhou Zishu have all the fun? Wen Kexing was great at catching mice.
He found them in Chengling's room, where Zhou Zishu had just lit the last brazier for light. It was Wen Kexing's outer robe he had taken from the chair; he wore it draped over his shoulders like a cloak. Wen Kexing laid the quilt from their bed over his shoulders too.
"Oh good, everyone's up," Zhou Zishu sighed, tucking his hands into his sleeves. "Xiaozi, where was the mouse when you saw it?"
"Umm," said Chengling, who was perched like a baby bird on the edge of his bed. "It's under a vase. I caught it…"
The three of them were quiet as they digested this information. Then Zhou Zishu reached out and yanked Chengling's ear and cried, "Then what did you need ME for??"
"Sorry Shifu!!" Chengling wailed. "But what do I do with it!!"
"What do you think you do with it?" Zhou Zishu demanded. "You really need me to kill a mouse for you?"
"No!" Chengling said, and then, morosely, "Can't we just put it outside?"
"And have it come back in before you could burn a stick of incense? No, this place is wretched enough without an active rodent problem."
"But," said Chengling, and looked plaintively at Zhou Zishu before wising up to look plaintively at Wen Kexing instead. "Wen-shushu…"
"Ah? Me?" said Wen Kexing. "Sure, give it here. I can snap its neck so quickly it won't even know it's died."
"But… I don't… want… to kill it…" Chengling said, his voice trailing off sadly.
Zhou Zishu pinched the bridge of his nose and sat down gingerly next to Chengling. "Look," he said. "I know it's not fun. But we kill mice so that they don't make more mice."
"I know," said Chengling, "and I don't want more mice either, but… it's just the one. And it hasn't done anything wrong other than be a mouse. And it's just little and scared."
Zhou Zishu sighed and looked at Chengling's pathetic little face, and then he looked up to meet Wen Kexing's gaze, and Wen Kexing knew they had lost.
"Fine," said Chengling's wretched shifu, the coldhearted scheming mastermind of the Emperor's Tianchuang. "Go get a jar from the kitchen. And some twine, and some rags, and a couple grains of rice. No more than ten! It shouldn't over-eat!"
"Yes shifu!" Chengling scampered away to the kitchen before Zhou Zishu could change his mind.
Wen Kexing sat down close to Zhou Zishu and wrapped his arm around him to hold him close. "A-Xu ah," he chastised. "Your soft heart will really get you into trouble someday."
Zhou Zishu just sighed again and titled his head into Wen Kexing's shoulder. The gesture was so unexpected and sweet — so unexpectedly sweet — that Wen Kexing was gripped by a vicious tenderness, and he leaned down to press a kiss to the crown of Zhou Zishu's head.
Zhou Zishu lifted his face with a frown. He was always frowning at things he wanted; Wen Kexing's silly husband always wanted quite badly to be kissed, but he was so easily embarrassed that to give him what he wanted was also a punishment. Wen Kexing thought it was better therefore not to kiss him very often — to only kiss him when he wanted Zhou Zishu to squirm — and would have been happy to articulate this to Zhou Zishu except that this kind of knowledge, too, was something Zhou Zishu desperately wanted, and so it would also be a punishment.
He was really being very restrained, he thought, and then he caught that thought and examined it. He, Wen Kexing, restrained! He took Zhou Zishu's narrow jaw in his hand and tipped his face up to kiss him properly after all. Zhou Zishu made a soft surprised sound against him and didn't pull away, one hand drifting up to hook in Wen Kexing's sleeve.
When Wen Kexing broke the kiss, Zhou Zishu murmured against his mouth, "What was that for? I haven't even pissed you off this time."
"You have a little," Wen Kexing admitted.
"Hm," said Zhou Zishu, his eyes narrowing into smug crescents. "Well, get over it."
"Why," Wen Kexing said, relishing the chance to look at his handsome face so close-up. "Don't want the kid to see us kissing?"
Zhou Zishu's gaze dipped obviously to Wen Kexing's mouth. "You know," he started, and then Chengling's approaching footsteps became audible and the two of them snapped away from each other: Wen Kexing did not, in fact, particularly want the kid to see them kissing. But he kept Zhou Zishu tucked firmly under his arm. That person got cold so easily.
Chengling trotted into the room then, and Wen Kexing directed him through transferring the mouse from beneath the upturned vase into the newly cozy jar with its mouse-sized rice meal. Chengling dipped the corner of a rag into some water so that the mouse could drink, and secured a second rag over the mouth of the jar with twine so that it could breathe but not escape.
"We'll bring it on a walk tomorrow," Zhou Zishu said. "Set it free far from the manor."
"Okay Shifu," said Chengling, his puppy eyes huge with gratitude. "Thank you Shifu."
