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The medicine was experimental. Lin Chen had told Mei Changsu that to begin with. So much of what Lin Chen had to do for Mei Changsu was experimental, when it wasn’t based off old, obscure documents found in some forgotten corner of the Langya Library. The Poison of the Bitter Flame was so uncommon that there had been no cases available for study in centuries. Mei Changsu always said if Lin Chen could keep him alive, he didn’t care how he did it. (Though, of course, there were still limits…) He knew Lin Chen never tested anything on him he didn’t believe had a good chance of working, never anything with too high a risk for the possible benefits. There were sometimes adverse effects. That was only to be expected.
The side effects were usually physical, not mental. This most recent medicine caused both.
“Changsu, I need you to focus,” Lin Chen was saying, but Mei Changsu couldn’t see him. All he could see was a vision in the distance. A cluster of tents. The Chiyan Army camp. It wasn’t the camp they’d had at Meiling, not one from the war at all. This was just a training camp, set not far from the capital—in retrospect he knew the Chiyan Army had generally been stationed too close to the capital for the Emperor’s comfort, but back then it had been convenient. He and his father had been at camp often, at court an equal amount. He hadn’t understood then the tolls of sheer distance, of separation; army life, too, had been like a game…
“Changsu, listen!”
“What?”
“Can you understand what I’m saying?”
“Sure.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again. “Two.” His vision was blurry. He squeezed his eyes shut again, and noise built up in his ears, noise that crowded out the sound of Lin Chen’s voice. Horse hooves, footsteps, voices, the clang of armor knocked together by careless motions. Not the sounds of battle, nothing so unpleasant. Just the chaos of a busy camp.
He opened his eyes and the camp was no longer in the distance. It was there before him. He was standing among the tents, among the soldiers. One of them brushed by him roughly, and he stumbled out of the way, dazed.
“Hey! Who are you? What’s your business here?”
The air was bitterly cold. He pulled his heavy fur cloak tight around himself and walked quickly away from the voice questioning his presence. Mei Changsu was not supposed to be in an army camp; even in his dreams of the Chiyan Army, he was usually Lin Shu. But he had a right to be here. If they knew, they would know he had a right to be here.
All these years later, he could still have drawn a chart of the camp if someone were to ask him. His feet moved automatically along practiced paths. Confidently. No one else questioned him. Sometimes strange characters from the jianghu came to visit Lin Xie, people who knew him from his Mei Shinan days. Mei Changsu didn’t even look like a jianghu chief, he knew—more like a fragile scholar, apart from the fact that his hair was usually loose, and the company he kept—maybe they thought he was some strategist from the city, some minor official at court. In any case, he clearly knew where he was going. Let him find his way.
He made his way to the training grounds where they ran drills. This time of day, it was mostly empty except for a few stray soldiers. A couple running through exercises with sullen exhaustion, probably as a disciplinary measure. A few running forms in the far corner. And then two youths at the archery range, not in armor or uniform, one in red and one in white.
Mei Changsu felt abruptly tired. The aftertaste of the medicine was still bitter in his throat, although it had been washed down now by many cups of tea and hot water. He leaned against the wall of a pavilion generally used by watching officials or his father or whoever was overseeing the drills. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he would see Lin Chen and Li Gang hovering over him. He knew this.
He opened his eyes, and stared across the field at Lin Shu and Xiao Jingyan.
They were talking. Maybe arguing. Well, talking and arguing both were largely being done by Lin Shu. Jingyan had his arms crossed and stood unmoving. Lin Shu gestured with annoyance, bow held in one hand, quiver of arrows on his back. At last frustrated, he looked across the field.
It could not be said that his and Mei Changsu’s eyes met. At this distance, it would be hard to say. At least, Lin Shu certainly looked at him. Maybe it was the cloak that caught his attention, the fur on it. Apart from that, there was nothing about Mei Changsu that stood out enough to catch the attention of a golden boy like Lin Shu.
Another comment to Jingyan. Now Lin Shu raised his bow, took out an arrow. Shot. The arrow lodged itself in the target, not at the bullseye but close enough. Mei Changsu glanced at it. Lin Shu was probably frustrated to have missed the center. Mei Changsu couldn’t care about such things anymore. He watched Lin Shu take another two shots without checking where they landed, only watching the ease with which Lin Shu bent the bow, the straightness of his posture. How little he seemed to mind the chill in the winter air.
