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Fang Duobing returned to Lotus tower after about a week, with a spring in his step and a song in his heart. He was truly free for the first time in years, and it filled him to the brim with joy and benevolence. Even the thought of having to go back to sharing a bed again couldn’t dampen his mood!
He returned to Lotus Tower without sending any prior notice; this way, Li Lianhua wouldn’t get the excuse of his return to greet him with yet another horrible experiment he called food. Besides, he would catch them off-guard, which was always satisfying. It was a win for everyone!
As he approached the clearing in which they’d parked, Huli Jing came bounding to his feet, tongue lolling and barking loudly. “I missed you too!” Fang Duobing told her, petting her thoroughly. Li Lianhua called it violent, but Huli Jing loved it and that’s all that mattered. “Did those two look after you well without me?” he asked her, rubbing her belly, and got another bunch of yaps.
A sudden sound startled him to his feet. It was from the house, and it sounded like a vessel had shattered on the floor or something. Before he could go and check, though, Di Feisheng materialised at the door.
“You’re back,” he noted, face utterly neutral.
“What did you break?” he asked A-Fei. Something felt… off about him. Was his hair usually this messy? It looked a bit askew.
A-Fei smiled, raising a brow. “Why do you think I broke it?”
Just on cue, there was a shuffling noise and Li Lianhua appeared too. “Ah, Xiaobao, you’re back. How did it go?”
Fang Duobing was feeling too good right now to bother with A-Fei’s rudeness, anyway. “The marriage is off, and I am a free man of the Jianghu now!” he announced smugly, coming up the stairs. “The King seemed quite relieved, and I parted on good terms with the Princess too-”
He stopped short on the second step from the top and blinked. “Li Lianhua, your robe is inside out.”
Li Lianhua’s smile dropped as he looked down at himself. A-Fei snickered. Li Lianhua shot him a look and waved it away with another (suspicious) smile. “It doesn’t matter. Good job freeing yourself, I’ll make us something special for lunch.”
“There’s really no need to, don’t bother,” Fang Duobing pleaded. “I ate too many special dishes at home, my stomach can’t take it.”
“You’re young and healthy, it’s nothing,” Li Lianhua said before vanishing in the direction of the kitchen. Fang Duobing shot Di Feisheng an imploring look, and only got an uninterested shrug in return.
“Useless,” he hissed, and ran in to avert the horrors.
~~~
Fang Duobing proved unsuccessful at averting anything. Li Xiangyi (it felt weird to think of him like that when he was pottering about the place with his sleeves rolled up, stirring and chopping things purposefully) had recovered to full strength and Fang Duobing was, alas, rendered helpless.
He cursed his own lack of foresight; why hadn’t he gotten himself a meal or two packed from the last village? It was too far away now. All he could do was to refuse to participate in the preparation. But that too was no hindrance, especially when Lao Di decided to be helpful to Li Lianhua. Would he really endure anything to make Fang Duobing suffer?
So Fang Duobing left them to it. He washed up, went up to unpack his stuff, and then decided to go sit downstairs after all. As he walked from the stairs to the door, he stopped at the sight of them, one bustling about the kitchen and giving orders and the other carrying them out. Li Xiangyi and Di Feisheng, Li Lianhua and A-Fei, in the kitchen, cooking.
There was a time when he’d wondered if getting to live a carefree life with Li Lianhua was a hopeless dream. He had never really seen Di Feisheng in those dreams he had clung to, but once everything fell into place, A-Fei simply stayed and before they knew it he was just as much a part of Lotus Tower as Li Lianhua or Huli Jing. Fang Duobing’s heart settled in his chest with a warm, content sigh at the sight.
Li Lianhua pointed to some seasoning, and A-Fei seemed to have some opinions about it. (He had quite a discerning palate these days, his sense of taste truly was improving). He too had limits, it seemed. Small mercies.
“Just hand it over. I didn’t ask for your input, Di Mengzhu.”
“It’ll be fine without this. Go ahead.”
