"I liked him," Jedao sniffs, fingers curling tight in the cloth of Gonou's shirt. "When he was himself. You're a very difficult man to proposition, you know. It's your only fault."
He says this with the full fervor of mixed self-pity and absurdity, soft sulky insistence ready to spite all logic and knowledge.
"You should take that as a compliment," Gonou murmurs, and lets the flood of power ebb to a trickle as a moment of exhaustion shakes through him like a foreshock. Jedao's better, not fully healed, but better; it will do for now.
But he doesn't want to break the connection he feels entirely. He lets the trickle continue.
"Sorry, tired," he adds, aside, before finishing the first thought. A compliment, because-- "I said yes to you."
"If you're going to be sorry, I'm going to be sorry," Jedao threatens, since telling Gonou he doesn't need to be sorry has been, if not exactly a losing proposition, certainly an involved one in the past.
"It's just polite," Gonou mutters, a little sulky, and rests his hand on the back of Jedao's neck. His fingers describe little soothing circles.
At least he hadn't hurt Jedao there.
"How are you? Not just - being hurt." He'd felt Jedao shuddering against him a moment ago. Silent tears, he suspects. Past and future... they can both be hard.
"I'm just - very tired," Jedao says quietly, which isn't true, exactly, but it feels true, and it's the easiest piece of how he is to scrounge up words for. "Worried for you. Worried I fucked things up."
"Then I still would've tried to tear you to pieces, and you would have had to kill me," Gonou says, his voice low. "And I would have hated to do that to you, too.
"It's not your responsibility to save anyone from me. Not even yourself. Or myself."
"I handled the thing in yellow," Jedao mutters. "I could've knocked you out if I was smart about it." Instead of I was a dick to Eiffel, which he's also miserable about, but doesn't want to talk about.
"Maybe," Gonou says. "That me underestimated you."
He can't help sounding a little smug about it: there are a lot of things that 'Hakkai' had thought he'd known about which he had been very wrong. Jedao's strength is only one of them, but it still makes him smile to think about just how much stronger Jedao is than Hakkai had given him credit for.
"But there's a difference. Between -- could have done better -- with better information. And failed. And fucked up.
Gonou curls in more comfortably around him, closing his eyes, and reluctantly lets the last thread of energy he'd been maintaining fade to nothing. He does have more sense than to try to focus on sharing qi while he's falling asleep.
(He can imagine the face Xie Lian would make at him if he were that stupid very distinctly.)
It doesn't take long for his breath to even out as he slips back into slumber.
Gonou isn't very good at sleeping in, even -- it seems -- with a death toll to help; he murmurs something incoherent into Jedao's hair bright and early in the morning, cracks an eye open, and smiles.
"Good--"
-- which is about when he's struck with a coughing fit that curls him up like a shrimp, pulling away from Jedao's embrace to prop himself up on his less-aching arm and try to clear his throat.
Jedao blinks awake, still aching in a few places where Hakkai's claws went particularly deep. He kneels in the bed and rubs Gonou's back gently until the coughing subsides.
"Tea would be good," Gonou croaks, pulling a face as he wipes the back of his aching hand across his mouth and straightens up. His other hand, the one that doesn't hurt, he lifts to cup Jedao's cheek affectionately before he lets go.
It's a relief to hear -- yes, of course, he's still the one who'd done all the damage, but he's glad that he can at least alleviate it.
He'd seemed to have a much finer control of that healing power as his older self, he reflects, considering his clawed hands. It's a skill worth developing.
His kettle is tucked among the pots on his windowsill; the kettle itself, bought in New York, rests on a solar-powered base. He's found it doesn't get quite enough energy to work unless he pushes it up beside the window most of the time.
"The water jug is on the sideboard," he offers, trying not to feel too useless as he relaxes back against the comfortably fussed-over pillows. "I feel -- better too. I think you're medicinal."
"Physical touch releases a number of hormones that reduce the activity of the stress system, which in turn promotes more effective healing," Jedao tells him absently; he had plenty of lectures from his therapists on the interactions of oxytocin and cortisol when they were trying to talk him into sleeping with a professional.
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He says this with the full fervor of mixed self-pity and absurdity, soft sulky insistence ready to spite all logic and knowledge.
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But he doesn't want to break the connection he feels entirely. He lets the trickle continue.
"Sorry, tired," he adds, aside, before finishing the first thought. A compliment, because-- "I said yes to you."
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At least he hadn't hurt Jedao there.
"How are you? Not just - being hurt." He'd felt Jedao shuddering against him a moment ago. Silent tears, he suspects. Past and future... they can both be hard.
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"And we both know that's harder on you than the other way around would have been," Jedao points out. "If I'd taken things seriously from the start -"
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"It's not your responsibility to save anyone from me. Not even yourself. Or myself."
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"I don't care. I want to protect you. I get to want to."
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"Just. If you can't. It's not your fault." He huffs a tiny breath out, and adds as firmly as his rusty voice can manage, "You didn't fuck up."
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He can't help sounding a little smug about it: there are a lot of things that 'Hakkai' had thought he'd known about which he had been very wrong. Jedao's strength is only one of them, but it still makes him smile to think about just how much stronger Jedao is than Hakkai had given him credit for.
"But there's a difference. Between -- could have done better -- with better information. And failed. And fucked up.
"I'm grateful you tried."
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"Sleep here?"
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"Love you. Goodnight, Gonou-shei."
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(He can imagine the face Xie Lian would make at him if he were that stupid very distinctly.)
It doesn't take long for his breath to even out as he slips back into slumber.
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"Good--"
-- which is about when he's struck with a coughing fit that curls him up like a shrimp, pulling away from Jedao's embrace to prop himself up on his less-aching arm and try to clear his throat.
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"I'll make tea?" he offers.
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"How do -- you feel?"
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He drops a kiss on Gonou's forehead and fusses for a few seconds over making sure his pillows are comfortable before he goes to find the tea kettle.
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He'd seemed to have a much finer control of that healing power as his older self, he reflects, considering his clawed hands. It's a skill worth developing.
His kettle is tucked among the pots on his windowsill; the kettle itself, bought in New York, rests on a solar-powered base. He's found it doesn't get quite enough energy to work unless he pushes it up beside the window most of the time.
"The water jug is on the sideboard," he offers, trying not to feel too useless as he relaxes back against the comfortably fussed-over pillows. "I feel -- better too. I think you're medicinal."
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