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“Is it true what they say.”
His voice is barely louder than the sound of pages rustling and ink being grinded across the hall of the Palace of Ling Wen. Still, it’s demanding enough for Ling Wen to look up from the scroll on her desk and raise an eyebrow ever so slightly.
“If the great Water Master is so inclined to loom over me and distract me from my work,” she says, giving him a once-over, “I hope he can at least do me a favor of being more specific.”
Instead of answering right away, Shi Wudu opens his fan and hides the lower half of his face behind it; a well-practiced gesture.
“Pei Ming,” he utters at length. “Is it true he’s gone to face his Heavenly Trial?”
To that, Ling Wen raises the other eyebrow and sets her brush aside, as surprised as he’s ever seen her.
“And here I thought you’d be the first one he’d boast to. The two of you being so close and all.”
“We are not close,” he says curtly from behind the fan, choosing to ignore the sour taste of those words in his mouth. “Apparently, he prefers to confide in his Noble Jie.”
“Your jealousy is uncalled for,” Ling Wen says in an unamused voice. “All he talks about these days is you, just so you know.”
He manages to bite back the question before it slips out, but unfortunately for him Ling Wen notices.
“Yes, he really does,” she sighs. “Don’t tell me you expected anything else after letting him into your bed.”
“I expected nothing!” he snaps, dropping the hand with the fan and only then realizing what he just did. Ling Wen winces and picks up her brush.
“Right. That’s why you came all the way here to shout in my face instead of using the communication array.”
He seriously considers storming out of the hall—he’s already got the answer he came for, anyway—when Ling Wen sighs again and says, “There is no way he wouldn’t tell you on purpose. He just doesn’t have it in him and you know it. Think back, I’m pretty sure something will pop up.”
“Besides,” she adds, eyes fixed on her scroll, “he’s consorting with you. What’s a mere Heavenly Trial to him?”
Hearing that, he does storm out of Ling Wen’s palace, nearly scaring the life out of her several junior subordinates as he goes.
Serves her right.
Despite himself, he follows her advice in the end, and then he begrudgingly must admit that she had a point.
Something does pop up.
There was a night not so long ago, where the man showed up at his doorstep with a grin so wide and radiant that for a moment Shi Wudu might have forgotten how to breathe. It was definitely one of Pei Ming’s stupid, stupid grins, yes. But there was also something different about it; something that made it impossible to look away from those well-shaped, supple lips and turned whatever they were saying into background noise.
Before Shi Wudu knew it, they were kissing right in the doorway.
“The talk will wait,” he breathed out in a while. “Take me to the bedroom.”
Ever the man of action, Pei Ming did exactly what he was told and did it well.
“You wanted to say something,” Shi Wudu said much, much later, cradling his lover’s head on his chest and languidly playing with the man’s hair. It was easy to fall asleep that way, and honestly he wasn’t very opposed to such a prospect.
“It can wait some more,” Pei Ming purred and nuzzled his collarbone as if reading his thoughts. “Shui-ge should get some rest now.”
Apparently, he made a mistake giving in because the next morning he woke up in his bed alone, and there was no sign of Pei Ming anywhere.
He mulls over that night as time drags by, and the more he thinks about it the angrier he becomes. ‘You should get some rest’, what a stupidity!
Two days. Three days. A week.
The silence in his communication array is deafening.
What’s a Heavenly Trial to him, he keeps telling himself as he paces around the halls. What’s a mere Heavenly Trial to him.
He’ll ban Pei Ming from the Palace of Wind and Water, he thinks viciously when it doesn’t help. Deny him his body. Make him pine and suffer like never before.
He deserves this. He deserves more.
But then one day there's the golden glow at the Heavenly Capital’s gates, and then there’s Pei Ming—battle-worn and exhausted and achingly alive—and that’s how all the threats and scolding speeches flee Shi Wudu’s mind, replaced by one single urge.
It’s foolish, foolish, foolish, he knows it is, he knows he’s better than that, he…
He gives in, again.
It takes him no time at all to close the distance between Pei Ming and himself. And then, broad daylight and useless gawkers flooding the street be damned, he pulls Pei Ming in and locks their lips together, just like that.
To that, Pei Ming lets out a small startled noise—which he devours because no one, no one is allowed to hear that except for him—and opens up right away.
For the lack of a better word, the thrum of Pei Ming’s newly acquired power against his tongue tastes divine.
“Hide anything from me one more time,” he hisses when they part for air, “and I swear you will regret it.”
“Tell you the truth, Shui-ge, it’s hard to regret anything right now,” Pei Ming says helplessly, the semblance of the grin that caused it all tugging at the corners of his mouth. “But I get it, I get it! I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
“You better,” he says as he pulls the man back in and closes his eyes.
Beneath his lips, he feels Pei Ming smile.
A good start.