Work Text:
When Hua-chengzhu and his Highness leave Paradise Manor on business without their three daughters, the girls are usually entrusted to the care of their uncle-in-name, Yin Yu.
The role of nursemaid was not one that Yin Yu ever expected to play after his ascension. But he had missed being a shixiong to a crowd of clumsy shidis, even with Yizhen clinging as closely as he used to in their disciple days: and when Hua-chengzhu asked Yin Yu if he would be little Hua Hongyue’s personal attendant, Yin Yu agreed at once. He had not regretted his decision for a moment, though her little Highness was as full of tricks as her father: and his Highness often watched the two of them together and remarked that even the nurseries in Xianle’s royal capital never boasted a momo as capable as Yin Yu.
In due time, Hongyue was followed by two younger sisters. Lanyue came first, when Hongyue was four, and Yinyue arrived three years later; and after Yinyue’s second birthday, Yin Yu was removed from his remaining duties about the Ghost City and reassigned to Paradise Manor’s family wing.
That was over a year ago: and tonight, Yin Yu is alone in the palace with the servants and his three small charges, for Hua Cheng and Xie Lian have gone off to settle a haunting some miles away from Ghost City.
He does not expect to have much to do before they return. The children had an early supper and went to bed before mao hour, weary from playing with Chengzhu’s butterflies all afternoon: but just as Yin Yu is about to put out the lights on the ground floor of the manor and retire to his room in the family wing, two small figures scurry into his study and seize the trailing hems of his sleeves.
“Shushu,” Lanyue whispers, tugging at his robes. “I’m hungry.”
Yin Yu bites back a smile. “Didn’t you already have dinner, Lan’er?” he says quietly, sliding his chair away from the desk so that Yinyue can climb up into his lap. “You’ll be sick if you eat too much before bed.”
“We did have dinner, but we’re hungry again,” Hongyue calls sheepishly, peering around the door. “We’re going down to the kitchens to look for some of baba’s baozi.”
“But I don’t want baozi,” Lanyue insists. “I want shushu to make us a snack.”
At this, Yinyue stands straight up on Yin Yu’s knee and grasps his long hair between her fists. “Snack!” she shrieks. “Yinyin wants, too!”
“Very well, xiao-gongzhu,” Yin Yu says, trying not to laugh. And then, turning to Hua Hongyue: “What does our zhang-gongzhu think of noodles?”
Hongyue is delighted by the prospect of a midnight bowl of noodles: and two ke later, Yin Yu finds himself in the kitchens, putting the finishing touches on three steaming bowls of soy-sauce noodles topped with qingcai and slices of boiled pork.
“Here you are,” he says solemnly, setting the bowls before the three princesses. “Eat slowly, and chew the pork well before you swallow.”
As he busies himself with feeding Yinyue, Yin Yu wonders why he added that last—for none of the girls are in the habit of gobbling at the table, unlike the child Yin Yu first learned to make noodles for in his mortal lifetime long ago. Yizhen always ate so quickly that Yin Yu had to hover over him at mealtimes, terrified that this youngest shidi would inhale a mouthful of rice and choke if Yin Yu looked away from him—just as he is doing now for three-year-old Hua Yinyue, though Yin’er is as careful with her food as his Highness must have been when he was a boy. She chews her pork and noodles with a determined little furrow between her brows, sipping her soup in small mouthfuls to keep it from splashing on her nightshirt; and when her bowl is empty, Yin’er is nearly as clean as she was when the meal began.
“I’m full, Yin-shushu,” Hua Lanyue sighs, licking up the last drops in her bowl with a sleepy smile on her face. “Can we go back to bed now?”
“You’re already full?” Yin Yu blinks and looks into the pot of broth, bewildered. He had made three servings, and ladled out three servings—and the girls were clearly satisfied by their meal, but the pot is still half-full.
Oh, he thinks, with a bittersweet ache in his heart: for how often had he been roused in the middle of the night when he was a youth to make snacks for the young Quan Yizhen?
Yizhen has always had a bottomless appetite. Black Water is the only person Yin Yu knows who could out-eat Yizhen; and when they were still disciples, Quan Yizhen ate thrice as much as Yin Yu and Jian Yu did at every meal.
Half-dreaming, he closes the pot and brings the princesses back to the nursery. He draws the covers over Hongyue and Lanyue, and tucks Yinyue into her little crib; and then he waits to hear the clatter of Hua-chengzhu returning to the manor with his Highness, after which Yin Yu bids the two good night and makes his way back to the kitchen.
He stares at the pot of broth, still steaming gently on the stove: and then he coughs and recites the password for Yizhen’s communication array.
Shixiong! Yizhen cries, a moment later. Why are you still awake?
The tips of Yin Yu’s ears grow warm.
I missed you, he replies. It’s been more than a week since I last saw you. Are you busy?
And then, softly: Are you hungry?
A laugh from Yizhen’s side of the array. I’m always hungry, shixiong.
Will you come to the manor for dinner, then?
At first, Yizhen does not reply; but then a great crash sounds outside the kitchen window, sending Yin Yu dashing out into the courtyard to find Yizhen sprawled across the wet grass.
“Shixiong!” he beams, leaping to his feet. “I’m here.”
“So you are,” Yin Yu says, laughing. “I made your favorite noodles for the little Highnesses; but they only finished half of the soup, so I thought I’d invite you over for dinner.”
