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In the wake of She Li’s downfall, in the early hours of the quiet morning, Mo Guan Shan and He Tian stare at each other.
It feels liminal, laying in Mo Guan Shan’s too small bed as sunlight filters in from the window where the curtains don’t cover a small slip of space. An alarm is going to go off any minute, but for now they have time and neither speaks for fear of breaking the peaceful bubble.
It is Mo Guan Shan who moves first. He takes He Tian’s bandaged hand gently, slowly, and He Tian watches as Mo Guan Shan brings it to his lips and a tender kiss lands in the middle of his open palm.
Mo Guan Shan’s lips travel to kiss He Tian’s fingers next, lips warm and soft landing on each knuckle, before returning his attention to He Tian’s palm. He kisses it again, this time almost reverently, and runs his tongue along where he knows He Tian’s wounds are despite the bandages. They would scar, he thinks, the first one did and this one will too. They would fade in time to be barely visible, but they would always be fresh to Mo Guan Shan. He would always see the blood—red, warm, and oozing—from where He Tian had been punctured in defense of him.
He Tian gasps when he meets Mo Guan Shan’s gaze.
‘Sorry,’ he seems to say with every graze of his lips. ‘Thank you,’ his eyes, a heated heavy gaze conveying more than just gratitude and relief. It’s a vow, an unspoken devotion, ‘I would do the same for you,’
Mo Guan Shan unlatches his mouth from He Tian’s palm and surges up to capture his lips instead.
It is chaste and quick and tastes like benediction that He Tian feels his lungs give out the breath he’s been holding all this time.
His hand move to rest on Mo Guan Shan’s neck, and when they broke apart, his instincts led his mouth to rest over the bandage around it. He kisses his way around, the bandage a rough texture against his lips, but the warmth of Mo Guan Shan’s still healing tender skin underneath distracts him from it.
Mo Guan Shan is pliant under his ministrations and He Tian takes advantage of this. His lips hover over Mo Guan Shan’s pulse and he feels rather than hears the whispered plea.
The rhythmic thudding of his pulse is maddening, intoxicating, each pump of it whispering ‘please, please, please’, and the cadence of it is music to He Tian’s ears.
He runs his tongue along it and the pulse quickens further. The grip on his wrists tightens and He Tian moves to kiss and suck on the erratic pulse, smirking as Mo Guan Shan gasps and tenses beneath him.
He Tian moves to kiss lower, charting a path down Mo Guan Shan’s collarbones and moving his hand to go under the latter’s sleep shirt, when an alarm sounds out, blaring and noisy in its chirpy tone, and any and all plans of going further are halted. Mo Guan Shan groans, throwing an arm over his eyes, while He Tian laughs as he plops down beside him again.
Mo Guan Shan peeks at He Tian beside him—hair mussed, eyes alight with mischief, smile still sleep soft despite already being long awake, and oh so radiant in the early morning light—and thinks he would like to keep this boy and wishes that he would be allowed to.
(He doesn’t know that He Tian is smiling because the morning sun illuminates his red face in the prettiest way and wants so badly for Mo Guan Shan to want him too, wishes desperately to be allowed to keep him too.)
“Good morning, Little Mo~”
“Yeah,” Mo Guan Shan mutters, a little annoyed at himself for finding He Tian’s lilting tone endearing. “Good morning.”