Work Text:
He thwacked the branch against Zhao Yuanzhou again, feeling childish and wildly freer than he had in years. Cypress needles scattered into the air. The sharp swats echoed off chamber walls grown thick with silence and sorrow.
Zhao Yuanzhou repeated the word again, “Fall,” but with a different target. Zhuo Yichen felt the swoop in his knees and dropped before he remembered he could resist the command, Zhao Yuanzhou had given him the power to resist. It must be, then, that he didn’t want to.
“Oof” was Zhao Yuanzhou’s next word as Yichen fell almost on top of him, elbow colliding with his belly. Whatever further retaliation Zhao Yuanzhou had planned was punched out of him. “I miscalculated,” he wheezed. His mouth, often so soft and sad, turned up at the edges in a smile.
Yichen threw another feathery-leafed twig to hide what made his heart beat fast. Zhao Yuanzhou pulled the twig from his face and hurled it back at Yichen, followed quickly by another.
In seconds, they were slapping and smacking at each other like little boys at the Bureau after a long day of training. Yichen laughed and that sound echoed in the chamber, too. They wrestled until the laughter overtook the fight in his limbs and he gave up. Zhao Yuanzhou splayed on the ground beside him.
Yichen sputtered, spitting out cypress needles and wood debris. When was the last time his stomach had hurt from something other than hunger, fear, and grief? His chuckles settled as he began to pluck the mess from his clothes, his hair. He turned his head, seeing Zhao Yuanzhou almost covered in branches, shining eyes peeking through the green lace of cypress leaves. A belly hurting from laughter and here with him, Zhu Yan, the great demon he’d hated for so long.
Yichen’s memories had turned grayscale compared to the vibrant, bloody colors of all he’d experienced since. It was a dream to think he’d once had a laughter-happy life; a nightmare where a dear friend was his greatest enemy.
Zhao Yuanzhou sat up beside him, his heavy robes spread over his knees. So many branches stayed with him, it was like watching a moss monster rise from the ground and Yichen snorted another laugh to see him. It had been barely two minutes all told, but time itched at Yichen’s shoulders. So many in Tiandu awaited their help, Wen Xiao was still poisoned, they’d already lost Ying Lei, and Bai Jiu needed their supplies if they were to have any hope. They had no time for this.
But Zhao Yuanzhou looked at him, so fond and so…Yichen couldn’t bear to name it. He felt as compelled as if the demon had spoken a one-word spell. “Want,” he might have said. “Desire.” Yichen didn’t need the command. Their knees touched and he desired.
Bai Jiu admired his courage, but Yichen felt timid as a scared child now. Always felt timid when faced with that heavy look in Zhao Yuanzhou’s eyes, different from how the great demon of his childhood looked at Wen Xiao, but not different enough. Not different enough to stop the thoughts from seeping into Yichen’s mind that maybe—maybe—what the demon felt for each of them was not so different either.
Summoning bravery like a sudden madness, he leaned forward and kissed Zhao Yuanzhou’s cheek, so near his lips he almost felt their warmth. He pulled back just as quickly, his mind returning to him with a shock through his system. “I’m sorry” sprang to his tongue, but before he could say it, a firm hand slipped behind his neck and pulled him back in. Yichen couldn’t stop the sigh he breathed against Zhao Yuanzhou’s mouth. He let his fingers touch the thick embroidery on the demon’s knee.
Zhao Yuanzhou kissed well. The ever-present heat of him just an ember on Yichen’s lips, warming him, not trying to burn him alive. Their lips touched and parted, parted only to touch again. Tender in a way Yichen would not have expected, did not let himself imagine, and it set him tingling all over.
He did not know what they’d promised each other, Zhao Yuanzhou and Wen Xiao, these two people he held so closely in his heart, but he would choose the second kind of love for them. He would watch them flourish and sway in the wind. Wen Xiao had chosen Zhao Yuanzhou and maybe he had chosen her, and Yichen would feel no regret to fight and die to see them grow more beautiful together...if only he could steal just this moment. To kiss Zhao Yuanzhou the way he shamefully imagined kissing Wen Xiao in the deep of night when sleep slithered through his defenses. He could not bear to sully her with his aimless desires. But Zhao Yuanzhou... They had stabbed one another, slapped, beaten, and cursed one another. Zhao Yuanzhou could not judge him here, now, and in the end, they were equally foul things.
This didn’t feel foul, though, the way Zhao Yuanzhou kissed him so gently. Kisses finer than the jade he drank. He parted his lips to take one of Yichen’s between them, a soft tug and then release, stoking a lust Yichen hadn’t known he had in him, sparking sensations he hadn’t known he could feel. Zhao Yuanzhou’s thumb caressed the sensitive skin beneath his ear and Yichen shivered.
He drank from soft lips, lingering, hungering, parched and satisfied at once until Zhao Yuanzhou pulled back. Yichen nearly toppled onto him again. He’d leaned so far into the demon, chased his kiss unconsciously. That gentling thumb stroked his bottom lip, woodsy and smelling of cypress. If he’d been braver, he would have licked Zhao Yuanzhou’s skin, but Zhao Yuanzhou removed his hand before Yichen could muster the courage. The demon’s red-black eyes were slower to leave Yichen’s lips, which felt plump and tingly now, and Yichen knew hunger when he saw it. He shared it. If Zhao Yuanzhou—if the Great Demon Zhu Yan—kissed him again, he would welcome it. “We should get back,” Zhao Yuanzhou said, and turned his head to finally break his stare.
They had no time for this. Yichen knew that. Yet, he’d desperately needed this, too. Both could be true, couldn’t they? Zhao Yuanzhou had broken his heart and healed it. He’d never been lonelier and never had more friends. He loved Zhao Yuanzhou and he was destined to kill him. Both were true, weren’t they? All could be true, couldn’t it?
He stood on lust-wobbly knees, belly swooping as he rose into this new world where he’d kissed and been kissed, and brushed the debris from his clothes. He smoothed his hair until he felt only the familiar ribbons and bells. He glanced at Zhao Yuanzhou but didn’t dare help him with his own tidying. One touch would almost certainly lead to more and they had no time for this. They would never have enough time for this.
He strode for the door, trusting that Zhao Yuanzhou would follow with their basket of gathered cypress fronds. Yichen heard the whisper of robes on the stone floor as Zhao Yuanzhou fell in beside him, heard his footsteps halt when Qing Geng unexpectedly appeared before them.
Her lovely eyes drifted to Zhao Yuanzhou—and didn’t everyone’s?—so it took Yichen a moment to recognize the confusion in her gaze. He glanced. Zhao Yuanzhou had missed a stick, the lacy green needles still clinging to his long hair, atop his head like a jester’s crown.
Yichen grabbed the branch and tossed it into Zhao Yuanzhou’s basket. Seeing Qing Geng calmed him unexpectedly. Perhaps it was just her demonic, healing presence, along with the thought that, of anyone, she would understand why he’d done what he did, why he’d stolen this small moment, these few kisses. Of all living beings, she would not shame him in this. She knew how a love unrevealed could poison a heart. They were already fighting so many poisons, so many enemies. He carried a curse borne on his blood that would poison his every future with fate.
They didn’t have time for this and they needed this. Both could be true, couldn’t they? He loved Zhao Yuanzhou and he was destined to kill him. Both were true, weren’t they?
All things could be true, even if they tore him apart.