Fang Duobing had no intention of defending A-Fei after his earlier betrayal. Let him reap what he sowed! He stayed just outside the door, watching the bickering.
“Aiyah, will you stop being stubborn?” Li Lianhua said, hand on his hip. “Just-”
“Let it go for now,” A-Fei said. Something about his voice felt weird. Was it this–for the lack of a better word– smooth, just before? “I’ll make it up to you.”
Li Lianhua huffed, frowning. “Do you think I’m that easy?”
A-Fei smirked. “I know you are.” With that, he left Li Lianhua’s side and took the seasoning in question further out of reach. But not before resting a casual hand on Li Lianhua’s waist and squeezing it.
Fang Duobing’s mind zapped into blankness. He could only watch as Di Feisheng returned to Li Lianhua’s side. His hand moved, and Fang Duobing could see its trajectory, making once again for Li Lianhua’s waist –
“I’m back!”
Both of them looked up, Li Lianhua startled and Di Feisheng utterly unfazed, hand still hovering inches away. Fang Duobing burst into the kitchen and squeezed his way between them so he was facing the latter.
Li Lianhua poked him in his back. “What are you doing?”
Fang Duobing beamed around at him. “Just wanted some water,” he said, pouring himself a bowl from the pot on the counter beside them. As Li Lianhua sighed and went back to the cooking, Fang Duobing fixed A-Fei with a pointed look.
He just stared back, unmoved. The audacity! Fang Duobing stepped forward, backing him further away from Li Lianhua because putting himself between them was not enough, there needed to be distance!
At least, that was the intention. All he accomplished was bumping right into A-Fei’s front, because he didn’t budge a single inch. He grabbed Fang Duobing by the arm to stop him from pushing further and frowned down at him. “What are you doing?”
Fang Duobing grit his teeth. “I could ask you the same,” he hissed to A-Fei.
A-Fei frowned, and answered in a totally normal volume audible to the entire house. “I’m helping in the kitchen.”
The nerve! To lie so blatantly! Fang Duobing puffed up and shot back, “I’m also helping, then.”
A-Fei looked him over, head to toe. Fang Duobing was suddenly all too aware of the fingers right around his bicep, the way his minute struggling had pressed their chests together. The few inches A-Fei had on him meant that A-Fei was looking down at him, the swoop of his long lashes even more pronounced at this angle, with his stupid eyebrow raised mockingly. Fang Duobing flushed. He was so mad! How could this one man be so infuriating!?
Before he could explode, Li Lianhua snapped at both of them. “This place isn’t big enough for three grown men to move around, one of you just leave.”
“I’ll stay,”
“I’ll help!”
They both glared at each other.
“I was here first,” Di Feisheng said.
“Exactly! So go and let me do my part now.”
“When have you ever cared about doing your part?”
“You old-”
“Enough!” Li Lianhua stuck a ladle between them and poked them apart. “Are you both ten years old?”
They both sulked like children for a moment. Li Lianhua looked between them and sighed. In the end he turned to Di Feisheng and said, “Just let it be. Why don’t you go.”
Fang Duobing smirked at him in triumph. The smirk soon faded, though, as he noticed a look of quiet understanding pass between the two of them. “Fine.” A-Fei stepped away without protest and grabbed his sword. There was a quiet, smug air to him. “Call me when it’s done, I’ll go train.”
Li Lianhua turned to Fang Duobing and shoved the ladle into his hand. “Stir and make sure it has no lumps.” And then he triumphantly snatched the seasoning A-Fei had been keeping out of his reach and added a generous amount to whatever he was making. Even as Fang Duobing stirred in an A-Fei-free kitchen, he increasingly felt like he hadn’t won after all.
~~~
The only upside of the whole kitchen incident was that Fang Duobing was too worked-up to taste how bad lunch was. He just found himself waiting for the day to just end as soon as possible, so he could let the knot of unpleasantness work itself out of his chest with sleep.