He barely noticed that Lin Shu’s stance had changed, that his aim had shifted, until an arrow whistled by his ear.
It stuck in the wood of the pavilion behind him. He blinked. On the field, Lin Shu’s head was thrown back in laughter. Then he came running over. A hand slammed against the wall by Mei Changsu’s head. Lin Shu grinned at him.
“Sorry, sorry! Did I startle you? My aim seems to be off today.” He pointed at the target, and Mei Changsu saw that indeed, none of the arrows had hit the bullseye. But the arrow in the wall was close enough to brush against his hair when he moved slightly, leaning further away from Lin Shu’s oppressive body. Could anyone have believed that to be a mistake?
Mei Changsu smiled. He didn’t grin these days the way Lin Shu grinned, but he could still enjoy making someone uncomfortable—or at least disappointing them when they were looking for a reaction. “Don’t worry about it, young marshall. No harm done.”
Lin Shu’s free hand plucked the arrow from the wall and returned it to his quiver. Then it clapped down on Mei Changsu’s shoulder. “How about I make it up to you? Come have dinner with me. By the look of you, you must be one of my father’s friends. Unless you were sent by my uncle.”
“Xiao Shu!” Jingyan had been coming over at a slower pace, and he had now at last arrived. “Cut it out. Xiao Shu—”
The hand retracted from his shoulder. Lin Shu turned. Mei Changsu blinked.
The figure of Lin Chen resolved itself before him. “Changsu. I need you to tell me your name. Do you know your name?”
He blinked again. Irritation seeped in. “Didn’t you just say it? Get out of my face. You’re too close.”
“You weren’t answering.” Lin Chen stepped back nonetheless. But it was not a retreat. He asked Mei Changsu several more questions before insisting he spend the next two days at least resting.
The medicine had been supposed to help up Mei Changsu’s energy levels. Theoretically increase productivity. Mei Changsu sighed. The risks of experimental treatments.
It had been just like Lin Shu, the dream.
Mei Changsu often remembered Lin Shu in a golden haze, sometimes barely thought of that person as himself. Lin Shu had been brave, brilliant, loved by all. Strong, willful, friendly… He often forgot that what loving family members had called “brilliant” and “willful” often translated to tricky and even perverse. Would Lin Shu shoot an arrow at a visiting official just to startle him? Yes. And then run over to gloat about it—absolutely. (In fact Mei Changsu thought he could remember doing just that once, though the details of the incident evaded him.) He’d get away with it, too. If Lin Xie had been there he would have given Lin Shu a talking-to, but since no superior officer had been present, it would be Lin Shu’s word against Mei Changsu’s. He could make a guess that, especially with the arrows on the target as proof that Lin Shu really had had poor aim that day, the poor intimidated scholar wouldn’t dare to make a big deal out of it.
At the same time, he had been a bit golden, hadn’t he?
Mei Changsu closed his eyes. The hallucinations were gone now, but he could bring up the image of Lin Shu’s face easily, looming close to his, breath mingling with his breath. Lin Shu’s face was not the same as his face—the very bone structure had changed during the older Master Lin’s treatment of the Poison of the Bitter Flame. Reshaped. Maybe someone who knew them well could tell their eyes were the same, but Mei Changsu could not tell. He recognized his eyes in Lin Shu’s face, but rarely in the mirror.
They smelled different, too, though that had a simple explanation. Mei Changsu always smelled of medicine and, during the fall, winter, and early spring, of the smoke of the many braziers he always had near him. Lin Shu’s smell was fresher, sweat and a hint of herbal scent from a sachet Nihuang had given him once. One of the most feminine gestures she’d ever made towards him, that; he’d gotten the feeling it had embarrassed her a little. One reason he’d kept it on him for so long afterwards—he respected she had stepped outside her comfort zone to give him such a thing.
He'd thought he’d forgotten that sachet. Certainly he lost it years ago, even before he went to fight at the border. But apparently it had lingered in his memory after all, one of the essential lost artifacts of Lin Shu.
