Work Text:
Zhang Qishan did not understand morphine.
He understood what it was. Those two things should not be confused.
He knew what it looked like in small glass ampoules, knew the way doctors snapped their thin necks, knew the smell of alcohol used to clean the skin, and had seen more than enough soldiers being given it after a bullet tore through muscle or shrapnel lodged too deep for a surgeon to remove without cutting half the man open. He knew it dulled pain. He knew that after a sufficiently large dose, a man who only moments earlier had been screaming loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the city could suddenly loosen the fingers clenched around the bedrail and fall asleep.
So he understood morphine as medicine.
He did not understand morphine as a need.
He did not understand the way Xie Jiu looked at it.
And that was what frightened him most.
He first noticed the problem several months earlier, although later, when he began arranging all his memories in the proper order, he realized that he had seen the symptoms much sooner. Jiu Ye refused food more often. His face grew paler, his cheekbones sharper, and the elegant suits that had always been tailored perfectly to his figure began hanging from him in a way that had nothing to do with changing fashion.
Sometimes his hands trembled. At other times he was restless, pacing around his study as though his own skin were a garment sewn just a little too tightly and he could not find a position in which it would stop bothering him.
Then there were days when all of it suddenly disappeared.
Jiu Ye would arrive at a meeting calm.
Relaxed.
Almost serene.
Zhang Qishan should have felt relieved.
Instead, for the first time, he became truly afraid.
Because he knew Xie Jiu.
He knew the look in his eyes when Jiu Ye analyzed a problem. He knew the slight crease that appeared between his brows when someone said something particularly stupid. He knew the barely perceptible lift at the corner of his mouth with which Xie Jiu responded to Ba Ye's jokes when he found them amusing but had no intention of giving him the satisfaction of knowing it. He knew that Jiu Ye touched the rim of his teacup with one finger when he was thinking, and that he moved a piece above the board exactly twice before making his move whenever he was trying to provoke his opponent.
The man sitting across from him that evening did all of those things.
But as though from farther away.
As though someone had stretched a thin layer of silk between Xie Jiu and the world.
"How much?" Fo Ye asked.
Jiu Ye looked up from the board.
"How much of what?"
"Morphine."
His finger stopped on a black piece.
It lasted perhaps a second.
To anyone else, it would have meant nothing.
Zhang Qishan knew.
"Fo Ye," Xie Jiu said mildly.
"How much?"
Jiu Ye sighed.
"I don't think this is a conversation we should be having over tea."
Qishan looked at the teapot standing between them.
Then he reached for it, moved it to the side table, and looked at Jiu Ye again.
"Now there is no tea between us."
For a moment, Xie Jiu stared at him without a word.
Then he burst out laughing.
It was the first genuine laugh Qishan had heard from him in weeks, so he considered his solution effective.
That did not mean, however, that he allowed him to avoid answering.
+++
The worst came later.
Zhang Qishan could understand pain.
If Xie Jiu had told him that he took morphine because something hurt, Qishan would have found the best doctor in China. If that doctor could not help, he would have found another. If it became necessary to bring in a specialist from Germany, Japan, France, or the very end of the world, he would have sent men and money until someone found a solution.
But when he asked,
"What does it give you?"
Xie Jiu remained silent for so long that Qishan began to wonder whether he would answer at all.
They were sitting in his study late in the evening. Rain fell beyond the windows, heavy and monotonous, beating against the tiles of the Xie residence like thousands of tiny fingers.
Jiu Ye looked tired.
Not sick.
Tired.
And Qishan suddenly thought that perhaps this was precisely what he had failed to understand before.
"Silence," Xie Jiu finally answered.
Fo Ye frowned.
"It's quiet here."
Jiu Ye smiled.
It was not a pleasant smile.
"Not that kind of silence."
And that was when Qishan understood that he still understood nothing at all.
+++
He tried.
He truly tried.
He spoke with doctors who told him about tolerance, dependence, dosage, and withdrawal. About how one could not simply take away a substance to which a man's body had already become accustomed. About muscle pain, insomnia, nausea, trembling, cold sweats, anxiety.
Fo Ye listened to all of it.
Then he asked,
"How long until he stops needing it?"
