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Jiaoqiu has known since he first met her, when he saw that torn-open little body being rushed to him on a stretcher, that Feixiao is not the same kind of foxian he is. She carries Moon Rage in her blood. She’s unnaturally tall and broad, and fur would creep down her spine in a bristling mane if he didn’t help her shave it. When she’s angry, it fills his veins too, like a toxin.
Feixiao was a borisin war slave. But to the borisin, foxians are not suitable to fighting; they are livestock, weak and directionless, despite their genetic similarities to their masters. Only borisin can go to war. Only foxians can be taken as slaves. Feixiao the war slave did not have a say in the circumstances of her birth.
He does his best to help her hide her borisin ancestry, even without her asking, and it works for years. It works until he’s taken hostage by Hoolay, poisons himself to save Feixiao’s life, and loses over 4 pints of blood to the Warhead’s bloodwine tradition. It works until the next week, when he’s sitting on the lip of Feixiao’s tub with a pair of scissors, and he realizes that he’s not going to be able to do this safely.
“Feixiao,” he says, lowering his tool. He reaches out with his other hand, laying his palm flat to her bare back. Long, coarse fur scratches against his skin. She’s put this off too long already. “I’ll be right back, I’m going to get Moze.”
“What?” Feixiao asks, almost a laugh, but then he stands up and she realizes he’s serious. He can see the faintest glow from the lamp in the corner of his eye, and his gaze flicks towards it on instinct. Of course, as soon as he’s centered on it, it vanishes. Shame Feixiao isn’t bright enough to see in his periphery. “Jiaoqiu, come back here. We don’t need to drag Moze into this, you can just go slow,” she insists. Jiaoqiu shakes his head.
“I’m not risking cutting up your back over something as silly as not admitting that I need guidance. It can go back to just you and me once I’ve relearned how to do this, but I need someone to show me, and you can’t reach. You know he won’t care.” He reaches out behind him, then down until he hits the sink, where he sets the scissors. In Feixiao’s direction, he quirks a smile. “I’ll be here to keep him from assassinating you, my General. You have nothing to worry about.”
“Jiaoqiu, do not go get Moze,” Feixiao barks, and all the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It must show on his face, because, “Oh no, Jiaoqiu, you’re okay. Don’t go get him, but it’s okay, it’s just me.” Calloused hands envelope his, confident and warm. “Why do you want to get him so bad?”
Jiaoqiu frowns, but doesn’t pull away as she massages her thumbs into his palms. “It’s the obvious solution to our problem. You need a shave. I need someone to physically guide my hand and make sure I don’t miss anything that could give you away. Moze cares deeply about us both, and already knows about several aspects of your… condition, and has said nothing. Why won’t you let me go?”
“Aren’t you giving up too fast?” Feixiao asks instead. “You didn’t even try-“
“Why don’t you try cutting around my neck completely blind,” Jiaoqiu retorts, too harshly. Feixiao’s hands still. He closes his grasp around them, holding them up. “Feixiao, I have limits now. If I want to do the things I used to be able to, I can’t just pretend they don’t exist, I have to learn how to get around them. That means change.”
“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” Feixiao responds. He hates when she brings out the diplomacy voice for him.
“Is there someone else you would prefer?” he asks, even though he knows there isn’t. “I’m not going to be cutting anything around your neck without help.”
“You can be so stubborn sometimes, you know that?” Feixiao sighs, which is how he knows he’s won. “ Tell him first, at least, so he doesn’t get a nasty shock when he walks in.”
“Of course,” Jiaoqiu assures as he gently removes his hands from her grasp, mind already turned to the task of finding Moze.
He won’t be far—he never is. However, he’s silent by habit, especially when he’s not actively making himself loud for Jiaoqiu’s benefit. At least he knows Moze is outside the master suite, because Feixiao gave him that order herself.