It had smelled good.
Undoubtedly Lin Shu had not noticed Mei Changsu’s scent, probably had barely noticed his face, though he might have been disappointed at only drawing a smile from him rather than flustered outrage or humiliation. What had he hoped to get out of inviting him to dinner? He couldn’t have really wanted to apologize. Maybe he’d hoped to find a chance to tease him some more, hoped a delicate man like Mei Changsu would be disgusted by army rations or discomfited by the talk among the men. Or maybe he’d really been curious about why Mei Changsu was there, whether someone had sent a peculiar scholar to the camp with a purpose—though Lin Shu had never cared much, before the war, for politics.
He frowned. Silly. He was obsessing too much over a hallucination, a dream. There was no meaning in Lin Shu’s actions except what Mei Changsu invented in them. Maybe he’d dreamed of Lin Shu inviting him to dinner because he’d been hungry. Who knew.
Maybe that was also why when he fell asleep and dreamed again, he found himself in the midst of a festival, surrounded by food stalls and vendors of dumplings, cakes, and tanghulu. There was one vendor selling small bags of roasted hazelnuts as well; Mei Changsu wrinkled his nose and quickly walked in another direction.
The scenery was familiar. Jinling during a lantern festival. He hadn’t been to Jinling at all in ages—recently all his holidays were spent in Lanzhou with the Jiangzuo Alliance, and they usually made a good job of it but there was nothing like the bustle of a city celebrating. Sometimes it came to him achingly, nostalgia and longing for the capital, the place he grew up, spent almost all of the first eighteen years of his life. More often, though, he missed the people. His family, now all dead. His friends, all dead or out of his reach. He missed himself, too, the person he had been, joyful and innocent and—
His eyes caught on the sight of a figure in the crowd.
Two figures, in fact, both wearing white, though in different shades, different styles. Nihuang and his younger self stood at a stall selling lanterns. Nihuang stood back a little ways while Lin Shu bartered. Enthusiastically, though Mei Changsu knew for a fact he wasn’t anywhere near short on money. Another difference between Lin Shu and Mei Changsu—though Mei Changsu was hardly poor, in the years he’d spent founding the Jiangzuo Alliance, he had learned enough of want to understand real thrift. Lin Shu just enjoyed arguing for the sake of arguing.
Though Mei Changsu couldn’t blame him. One childish tendency he’d never outgrown: He still loved to win.
At last a deal was struck, and the vendor handed Lin Shu and Nihuang each a lantern. They were not the best quality lanterns being sold tonight, Mei Changsu could tell, not the best Lin Shu or Nihuang could afford. But they had a certain charm to them. He remembered he had liked the color and the style of the calligraphy on the lanterns’ sides. He remembered this night well enough, when he thought about it. Lin Shu was still young, but not a child anymore. A man—just. And Nihuang was visiting from Yunnan again. This would be his last winter in Jinling before the war swept him off with the Chiyan Army. The last peaceful lantern festival.
I wish I’d spent it with my family.
But Lin Shu had his own ideas of how to spend a festival, and none of them involved staying at home. He grabbed Nihuang’s hand and they ran through the streets. Mei Changsu lost them in the crowd, but he knew where they were headed. They had already run around the city looking at lantern displays before purchasing their own lanterns, and would now head to the main square to release their lanterns into the air—they had bought the kind that would float. After that, they would wander aimlessly for a while, start to head back to the Lin Manor and end up in a strange corner of town, largely untouched by the festivities, empty and abandoned. Hearing fireworks, they would jump up to the rooftops and stay a long time watching the sights. Alone.
Mei Changsu began walking. Remembering the twists and turns their path had taken that night, the corner of town where they had ended up. The crowd did not part around him, but he found it easy to cut through. No one bumped into him, knocking him off his feet or spilling wine on his winter cloak. He simply walked through, unobstructed, like a ghost.
(Of course they were the real mirage. He knew this was a dream. He knew that well enough.
Yet there was something lonely about it, the way no one seemed to look at him.)
