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“So, no question for the illustrious Tianquan?” Ningguang leans lazily against the balcony of her newly rebuilt Jade Chamber. Beidou stands next to her with her arms crossed over the railing. They’re not looking at each other- Ningguang facing the Jade Chamber and Beidou the sea beyond Liyue Harbor, but there’s enough of each other in the air that they don’t have to. The smell of the sea that clings to Beidou, the ghostly pale hair that floats in the light air around Ningguang.
“Nah,” Beidou says. She hesitates for a moment and Ningguang notices, somehow. Maybe a thrum in the air, a flex in Beidou’s shoulder- for surely that’s all of her that Ningguang can see now. Perhaps they just know each other so well by now that Ningguang can feel it as deeply as she would her own minute equivocations.
“My offer still stands.” There’s something of a smile in her voice. Beidou can see it in her mind's eye, beyond the clouds and waves on the coast. “The question promised was not one that needed to be presented in front of the other winners.”
There are many questions Beidou would like to ask, in truth. The decision not to ask any earlier had been primarily one of resignation, the result of more than a few nights tossing and turning in contemplation. Now that the choice is brought up again the avalanche of arguments are thrown into the air again. Ask about the markets, because as secure as you are there are dozens who come to you with questions you aren’t qualified to answer. Ask about her childhood- you know she wants to tell you but won’t without being pushed to. Ask her what happened to your mother and father, if the records even exist from back then. Ask her about the traveler, about Rex Lapis, about the shadow on the Adepti, about the Fatui. And, shamefully above all the rest:
Ask her if she could ever want-
Beidou chuckles. A confession pried open in this way is the coward's way out, and they both know it. It would be cowardly if that were Ningguang’s intent in offering this favor and cowardly if Beidou took it. After the quarter century they have spent not saying the words, a Wonder Core and a new palace cannot be the thing to push aside the curtain.
Ningguang taps her finger against the stem of her pipe, a movement Beidou can see only in the flex of her bicep and the way the smell of smoke gets barely more perceptible around them. “Come on, Captain,” she says, “I haven’t got all day.”
Beidou raises her eyebrow, knowing Ningguang won’t be able to see it. “How are you making time for this, anyway? With the Tianquan’s busy schedule, there’s no way you ought to have the leisure to hum and haw with a pirate.”
“I always make time for you.” The words hang in the air even though Ningguang doesn’t even pause after saying them. “You are right, I had taken the day off to celebrate the satisfaction of a construction project well pulled off. Still, while my patience is not as thin as it was in our youth and I don’t have any pressing engagements in the near future, I would appreciate if you spit it out.” She pauses to evaluate her next words. The thought she puts into it crawls up Beidou’s spine and makes her tense. “I know you’ve thought something up. Deliberated on it for hours, most likely.”
The tension that suddenly surrounds them is not just in Beidou’s stressed muscles. It’s in the air, coating Ningguang’s words. It’s in the place where her dress runs up her thighs, where the golden detail curls under her breasts, and in all the other tiny details that Beidou can’t see but know all the same.
Beidou swallows. “What makes you say that?”
“I did the same thing. Pondered for hours what you would ask. I thought up answers to everything I thought you might say.” Ningguang laughs a little. The self deprecation in it is something no one but Beidou is allowed to hear. “We are similar enough, Beidou.”
Another stray breeze- one that got separated from its friends and drifted up here, far above the tree line- flutters Ningguang’s hair into the corners of Beidou’s vision.
Beidou wants to hold her.
“Do you have a phonograph in this shiny new palace of yours?” Beidou blurts. Well, it certainly doesn’t sound like she blurts it. Her voice is never anything but steady and rough, no matter how much her own words come as a surprise to her.
It’s a thought she’s had… far too long, one borne of nostalgia for when they were much younger and would dance through the streets on festival nights, trying to copy the steps of the performers. That was before they knew much of anything. Beidou isn’t a half bad dancer now and Ningguang’s a beautiful one, all smooth steps and instinctive moves. Beidou wants to feel that the way you feel dancing, buried so deep in your muscles it’s impossible to forget.
She hadn’t found the gall to bring it up before the Jade Palace fell the last time, and then there was nowhere to ask Ningguang to. Certainly not Beidou’s tiny, tiny apartment. When she’d heard the Jade Palace was going to be rebuilt of course it occurred to her that they could finally dance, but she’d hadn’t planned on bringing it up so soon.
“Is that your one question?” There’s an element of surprise in Ningguang’s voice, too. It dispels all of the heaviness that had settled between them before.
“Depends on your answer.” Beidou volleys back.
Ningguang regains her footing almost immediately. “Ah, I’m not sure that’s entirely within the rules, but I will certainly answer this. Yes, I do. Imported from Fontaine.”
Beidou leans back from the balcony and rubs her hands together. “Alright. Then, do you have-”
“Ah, ah, ah!” Ningguang’s right in front of Beidou now, straightening and holding up a finger in chiding. “Only one question per victor. You will just have to do me another favor, I suppose.” The crows' feet at the corners of her eyes crinkle in amusement. Ningguang loves games.
Beidou supposes she enjoys playing along just as much.
“Haven’t I done enough for you already?” Beidou reaches forward- just a few inches, they’re already so close together- to caress the earrings Ningguang’s wearing, smuggled in from Sumeru at half the price they’d be on the harbor. She lets her hand linger there a bit longer than she needs to make her point before returning it to where it braces her weight against the balcony.
Ningguang’s eyebrow quirks. “Haven’t I answered enough of your questions already?”
Never, Beidou thinks. I could listen to you hand out answers for days. Instead she says, “fine. What’s this favor, Lady Ningguang?”
"Dance with me, Captain Beidou."