He exits the bathroom and finds his way to the door without issue, the route memorized and clear of obstructions. Once it’s shut behind him, his ears swivel—pick up nothing, of course—and he inhales deeply—a trace of Moze’s scent, but they spend so much time together that olfactory fatigue hides any further details. “Moze!” he calls, and checks how far the wall is with one hand before starting down the hallway. Damn Feixiao’s massive estate. “ Moze! ”
“Is everything alright?” asks a voice right next to him, practically making him jump out of his skin.
“ Moze , dear Lan,” Jiaoqiu exclaims, reaching out to catch Moze’s shoulder. “You have got to start wearing perfume.”
“Wearing perfume?” Moze asks, bewildered, as Jiaoqiu shakes his head.
“Around the house, at least. If I can’t see, hear, or smell you, how am I supposed to find you at all?”
“Not being found is a large part of my job,” Moze reminds him, a note of humor in his voice. “But I’ll consider it. Why were you looking for me?”
“I need your help with Feixiao.”
Moze is quiet for a long moment. He must be making an expression. Then, “What do you mean, help?”
“I can’t see her to know where I’m touching, and I don’t want to hurt her.”
“…so you came to her assassin?”
“You better not try anything while I’m there! You know the rules!” Jiaoqiu swats him, not hard. “Anyways, Feixiao gave me permission to ask you, so it’s fine. I just need someone to help me with the scissors.”
“The scissors,” Moze repeats flatly.
“And razor after, for her back. I know you haven’t seen it before, but you’re a smart man—you know Feixiao… you know she isn’t quite like other foxians. She cannot let certain traits become noticeable, and until I’ve adjusted I cannot do my duty to help her hide them.” Jiaoqiu resists reaching out for Moze’s arm again, and the reassurance that he knows exactly where he is. Even now, he’s just pointing his gaze toward Moze’s voice.
“Oh, that’s all,” Moze says, as if surprised. Jiaoqiu tilts his head.
“What do you mean?”
“Nevermind. Yes, I’ll help. She’s in her bedroom?” Moze confirms, his voice growing slightly further away. Jiaoqiu hurries to catch up.
“In the attached bathroom,” he corrects, and hears the soft click of the bedroom door opening. Moze doesn’t respond. Jiaoqiu has previously guessed that he forgets Jiaoqiu can no longer see him nod.
He follows Moze to the bathroom door, where Feixiao calls out, “Everything okay? You’re cool, Moze?”
“I’m cool,” Moze confirms, amused.
Feixiao is still very quiet when they enter the bathroom. Modesty has been thoroughly annihilated between her and Jiaoqiu, as a soldier and her healer, but not so much between her and Moze, who generally steps out of the healing tent once she’s stabilized. The tub is filled only to a hands-length or so, but the water still sloshes as Feixiao turns. “It’s not like you could kill me with a pair of scissors, Jiaoqiu.”
“On the contrary, wouldn’t that be an embarrassing way to go out? Accidentally stabbed in the tub by your own healer, at the one time in his life he can’t treat you, all because you refused to accept help?” Jiaoqiu remembers where he put the scissors, so they don’t take long to collect, and then he finds and carefully sits on the edge of the tub. He wishes, painfully, that he could see Moze’s expression right now, and adjust his behavior in kind. Instead, he’ll have to assume everything’s fine. “Moze, give me a hand, will you?”
Moze brushes against Jiaoqiu’s leg as he kneels beside him. “I can do it,” he offers, but Jiaoqiu shakes his head.
“Guide my hand while I do it,” he orders instead. “I need to learn.”
Moze lets out a resigned sigh, one Jiaoqiu knows was only audible for his benefit. He takes that as acquiescence and finds Feixiao’s shoulder with his free hand, smoothing his thumb over her skin until he reaches the edges of the fur crawling down her spine. It’s gotten long enough that he needs to trim it before it can be shaved, which he explains to Moze, and then holds the scissors, closed, in front of him. “Well?” he asks, and Moze presses himself almost flat to Jiaoqiu’s side to properly place his hand over Jiaoqiu’s on the handle.
