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Yuanzhi feels it before he sees it.

A sort of free fall and a sense of sudden, inexplicable loss that hollows out his chest. He nearly drops his sword when it happens, saved only by muscle memory seizing his sinew to move and deflect the blow meant to harm him.

Panic trickles down his spine the moment he realises his eyes cannot find the one face he’d been keeping half of his concentration on.

“Xiao Hua!”

Yuanzhi turns to where he last saw him, singular focus stealing his breath away as he bolts forward.

Please, please, please…

His mind begs with every desperate jackrabbiting of his heart.

It can’t be.

Yuanzhi fights off two assailants and brutally dispatches them with detached efficiency. One more who aimed for his jugular just as he spies a head of hair wearing the familiar silver glint of hairpieces that match his own. Another who stops him in his tracks with a punch to his gut, but the pain is barely a blip on his senses when he fights this assailant off, summarily ending it with a shot of his hidden weapon between the eyes.

Frantically, he calls out for his Hua gongzi. Fear now bleeding into his voice.

And then.

Yuanzhi lets his swords drop just to catch Xiao Hua when he falls.

“No…” Yuanzhi chokes on his spit, cradling him, half dragging him away from the melee. “Xiao Hua. Xiao Hua!”

Heated prickles burn in the corners of his eyes but he does not let any tears fall. There’s a cold touch to his cheek and Yuanzhi folds his hand to keep it there.

“I’m sorry,” Xiao Hua whispers around a trickle of blood that drips from his smile. “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t say that, don’t you fucking say that!” Yuanzhi’s chest hurts with helplessness. “You promised me, so don’t you fucking dare leave!”

His husband, because Yuanzhi refuses to think of this man as any less than the person he chose to have and to hold, can only smile, blinking sluggishly up at him.

“I’m just going ahead of you. You can come meet me in your own time.”

The horror and the grief become truer to him as the seconds pass. Yuanzhi holds on. Curling a hand over Xiao Hua’s cheek, he presses his thumb to the corner of his lips, leaning in to press his own over them.

He trembles as he kisses Xiao Hua, a wounded sound escaping him.

Here are the lips that had smiled at him that first day in the clinic as Yuanzhi had been reorganising his herbs. A stranger dressed in black that leaned against his doorway. Yuanzhi had almost told him to leave if he had no business here, and was stayed only by a sudden declaration.

“I really like you. Can I kiss you and marry you?”

It was strange enough to pique his interest. One moment leads into another, then into a companionship that blooms into romance, and then into Yuanzhi braiding his hair ornaments into Xiao Hua’s hair, letting him slide a ring on him in return.

And now Yuanzhi is here, carding his fingers through his Xiao Hua’s hair, nails catching on the silver hairpieces.

“Didi, let go of him.”

Someone tries to take Xiao Hua from his arms to which he stabs with the dagger in his sleeve. They stop. No one tries again.

“Didi, you need to let go of him.”

Gege’s face swims into view and for a moment, he wants to give in to the childish urge to ask him to fix this, to bring Xiao Hua back.

What he says instead is, “I want to go to him. I want to be with my husband.”

A pained grimace flashes over Gege’s face. He crouches down, eyes searching as he clasps Yuanzhi’s neck. “Didi, you’re hurt alright? You’re bleeding. We need to get you some help.”

Yuanzhi shakes his head. Turning back to Xiao Hua in his arms, he dislodges one of the poisoned tips from the mechanism in his arm guard. Keeping his eyes on his husband’s face, he smiles, kissing him once more. With a quick flick of his wrist, he slices his palm, feeling the burn and sting of the wound cut through the numbness and fog in his head.

“I’m coming to you. Wait for me.”

Yuanzhi marries Hua gongzi with heaviness in his chest and the burn of duty gripping at his throat. All he chooses to remember about his wedding ceremony is the look on Gege’s face as he veils him and the surprisingly calloused hand that takes his when they move to the Hall of Elders to give their respects.

The hand in his had been the one thing that kept his mind shackled to the reality of his situation.

Hua gongzi, when they finally had a moment alone together, had been gentle; carefully helping him out of his heavy wedding dress, attentively tending to his needs even as Yuanzhi mulishly refuses to speak a word to him.

“I won’t hurt you.”

That had given him pause even as he distrustfully glares at the man. Sensing it, Hua gongzi had smiled, bright and sunny as if unaffected by Yuanzhi’s dark mood.

“I’ll sleep on the daybed once we’ve exchanged our wedding wines,” He promises. And keeps to it.

Yuanzhi would know. He stayed up the whole night with a hand to the knife he keeps under his pillow.

Life as the wife to Hua gongzi starts like this.

There isn’t a need for him to manage the household seeing as he’s, well, a malewife Hua laoye betrothed his son to in exchange for the backing and the prestige of Gege’s name being linked to the Hua family. So, he spends his days either in his rooms or in the courtyard that he shares with his husband.

And Hua gongzi keeps to his promise to not hurt him. In fact, the fool with his softer disposition is anything but the image Yuanzhi had built up of him in his head.

He’s kind and gentle, considerate of others. It isn’t long before Yuanzhi figures out how much the servants and maids of their courtyard clearly care for their young master. There’s a deep, unwavering sense of morals in his dealings with others.

He’s an honourable man, Yuanzhi finds himself thinking when they have their shared meals. If anything, no matter how sharp Yuanzhi’s words are or how much his attitude toes on the line of disrespect and discontent, it doesn’t faze his husband one bit.

Yuanzhi’s gone and broken a gadget Hua gongzi spent a month on? Oh, that’s no matter! In fact, the broken parts actually work better when put back together.

Yuanzhi’s claimed a room in the residence to fashion into a laboratory without asking? Fantastic! Hua gongzi has his servants go out and buy up all the equipment and every ingredient for Yuanzhi’s personal stores.

All through this, his smile never fazes.

And as a river can change its course after a period of time, so can human emotions. The muscle that beats in Yuanzhi’s chest isn’t immune and he is human after all.

Their shared meals start to feel less like a burden and more like parts of the day he looks forward to. He allows himself to be openly interested in the little whizzbangs Hua gongzi makes, going so far as to willingly spend time with his husband in the workshop and allowing him space in his laboratory.

It becomes easier to accept the warmth and the regard he is given.

It becomes simpler to give his own in return.

So, when he finally plucks up the resolve to ask if his husband would accompany him to the market, he thinks his heart swells twice its size in the face of the smile he receives and the quiet and shy whisper of, “I would like that.”

Love isn’t immediate. Yuanzhi thinks it’ll be awhile before he feels anything of the sort. But he’s fond. Fond of the little rhythm they’ve built in their life together. Fond of how Hua gongzi lets him set the pace, content to be half a step beside him.

It’s undeniable fondness that guides him to take his husband’s hand one night as they’re readying for their separate beds and guide him to his own.

Fondness still, when Hua gongzi kisses him chastely on the cheek only for Yuanzhi to gently remind him, “That’s not how you kiss your wife.”

It’s still not love when they consummate their marriage. Not love when Hua gongzi takes to sleeping in Yuanzhi’s bed every night after, not yet that.

But he knows he will get there. His heart tells him so.