deuceoftears | TLV IC Inbox

"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."

"You-- I tried to tear you to pieces," Gonou says, his voice flawed over the confession. "You didn't do anything wrong."

Jedao huffs softly.

"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 -"

"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."

Jedao makes a soft, strangled sound of frustration in his throat.

"I don't care. I want to protect you. I get to want to."

"I wouldn't make you stop." Gonou turns his head, carefully and just a little, brushing a kiss against Jedao's forehead.

"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."

"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.

"I'm grateful you tried."

Don't worry about me, I'm just tired," he mutters, his cheeks a little pink. "I'll be sensible tomorrow."

Gonou makes a soft sound of understanding, even if he's not sure that tired covers nearly all of it, and settles against him.

"Sleep here?"

"If you kicked me out I might sleep in the doorway," Jedao mumbles, and holds on a little tighter around Gonou's waist.

"Good thing I won't," Gonou murmurs. "...I love you, Jedao-shei."

He shivers, small enough that it would be imperceptible if they weren't wrapped around each other, affected as always by the intimate honorific.

"Love you. Goodnight, Gonou-shei."

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.

In the morning, Jedao is indeed better healed than when they fell asleep, and still holding onto Gonou exactly as tightly as the night before.

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.

"I'll make tea?" he offers.

"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.

"How do -- you feel?"

"Much better than I would have expected," he says honestly. "It would take me three or four days to heal this much, without your help."

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.

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.

"Mm, I see," Gonou says very seriously, pulling his knees up into a half-folded seat and resting his hands on his ankles as he smiles at Jedao. "It also helps that it's you."

"You definitely haven't tested that," Jedao teases, instead of ungratefully pointing out that if it was someone else, Gonou would probably have spent less of his own energy healing them.

"Well," Gonou admits, smiling a little, "no. It's unscientific. Tea in the top drawer, under the water jug."

He settles back into his pillows and watches Jedao make tea, something wistful lingering on his face even as he smiles. He's letting himself be, selfishly, intensely grateful that the past versions of people couldn't change the past.

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