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Jing Yuan is well aware of how he ended up in this situation, with Fu Xuan across from him as they play starchess, Mimi’s head on her lap like she is his owner — and Jing Yuan is well aware that if the lion had a choice, he would pick Fu Xuan over him.
After all, who in this world would not?
Fingers tap the back of his hand, delicately filed nails resting against the scarred skin. “Jing Yuan, you’re distracted.” The words drip into him like syrup, sticking to his brain and replaying in his mind, echoing through his blood until the only thing Jing Yuan is any longer is those words. He blinks and Fu Xuan comes into focus again, his eyes settling on the flush sitting high on her cheeks, on the way her own eyes soften around the edges, on the way her hair rebels from the intricately placed pins and falls against pink skin. “Should I add this game to my win streak?”
He swears Fu Xuan could sell honey to a bee.
The two of them have been in this position before—centuries of knowing each other does that to long-lived races—but each time the Qixi Festival comes around, the situation worms its way into his chest and beneath his ribcage until it wraps around his heart, until it digs its meticulously filed nails into the squishy muscle and reminds Jing Yuan of all the things left unsaid. He hates how often he swallows the words, how untruthful he’s being when Fu Xuan has been nothing but honest with him about her own feelings, about her own thoughts about labeling their relationship as anything more than friends with benefits. Eighty years is a long time to bury his feelings in spite of finding himself wrapped between her legs and silk sheets.
A smirk slips across his face. “How bold of you, Fu-qing. When have I ever thrown a game of starchess? Especially to you .”
Jing Yuan watches Fu Xuan’s eyebrow twitch, a small tell that only he seems to notice. Perhaps it’s from glancing at her throughout meetings or while getting tea or working late over the years that he somehow managed to become so well-versed in the woman in front of him. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that others know her like this, but it would be quite hard to match Jing Yuan in knowledge of all of the hidden quirks Fu Xuan tries her best to hide beneath the surface. It’s cute, he thinks, how the real version of her is hidden just out of sight for those unwilling to search for it.
It makes him feel smug .
A pout forms on her lips, eyes narrowing at him as her delicate fingers uncap their bottle of amber huadiao wine and wrap around the body. Jing Yuan watches as Fu Xuan wars over what to do next, glancing between her cup and his own as if divining which cup to fill first will change their future, will set them on a path where that allows them to celebrate the holiday with a different label attached to them, a different atmosphere surrounding them in their secret garden. Or perhaps that is just his wishful thinking, his delusions writing a story that has no basis in reality.
Fu Xuan tips the bottle in his direction. “Care for more?”
“Master Diviner, even you know that getting me drunk won’t help you win.”
Fu Xuan’s huffs and her bangs flutter around her face, landing across her cheeks. The moment they stepped foot into the garden, she pulled the golden pins from her hair and Jing Yuan watched it tumble down her back, slipping over her shoulders as if it were made of silk. It’s amazing how little she cares about fixing it when she has had a few drinks, when it’s just the two of them and there is no one left for her to worry about keeping up appearances for. Jing Yuan watches at how fluid her movements are—even now, between them, her youth spent next to her master’s side, pouring tea for the both of them, makes itself known. A hand settles at the bottom of the bottle, tilting it forward just enough for the wine to pour out in a steady stream. The wrinkle between her brow deepens as she pulls back, questioning herself for only a moment on whether she filled his cup enough before filling her own.
Just like all things, Fu Xuan does it beautifully.
Jing Yuan smiles at the woman across from him. In the centuries that they have known each other, Fu Xuan has been nothing short of a fascination, a puzzle for him to solve even if every piece is the same shade of pink as her hair, as the color that haunts his dreams when he’s away on diplomatic missions for whatever reason and can’t contact her for weeks on end until they arrive back on the Luofu and she’s the first one he sees, waiting at the edge of the starskiff platform with her arms crossed against her chest and that wrinkle between her brows as if he did something in his time away to annoy her. But he knows better than to assume that at first glance, knows better to understand that the pout that sits so pretty on her lips is her own way of showing him that she is grateful he made it back to the Xianzhou Luofu, that she no longer has to spend the nights alone and awake, worrying over him and whether or not he will come home to her, his diviner.