Sleeping always made things better, like his mother said. It was especially true at Lotus Tower. There were still only two beds, and Li Lianhua, as the one who had lived here the longest, had the privilege of a whole bed to himself. So Fang Duobing and A-Fei had spent years sharing a bed now. It wasn’t a big one either.
Looking at A-Fei shovelling rice into his mouth across the table, Fang Duobing thought, strangely enough, that he would still feel better once he went to sleep beside him. The warmth of another person beside him was rather comforting. Habit had such a way of turning into comfort.
The day slogged on, but came to its inevitable end. Once dinner was cleared away, Fang Duobing poked A-Fei in the shoulder. “Come on, let's head up.”
At his words, the air seemed so still inside Lotus tower. Di Feisheng turned to look at Li Lianhua, who was in the process of shedding his belt and outer robes for bed.
“Ah, Xiaobao,” he said, busily draping the robes over the nearby stand. “A-Fei will sleep here, the upstairs bed is all yours.”
The words sank into him at a snail’s pace, and settled low in his stomach. “Why?” he demanded. “Nothing changed for so long. What’s happened now?”
There was a moment where both of them looked at him, and then at each other, an air of confusion between them. Li Lianhua finally shook his head and said, “You also live here now, you too should get to enjoy a whole bed to yourself sometimes, right?”
Fang Duobing looked to A-Fei, who was suddenly all too interested in staring out of the window with a mild frown.
“How come A-Fei isn’t hogging the bed upstairs? I can sleep downstairs too. If it's about fairness, we can take turns, right?”
Li Lianhua stared at that for a second before trailing into a nervous chuckle. “Right, that’s right. But…”
“I want to sleep here with Li Xiangyi, and he wants to sleep with me,” A-Fei said, and the words simply punched the air right out of Fang Duobing’s lungs.
He gaped between the both of them like a goldfish, before finally finding some words. He turned to Li Lianhua and pointed at Di Feisheng. “You- You’re allowing this?”
Li Lianhua tilted his head with a wry look. “You think he can hog my bed without me letting him?”
Fang Duobing was once again left with nothing to do but gape at them. He felt like he should say something, but his ears felt like they were ringing. In the end he simply nodded and went up the stairs alone. Soft as the sound was, he heard the door to the downstairs close behind him.
He pulled off his shoes and his robes and flopped down on the bed, staring at the crisscrossing wooden beams overhead. A-Fei, sharing a bed with Li Lianhua!? Just the thought felt wrong!
How would they even sleep? For two men to fit in one of these small beds, they had to hold each other. A-Fei always lay on his back, and Fang Duobing sprawled out half on top of him. But they always woke up with Fang Duobing curled on his side and A-Fei curled around him, an arm over him. It was always the same. It was just what they’d fallen into over the months.
He thought of Di Feisheng’s arms around Li Lianhua, and his heart hammered faster. He wanted to shove those arms away. He wanted to be between them, so none of it would be happening, and he could keep A-Fei’s arms off and have his own around Li Lianhua.
That thought was enough for him to sit up and shake his head. Come to think of it, it was none of his business! If they wanted to sleep together– even if they wanted to do something more than that! It was none of his business. It shouldn’t be making him feel like he’s choking on a particularly large and evil dumpling! He'd already made a fool of himself with what he'd done in the kitchen before, it seemed.
He really needed to sleep. Determined, he lay down and hugged the fluffy quilt to himself. He wouldn’t think about being downstairs with Li Lianhua instead. He wouldn’t.
When he eventually drifted off to fitful sleep, he did so while thinking that it was rather cold up here, without A-Fei beside him.
~~~
Fang Duobing rose early the next morning, as dawn was just touching the sky, and couldn’t sleep again. He went down to get some water, and stopped short at the door. It was open now.
Determined to keep his eyes on his goal and nothing else, he went in, silently drank one cup, and turned to leave. He was a mere step away from the door when his determination crumbled and he looked over at the bed.