The doctor hesitated.
That was a bad sign.
"Physically?"
Qishan looked at him.
"There's another option?"
The doctor looked as though he had just realized he was standing in the middle of a minefield.
"Yes."
Fo Ye did not like that answer.
He liked the next one even less.
Because the body could be forced.
The mind was more difficult.
And Zhang Qishan had spent his entire life learning how to fight things that had bodies.
+++
The first night was bad.
The second was worse.
On the third, Jiu Ye told him to leave.
Fo Ye stayed.
"Zhang Qishan."
"Xie Jiu."
"This is my house."
"I know."
"Then get out of it."
"No."
Jiu Ye sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a blanket despite the warmth of the room. Tremors passed through his body in waves so violent that the fabric shook with him. His hair, usually arranged perfectly, clung to his damp forehead.
He looked at Fo Ye with pure hatred.
Qishan considered that a good sign.
Hatred meant Jiu Ye still had enough strength to feel something.
"I hate you," Xie Jiu said.
"I know."
"No, you don't."
"You can explain it to me in the morning."
"I hope you die."
"I would gladly trade my life for yours."
Jiu Ye froze.
So did Fo Ye.
That was not something he had intended to say.
For several seconds, there was nothing in the room but the rain.
Then Xie Jiu's face changed in a way Qishan never wanted to see again.
The anger disappeared.
It was not replaced by sadness.
Sadness would have been easier.
What appeared instead was exhaustion.
So profound that Qishan could almost feel it physically.
"Maybe," Jiu Ye whispered, "it would be easier if you simply let go."
Fo Ye was in front of him before he had time to think.
He crouched down.
Caught Jiu Ye's face between both hands and forced him to look at him.
"No."
Xie Jiu closed his eyes.
"Fo Ye…"
"I refuse."
"You can't order—"
"I can."
Jiu Ye's eyelids slowly lifted.
Despite everything, something almost offended appeared in his gaze.
"Death?"
"If necessary."
Xie Jiu stared at him.
And then, to Qishan's absolute astonishment, he began to cry.
Silently.
It was worse than screaming.
Qishan had seen people cry. Soldiers. Civilians. Men who had just learned of their brother's death. Mothers holding the bodies of their children. He had seen despair in so many forms that he should have known what to do.
He didn't.
So he did the only thing that came to mind.
He embraced him.
Jiu Ye stiffened.
For a moment, Qishan thought he would push him away.
Then fingers clenched around the fabric of his shirt.
And Xie Jiu hid his face against his neck.
Fo Ye sat with him on the floor for the rest of the night.
+++
Not every day was that bad.
Some were simply absurd.
"I'm cold," Xie Jiu murmured quietly, rubbing his hands together.
Fo Ye took off his coat.
Ba Ye stopped halfway through a sentence.
Jiu Ye looked at the heavy military coat Qishan had just wrapped around his shoulders.
"Fo Ye, I only said it was a little chilly."
"Now it isn't."
"You'll be cold."
"It doesn't matter."
Ba Ye looked from one of them to the other.
"Continue," Qishan said.
Ba Ye did not continue.
"What?"
"The report."
"Yes. Of course. The report."
Ba Ye looked again at Jiu Ye sitting in Fo Ye's coat.
"The report."
"Ba Ye."
"I'm gathering my thoughts."
"You've been gathering them for five minutes."
"Some of them escaped."
Jiu Ye closed his eyes.
Fo Ye thought he was falling asleep and continued his conversation with Ba Ye in a quiet voice, barely louder than a whisper, unwilling to disturb him.
He did not notice the small smile hidden against the collar of his coat.
+++
Another time, Jiu Ye's fingers trembled so badly that he could not fasten the button of his shirt.
He tried once.
Twice.
Three times.
Qishan watched him for several seconds.
Then he approached.
"Let me."
"I can manage."
"I can see that."
"That sounded insulting."
Fo Ye moved his hands aside.
He fastened the button himself.
Then the next.
Xie Jiu went still.
It was only at the third that Qishan realized how close they were standing.
Jiu Ye smelled of soap, medicine, and something uniquely his that Qishan had never been able to name. His neck was exposed. The skin beneath Qishan's fingers was warm.
Too warm.
