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Mo Ran is weeping.
Turning, Chu Wanning just about makes out the line of his back and shoulders in the darkness, the way they tremble and shake with his sobs and hiccups. It’s clear, right away, that Taxian-Jun has returned; Mo Ran would have curled around him, pressed his face into Chu Wanning’s hair. He’d find no shame in seeking comfort, whereas Taxian-Jun would rather die than allow his pain to be seen.
Even if it’s not the first time.
In a past lifetime, in a time when neither dared to be honest with the other—when one was trapped in hate—Taxian-Jun had frequent nightmares. The proud conqueror is nothing like himself when he’s having nightmares—reduced to a little boy curled into a ball, yearning warmth, affection. Love.
At first, Chu Wanning pulled away, unsure of what to do as he cried and pleaded with an unseen person to stay, please, don’t leave me. It had to be Shi Mingjing, the one Taxian-Jun was mourning. Surely, he wouldn’t want Chu Wanning to witness his grief, much less soothe him. Chu Wanning, the man who left his true love to die.
Still, eventually, Chu Wanning began to comfort him. Reached out to rest a hand on Taxian-Jun’s head, patting gently, carding his fingers through dark strands. And it calmed him, somehow, made the weeping fade and subside. So, the next time the nightmares struck, Chu Wanning reached for Taxian-Jun every time, always, no matter how bruised, battered, or aching he felt. No matter how much his own heart was filled with anguish.
And that’s what he does now.
Gently, fingers slipping in Taxian-Jun’s hair, Chu Wanning brushes the pads of them across his scalp, down the nape of his neck, and back up again. Taxian-Jun sighs, leaning into Chu Wanning’s touch, as he always has. And Chu Wanning tugs Taxian-Jun close with his other arm, wrapping it around Taxian-Jun’s waist, as he always has.
And as they always have, they stay like that for the rest of the night, Chu Wanning spooning against Taxian-Jun, chest to his back.
Chu Wanning can count on his fingers the number of times he’s had Taxian-Jun in his embrace. It’s not the way Chu Wanning likes it, nor would Taxian-Jun’s pride allow it. Which is why, as soon as Taxian-Jun stirs awake, he flips around and pushes Chu Wanning onto his back, hands pinning Chu Wanning’s wrists above his head. The sudden movement loosens Chu Wanning’s robes, the fabric sliding open to reveal bruises on pale skin.
“Mo Ran,” Chu Wanning snaps.
“When did Wanning get so bold?” Taxian-Jun says, voice dropping low.
“You were—” Chu Wanning pauses; an acknowledgement of Taxian-Jun’s vulnerability, out loud, would not be taken well. “I was… cold.”
“Oh?” Taxian-Jun buries his nose into the crook of Chu Wanning’s neck, breathing in deep. “This Venerable One can think of many ways to warm you up.”
“Not now. It’s too—ah!”
Taxian-Jun’s tongue flicks at the reddened spot where his teeth had sunk in. “Hmmm? Too what, Wanning? Speak a little more clearly, why don’t you?”
Chu Wanning grits his teeth. In their previous life, he might have hissed and snarled, then let Taxian-Jun do as he pleased. (Had no choice but to allow it, really.) But now, cultivation intact, he has no reason to give into what is essentially Taxian-Jun’s attempt at patching up his ridiculously fragile ego.
A spark of light crackles around Chu Wanning’s wrist, glowing golden before Taxian-Jun’s widening eyes.
“Wait, Wan—”
Taxian-Jun’s screams send Goutou into a barking frenzy.
When Mo Ran’s eyes open again, Chu Wanning waits to see the shift in his features, a softness that Taxian-Jun hides all-too-well behind the veneer of arrogance. Once spotted, he presses a wet cloth to Mo Ran’s forehead, dabbing the sweat off his skin.
“Has he done it again?” Mo Ran sighs.
“He’s learning,” Chu Wanning says.
Mo Ran’s lips press together in a thin line. “Is he? I know how stubborn he—” he swallows, throat bobbing. “— I can be.”
Chu Wanning leans in and kisses his cheek. “Then you know that he’s just as capable of listening. Eventually,” he adds as an afterthought.
Mo Ran smiles, tugs Chu Wanning’s hand close to brush his lips against the back of it. “You have infinite patience.”
Chu Wanning flushes, but doesn’t pull away. “Mo Ran,” he says, quietly. “I didn’t want to pry, but your dreams… what are they of?”
“Of you,” Mo Ran says, without hesitation.
The knee-jerk reaction is to tell Mo Ran off for being silly, but Chu Wanning bites his cheek, recalling Mo Ran’s wish for him to accept affirmations and affection. “I meant your nightmares,” he says instead.
Mo Ran arches an eyebrow. Then, he tugs Chu Wanning on top of him, hands gentle on his hips. “They’re all about you,” he murmurs.