A-Fei was still curled up on his side, but Li Lianhua was face-down, spread out over the bed and A-Fei like a particularly obnoxious weed. Their quilt was kicked nearly off the bed. Fang Duobing scoffed. See? It wasn’t comfortable for either of them. They weren’t used to it. They really should go back to the previous arrangement they were all used to!
After hesitating for a moment, Fang Duobing padded over and pulled the quilt back over them. The chill in the air wouldn’t quite leave for another hour at least.
As he adjusted it, A-Fei frowned and shifted in his sleep. A moment later, from the tangle of robes and quilt and limbs, Li Lianhua’s hand emerged and patted his shoulder, and he settled down. The hand stayed. Both of them had remained asleep the whole time.
The damned knot in Fang Duobing’s chest had not been defeated by sleep. But as he watched this, it loosened a little. Only… he felt like he was unspooling with it.
~~~
It was about four days later that it happened. If you asked him, Fang Duobing really wouldn’t have been sure of what had started it in the first place. The three of them had been chopping up some logs for firewood and a few repairs, Li Lianhua mostly ordering them around, that lazy old fox. When he went in for a moment to check on their food, Fang Duobing and A-Fei got into a fight again. That was nothing unusual for them. They had even gotten better at taking it outside and not letting the house suffer damages!
But they hadn’t been far enough today, because by the time Li Lianhua heard it and came out, Huli Jing’s kennel was splintered into bits. Huli Jing had whined, and Li Lianhua had snapped. No amount of apologies or promises to fix it first thing in the morning placated him.
Dinner was a silent affair, with Li Lianhua’s ire seeping into the air and the two of them eating the food he’d made shamefacedly. And soon after they cleaned up, Fang Duobing climbed up to his room. At least he could sulk by himself–
The stairs creaked, and a moment later, a frowning A-Fei appeared.
“What are you here for?” Fang Duobing asked.
He looked at him with a sour face. “I’m sleeping here tonight.”
Fang Duobing’s eyes went wide. “What happened to you and Li Lianhua?”
A-Fei glared at the floor like he was trying to burn a hole through it. “It’s cold, and that dog doesn’t have a kennel. He decided it’ll be sleeping inside tonight, with him.”
A snort escaped Fang Duobing before he could bite it back. A-Fei’s glare snapped up to him, and he pressed his fingers to his mouth even though there was no taking it back.
Clearing his throat he nodded sagely. “Of course, of course. We must pay for our mistake.”
A-Fei raised an extremely pointed eyebrow. “ Our mistake?”
“Ah, just let it be, I don’t even remember what we were fighting about,” Fang Duobing waved it away, taking off his belt and arm bracers. For someone who was hoping to sulk by himself, Fang Duobing’s mood had considerably improved since he’d realised he had company.
With a huff, A-Fei sat down on the bed and started undressing, all the while with the face of a storm cloud. Fang Duobing plopped down beside him and poked him in the shoulder. “Don’t sulk, Lao Di. Look on the bright side. You can finally share a bed with someone who won’t hog the entire place and kick off the quilt!”
At that, Di Feisheng’s mouth shifted into a sudden smile. He looked way too amused. “Are you really this happy that I’m not in bed with Li Xiangyi?” Fang Duobing opened his mouth in outrage, but was too surprised at the shamelessly forward words to actually do anything but imitate a fish.
Meanwhile, A-Fei lay down on the bed with a sigh. He was still smirking, the bastard. “I’ll settle for you tonight,” he told Fang Duobing.
Heat rushed to Fang Duobing’s face at incredible speeds. “Shameless! Scoundrel!” he accused, yanking off his belt properly and stripping out of his outer robe before leaning over the edge of the top floor and yelling down, “Li Lianhua, are you hearing this? Your man is shameless!”
“He’s your man before the morning,” Li Lianhua’s put-upon voice floated up, muffled. “Now shut up and let me sleep.”
Fang Duobing almost fell over the railing. With a curse, he stomped back in hard enough to make sure Li Lianhua felt it downstairs. “Both of you are shameless!” he scolded, poking a finger in Di Feisheng’s direction before lying down. Instead of his usual place which was half on top of A-Fei, he lay on his side, on the little sliver of space left, with his back to the other man.