“Let me know if I need to move,” Feixiao tells them. Jiaoqiu shakes his head.
“No, you stay still. Moze, I’m ready. Try to give me landmarks so I can tell where on her back we’re cutting,“ he instructs, and the other man helps him run his knuckles up to her shoulder, then over to her neck.
“You can probably ask her to hold up the hair she doesn’t want you to cut, and then angle down,” Moze says. Jiaoqiu’s ear flicks as warm breath blows against it. “General?”
Feixiao shifts slightly, and Jiaoqiu feels her making the part, separating the hair on her head from the fur below. “I see,” Jiaoqiu remarks, running the back of his index finger over the part. Neither Feixiao nor Moze laugh. Then he sections the bottom with familiar movements, pulling the coarse locks straight for a clean cut, and positions the scissors at his best guess. “How’s this, Moze?”
“Point the tip slightly more towards us. Like this.” Moze tilts the scissors, and Jiaoqiu snips. The first clump of fur falls.
He moves down, and finds that if he overlaps the sections, the process of pulling her hair straight to be cut ensures it’s all more or less the same length. A good half of it he does on his own, Moze only stopping his hand when he’s about to make a mistake. The real challenge is keeping the scissors horizontal—he can’t see where the tip is pointing, and his hand keeps drifting into a position that would cut into Feixiao’s skin. Moze corrects him every time, but it’s frustrating that he can’t correct himself.
“Are you done yet? This is just to get it short enough for the razor, you don’t have to make it pretty,” Feixiao complains. Jiaoqiu flicks an ear towards Moze.
“Are we?” he asks.
Moze takes his hand away and doesn’t answer, so Jiaoqiu imagines him raising an eyebrow, or crossing his arms. Moze prompts, “Can’t you figure it out?”
A hint of annoyance pricks at Jiaoqiu, but he knows he was just insisting a few minutes ago that Moze let him learn how to do it. He pulls the scissors back and considers. Touch is all he has left when it comes to sensing physical items, so… he reaches out, stroking his open palm up Feixiao’s back, which is smooth and then soft on her fur. She shivers and remarks, “I feel like a house cat.”
“Hopefully you wouldn’t shave a cat,” Jiaoqiu responds absently. There are a few long strands he can feel against her skin. He snips them down, perhaps overcompensating with the angle of the scissors, but Moze doesn’t stop him. “Yes, we’re done,” Jiaoqiu announces. “With the trim, at least. Moze, can you pass me the shaving gel and the razor?”
His ploy works, and Moze hands them over from who-knows-where. Jiaoqiu pretends he knew where they were all along and takes them both, setting the razor down on the lip of the tub, and then reconsidering and holding it out to Feixiao. She is far less likely to drop it into the water.
“This, I can do,” Jiaoqiu says, and feels Moze lean slightly back, away from his leg. He takes a pump of shaving gel and starts rubbing it over Feixiao’s back, the same old motions coming to him easily now that he doesn’t have to worry about hurting her if he messes up. Her posture loosens as she relaxes under his touch, and then it’s over. He dips his hands in the water to clean them, then holds one out to Feixiao. “Razor?”
She passes it back to him. “I can deal with a few shaving nicks, too, you know.”
Jiaoqiu lays his left hand flat on her spine, and starts halfway down her back at the end of her fur. He resists the urge to double check with Moze that he’s doing everything right, knowing he’ll stop him if he does something too wrong, and he’s not near the danger zone of Feixiao’s neck yet. Instead, he retorts, “You might be able to deal with it, but I don’t want you to,” and carefully drags the razor up her back.
Slowly, he makes progress, all the way up to the part she made between her fur and her hair. Moze only stops him once, redirecting an off-center stroke that could have slipped into her sternocleidomastoid, close to her carotid. Then, like before, Jiaoqiu smooths his palm down her back, feeling for spots he missed, and cleans them up with slow, gentle swipes.