Head on Mo Ran’s chest, Chu Wanning listens to his heartbeat, steady and strong.
This is Mo Ran, not Taxian-Jun. Perhaps the content of his dreams have changed with him.
It isn’t long before Chu Wanning is once again awakened by soft weeping.
Instinctively, automatically, he wraps his arms around Taxian-Jun and pulls him close, hands drawing small, soothing circles on Taxian-Jun’s back. Taxian-Jun flinches, breath hitching. Then he turns, and Chu Wanning expects a big palm against his chest, pushing him off.
So he startles when Taxian-Jun’s fist curls into his robes instead, his face tucked into the juncture between Chu Wanning’s neck and shoulder. Hot tears flowing, soaking into Chu Wanning’s skin, Taxian-Jun whispers something then, quiet and muffled, cut off by his sobs. Chu Wanning strains to catch it, breathing light, as if stilling his breath can help him take in what Taxian-Jun is saying.
Grip tightening, Taxian-Jun presses in, his exhale long and harsh, and then Chu Wanning hears it—words murmured in a voice so unlike the Emperor he once knew.
“Shizun… Notice me, please…”
Chu Wanning’s heart throbs in his chest. He barely has time to digest this turn of events before Taxian-Jun is speaking again.
“Please, look at me. Open your eyes and tell me again how much of a disappointment I am, how unworthy my wilful actions are of a Sisheng Peak disciple… wake up and tell me this is all a dream. Th-This Venerable One… This Venerable One commands you, Chu Wanning. Without you, This Venerable One…”
Taxian-Jun shudders, his voice turning so tiny, so broken.
“I, I really…”
The revelation hits Chu Wanning harder than Tianwen’s heavenly strikes.
Him.
It was him.
The person that Taxian-Jun calls for—yearned with all his might over all those years—was him. Not Shi Mingjing, but him. Chu Wanning. He, who was too cold, too distant with young Mo Ran, who failed Mo Ran so many times, but none more so than in that crucial, pivotal moment with the flower of hate.
“I’ve always been yours,” Taxian-Jun had said. Confessed, moments before his body crumbled into dust. Chu Wanning heard it, processed it, and never truly believed it.
Until now.
Something settles around Chu Wanning, a heavy cloak of sadness, and he holds Taxian-Jun tight against him, his own hands trembling. He won’t forget the way his heart splintered when Mo Ran died in his arms, the way his soul felt as if it would never be whole again. How excruciating must it have been for Taxian-Jun, alone and filled with nothing but anger and hate?
Chu Wanning breathes with Taxian-Jun, slowing when his breath slows, steadying him when it wobbles and jumps. For a while, Chu Wanning’s thoughts race, stormy with memories of silk sheets and blood-red curtains, the smell of incense and aphrodisiacs, a low chuckle that gusts over his ears and down, down, down his naked back. But it’s warm and comforting in the darkness, pressed against Taxian-Jun, and slowly, gradually, eyes slipping shut, sleep claims him.
He awakens to the feel of Taxian-Jun flipping them around, the weight of Taxian-Jun’s body sinking into his.
Incorrigible.
“Are you that eager, baobei?” Taxian-Jun purrs, hands roaming. “Is he not satisfying you enough?”
Chu Wanning sighs, relaxing under Taxian-Jun’s touch. “It’s not a competition.”
“Meaning This Venerable One wins by default?” Taxian-Jun says, eyes bright with such triumph that Chu Wanning almost lets out a laugh.
“As you say.”
Taxian-Jun’s immediate response is a smirk, a kiss on Chu Wanning’s lips. He deepens it, tongue slipping in, and Chu Wanning parts his lips in an open invitation. But Taxian-Jun breaks away then, his smirk fading into a frown.
“Wait,” he says. “Usually, you’d be summoning Tianwen by now.”
Chu Wanning looks back at him, mouth curved in a soft smile, one hand reaching out to frame Taxian-Jun’s cheek. “Mo Ran,” he murmurs. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Taxian-Jun’s breath catches. “What are you—”
“I’m here to stay,” Chu Wanning says. “Always.”
With his next breath, Taxian-Jun’s face crumbles, and he’s kissing Chu Wanning again, slow and deep, without the rush, the sense of urgency that’s ever present, as though he’s terrified of losing what he has. Of losing Chu Wanning again.
No, this time, maybe for the first time, he’s gentle, adoring in a way that he has only shown through extravagant gifts and acts of possessiveness.
That is, until Taxian-Jun opens his mouth, hours later, proclaiming how much better he is in bed than his “peasant self.”
Blissed out and aching, Chu Wanning doesn’t correct him.
Two lifetimes in one: a boy who blossomed with the maturity and strength of a centuries-old pine tree; another who remains trapped in perpetual adolescence, still finding comfort in a place he desperately wants to call his own.
And Chu Wanning will be there for them: to stand tall by one’s side; to be home for another.