[mlc ficlet] out of the mist
mysterious lotus casebook | feihua (background difanghua) | post-canon | g
Di Feisheng finds Li Lianhua gone, but not far.
this came to me in a vision. it might get folded into a longfic I'm trying to get off the ground, but it stands on its own.
Di Feisheng wakes, leaned awkwardly against the bed, and finds the blankets thrown aside. The pillow remains dented, the only sign of the absconded sleeper.
Again he fell asleep beside Li Lianhua's bed. He's kept watch here on more nights than not, ever since they came back to the sanctuary of Tianji Manor. The room is a little musty with lingering sleep, but crisp humidity tinges the air by the doors left ajar. The pale blue of dawn shimmers through the crack.
Kneading a crick in his neck, he goes outside. The garden is heavy with dew, the flagstones breathing cold even through his boots. Even without reaching for Li Lianhua's qi, he knows where to go.
He could still reach for it. It would be soft and new against his senses, like a bone not quite done mending, dangerously vulnerable but firming by the day.
However, there are damp footprints along the flagstones. Freshly left, they trail through the gate under the climbing wisteria and onto the open side of the mountain. Not thirty steps away, the ground plummets away down a cliff that even Di Feisheng would be hard pressed to ascend with qinggong.
The cliff's edge is hemmed in enterprising trees. Billows of mist hang between them like scraps of silk, turning the air silver and close, the shadows still blue and watery along the grassy path.
Not far down the path there is a boulder. Wrapped in an old surcoat, almost the green of the moss dappling the rock, Li Lianhua looks out over the drop at their feet. His hair is down; his feet are bare. If not for the worn surcoat weighing him down, he'd look no more tangible than a swirl of mist.
If Fang Duobing were here, he'd have already flown at Li Lianhua. Di Feisheng can practically hear him: What are you doing out of bed? Where are your shoes? You'll catch your death!
Di Feisheng merely lets his boots fall loud enough for Li Lianhua to hear. His senses are still changeable, but they, too, are getting stronger.
He stops so there's a polite handspan between their shoulders. Li Lianhua angles his head lightly towards him. Blinks, as if for the first time in a while. The steepled tops of watchtowers on the lower slopes peek out of the fog below.
It was Di Feisheng that intruded on Li Lianhua's contemplation, so he should say something. Instead, he watches, out of the corner of his eye. The pre-dawn chill has pinched Li Lianhua's cheeks and brightened his eyes. His hair falls untended, in long dark tendrils, as if he'd stepped out of bed and straight outside.
He looks... good, Di Feisheng thinks. Thin and tousled, yes, but present, his shoulders down and unhunched. Like he is truly here.
Then, Li Lianhua says, thin and low, like he barely dares to voice it, "It doesn't hurt."
"Were you in pain? You could've woken me."
Li Lianhua's gaze moves to the distance again. His fingers curl around his own elbow. "No. I woke, and I did not hurt."
There is a problem here, but Di Feisheng is not quite seeing its shape. The poison is gone. They're all waiting to see what that means, in terms of Li Lianhua's still chancy health. "That's a good sign, no?"
Li Lianhua's eyes cinch. "It was ten years, Lao Di. For ten years, I never knew when the pain would come, how long it would linger."
"You always beat it back." Di Feisheng catches his own hand before he touches Li Lianhua. His shoulders have drawn taut under the surcoat.
"I did," Li Lianhua says. "And it always came back, worse than last time."
Di Feisheng was raised on pain, intimately schooled in it: his lessons covered both inflicting and suffering it. He's almost died more than once. He spent the better part of ten years repairing the damage Li Xiangyi wrought in their last battle. He knows both how to shrug off his own agony and that pain is a friend, a guide, a teacher. As long as he hurts, he is alive.
Li Lianhua was once a swordmaster, the pinnacle of the wulin. He knew these same truths. But now, he is barely more than an ordinary person, the wellspring of his neili near dry.
"But—" Di Feisheng hates that he hesitates. "You're healed. The poison is gone."
The noise that escapes Li Lianhua is not a laugh: it's an ungainly, smothered huff, frustration and amusement in one. "Yes," he says, "and for the first time since you and I last fought, nothing hurts."
Suddenly made wordless, Di Feisheng lets himself be drawn by his earlier impulse.
He sets his hand on Li Lianhua's shoulder. A shiver passes through Li Lianhua, his breath gusting out, his tension slackening but not dispersing. His chin dips slowly.
In moments like these, Di Feisheng is envious of Fang Duobing's simplicity in matters of emotion. He guards against nothing, holds nothing back. He'd know what to offer here, would intuit what would ease the last of Li Lianhua's strain.
Li Lianhua decides for him. Without warning, his weight angles into Di Feisheng. Di Feisheng only has to catch him as he presses into his startled embrace, bony shoulder to his chest, soft cheek to his jaw, the tangle of his hair that smells like the dew-damp woods to his temple.
"Good," Di Feisheng murmurs. For want of a batter plan, he strokes Li Lianhua's hair. "That's good."
A smaller, sharper shiver hitches Li Lianhua's shoulders. His hands crumple the back of Di Feisheng's robes. Between their bodies, the morning is warm.