He found the corner and stood beneath an awning, leaning against a wall. Lin Shu had leapt up to that rooftop easily, years ago. Mei Changsu could not make such a jump, nor even painstakingly climb it. It was a bit funny. He used to dream of someday taking some time to travel the jianghu like his father had in his youth. He had always assumed he would learn some things about martial arts. Grow stronger, not weaker.
Then again, he’d never dreamed of becoming a jianghu chief. After all, he’d figured, even if he did travel there someday, it would never be his world. His world was camp and capital, army and court. His world was Jinling.
On the rooftop, he was Lin Shu. Lin Shu watching his world lit up with lanterns and fireworks. A better kind of fire than he would know in future days. Lin Shu sitting with Nihuang. In the time it had taken Mei Changsu to meander down to this corner of the city, they’d practically run the whole city through twice over.
Nihuang leaned her head on Lin Shu’s shoulder. Almost demurely fond. Lin Shu leaned his head against her head.
Most young couples their age weren’t supposed to be alone without chaperones. Even if they were engaged, there were concerns about impropriety. Certain advances were not meant to be made until marriage. But the Lin family and the Mu family both had martial roots, were both immensely practical, and both trusted each other implicitly. Lin Shu and Nihuang had known each other since childhood, had played together when Nihuang could barely walk. Sure, they could go enjoy the lantern festival together with no chaperone—they’d been going to festivals together, though often in groups, for as long as they could remember. What could be improper about that?
Lin Shu had known Nihuang for a long time, and he was comfortable with her. With her he could be as brazen as he liked or as lazy as he liked, and she would take him either way. They’d had brutally honest conversations over the years too, knew each other in the profound, naked way children could know each other. There was nothing left to be delicate about in his relationship with Nihuang, not really.
But when she acted shy like this, it made him feel shy too. Made something unfamiliar flutter in his chest.
There were still things Nihuang did not know about him. Some.
Maybe there were things he was still learning—some of them with her—that it frightened him to think she might guess.
“Lin Shu-gege,” Nihuang murmured, “it’s beautiful.”
Lin Shu sighed. He was not usually one for sitting still, even on a rooftop with a view. But it was beautiful, she was right. And with Nihuang leaning against him, even though he found his body tensing, he didn’t want to move.
Her head shifted against his neck, and he felt lips brushing his skin, opening slightly. Wetness. He stiffened further. Nihuang messing with him. He should push her off.
He was hard. Beneath them, crowds filled the streets. Above them, lanterns floated. The cracking sound of fireworks filled the air, pressed against his ears. Nihuang bit his neck lightly, teasingly. He took a sharp breath.
“You said you wanted to watch the fireworks,” he accused.
“I’m watching them,” Nihuang said innocently. “I can eat while I watch.”
Now he really did shove her off, still grinning. Abruptly he stood. He wanted to run across the rooftops, jumping from one to the next, until the energy left his system. He wanted to grab Nihuang and do things they weren’t supposed to do before marriage. Clearly she wanted to. Right?
Down in the alley, he glimpsed blue. A figure that was not simply moving past like other wanderers, but leaning against a wall, looking up.
Mei Changsu blinked. Lin Shu was looking down at him, gaze inscrutable. He stepped forward to the edge of the roof, and Mei Changsu, caught, turned and ran.
He sat up with a gasp in his bed, heart pounding. He was back in Lanzhou, blankets piled over him.
“Take them off,” he said. “It’s too hot.”
Li Gang, whose turn it must have been on the watch, touched his forehead. “You’re still cold,” he said. “Young Master Lin said we had to keep you warm.”
“Lin Chen is an ass,” Mei Changsu said.
Li Gang’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead, and Mei Changsu sighed. He wasn’t usually so blunt with his subordinates, not over the little things. It was Lin Shu still caught up in his chest, his head still half in the dream.
“Forget about it. I’m going back to sleep.”
“Good,” Li Gang said. “Young Master Lin said…”
“I need rest. Yes.” Irritably, Mei Changsu turned on his side, then back on his back when he couldn’t get comfortable. In the moments since his waking, he felt the room had already gone cold again. Lin Shu had sat on a roof on a late winter night and not felt a hint of chill.
Forget about it. He could push all inconvenient remnants of Lin Shu out of his manner, lock those old brash thoughtless habits of his away—but there were some things he could not forget.