The other side is harder, and at the same time, Feixiao is getting restless. Water splashes quietly as she shifts around, muscles flexing under Jiaoqiu’s hand as he tries to avoid the more difficult knobs of her spine. When she twists, “How far done- oh. Sorry,” she says sheepishly as Jiaoqiu’s hand jerks away too late. He winces for her as she turns back around, apparently unbothered, but it felt deep for a shaving nick, and he can smell blood.
“How much is it bleeding?” Jiaoqiu asks, tilting his head towards where he last heard Moze’s voice. Moze answers a second later, decidedly not from that spot, “A bit. I have a bandaid.” A shadow passes in front of the dim lamplight in Jiaoqiu’s periphery, and his heart tugs helplessly knowing that’s Moze, and that that’s the most he’ll see of him again.
Moze kneels beside Jiaoqiu, his body brushing against Jiaoqiu’s leg again. Jiaoqiu instructs, “You do it. I can’t tell where it is and I’m not feeling around for an open wound.”
A small crinkling noise from Moze in lieu of a response; he must have nodded again. Feixiao remarks, “Aren’t you going kind of overboard? It’s not an open wound , it’s just a little cut.” At least she’s stopped squirming around.
“A cut is an open wound, if it’s bleeding. It can still get infected and still transmit disease,” Jiaoqiu corrects while Moze reaches over him. For the moment they’re pressed together, he’s pleasantly warm and soft even in the muggy bathroom, then he pulls back and grunts for Jiaoqiu to continue.
Jiaoqiu rinses the blade and keeps going. Feixiao holds herself still by chatting with Moze and flicking at the bathwater. Her spine is the most difficult, and Jiaoqiu is concentrating, but he nicks her a second time. This time, it’s not deep enough to bleed.
“You’re done?” Feixiao asks hopefully, when Jiaoqiu hands the razor to her and splashes water over her back to rinse it off.
“Stay still,” he orders instead of answering, and lays one hand at her neck, just under her hair, as he swipes the other over her skin in businesslike strokes, feeling for rough spots against his palm that could indicate something he missed. Though he tries not to think about it, her back is smooth and firm beneath his palms, her muscles shifting when she does. He finds nothing, so he flicks his ears and tilts his head in Moze’s general direction, “Am I done?”
A near-silent rustle of fabric that must be Moze leaning over or standing up to check. “Yes, you’re done.”
Feixiao cheers, followed by the splash of water filling an abruptly-emptied space, and Jiaoqiu jumps out of the way. Moze catches him with a brief touch to his elbow and announces, “Aeons, Feixiao, I’m leaving,” as the drain is pulled out.
“Wait,” Feixiao says, suddenly serious. Water drips quietly. Her earlier shyness in front of Moze seems gone. “I don’t know what Jiaoqiu said to you regarding why I need this, or what kind of foxian I am. But I trust you know not to mention it, or any of this, to anyone but us.”
For a purposeful moment, Moze is silent. “I know. I won’t.”
“Also, pass me a towel.”
The sound of Feixiao getting thwapped in the chest. Jiaoqiu stifles a laugh as Feixiao calls “What did I do to you?” after Moze as the doorknob clicks. “Insubordination,” she scoffs to Jiaoqiu, slightly muffled. He imagines her scrubbing furiously at her hair.
“Insubordinate, but irreplaceable,” he agrees, crossing to rinse his hands in the sink and get rid of the feeling of fur and water. He has enough practice with this that once he’s standing in the right place, he doesn’t miss the handle once, nor bump the faucet. “Traits you seem to seek out. Where did you put the scissors and the razor?”
Feixiao laughs as she finally steps out of the bath. “I’ll put them away—you’re my subordinate, not my slave. Thanks for the help.” She claps a hand on his shoulder, “And for getting Moze. I think that was a good idea after all.”
“Of course. If I can rely on him for my safety, you can rely on him for yours.”
Feixiao pats his shoulder once more and then lets go. “Let me get dressed and I’ll point out everything wrong with that sentence.”