He takes a sip from his ceramic cup as Fu Xuan claims one of his pieces. A chariot, of course. “You’ve gotten better over the years, Fu-qing.” It’s a tease, but one that’s true. She has become a better opponent with each game they’ve played. “Today’s strategy is different than usual. I like it.”
Fu Xuan shifts and the hanfu he watched her so diligently put on earlier that night slips off of her shoulder, revealing flushed skin under the artificial night sky. How typical it is for her skin to turn the same color as her hair when they spend time drinking, complaining about how he teases her about the pale skin turning brighter with each sip. Jing Yuan averted his eyes now, though, at the feeling of her watching him, taking stock of how his desire slips out in moments such as these, when he can’t quite hide behind a joke that allows him to change the subject. By now, she knows all of his tricks and yet, does not thwart them even when she is the only one who could. She allows him to hide in this game of theirs year after year after year.
She allows him to be a coward.
Jing Yuan watches as a smile spreads across her face, her eyes glinting at the board between them. His own eyes follow her gaze and he mirrors her smile, the corners of his mouth curling dangerously at which pieces are left on the board, at who is most likely to win based on the wooden pieces in piles that continue to get messier throughout the night. He knows that right now she’s set to win—a hard-earned win that she would have refused if he even entertained the thought of going easy on her as they drank—but the longer he stares at the board, the more a sliver of a chance opens up for him. His fingers move quicker than his brain, drunk on wine and Fu Xuan, and he claims her horse, narrowing the gap between him.
A huff comes in reply, petulant. “You’re a scoundrel, Jing Yuan.”
“Are you surprised?” he asks, smirk curling even more. If they’re stating the obvious, he would say that she’s beautiful, that he would let her win if she so much as fluttered her lashes at him, that this game is just another in a long line of games that he holds dear to his heart because he’s playing with her . “We’ve been here before, Master Fu. You should know better than to think I would let you win so easily.”
The sound of paws shuffling against tile catches Jing Yuan’s attention, just barely, and he turns to watch Mimi stretch and meander right by him like he is nothing more than a specter to find a snack only to return to Fu Xuan, head dropping onto her thigh with a huff. His gaze travels from the spoiled pet to Fu Xuan’s face, still scrunched in concentration as if she hasn’t noticed what happened.
How he wishes it was him resting on her lap.
The thought shakes Jing Yuan so violently that he knocks over his cup, wine spilling over the table and onto his hanfu, staining the delicate silk and making fun of him for being jealous of his own pet. It’s a ridiculous notion—he could go so far as to call it blasphemous of him—to think something so immature in his old age. In the thousand years he has lived, he never pictured himself as someone so petty, so obsessed with trivial things such as Mimi resting his head in Fu Xuan’s lap as he has done the day before and the day before and the day before and will do again tomorrow and the next day and the next day.
Even hundreds of years after their dance began, Fu Xuan can still pull new reactions out of Jing Yuan when he least expects it.
And if this is all she allows Jing Yuan to have, he will take it with both hands and hold onto it for years to come, nurturing this silly jealousy of his that only ever happened after Fu Xuan wrapped him around her finger and pulled him through the ether to stand upon the pedestal he set her on, when Jing Yuan laced their fingers together and allowed himself the opportunity to enjoy this type of friendship — this type of relationship with someone again after so many years spent with no one by his side, encouraging him to do better, to live better in falsely barbed quips that he knows are laced with concern for his wellbeing and not simply because she wishes for his seat as Arbiter-General. If this is all Fu Xuan allows him, Jing Yuan will accept that for however long she is willing to play with him before she gets bored, tossing him to the side for someone better suited for her, someone who doesn’t tease her about things that hardly matter in the grand scheme of things and flick pink strands of hair into her face as he does it.