When he opened his eyes, he was sitting on another bed. This bed was not as soft nor as thickly layered, but then the room was not as cold either. It was spring already now, and outside the window he could see a garden coming into blossom.
He was in the Lin Manor. He was in Lin Shu’s—his—old room.
Such a familiar place, and so strange to him now. He stood and began to walk around it, looking at the furniture and the walls. There was nothing so special about them, except that they were all just as he remembered. He was intent on it, noting all the details, when a voice interrupted him. “Looking for something?”
He turned to see, of course, Lin Shu.
Lin Shu looked suspicious and amused at the same time. He had a right to be, for Mei Changsu had no right to be in Young Marshall Lin Shu’s room. Mei Changsu bowed to him in greeting. He did not know how to say he was revisiting old haunts (dreaming of them) without receiving mockery. Lin Shu would never believe Mei Changsu was a version of himself. He would never accept it.
“I recognize you,” Lin Shu said. “You’re the man who was watching me and Nihuang at the Lantern Festival. You visited the training camp once too.” He stepped fully into the room. “What’s your purpose here? Tell me.”
Mei Changsu thought he would wake up again, but he didn’t. He smiled and said, “No special purpose. I came to see… to see you.” He thought perhaps that was the truest answer. What else was he doing in these dreams but trying to recapture the person he once had been?
“And why did you want to see me?”
“Ah…” Mei Changsu considered. He did not want to lie, but neither did he want to explain the complexities of the situation to a straightforward person like the young marshall. Or see derision on Lin Shu’s face. “I admire you,” he said at last. “You are the kind of person I wish I could be.”
“Really? You snuck into Lin Manor just because you admire me?” Lin Shu scoffed. He was wearing a sword—ever the warrior—and now he drew it. “You dare to face me with such a flimsy excuse?”
The sword gleamed in the sunlight coming through the window. Lin Shu smirked, and Mei Changsu couldn’t help it. He smiled back.
Outraged, Lin Shu stepped closer, and brought the sword to Mei Changsu’s neck. “A scholar like you isn’t afraid of death? Is that it?”
“It’s not that,” Mei Changsu said. (Though death had not frightened him much since Meiling, he didn’t want to die either. There was work still to do.) “Only you won’t be able to hurt me.” Not in a dream.
“You really think I can’t?”
“I believe Young Marshall Lin is very strong and capable. But I am one person you can neither defeat nor avoid. It may be unfortunate for both of us, that.”
Lin Shu’s eyes narrowed. Slowly, he sheathed his sword, then tossed it aside, onto the bed. Mei Changsu began to turn away—he grabbed Mei Changsu’s wrist and pulled him closer.
Mei Changsu stilled. Breathed in Lin Shu’s familiar, estranged scent.
“Who are you?” Lin Shu demanded.
“My name wouldn’t mean anything to you,” Mei Changsu said. “It barely means anything to me.”
“I didn’t ask for your name. I asked who you were,” Lin Shu said. “If the name means nothing, tell me something that does.”
Mei Changsu laughed. “You’re still clever and stubborn. Sometimes I forget.” Something that would mean something to Lin Shu. What could he even say? He’d never had the desire to talk to his past self, only to become him. “I meant it when I said I admire you. There’s nothing else to be said, between you and me.”
He met Lin Shu’s gaze evenly. Lin Shu must have seen some kind of truth in his eyes, for he was silent for a moment, looking back. Then the smirk reformed on his lips. “Scholars too can be bold.”
“Not in comparison to you.”
“Then since you’ve been this daring, should I take the final step?” Lin Shu released Mei Changsu’s wrist and seized his chin instead. Tilting it up ever so slightly. He was the same height as Mei Changsu, but Mei Changsu always stood with a bit of a hunch, ever since his illness, ever since Meiling. He didn’t have that same upright posture. Lin Shu’s thumb brushed against his lip. “Should I give you what you want?” he asked.
His voice was mocking, but his grip was tight. Mei Changsu as Lin Shu hadn’t bothered to learn how to read his own expressions; nevertheless, he knew when a person was not as comfortable as they pretended, not as nonchalant.
The thumb pressed down, invaded Mei Changsu’s mouth ever so slightly. He closed his lips around it and raised his eyebrows.