He touched his forehead.
"You have a fever."
"And for a moment I thought you were trying to seduce me."
Fo Ye looked at him.
Jiu Ye looked at Fo Ye.
"I was joking."
"I know."
"Of course."
Fo Ye fastened the last button.
His fingers lingered near Jiu Ye's throat a second longer than necessary.
"Lie down."
Xie Jiu sighed.
"Remarkably romantic."
"Jiu Ye."
"I'm going."
+++
The problem was that Xie Jiu got better.
And then worse.
Then better again.
The doctors called it a process.
Fo Ye called it unacceptable.
Jiu Ye was thinner.
Weaker.
His body needed time.
Fo Ye did not trust time.
Time took people away.
It was very efficient at doing so.
Which was why Qishan began looking for other solutions.
And this was where he made a mistake.
He asked Ba Ye, because his insufferable, probably closest friend, even when he possessed no useful information whatsoever, could help him arrange his own thoughts into the proper shape.
He was helpful.
Annoying, but helpful.
+++
"How long do Zhangs live?"
Qi Tiezui slowly put down his teacup.
"Why are you asking?"
"Answer."
"Fo Ye, we've been friends for many years, and experience has taught me that whenever you begin a conversation like that, I should leave immediately."
"Ba Ye."
"A long time."
"How long?"
"A very long time."
"Why?"
Ba Ye regarded him suspiciously.
"Blood."
"That's all?"
"'That's all,' says the man with a qilin on his back."
Fo Ye ignored the comment.
"How can someone from outside the family become a Zhang?"
Silence.
Ba Ye blinked.
Once.
Twice.
"What?"
"Can someone from outside the family become a Zhang?"
Ba Ye opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Looked toward the door.
Then back at Fo Ye.
"Theoretically?"
"Yes."
"Adoption."
Qishan shook his head.
"Jiu Ye is too old."
Ba Ye stopped breathing.
Fo Ye did not notice.
"Another way."
"Jiu Ye?"
"Yes."
"Xie Jiu?"
Fo Ye frowned.
"How many Jiu Yes do you know?"
Ba Ye tightened his hand around his teacup.
"Fo Ye."
"What?"
"Are you trying to adopt Jiu Ye?"
"I just said he's too old."
"Yes. Of course. That would be absurd."
"Which is why I'm asking about another possibility."
Ba Ye looked at the ceiling.
Perhaps he was asking his ancestors for patience.
He received none.
"There's marriage."
Fo Ye fell silent.
So did Ba Ye.
For a moment, they simply stared at one another.
"I see," Qishan said.
Qi Tiezui suddenly knew, with the absolute mystical certainty of a man who predicted disasters for a living, that he had just made the greatest mistake of the month.
"I don't think you do."
"You've said enough."
"No, Fo Ye. Actually, I'd like to say more."
Qishan was already standing.
"There's no need."
"There is."
"I have a meeting."
"Zhang Qishan!"
Fo Ye left.
Ba Ye remained alone at the table.
He looked at his tea.
"I should've said it was impossible," Ba Ye sighed, rubbing his forehead. "It's not even as though he needed me to tell him anything. He already knew all of it, he just… wanted me to say it so he could blame me if something went wrong with his plan… I'm too old for this, and Fo Ye is definitely far too cunning."
He looked up at the ceiling.
Well.
He might as well prepare himself a comfortable coffin, because there was absolutely no chance whatsoever that this would end well…
+++
Of course, a surname alone did not change one's blood.
Qishan knew that.
He was not an idiot.
At least not in most matters.
But the Zhang family possessed things other people knew nothing about. Knowledge. Medicines. Methods of treatment passed down within the clan.
Stories about the Zhang family's extraordinary resilience were not merely legends.
If there was even one thing that could help Xie Jiu, Qishan intended to find it.
If there wasn't…
he would create it.
It was simple.
Only later did he realize that the part involving marriage had stopped seeming particularly problematic to him.
That should have concerned him.
It did not.
+++
Jiu Ye found him in the library one night.
Fo Ye sat surrounded by books belonging to the Zhang family.
"It's two in the morning."
"I know."
"You're not sleeping."
"Neither are you."
"I'm the one who's ill."