He heard A-Fei huff a laugh, and snapped his eyes shut determinedly. Even the heavens falling to the earth wouldn’t get him to turn around!
It turned out that a few minutes of trying to sleep with his hand feeling awkward and cramped and nearly rolling off the bed a couple of times were enough to weaken his resolve. Refusing to look at A-Fei about it, he rolled over and lay as usual, half on A-Fei.
There was a snort from beside him. A-Fei adjusted his arm around his shoulders and let him lie. But Fang Duobing felt too restless. He shuffled around, trying to find a comfortable position. After a few minutes, the restlessness got worse, compounded by the frustration of not being able to sleep.
While he was trying to wriggle his arm out from under himself, he was suddenly hauled in. Fang Duobing froze for a moment, registering the strong arms wrapped around him, the palms on his back pressing him down against a solid body, the fact that his face was currently buried in A-Fei’s chest.
“Will you lie still?” A-Fei asked, sounding truly annoyed. His voice was low, and Fang Duobing felt it against him more than heard it.
Fang Duobing looked up as much as he could, wriggling in his hold. “Let me go!”
“Stop being a worm.”
“You-! You’re the worm!” Fang Duobing hissed at him, not waiting to think about how stupid a thing to say that was, freeing an arm trapped to his side and using it to prop himself up. “It’s my bed too, I’ll move however I want!”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Let me go-”
The hands around him dropped abruptly, and Fang Duobing scrambled not to fall off as Di Feisheng sat up with no warning. He didn’t fall only because A-Fei grabbed him by the scruff of his robes and held him up. “Lie still or get out.”
“This was my room first,” Fang Duobing shot back, glaring up at A-Fei. The buzzing under his skin was in his head too, and thinking was beyond his capability.
“If you just want to throw a tantrum, I’m not entertaining you,” A-Fei said, voice laced with warning, the grip he had on the neck of Fang Duobing’s robes tightening. Their faces were just inches away.
“Y-You’re the one who got kicked out, why would I be throwing a tantrum?” he snapped back, shoving at A-Fei’s shoulders.
His breath was knocked right out of him as he was thrown onto his back, and Di Feisheng’s extremely annoyed scowl loomed over him. His weight was squarely on Fang Duobing’s middle and his hands were pinned to the bed, on either side of his head. Trapped between the bed and Di Feisheng, the noise in his head fell silent in an instant.
He stared up at him, wide-eyed.
A-Fei looked down at him for a long moment, and the annoyance settled into something Fang Duobing had come to recognise as concern. “What’s wrong?” he asked again.
Suddenly, annoyingly, Fang Duobing felt a tell-tale stinging in his eyes. The restlessness seemed to have melted in one instant into a helpless, miserable pool in his chest. “I don’t know,” he said, voice coming out too thick. “It feels horrible, but I don’t even know what it is.”
A-Fei sighed, long and slow. Before Fang Duobing could even start to feel embarrassed at his own confused moping, the weight on top of him vanished along with the fingers around his wrists. He reached for A-Fei without a thought except that he wanted him to stay close.
It turned out A-Fei wasn't going anywhere after all. Gently but firmly, Fang Duobing was turned onto his side. One arm under him, another over him, A-Fei pulled him in close and tight. Fang Duobing didn’t think. He buried his face in A-Fei’s neck, clutched the front of his robes, and curled up.
“We’ll worry about it tomorrow,” A-Fei said in a low and quiet voice. “But first, sleep.”
Fang Duobing stayed put, matched his breathing to the steady in-and-out of A-Fei’s. Every breath he took smelt like metal and leather and grass, like A-Fei. Every time a thought dared to try and enter his mind, the solid and warm embrace chased it away. He was exhausted, it turned out. He drifted off in a matter of minutes.
