Work Text:
One thing that Ling Miaomiao quickly discovered about being with Ziqi in this world, was that he really liked kissing. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t kissed before, but perhaps, due to propriety or due to how busy they’d been trying to save the world, they hadn’t had near the opportunities they had to do so now.
Ziqi was not a very good kisser. She remembered when they’d first kissed on the journey to search for his memories together, the way he’d stood there, straight on, and just inched forward until their lips touched. He didn’t turn his head to accommodate their noses like he should have, but he did close his eyes and purse his lips before they even made contact. To think about it made her want to cry laughing—in pure delight at how endeared she’d been. He really had no idea what he was doing. She was kind enough not to tease him about it. Knowing Ziqi, he’d have backed off, afraid to try again, if she did so.
He’d never expected to be doing it; she knew this.
The only reason Ziqi was better in this world was, she imagined, because he recalled the few times they’d done it before. It was no wonder his books tended to have rather gentle, chaste romances. If he wrote like he kissed, well…she didn’t read Fu Zhou’s novels for romance anyway.
It didn’t bug her, though. She loved kissing him. He was improving by leaps and bounds, and maybe it really didn’t matter that much anyway. She’d kissed other men before, and they’d been better at it than him, but that hadn’t made her happy the way doing so with him did. Because when she’d woken up from what she once thought was just a dream, she hadn’t remembered at the time the quality of kissing. What she’d remembered was love: the way he’d held her as if she were the most precious thing in the world, the way he’d shuddered when they pulled apart, his eyes rimmed red, as if holding back tears, and a look of near disbelief crossing his features.
That was Ziqi. Even back when he’d been half demon, when he’d been so strong, so powerful, she sometimes thought he was the most fragile person she’d ever met. In this world, he still looked at her like that sometimes, his eyes wide behind the wire-framed glasses he wore.
She’d never thought to imagine Mu Ziqi ( Xia Ziqi now) in glasses, never really imagined him in modern clothing at all, but they suited him.
Miaomiao wondered if he would ever fully stop looking at her like that, as if he were amazed by her mere presence, by the fact that of all the places she could be, she chose to be there, with him. Her heart swelled at this. She hoped that she also looked at him with such affection that she made him feel wanted with a mere gaze. She hoped that when he said she was always smiling, he could tell that her smile was different for him.
Ziqi had kissed her just a moment ago, upon her return from going to the restroom at his apartment. She’d sat back down on the couch next to him, and he’d leaned over and pressed a brief kiss to her lips. She smiled as, after he finished, he pulled her against him, hugging her back against his torso. His legs were up on the couch, and she rested in the spot between them.
“You were gone so long,” Ziqi whined.
Miaomiao pouted. “It couldn’t have been longer than five minutes. You’re so clingy, Ziqi.” She rocked back and forth, ever so slightly, her head bouncing against his chest as she did so.
His arms loosened from around her center, barely, and he let out a quiet chuckle. “Is that so bad?” he asked, and his tone was teasing, but at the edge of it was a tinge of nervousness.
“No,” she replied sweetly. “Not at all.”
Miaomiao twisted around and placed a hand on his cheek, moving to push his hair out of his face and—ahhh, there he went. He reached up and placed a hand atop hers, stilling it.
An odd thing she’d noticed about Ziqi was that he seemed to avoid allowing her to touch the left side of his head. Even when they were kissing, even when they were caught in the heat of the moment and he was as lost in her as he’d ever been, he’d maneuver her hand away from it. He’d tried to pass it off as casual, undeliberate, but she wasn’t foolish. She had a strong feeling as to why.
Miaomiao sighed. “Ziqi.” She allowed him to hold her hand in place, but ever so slightly, moved it up under his grasp. “Do you think I haven’t noticed that you do this?”
“Do what?” he asked, and he averted his eyes to the side. The fingers of his free hand tapped the top of his leg, idly. He was so transparent in his body language. He always had been. For all of the brusque facade he’d once been so intent on keeping, he wore his heart on his sleeve.
“That’s where your scar is, right?” she asked. “From your surgery?”
Ziqi grumbled something under his breath and sighed. “I can never fool Miaomiao.”
Miaomiao giggled and tapped his nose. “Maybe others, but not me.” She shook her head and smiled at him, warm and affectionate. “Let me see. I bet it’s cool.”
He wrinkled his nose and frowned. “It was pretty gross, actually.”
“There’s no way I’m not going to see it eventually anyway…” She pouted.
Ziqi just nodded. He turned his head, ever so slightly, and angled it downward. His hand slid off of hers, and he let it relax at his side, but Miaomiao could tell he was tense.
With care, with a gentle brush of her fingers, Miaomiao moved the soft dark hair in front of his left ear aside. She could feel it before she saw it, and Ziqi shuddered at her touch; a thick line of raised scar tissue that ran upward from his temple to around ⅔ to the center of his skull. She imagined how painful it must have been, how frightening for him to have to put his trust in the doctors that performed his operation. No wonder he’d told her about the courage he’d had to find; no wonder it had been for that he’d had to fight the Catastrophe of Heaven.