Zhou Zishu grunted. "Go back to bed," he said. "Don't bother us any more tonight. Come on, Lao Wen," he added, standing, and Wen Kexing, who was really just happy to be an us, rose and trotted obediently after him in silence.
They didn't bother lighting the braziers in their room; they both knew their way around in the dark well enough. Zhou Zishu allowed Wen Kexing to pull the quilt from his shoulders, shrugged out of his outer robe and draped it back over the chair, then hesitated. "I might as well start my day," he said. "I won't get back to sleep anyway."
"No," said Wen Kexing before he could consider it. "Come to bed. A-Xu."
Zhou Zishu's expression was lost in the dark, but his embarrassment was audible in his voice when he complained, "Don't say it like that."
"Come to bed," Wen Kexing repeated. "You don't have to sleep, but stay with me. I'll keep you warm. How can I sleep without you?"
"Comfortably," Zhou Zishu said pointedly. "Without any of your limbs falling asleep underneath me."
"A price I'm willing to pay," Wen Kexing said, and caught his hand. "Stay up and brood if you like, but let me be with you while you do."
Zhou Zishu was silent. He pulled himself free of Wen Kexing's hands and turned away. But it was to approach the daybed and collect a pair of cushions, which he brought to their curtained bed and propped against the headboard. "Fine," he said, and disappeared behind the curtains. "Don't bother me."
Wen Kexing crawled in after him at once. Under the curtains their bed was well and truly dark, and so he waited until Zhou Zishu stopped moving before feeling out where his body was. He was reclined in the center of the bed with his legs outstretched before him, his back against the pillows. Wen Kexing flipped back the quilt, nudged his legs apart, and lay between them. He wedged his arms underneath and around Zhou Zishu's waist, nuzzled his head against Zhou Zishu's tensed belly, and said, "All right. I won't bother you."
"You — !" Zhou Zishu started, but when Wen Kexing only hugged him tighter without further provocation, he relaxed. Wen Kexing closed his eyes and set his ear to Zhou Zishu's belly to listen to the gurgling sounds of his living body. After a moment a hand appeared to idly pet his hair, which was far more than he could have asked for.
Wen Kexing had almost fallen asleep again when Zhou Zishu said quietly, "I should have just killed it. Or had him kill it."
"Probably," Wen Kexing agreed with his eyes closed.
"What kind of education am I giving him? Catching mice in jars… It's ridiculous. That's no way to learn discipline."
Wen Kexing rubbed his mouth against Zhou Zishu's shirt, where he realized he had begun to drool. "Quite true," he mumbled. "No grown-ups ever let me do ridiculous things like put mice in jars, and look how I've turned out."
Zhou Zishu was silent for a long time after that. Eventually Wen Kexing offered, "If you want I can come with you and kill it while he's not looking."
Zhou Zishu squirmed around beneath him until he had wriggled his way down the bed to lie fully underneath Wen Kexing, bringing their faces close together. "That won't be necessary," he said, and wrapped his arms around Wen Kexing's chest in a crushing embrace. "Go to sleep. We have to go be frivolous tomorrow."
Wen Kexing held him close and obeyed at once.
*
In the morning they ate, then bundled up for the cold. Then they took a long walk. Chengling looked terribly silly in his layers and layers, carrying a jar to the middle of nowhere with utmost care, and between his silliness and the lingering pleasure of having woken up still fully wrapped around Zhou Zishu, Wen Kexing was in a tremendously cheerful mood. The sun was as high in the early spring sky as it was going to get when Zhou Zishu stopped and decided, apparently at random, "Here is fine."
Chengling crouched down in the snow, untied the string holding the lid on the jar, and released the fabled mouse. It sat shivering on the edge of the jar for several rapid mouse heartbeats, then scrambled away into the snowy undergrowth.
"Will it be okay?" Chengling asked them.
"Sure," said Wen Kexing, who had no idea.
"It's a mouse. It'll be fine," said Zhou Zishu. He was bundled up almost as much as Chengling, although he didn't look quite so silly. His face was pale; his ears and nose were pink. "Hey, little dummy, here's a challenge for you." Chengling looked up eagerly. "We'll give you a head start. Follow our tracks back to the manor. If we catch up to you before you reach the gate, you'll do thirty laps around the manor."
"How big of a head start?" Chengling asked.
"Who's to say," said Zhou Zishu, his mouth curving with mischief. "Better start running, kid."
Chengling leapt up and bowed and squawked, "Yes Shifu!", and scampered away, his boots throwing up clumps of snow as he left.
Zhou Zishu turned to Wen Kexing and crossed his arms. "I'm tired. Let's give him an easy win today and not hurry home." Wen Kexing beamed at him. Zhou Zishu continued, "From now on he's your disciple once we've gone to bed."
Wen Kexing tipped his head back and laughed and laughed. "Fine," he said. "Fine, all right, you tyrant."