Ko-Fi donation ficlet #15:
Xie Lian comes awake holding his stomach and gasping, his nightmare clawing at him, trying to pull him back under.
“Gege?” comes the soft call from his side, but he’s already halfway out of bed, feet tangled in the blankets. He yanks them free as his heart hammers, but a hand around his wrist keeps him from leaving their altar-bed.
“It’s nothing,” he says dismissively, aimed at the empty temple, a placating smile on his face.
“Really. It’s nothing. Just a nightmare. It’s fine. I-I want some water. Some food. I’m going for a walk. I don’t remember— I don’t remember where I put that scroll I found this morning.” Excuse after excuse floods out of his mouth.
The fingers around his wrist stroke over his veins, his tendons, with painstaking gentleness. Up. Down. Up. Down.
He breathes with the movements and finds himself calming by small degrees, but he tenses again when Hua Cheng says, “You don’t have to talk about it. But I’m listening.”
Hua Cheng always listens to what Xie Lian has to say, no matter how trivial.
Something about it has Xie Lian returning to bed. He’s pulled immediately into his husband’s arms, tucked beneath his chin. The embrace is tight.
“It happened so many hundreds of years ago,” Xie Lian says, stiff. “I don’t think about it anymore. I don’t know why I dreamt about it at all.” Fingers card through his hair. Patient. Tender. It gets him to admit: “The temple.”
Those fingers freeze, and Hua Cheng forgets to put up the pretense of breathing. Xie Lian’s never brought this up before, with anyone, but he supposes it was only a matter of time for this nightmare to crawl out of the depths of his memory, considering they spend so much time in Thousand Lights Temple and they sleep on an altar converted into a bed.
“You were there with me that day,” Xie Lian says. It’s half a question, half a statement.
“Gege’s…apologizing? To me?” Hua Cheng asks, voice laced with confusion in the dark.
For a moment, Hua Cheng says nothing. Then he rolls them over so that he hovers above Xie Lian. He kisses Xie Lian.
When the contact breaks, his fingers find the ties of Xie Lian’s inner robe, not how they usually do—with frenetic desire—but like Hua Cheng is handling an artifact that might crumble if he’s too rough.
Xie Lian’s robe parts, and Hua Cheng descends to press a kiss to his belly. At the touch, with his nightmare so fresh in his mind, Xie Lian flinches, his stomach quivering under Hua Cheng’s lips. His husband would never hurt him, he knows, but his skin is so sensitive, like it’s only freshly healed. He jumps again when Hua Cheng kisses his stomach a second time—jumps a little less over the third kiss—not at all for the fourth. When it’s clear his panic is abating, Hua Cheng moves to his heart, his throat, everywhere he was hurt, blessing his body with affection.
“You’re safe, Your Highness,” Hua Cheng promises against his skin.
“You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t hurt.”
“I really am over it,” he insists, voice tight.
“Say something if it hurts.”
Tears well up in his eyes. “I’m fine.” A whisper. “I’m fine. I promise. I’m really fine.”
Those tears pour over. His breathing is shaky when Hua Cheng cups his cheek, kisses him, and smooths away his tears. One kiss. Two. Three.
“Okay,” he agrees, the word so quiet it’s practically silent.
And so Xie Lian talks. For the first time in eight hundred years, he talks about what happened to him—and someone listens.