Yizhen’s eyes go soft. He follows Yin Yu to the table without another word, watching as he fills a great bowl with soup and prepares a triple helping of noodles—much as he used to do when he was a child, famished after a long day of leaping about on the training fields. Yizhen could never eat enough to sate himself at dinner, though his plate was always piled twice as high as everyone else’s; and on the days he worked particularly hard, he often crept out of his bed around chou hour to look for extra food in the kitchens.
Yin Yu developed a habit of getting up with him on those nights, so that Quan Yizhen’s midnight foraging would not disturb the servants; and whenever there were no left-over buns and dried snacks to be found, Yin Yu took some of the broth meant for the next day’s porridge and made Yizhen a simple noodle-soup topped with vegetables and meat.
“I think this must taste better than the soup I used to make,” Yin Yu says, when Yizhen makes a delighted noise at the first spoonful and puts the whole bowl to his lips. “The qingcai we grew at the sect weren’t as crisp as the ones Queen Yushi sends us.”
Inexplicably, Yizhen shakes his head. “I love them both,” he says simply. “You had to put in more vegetables, because the ones we had were wilted—and you used chicken, since we were only allowed pork on feast days—but that soup was just as good as this one.”
Yin Yu thinks of the old, shriveled ginger-roots in their old sect’s communal kitchen and frowns. “I don’t see why. The river-water always tasted of rock, and the garlic was so dry that it hardly had any taste left; and as for the radishes, well—”
He would have denounced their old sect’s food until dawn, given the chance: but before he can say another word, Yizhen puts down his spoon and kisses Yin Yu squarely on the lips.
“Yes,” he nods, as Yin Yu claps his palm to his mouth in embarrassment, “but it was still your soup, so it was perfect to me. It always was.”
With that, he returns his attention to his dinner and drinks up the broth in silence—if Yin Yu does not count him slurping at his bowl, which Yizhen does with such glee that Yin Yu almost feels as if he had prepared a full banquet for his lover instead of a lone pot of soup. It is a joy to watch Quan Yizhen eat, as it is to watch the firelight glinting gold in his curling hair; and when the bowl is empty, Yizhen glances up and catches Yin Yu’s eye.
“Thank you, shixiong,” he whispers. “Will you—”
But before he can finish the sentence, Yin Yu finds himself standing on Quan Yizhen’s side of the table, clutching at his shidi’s arm for dear life. He cannot guess what Yizhen was about to ask—though knowing him, it must have been something heart-wrenchingly sweet and sincere, which would cost Yin Yu nothing at all and yet mean the world to Quan Yizhen—but for some reason, Yin Yu cannot abide the thought of Quan Yizhen returning to the heavenly realm that night.
Yin Yu has been there once or twice since the debacle with Jun Wu. He had awoken there, for his body was nurtured in the halls of one of the masters of healing while Yizhen watched over his displaced spirit, and the splendor of Yizhen’s heavenly palace no longer makes him ache as it used to do in years past—but Paradise Manor is his home, and he is Yizhen’s, so it is only right for the two of them to be together here instead of the Palace of Qi Ying.
“Whatever it is—yes,” Yin Yu breathes. “But—will you stay with me tonight, Yizhen? Here, I mean?”
Yizhen draws back and stares at him with reverent eyes.
“You’ve never asked me that before,” he says.
“You slept at the manor three times last month,” Yin Yu protests, flushing crimson as Yizhen pulls him into his arms. “How can you say you never—”
“I did, and you did want me to,” Quan Yizhen reminds him, smiling. “But you never asked.”
Yin Yu goes still against Quan Yizhen’s shoulder. “...Ah. Then—did you mind, that I didn’t?”
“A little, at first,” Yizhen confesses. “But I’m pretty good at guessing now; and when I can’t tell what Shixiong wants to say, I just ask Crimson Rain.”
“And he tells you?” Yin Yu feels as if he might faint. “How would he know?”
“Well, he managed to win his Highness over; and the two of you are alike, in some ways. But I’d have asked you first if I thought it wouldn’t embarrass you.”
Yin Yu shuts his eyes in defeat and leans up to kiss Yizhen on the brow.
“Don’t ask Hua-chengzhu things from now on,” he implores. “I’d like to be asked, even if it does embarrass me.”
“Oh!” Quan Yizhen beams at him. “Then, shixiong—can I sleep with you tonight?”
He hasn’t changed at all, Yin Yu thinks, his heart swelling with wonder as a stray lock of coiling hair slips free from Yizhen’s guan. All these years—three life-times of men and centuries of godhood, with betrayal in between; I was ruined, and Yizhen was never altered, and yet—and yet—
Thank Heaven that he is as he was, unchanged! Thank Heaven!
He recalls the bruises on the faces of his shidimen, the mud flying from Yizhen’s small boots—the soup they shared in the kitchens of their old sect, cooked by candle-light and moonlight when the cooks were long abed—Yizhen’s grief when Yin Yu was carried away to heaven, his delight when the silk pillow-cases on the beds in Yin Yu’s old palace kept his hair from tangling while he slept—Yizhen at the gates of the Ming Guang residence demanding a fight with its lord, Yizhen—
“Yizhen,” Yin Yu chokes at last, making a valiant effort to stop himself from weeping. “You are the best thing that ever happened to me.”
And now the wonder is in Yizhen’s eyes as well as his own; and Yin Yu—fallen god and failed general, nurse-maid and shixiong and friend and beloved—is the happiest man in all the world.