Fu Xuan deserves better than him, but Jing Yuan will allow himself to indulge in velvety skin, in soft hair, in mumbled affections disguised as complaints until she realizes that.
She narrows her eyes at him, but there is no heat behind the stare. “I repeat, you’re a scoundrel, Jing Yuan. And now you’re wasting good wine.”
The words flow into Jing Yuan, rattling him out of his stupor and restarting his brain. Something must be wrong with him with how easily he’s distracted by Fu Xuan tonight, how easily he gets lost in the way her mouth curves to one side, a dimple just barely making itself known before she purses her lips together in concentration, once again attempting to best Jing Yuan for a win, to take his spot as general, to get him to fall first even though he already declared her the winner of that battle hundreds of years ago. Their needless competition is all for show, for Fu Xuan to move the goalposts whichever way she sees fit so she never has to reveal the cards closest to her chest, never has to say the words Jing Yuan so desperately aches to hear fall from her lips and fill him in the same expert way she pours wine into a cup, filling it to the exact amount for him to enjoy.
It’s only then that Jing Yuan realizes how he set himself up for this heartache. If he hadn’t been so desperate for Fu Xuan to see him as anything more than a coworker, he knows he would have offered something more, something more sustainable than this flimsy relationship that seems to be fast approaching its expiration date. And while he set himself up for this, he wishes he could blame himself, could take the fall for setting them on this path all those centuries ago but he can’t.
Fu Xuan beat him to the punch.
And the night she took his hand in hers is seared into his memory, how soft the skin of her cheek felt against his calloused hands, how slowly she moved to gauge his reactions, to read each minute twitch beneath his skin in the impossible situation that he would ever ask her to stop, to push her away and jerk back from her touch as if he hadn’t been dreaming of her since that night on the battlefield when he promised himself that he would never leave her side. Jing Yuan remembers that she was the one to bridge the impossible distance between them, that she was the one to lead him away from the Exalting Sanctum and through the streets until they stood in front of his home, her manicured fingers slipping between the gaps of his own battle worn hands until he found the courage to unlock the door to their shared future. He remembers the way in which such a small body pressed against his back, Fu Xuan’s arms wrapped around his waist as if tethering him to the moment, to the reality that she was the one who revealed the the hidden parts of herself in a rare moment of vulnerability.
All for him.
The softness of nostalgia was wiped away soon after that as deft hands worked to undress him, her face still hidden in his back. Jing Yuan knew better than to make a comment, to make a joke but his relationship with Fu Xuan had never been anything but doing the opposite of what he should do and he’d been grateful when she let out the smallest chuckle, a barely there puff of air that would have gone unnoticed if not for the silence that surrounded them in the entryway, the bubble of tension bursting at such a brief sound. He felt it bleed out of her with each new move of her fingers, slipping underneath silk and cotton and metal until finally dancing across scarred skin to turn him around. And oh, what a sight for Jing Yuan to see. The pink dusting Fu Xuan’s cheeks traveled to the tips of her ears, barely a handful of shades paler than her own hair.
“ You’re a scoundrel ,” she whispered against his lips as she kissed him and he signed away a life of never knowing what it was like to bite the forbidden fruit.
He watches now as Fu Xuan leans on the heel of her palm, head dipping every few seconds only to wake herself and pretend as if she never fell asleep in the first place. Hidden behind his cup, a smile slips across Jing Yuan’s face at the act. This isn’t the first time he has witnessed sleep overtake her, bit by bit until she finally succumbs to the deep call despite her desire to continue working. Except now, the wine she so delicately poured for herself is working against her, lulling her into a relaxation he so rarely sees her enjoy. He stores the memory in the back of his mind for another day, another length of travel away from the Luofu, from Fu Xuan herself, so that he has something to rely on when so far from home.