Qishan looked up.
"Which is exactly why you should be sleeping."
Xie Jiu stepped closer.
His gaze moved across the books.
"What are you doing?"
"Reading."
"I noticed. I'm more interested in why."
Fo Ye said nothing.
Jiu Ye reached for one of the books.
Qishan covered it with his hand.
Too late.
Xie Jiu read the title.
Then another.
His brows slowly rose.
"Fo Ye."
"Jiu Ye."
"Why are you studying records concerning the admission of outsiders into the Zhang clan?"
Silence.
Jiu Ye stared at him.
Qishan made a decision.
"I want you to become a Zhang."
Xie Jiu blinked.
It was a surprisingly similar reaction to Ba Ye's.
"Excuse me?"
"Zhangs, with our mutated blood, live a long time."
"I'm aware."
"They're more resistant to illness."
"I'm also aware."
"We have methods of treatment your doctor doesn't know."
"Fo Ye…"
"If you become a Zhang, I'll be able to—"
"How?"
Qishan stopped.
Jiu Ye tilted his head.
"How exactly do you intend to make me a Zhang?"
It was a reasonable question.
So Qishan answered truthfully.
"Ba Ye said we could get married."
Xie Jiu stared at him.
Fo Ye stared at Xie Jiu.
Somewhere outside, a dog barked.
"I see," Jiu Ye finally said.
Qishan nodded.
"Good."
"No. I absolutely do not see."
+++
Xie Jiu laughed for five minutes.
Fo Ye was beginning to feel offended.
"This isn't funny."
"Of course it isn't."
Jiu Ye wiped his eyes.
"You want to marry me."
"If it helps."
"For medical reasons."
"Yes."
"To prolong my life."
"Yes."
"Because Zhangs live a long time."
"Yes."
Xie Jiu covered his mouth with one hand.
His shoulders began shaking again.
"Stop."
"I'm trying."
"Unsuccessfully."
"Fo Ye, forgive me, but I have just been informed that the First of the Nine Masters intends to marry me as an experimental medical treatment."
Qishan crossed his arms.
"Do you have a better idea?"
And then the laughter stopped.
Just like that.
Xie Jiu looked at him for a long moment.
"You really would do it."
It was not a question.
"Yes."
"Even if there's only the slightest chance it might help."
"Yes."
"Even if everyone in Changsha decides you're insane."
"Ba Ye already thinks that."
"Ba Ye has thought you're insane for years."
"Then nothing will change."
Jiu Ye lowered his gaze.
His fingers traced the spine of one of the books.
"Why?"
Fo Ye knew the answer.
That was the worst part.
He had known it for a long time.
Perhaps from the moment he first noticed the trembling of Jiu Ye's hands. Perhaps earlier, when he learned to distinguish every tiny change in his expression. Perhaps even earlier than that, when he discovered that of all the people in Changsha, it was Xie Jiu's house he came to when he did not want to be a commander, Fo Ye, or the First of the Nine Gates.
When he wanted to be only Zhang Qishan.
He loved him.
Not like a brother.
Not like a friend.
Not like a man for whom he felt responsible.
He loved him in a way that was inconvenient, deep, and so integral to him that for years he had never needed to name it, because it existed regardless of its name.
But saying it was harder than walking into a tomb full of traps.
So Fo Ye said,
"Because I won't let you die."
Jiu Ye raised his eyes.
"That's not an answer."
"It is."
"Not for me."
Qishan clenched his jaw.
Xie Jiu waited.
A strategist.
He always knew when his opponent had nowhere left to retreat.
"Because," Fo Ye said slowly, "when you're cold, I want to warm you."
Jiu Ye went still.
"When your hands shake, I want to stop them. When you can't sleep, I want to stay. When you cry…"
His voice failed him.
That was irritating.
Qishan tried again.
"When you cry, I want to be the person you can do it with."
Xie Jiu's eyes grew wet.
Fo Ye immediately regretted it.
"Don't cry."
Jiu Ye laughed through his tears.
"Remarkably helpful."
"Jiu Ye."
"Continue."
Qishan looked at him in irritation.
"You know."
"I want to hear it."
Of course.
Of course Xie Jiu could not make this easy for him.