Lin Shu, he knew, was misinterpreting him. Lin Shu was young, and there were just a few things usually on his mind. Food, fighting, and fucking—and Mei Changsu intrigued him, but he was too weak and nonthreatening to fight.
Perverse that Lin Shu would want to do anything else with him, the specter he would someday become. Perverse even that he should not be repulsed by him, this corruption of his present self. Mei Changsu would not have expected it. But sometimes he misremembered the boy, the man, that Lin Shu had been.
Lin Shu’s other hand landed behind his neck and pulled him closer, even closer, into a clumsy, hungry kiss.
He kissed back. Lin Shu, for all he was impulsive, did not have much experience. He’d garnered more over the years. Lin Shu, for that matter, had never kissed a man. Mei Changsu had kissed a couple.
For all that, it was Lin Shu who took the lead, who kissed harder, who slowly backed Mei Changsu up against a wall and pinned him there. Mei Changsu protested at that for a moment—his heart was beating wildly, and at times like these he was really supposed to sit or lie down—but Lin Shu shushed him, and his heart wasn’t really in it anyway. Lin Shu’s hips were squarely pressed against his hips, and he was hard. Mei Changsu could feel it.
He himself was aroused, but not as much so. It was not just the calming influence of age and experience there. His illness also made it more difficult to arouse him. Still, Lin Shu’s lips against his lips, his strong body pressed against Mei Changsu’s body, felt good. Right.
“Is this what you wanted?” Lin Shu asked him, eyes glistening.
“You’re really an arrogant bastard, aren’t you?” Mei Changsu said.
Lin Shu laughed. “You’ve really been watching me, haven’t you? More than just the twice.”
More false impressions on his part. He seemed to enjoy it, picturing Mei Changsu following him, watching him, longing for him… He wouldn’t enjoy it so much, of course, if he understood. If he knew the way he himself would one day pine. But the thought of some pathetic scholar lusting over him turned him on. Mei Changsu considered that Jingyan might have been right the couple of times he’d accused Lin Shu of having a superiority complex. Spitefully, he put a hand on Lin Shu’s dick, and squeezed it through his clothes. Gently, but not softly. Lin Shu’s jaw clenched.
“It’s not good to be too proud,” Mei Changsu said quietly. “Young Marshall, you’d better admit you want this too.”
“Isn’t it too late to play coy?”
“I won’t,” Mei Changsu said. “You can have me. Against the wall, on my knees, in your bed, however you want me. But you’ll have to say it first.”
“I want you,” Lin Shu said. “Fine. I said it.”
“How, then?”
“On your knees.”
Obediently, Mei Changsu knelt. “What next, Young Marshall?”
“You’re more of a nuisance than you looked,” Lin Shu said. “Is talking all you know how to do?”
“Compared to Young Marshall Lin,” Mei Changsu said, “that would be accurate.”
“Shut up,” Lin Shu said. He had taken off his belt and was opening his outer robes, hurriedly. “Do you think I can’t tell you’re being sarcastic if you use that bland voice? I hate it.”
Mei Changsu smiled. “I haven’t said anything I didn’t mean.”
Lin Shu, having stripped adequately for access, grabbed his head again, this time his fingers clenching in Mei Changsu’s hair. Mei Changsu leaned forward and delicately ran his tongue along the tip of Lin Shu’s cock. Lin Shu hissed.
“Don’t tease me. I know you know what to do.”
“I look like a prostitute to you, Young Marshall?”
“You look like…” Lin Shu gave up. He pulled slightly on Mei Changsu’s hair until Mei Changsu opened his mouth and began to suck. He groaned. “I knew you would be good.”
Mei Changsu sucked harder.
“You were made for me,” Lin Shu said. He didn’t quite thrust his hips, but he was shaking. Squirming. “I knew when I first saw you. You knew me then, too. I could feel it.”
He didn’t last long. Too inexperienced—didn’t know how to. As he came, Mei Changsu felt a surge of pleasure in his own body. He swallowed hard, gasping and choking, eyes watering—
He came to coughing, trying to sit up. A hand helped him, supported his back. He wiped his eyes, and when his vision cleared, he saw it was Lin Chen.