Mimi wakes at Jing Yuan rising from his spot, the game between them long abandoned much to the lion's disappointment. Mimi knows that he’ll have to move away from the warmth of Fu Xuan and crawl back to his bed in the apartment, only to sleep covered in his excess of pillows instead. The corner of Jing Yuan’s mouth quirks up into a smirk at the scene before him. His petty jealousy from earlier that night seems to have flipped onto its head—smugness flows through him at the prospect of sleeping next to Fu Xuan, to the only person he ever wishes to wake up to in the morning.
And she grants Jing Yuan that sweetness, that fantasy, that all-consuming dream that has haunted him for decades like a specter in the shadows, catching his eye in moments such as this. It’s unfair, he thinks, for him to latch onto these moments that mean so little to her and so much to him. It makes him feel foolish, as if he’s courting her in his younger years when he wasn’t so tired or scarred, when he didn’t have to worry about the politics that will undoubtedly put the blame on her if their relationship were to ever see the light of day. He shakes the thought away, refusing to let something so irritating ruin his time spent with her now.
“Fu-qing,” he whispers as calloused hands catch on the silk of her hanfu, “we shall finish our game in the morning. I’ll even allow you to redo your last move.”
Even wrapped in layers upon layers of silk from the finest tailors of the Xianzhou, Fu Xuan weighs nothing more than air. How such strength resides within her bones, her tendons, her muscles that wield such power that even he himself can’t but stop and stare in awe is a question he knows he will never find the answer to—or perhaps it’s more accurate to say Fu Xuan herself will never reveal that kernel of truth, hiding it from him until the pair of them are old and wrinkled and far past their prime even for long lived species. The thought makes him smile to himself as he shuffles around Mimi, pointedly ignoring the lion’s annoyed grunt at him.
Too bad old friend , he thinks, she is mine for the night .
Jing Yuan gets one, two, three steps away from the table when he feels something brush his temple. He chalks it up to the breeze, to his hair catching on the wind and tickling the soft skin in the night. Until it happens a second time, this time a hand coming into view.
Fingers card through Jing Yuan’s hair, pushing it away from his forehead for the briefest of moments before it flops back. Soft giggles erupt from Fu Xuan as he carries her through the home, echoing against the empty space he never quite managed to fill despite Fu Xuan’s own belongings somehow finding a home among his own—treasured hair pins here, one of those ridiculous plushies she refuses to admit she loves there, a silk quilt that traveled with her from the Yuque that now drapes across his bed.
It takes Jing Yuan a moment to realize what’s happening: Fu Xuan is petting him. She’s petting him like she pets Mimi. He isn’t sure if he should be honored or insulted or maybe, just maybe, a combination of the two, which gives him permission to tease her about it in the morning when she isn’t quite yet awake and her laughter is nothing more than soft huffs of air that he hoards like a dragon hoards gold on other planets he has only ever heard of in passing.
The short trek from their secret garden to the bed follows the same pattern, Fu Xuan combing his hair while Jing Yuan locks the memory behind a door in his heart, meant only for him to tease her with if only to convince her it didn’t mean as much as it truly does. Even in his old age, Jing Yuan allows himself to be delusional when it comes to her . Finally, he sets her down on the side of the bed she likes best and he chokes back a sigh from escaping.
Jing Yuan watches as pink hair spills over satin sheets—something she insisted on—haloing Fu Xuan’s pale face like she’s some sort of angel sent to haunt his heart, his thoughts, his home for however long her flighty nature allows. He knows this sort of relationship is hardly sustainable — they’ve been doing this for the last eighty years, dancing around a label in favor of enjoying a new layer to their relationship, to their lives that are so intertwined that Jing Yuan can’t picture his without her in it, no matter what form it takes. But he knows, he knows , that something will have to give at some point whether it’s in a year or ten or another hundred, but it will come, and he isn't quite sure how he will deal with it.
Soft fingers trail along his jaw, pulling him back into the present, back to the her in front of him. “It’s not like you to be distracted.”