And Ziqi was a writer. Even more so than most other people, nothing was more important to him than his brain. She smiled softly as her fingers carded through his hair. It looked like it felt; a light pink, like the tissue around a scab that had almost healed, that same sheen to it that freshly healed wounds often had. His hair grew around it, not through it, but Ziqi’s hair was thick enough that it didn’t matter. She ran a finger down it, and he flinched under her ministrations.
Then she leaned up, and she pressed a tender, barely there, breath of a kiss to it.
“Thank you, Ziqi,” she finally said. He reached up and placed his own hand over the side of his head, rubbing it gingerly, as if it was different now—now that Miaomiao had seen it, now that Miaomiao had kissed it.
“Are you happy now?” he let out a quiet huff, and Miaomiao chose not to comment on his flushed cheeks.
“Mm-hmm.” She beamed at him. “I’m glad you showed me.” She let out a short, warm laugh. “That not even my Ziqi, strong as he is, can survive the Catastrophe of Heaven unscathed.”
Ziqi froze, and his eyes widened, and within a moment they were rimmed red, holding back tears. He scooped her up in his arms, and he pressed against her in a crushing embrace, one that, had he been as strong as he’d once been, may have even hurt. To her he was brave, to her he was powerful. To her, she understood the courage it took to have his surgery was little different than the courage it had taken to save the world.
She patted him on the back and grimaced. “You’re squishing me.”
Embarrassed, Ziqi pulled away, biting his lip and rolling his eyes upward. “Ummm…”
Miaomiao laughed. “Did they have to shave your head when they did it?” she asked, her eyes bright with curiosity.
“Why would you want to see that?” Ziqi snapped, although without any real anger. Miaomiao continued to look at him expectantly. He exhaled deeply. “No, not entirely.”
“Do you have any pictures?” she asked, her eyes wide, and he was, as always, weak to her questioning gaze.
“It looks gross.”
“Ziqiiiii,” she ground out, “you can’t be with someone forever and not see the gross parts of them as well.”
Ziqi, who had picked up his phone from the coffee table, immediately dropped it.
Forever.
Should it be so strange? In the world where they’d fallen in love, he’d called her his fiancée. He wondered if that still stood. He was too afraid to ask right now, but in the future, he thought that he’d like to propose to her the way they did in this universe: with a ring and a vow.
He nodded and picked up his phone, then opened his gallery and scrolled up to a few months before. “My literary agent was the one who visited me and took care of me most often while I was recovering.” Ziqi frowned. “I was so hopped up on medication the first few weeks that he said I looked baked like I was in an American movie.” He let out a sardonic laugh and held up his phone, showing Miaomiao a photo, likely taken by said agent.
Ziqi looked tired, eyes half-lidded and a woozy smile on his face. The front side of his head was shaved, and a gnarly set of stitches stood out on his scalp. It was a little gross, and her heart ached at the pain and discomfort he must have been in, but it also made her happy to see.
Someone had been there to take care of him when she could not be. Miaomiao knew his parents lived hours away and that Ziqi felt guilt for the strife his illness had caused in their relationship, much as it wasn’t his fault. He would not have wanted to ask them for help unless he had to. She was so glad he had someone else, especially knowing how Ziqi struggled to make friends. And this scar also meant that Ziqi’s disease, while not cured, had been treated, and with regular monitoring, would not affect him for the rest of his life. When she looked at it like that, she loved it.
He was at his laptop in the picture, a document open in front of him, and Miaomiao could see right away that despite what he’d just been through, he was already back to writing.
She let out a short giggle. “You were writing?”
“I wanted to get my revision done as fast as I could,” he explained. “I wanted to publish Yong Ye Xing He as soon as possible.” He tapped her nose. “You should know why. I missed you.”
“Mmm.” She nodded, then squeezed his free hand and traced circles on top of it, then—a heart. “Are you really that self-conscious about the scar?”
Ziqi shrugged. “At first it really bugged me. It’s not so bad now. I don’t… know why I was so adamant on not wanting you to see it.” He sighed and shook his head. “I just didn’t want you to be reminded of how fallible I am, I guess. In the other world, I was so strong.”
“I never liked you because you were physically strong; you must know that.”
Ziqi nodded. “I know.”
“Or even because of your cool demon powers.” She bit back a giggle.
“All right, I get it.”
Miaomiao snuggled up against his chest, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “If it does bug you, though… you could always grow your hair out? Even less of a chance of it being seen that way.”
Ziqi stilled, and he stared down at her, eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “Is it for you or for me that you’re suggesting this?”
Miaomiao’s cheeks flushed, and she covered them with her hands, a pout crossing her lips. “Okay, okay, so I do miss that. Your hair was so beautiful, Ziqi.”
Ziqi closed the distance between them, pressing a kiss to each of Miaomiao’s flushed cheeks and smiling widely. “If my Miaomiao wishes.”
She grinned, but then her expression faltered for a moment. “Do you want to, though?”
He nodded. “Yeah, why not? I looked pretty cool, didn’t I?”
Miaomiao pressed herself even closer to him and closed her eyes, sighing in delight. “You still do.”
And he kissed her again. It was still not a great kiss, but it was perfect nonetheless.