Baixiao accepts Ningguang’s requests (said cursorily and too quietly for Beidou to hear) with a curt nod and disappears into one of the Jade Chamber’s endless closets. Beidou tucks her hands into the pockets of her loose pants and looks around.
Every shelf seems to glitter with untold treasures, although that’s really probably nothing more than emotional memory of the priceless masterpieces the old Jade Chamber held. Ningguang’s collection will take time to rebuild. Warm light streams through the window and alights on dust.
Time seems frozen for a moment, as Ningguang gazes at Beidou and Beidou looks at all the pieces of Ningguang, rebuilt into a home.
Finally Baixiao returns with a thin, shiny record. It looks like a dragon scale to Beidou, covered in a thousand miniscule pits and bumps. The silence in Ningguang’s study persists as she carefully lifts the needle of the phonograph, fits the record into its place, and lets it play. She nods to Ningguang and leaves the room as silently as she entered it.
The soft noise of a harp fills the room.
Beidou turns to Ningguang and lets out an awkward chuckle that turns into a sigh halfway through. “So, are we doing this?”
Ningguang’s face curves into a smile and she steps forward. “Do you lead when you dance, Captain Beidou?
“I lead. Usually. I’m an amicable woman, though, so whatever fits your mood better.” She stretches, one arm high above her head and the other bent to hold it at the elbow. Ningguang eyes the curve of her tricep and Beidou lets her, casting her gaze up to the carved intricacies of the ceiling tiles.
“Mmm,” Ningguang says, “I think I will lead. I doubt you know this dance well. In fact, I know you don’t, which is why I chose it.”
“Uh-huh?” Beidou lets her arms drop and moves closer, holds her hands in a ghostly imitation of dance posture. Ningguang steps into them easily and fits her hand onto Beidou’s waist. Oh, she is warm, skin bouncing with psychosomatic electricity wherever Beidou touches her. Her shoulder is soft and smooth and the drapery of her dress static-sticks to Beidou’s thighs.
“Yes.” The music wraps around them like the ocean. Ningguang starts to move, taking small, purposeful steps. Beidou follows. The dance is familiar in a faraway sense, enough that she can keep up, but Ningguang is right that she doesn’t know it well. “This may come as a shock, Captain, but I enjoy having the upper hand with you.” She chuckles.
Lyrics bleed into the orchestration, something soft and vague about dust and lost loves. Ningguang’s eyes flutter closed.
They dance for a few moments before Beidou responds. “You’ve got to realize that you always do.”
“Hm?”
“Have the upper hand.” Beidou can smell Ningguang this close, but she can’t name the scent. “I do your goddamn errands, Lady Ningguang, you have me in the palm of your hand.”
Ningguang laughs a little, more of a startled exhalation than anything else. “It doesn’t feel that way,” she murmurs, head tilted up to look into Beidou through her eyelashes. Behind them her eyes are clear gray and calculating.
Beidou swallows. “You could ask anything of me, Ningguang,” she says softly. It’s an admission of affection, yes, but also feels like swearing fealty- putting her pride at the other woman’s feet in hope that she’ll press a sword to her shoulder, not push her to the ground with a heel. It’s nothing new, either, which is the only reason Beidou feels comfortable voicing it aloud. If Ningguang was going to lord Beidou’s devoted tendencies above her she likely would have started a decade ago.
“Anything?” Ningguang’s voice is rough at the edges, which would make Beidou flush if she were a lesser woman. Instead she shrugs as best she can mid-dance.
“Probably. Maybe I’d draw the line somewhere, but it’d likely be further along than either of us would appreciate.”
Ningguang gazes at her for a half dozen steps. Beidou gazes back. Neither of them breathe, but they keep spinning around each other, footsteps coming without a conscious thought, and the harp keeps serenading.
Beidou doesn’t look at Ningguang’s mouth. She’s had decades to practice not gazing at Ningguang’s mouth. There’s something electric in her eyes, anyway, that makes them far more fascinating.
Maybe time stops again and they are the only ones that move, just them and the phonograph in the corner. Ningguang’s chest rises and falls against Beidou’s.
She knows, with the perfect clarity of having lived through a thousand of these moments but being too scared to see what’s on the other side, that she’ll turn this dance over and around in her mind for weeks, wondering where she could have moved, what she could have done.
Finally Ningguang coughs and glances up at the ceiling. “Yes, well, I’ll try not to test you too much.” A beat. “Ah, did you see that debacle at the docks this morning? I’ve been getting reports about it all day and for the life of me cannot put together the drivel these millelith are reporting.”
Beidou blinks down at her. Ningguang wordlessly pleads with her to move on. “Yeah, that shit,” she agrees, pulling Ningguang closer and taking a step, following her sweeping motion across the office floor, “I can tell you whatever you want to know. Shoot.” It’s an amusing mess, anyway, which is the only reason Beidou doesn’t mind Ningguang diverting into work.
They volley back and forth for a few turns, probing questions about the nature of the accident and teasing ones about its significance to Ningguang. Finally Ningguang sighs, sated.
“Thank you, captain.”
“It’s nothing. Xinyan was so hyped about the chaos she just about chewed my ear off at lunch, I’m glad it came in handy.”
The rest of the waltz passes in spinning steps and Ningguang’s laughter. When the record ends with the soft hiss of the needle against nothingness, they step apart. Beidou forgets to ask her second question and Ningguang forgets to offer it again.
It wasn’t going to be important, anyway, and if it were- if, somewhere in their perpetual dance one of them managed to push the other into the question underneath the skin of their friendship- there’s always another opportunity to ask it. They’ve worked for so long to have this kind of time to squander, and the satisfaction of wasting it together dulls the deep ache Beidou knows is tying them together.
Still, even dulled, it hurts.