Fo Ye sighed.
Then he reached out.
He curled a hand around the back of Jiu Ye's neck and drew him closer until their foreheads touched.
Warm.
Alive.
It was enough to make something tighten painfully inside his chest.
"I love you," he said.
Then, more quietly, he added,
"That's why."
Xie Jiu closed his eyes.
And this time, when his hands began to tremble, Fo Ye simply caught them.
+++
Marriage, much to Zhang Qishan's disappointment, did not magically turn Xie Jiu into a long-lived member of the Zhang clan.
Ba Ye informed him of this even before the ceremony.
Repeatedly.
Fo Ye told him to stop.
That did not mean, however, that the plan was entirely useless.
Jiu Ye gained access to the Zhang family archives, medicines, and knowledge that Qishan had previously been able to share with him only in part. There was no miraculous cure hidden among them. There was no way to erase addiction with a single sweep of the hand, nor any secret technique capable of repairing all the damage.
But there were things that helped.
Medicines.
Methods of strengthening the body.
Knowledge about recovery.
Above all, however, there was time.
Months.
Then a year.
Then another.
Jiu Ye still had bad days.
Sometimes he woke in the night drenched in sweat, his heart beating too fast and the memory of that miraculous silence so intense that his teeth ached.
Then Fo Ye woke as well.
He never asked why.
He simply reached out a hand.
And Jiu Ye learned to take it.
+++
One winter night, several years later, Ba Ye came to the Zhang residence and found them in the sitting room.
Jiu Ye sat at the table over a stack of documents.
Fo Ye was reading a report.
"Cold," Xie Jiu said without looking up.
Qishan immediately stood.
Took off his coat.
Placed it over his husband's shoulders.
Ba Ye closed his eyes.
"It's been four years."
"What?" Jiu Ye asked.
"Nothing."
"Say it."
"I was merely wondering whether Jiu Ye knows that blankets exist in this house."
Fo Ye looked at him.
Ba Ye raised both hands.
"I'm silent already."
Jiu Ye adjusted the coat around his shoulders.
It was decidedly too large.
It smelled like Fo Ye.
Warmth, winter air, and something that over all those years had become the scent of home.
He looked at Qishan.
Fo Ye had returned to his report.
As though nothing had happened.
As though taking off his own coat every single time Xie Jiu said he was cold was the most obvious thing in the world.
Perhaps to him, it was.
Jiu Ye smiled and returned to his documents.
His hands no longer trembled.
Not always.
Not every day.
But not today.
And when, several hours later, he fell asleep in the armchair, Fo Ye put his report aside, walked over, and for a moment simply looked at him.
At the peaceful face.
At the chest rising with every breath.
At the man he had once held on the floor in the middle of the night because he had been afraid that if he loosened his arms for even a moment, Xie Jiu would slip away into a place from which even Zhang Qishan would not be able to bring him back.
Qishan bent down.
Slid one arm beneath his knees, the other behind his back, and carefully lifted him.
Jiu Ye stirred in his sleep.
"Fo Ye…"
"Sleep."
His head dropped onto Qishan's shoulder.
"I'm not… a Zhang by blood," he mumbled sleepily.
Qishan stopped.
"I know."
"So your plan was stupid."
"I know."
A moment of silence.
"Ba Ye was right."
Fo Ye frowned.
"Sleep."
Xie Jiu smiled with his eyes closed.
"I won't tell him."
"Good."
Qishan continued walking.
After several steps, he heard one more thing.
"But I think it worked."
Fo Ye looked down at him.
Jiu Ye was already asleep.
Qishan drew him a little closer against his chest.
He did not know whether it was Zhang medicine that had worked.
He did not know whether it had been the medicines, the doctors, time, Jiu Ye's stubbornness, his own stubbornness, or all of those things at once.
He did not even know how many years they had left together.
No one knew that.
But Xie Jiu was warm in his arms.
Breathing.
Alive.
And Zhang Qishan, who had never been particularly good at dealing with things he could not control, decided that for today, that was enough.
Tomorrow, he could argue with death again.
And if death truly intended to come for the Ninth Master someday… well…
First, it would have to speak with the First.
And the First had no intention of surrendering his beloved without a fight.