Fu Xuan blinks up at him and Jing Yuan swears he sees concern in her eyes, swears there are years of questions simmering just below the surface that she so desperately wants to ask but refuses to give voice to out of fear that Jing Yuan will withdraw from her and play it off like he hasn’t a care in the world with that same smile he puts on for everyone else. In actuality, try as he might he can’t turn that smile on for Fu Xuan, can’t give her something as lazy, as placid as a smile like that because the one he directs only toward her is already tugging at the corners of his mouth and it says everything he could never vocalize to her, everything he wishes they could be if the line wasn’t already drawn in the sand and he wasn’t such a coward.
She deserves better than this, better than him for all his deception that only seems to grow with each passing day Jing Yuan watches Fu Xuan work so diligently to take over his position, to become the Arbiter-General they both know she will be when the time comes, when she is able to stop acting so impatiently, so rash as is common for people her age.
“Jing Yuan,” Fu Xuan calls and he can’t help but lean in, closing the already scant distance between them. She’s pouting again. He presses a thumb against her bottom lip and he catches a flash of pink tongue against the tip. “It’s rude to be so distracted with someone in your bed.”
How bold , Jing Yuan thinks, it’s rare for her to be so forward . Both of them have sobered up enough that he knows her words are true, that they are the same thinly veiled riddles she has used before in order to say what she wants without burning from embarrassment, without overthinking whether or not he wants this as much as she does—and he always wants it as much as she does if not more.
And before Jing Yuan has a moment to reply, Fu Xuan is already slipping a hand under his robes and pressing soft lips against his own, the sweet taste of wine on her lips, on her tongue as it pushes deeper into his own, flicking against his tongue. This part of their relationship—their game —has always been on Fu Xuan’s terms, has always followed her rules of engagement on when or where out of respect for her boundaries. Intimacy is something she knows enough about in theory but not so much practice simply because of the walls she has up that Jing Yuan managed to tear his way through. Few others have seen beyond them and into this side of her, vulnerable and wanton and less than the proper image she so desperately upholds in her daily life.
This, too, makes Jing Yuan feel smug even as he stumbles forward to meet her enthusiasm.
Fu Xuan pulls back, rare mischief glinting in her eyes. “I believe the stakes of our game allowed the winner to pick what they want to do to the other.”
Both of them know that Jing Yuan will do anything she asks, will drop down to his knees that very moment if she glances at the edge of the bed and will beg if she wants him to. Fu Xuan plays this game better than he ever will—always has and always will with those big eyes that blink up at him, promising all of the things he so desperately wants when they fall into bed together.
They’ve known this for decades and will know it for centuries more.
“What did you have in mind, Fu-qing?” He nips at her bottom lip, sucks in a breath when her hand slips under the silk of his hanfu, nails dragging against the soft skin of his chest. She’s playing with him—just like she did while they sat in the garden, just like she has been doing with him for years now—but Jing Yuan would be loath to stop her now, not when things are getting good. “Your wish is my command.”
She grins, soft and sweet and hiding everything that he knows lurks in the recesses of her mind. Her nails dance along his collarbone until they escape from the fabric and finally, finally , pushes it away and off his shoulder, delicate and deliberate like all things she does. She takes her time undressing him the same way she reads the Matrix of Prescience: slow and calculated, as if she is taking her time to savor each possibility that could come to pass in the scant hours they have between now and needing to rise, needing to start their days as professionals once again. This game is one he allows her to win at, cheating every which way with how she smirks at him, how her eyes twinkle with the promise of everything she swears to do to him so long as he says the word. She repeats the movement with the other shoulder, pushing the fabric along corded muscle until finally it catches and she pouts, as if the dai holding his whole outfit together personally offended her.
And Jing Yuan supposes it did, because how dare something as insignificant as fabric get in her way. Another huff falls from her lips but Fu Xuan doesn’t allow Jing Yuan to comment on it, only allows him to suck in a gasp as she presses forward to litter his chest with barely there kisses that leave him holding his breath as if even doing that would spook her into stopping.
“You should know better than to promise such a thing,” she mumbles against his collarbone before surging up to finally kiss him on the mouth.
And not for the first time, Jing Yuan swallows his longing with the taste of Fu Xuan on his tongue.