~~~
It was soon after dawn when Fang Duobing woke up and blearily made his way down. He found Li Lianhua still splayed out on his bed in his under robes, hugging his quilt with the far-away look of a man still half-asleep. A-Fei was sitting against the doorframe with Huli Jing at his feet in a rare moment of tranquillity between them, reading something.
Usually, their day would’ve started at dawn. Lazy days like this were not frequent, and Fang Duobing treasured them. He dropped down on the floor beside Li Lianhua’s bed, yawning.
One half-shut, dozing eye fixed on Fang Duobing.
“Why are you in just your under robes? Isn’t it cold?”
Fang Duobing looked at him. “You’re one to talk.”
“I’m still in bed.”
With a pout, Fang Duobing dropped his head against the bed frame. “Left the rest of the clothes upstairs.”
There was a snort from the bed. “I’ll make you my pepper soup if you get a cold.”
Oh, that was a horrible thought. Fang Duobing groaned, torn between going and getting his quilt and being a lump on the floor. Then, the bed creaked and he looked up to find Li Lianhua rolling onto his side, shifting to the far end.
“Get in,” Li Lianhua mumbled.
Fang Duobing stared at his back.
Di Feisheng gave his two cents from the door. “The dog’s shed all over the bed, and another lazy dog still isn’t getting up to dust his sheets.”
Li Lianhua made a rude gesture at him from the bed.
“I don’t care,” Fang Duobing answered, already crawling under the quilt and sighing at the warm sheets under him. While he tried to fit comfortably and enjoy the warmth, Li Lianhua found his hand and pulled it over himself, hugging it along with the quilt.
“Happy now?” came his sleepy voice.
Fang Duobing blinked at the back of his head, and decided he was too sleepy to think too hard. He dragged himself closer and curled around Li Lianhua, forehead pressed to the base of his neck.
“Can I do this?” he mumbled into the sleep-warm back.
“Mm.”
He tangled their legs together and felt Li Lianhua huff. He nosed his way to the skin right over Li Lianhua’s collar. “Can I do this?”
Li Lianhua sighed. “Whatever. Just don’t expect anything from me now.”
Di Feisheng laughed from the doorway. Fang Duobing raised his head to stick his tongue out at him before dropping down to Li Lianhua once more.
“Li Lianhua,” he asked in a whisper, heart stumbling a little as he mustered his courage. “Can I kiss you?”
Slowly, Li Lianhua looked over his shoulder at him. He looked, more than anything, put-upon. “Kiss me, fuck me, do whatever you want, but another time. If you’re just going to keep disturbing me now, go back to the floor and let me be.”
Fang Duobing couldn’t keep his face from burning. With a smile that even he could tell was stupid, he buried his face in Li Lianhua’s back again. “Sorry, sorry, I’ll be obedient.”
“Li Xiangyi is a cradle robber,” A-Fei piped up, very helpfully. “Who knew.”
“I’m 23 now!” Fang Duobing protested.
“You’ve been making eyes at us since you were 18,” Li Lianhua said.
“I can’t help that! It’s not like either of us made a move! Are you not even going to try and defend yourself?” Fang Duobing marvelled.
“No, I’m considering keeping you at arm’s length for another five years.”
Fang Duobing scoffed, and burrowed into the quilt and Li Lianhua even more. “See if I care! I’ll wait! I’m not going anywhere!”
“Stop shouting, or I’m really throwing you out.”
“You have to move first to do that,” Fang Duobing said, at a lower volume.
A-Fei laughed. “If you’ve figured out his weaknesses, you’re old enough.”
“Di Feisheng, will you mind your own business?” Li Lianhua said, going so far as to not mumble.
“Your business is my business,” A-Fei answered with the most shit-eating grin so far. Fang Duobing cringed at it and felt Li Lianhua shudder.
“I need more sleep to recover from that,” Li Lianhua grumbled and dragged the quilt over his head. Di Feisheng seemed content with his needling for now, and didn’t poke back. Fang Duobing went under the quilt too, and clung on to Li Lianhua as his breathing evened out with sleep. As he dozed off too, Fang Duobing found himself content. They were going to be fine, after all.