“The effects are wearing off,” Lin Chen said, “and your fever broke, but you still need more rest.”
“I keep dreaming.”
“Nightmares?”
“I don’t know. No. Not really.” Mei Changsu squeezed his eyes closed. “I don’t know if I can bear anymore.”
“They must be bad then, if the almighty Mei Changsu can’t handle them.”
Mei Changsu growled.
“What did you say?”
He was not cold anymore. His body was exhausted and wired at the same time. Tense. Aroused.
“Lin Chen,” he said, forcing his jaw to relax. “Can you help me?”
“That depends on what you need help with.”
“I need you to help me relax.”
“I’ll make you some tea.”
“No. Not like that.” Mei Changsu pushed off the blankets. “I need you to fuck me. Will you do it?”
Lin Chen was a little startled but unimpressed. “You’re still sick.”
“It’s not contagious.”
“As a doctor, I can’t in good conscience wear out my patient like that.”
He’d done it plenty of times before, sometimes with Mei Changsu in worse health. Of course, those times had been right after the surgery, when the older Master Lin had worried the treatment might have backfired, when he’d been for some months floating between life and death. The disciples of Langya Hall had treated him as if he were made of glass, and Master Lin too had been gentle, fretting over him like a parent. His subordinates, who had not yet been the Jiangzuo Alliance, just a handful of weary survivors, had looked at him with eyes full of grief and fear. Only Lin Chen had been unafraid to step into that liminal space with him. “Don’t look at me like that,” Mei Changsu remembered him saying once. “Do you think I’m afraid you’re going to die? Do you think that frightens me?”
These days, it probably did. Back then, he’d been callous—or at least seemed callous—and for Mei Changsu, his carelessness had gone easier than ointment on all his rough edges.
Back before he grew a damn conscience.
“These dreams are a side effect of your medicine,” Mei Changsu said. “If they’re making me horny, shouldn’t you in good conscience help treat the symptoms?”
Lin Chen pointed at him. “Only you, Changsu.”
“I would hope so,” Mei Changsu said tartly. He spread his legs. “Come over here.”
Lin Chen came over.
“Lin Chen,” Mei Changsu said, later, “were you the first man I ever kissed?”
“Do you think you ever told me that?” Lin Chen said. “You don’t remember how you were back then. We didn’t talk.” He sighed. “You always laugh when I say I never knew Lin Shu. Well, I didn’t. You didn’t want me to know him.”
Mei Changsu closed his eyes. That was true, he supposed. Even the newborn Mei Changsu had guarded Lin Shu jealously, afraid to lose him. Afraid of what he was becoming. He’d divorced his past self to protect it; if Mei Changsu was not Lin Shu (and he could not be Lin Shu fully, never again, that he had known), at least Lin Shu would not be corrupted. Lin Shu, if not Mei Changsu, could stay forever gold.
“I was trying to remember,” he said quietly. “I had these dreams… I keep on almost remembering, and then it fades away.”
“Remembering a man?”
“I feel like there was a scholar, once,” he said, “someone… but I can’t remember his face.”
Lin Chen pinched him; he twitched. Swatted him away. “Is this,” Lin Chen asked, “the way you treat a doctor who has very generously agreed to tender you his affections? It hasn’t been ten minutes and we’re still in bed. I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Fine,” Mei Changsu said. “Later.”
“I don’t want to hear about it later either!”
But Mei Changsu had no one else to talk to about it. And he really thought he remembered something. The dreams, he knew, had had a basis. He had once shot an arrow to frighten a scholar. He remembered that. He’d once sat on a rooftop with Nihuang.
And hadn’t he once come upon someone in his bedroom? That didn’t seem likely—in the dream he hadn’t remembered such an incident—but, now that he was awake, hadn’t there once been—and hadn’t he—
Lin Chen pinched him again. “Don’t even think about it.” He wrapped an arm around Mei Changsu. “You should learn to appreciate what you have.”
Mei Changsu sighed. “Would you believe I do?”
“No.”
“…worth a try.”
Lin Chen kissed him on the cheek. “Go back to sleep.”
It took a while. Mei Changsu did not sleep easily these days. But when he did fall asleep at last, he did not dream.