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Muttering under her breath as she penned yet another draft for the Lantern Rite budget, Ningguang barely registered the sound of her window opening. A soft breath of fresh air kissed her skin, the candle on the table wavering with a flicker from the breeze, and she tch'd in annoyance.
"Baishi, what have I said about the study windows?"
There wasn't a reply, but this time Ningguang caught the sound of the shutters slowly closing, as if afraid to further anger the Tianquan at this critical juncture two weeks before the festivities.
Except her concentration had been broken, and now the numbers were swimming before her eyes even moreso than before. Ningguang typically refrained from overworking herself, just having one overworked Qixing would already put enough stress on the system of seven, and she had no intent on giving Keqing the excuse to call her a hypocrite. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and the main caravan delivering the black powder for the fireworks had reportedly gone missing in the pass a few days prior and now she had to both pen a letter to call Yelan to investigate the area, and order another batch of blackpowder should the previous be unrecoverable. They had already put aside most of the funds this year for a particularly extravagant Xiao Lantern, so now Ningguang had to look through the nooks and crannies of the budget to somehow scrounge up the necessary funds for this unexpected expense.
They would've had more budget if the Feiyun Commerce guild's old man didn't fall abruptly sick and have their main family end up pushing all the jobs to their less… financially wise underlings, but alas, even the Tianquan could only predict so much.
Ningguang leaned back in her chair and sighed. She massaged the bridge of her nose to push away the headache that was rapidly encroaching upon her consciousness, and—
A whisper of sea wind and the taste of brine in the back of her throat was all the warning she had before strong hands settled on her shoulders, fingertips rough with callouses and palms gloved in warm leather.
"Dunno what you've told Baishi about windows, but you once told me that it was the uncivilized mode of entry." Beidou's warm breath tickled her ear, and her voice was as rough as her callouses but a full amber mug of mirth. "Even if you always appreciated the food I would bring along," she added almost as an afterthought.
"Captain Beidou, what a surprise to find you here at this hour tonight," Ningguang said, leaning back to rest her head against the other woman, "I trust your return was a pleasant one?"
"Mmhmm, caught a nice tailwind once we were out of Port Ormos proper, and not a single cloud in sight. Not even a quarter of the ice that we prepped in the hold has melted, so you can have a good ol' shipment of unbruised lavender melon to look forwards to." Beidou squeezed Ningguang's shoulders, and Ningguang could feel the abrupt pause of the other woman's movement. "Archons, A-Ning— speaking of lavender melons, you've got a knot the size of a pit here. You been doing ok?"
"You found me here at near midnight, dear captain, what do you think?"
Beidou snorted, "point taken. Let me just— ease these out of you then, make sleeping a bit easier later hmm?"
"If you have the time to spare," Ningguang sighed, both of them knowing that Beidou was likely to spend the rest of the night in the Jade Chamber. "Although, you also sound tired yourself, my dear captain. Was your last voyage overall successful?"
Just because the return was swift and painless, doesn't mean the rest of the journey had been. Ningguang has seen Beidou return bandaged head to toe and still grinning like a lunatic because of blue skies and pleasant winds before, and as such it wasn't quite the indication of safety that Ningguang would have been looking for.
"Ha! Ya caught me there. We had a bit of a mishap encounter at our usual Guyun docking location, but it wasn't anything we couldn't deal with."
And so the captain rambled on, spinning a tale of close encounters and silly accidents, her hands kneading against the soreness of Ningguang's shoulders all the while. Lulled by the woman's solid presence behind her, that sea-born scent and her gradually softening voice, the Tianquan slipped quietly into sleep— warm hands working away at her tension all the while.
The next day Ningguang woke to the sun just starting to peek through the gossamer canopy of her bed, and a concavity on Beidou's side of the bed that she had rolled into. There was a lingering scent of brine on Beidou's pillow, and when Ningguang stretched out, refreshed for the first day in weeks, her hand knocked over a clumsily folded paper crane placed on her own pillow.
That woman, she really knows me too well.
The flower was, of course, a folded letter. Not a long one, and written in a hurry if the ink smudges were any indication, but still folded into a pretty little crane holding the pirate's well wishes.
If Ningguang went through the rest of her day with a bit more of a grace and a touch more patience, then that was only for her to know.
This persisted for the remainder of Beidou's days in port— sneaking in at horrendously late hours to find Ningguang still working at Lantern Rite preparations and contingency plans, and proceeding to "convince" her to sleep with tales of her adventures and a relief from the aches of the day with a massage. The captain would also be off by morning, before Ningguang herself wakes, but a different folded paper creature would be on her pillow each morning.
She would slip them into a drawer, back in their clumsily folded forms, taking extra care to not tear the delicate paper it was made from.
Lantern Rite was arriving soon, and the Tianquan was not the only one being run ragged with tasks. The whole harbour was bustling with merchants, sponsors, and harried food stall owners alike, but Ningguang was starting to hear some concerning rumours floating up from her network and well, that would also need to be dealt with before the festivities hit, wouldn't it.
(She had both underestimated and overestimated the threat, which was a new one for her, but having to send Beidou off to guard the Gate of Fright — Ningguang was going to live with nightmares of blood and lifeless red for a very long time.)
The morning after the nearly disastrous Lantern Rite, Ningguang woke to the rare sight of captain Beidou strewn haphazardly across their bed. Rare, considering how the pirate normally spends her nights sleeping like a particularly warm and well-muscled log; but being sprawled over the other woman in question, who was the Tianquan to argue?
To think that the day before had nearly heralded the collapse between the fabric of life and death itself with Beidou at the forefront— Ningguang drew in a shaky breath. And promptly coughed it out when a heavy hand patted her on the back.
"I can hear you thinking from down here," Beidou's chest reverberated with a suppressed laugh, "take a breather A-Ning, yesterday was too much of a shitstorm to still be anxious about it today. Gotta save some of that stressing for next year's Lantern Rite, y'know?"
The Tianquan, who had been stressing for the past four Lantern Rites for various, unforeseen reasons, groaned. "Archons, kindly don't remind me. The deals that I would strike so that we could please have one, one uneventful Lantern Rite after the last few years—"
"At least we've probably covered most of the most horrifying boxes off the list?"
"You say this now, but when next year rolls around—"
Beidou laughed, then winced. "You've… got a point there."
"I always do," Ningguang said primely. Then she turned her head to better look Beidou in the face, to capture any sign of the pain that she just heard hiss through the pirate's lungs. "Are you doing well though? No side-effects of the Gate, or any other injury that I should know about before I start finding bandages under the dresser again?"
"No! I mean, I'm doing well and no injuries!" Except she twitched when Ningguang shifted, and her face had tensed up when she raised her arm to somehow indicate haleness.
"Beidou."
"I'm all good!"
" Captain Beidou."
"Ningguang I'm fine— "
"Captain Beidou of the Crux fleet, do you want me to notify Yinxing?"
The sea-faring captain, braver than any Millelith and the sole individual capable of parrying even a thunderbolt strike from an archon, groaned into a raised arm. Muffled, Beidou relented, "I might be a bit sore from yesterday, but that's it. It's already plenty better than yesterday, and a good night's sleep here with my very own Tianquan-sized blanket also helps." Ningguang pinched Beidou's cheek for the snark, and shuffled so that she was a bit more firmly entangled with the other woman.
"How bold, to call the Tianquan your own blanket."
And so Ningguang attacked, sticking fingers into all the spots that she knew Beidou was ticklish, and spent the rest of the early morning doing not much at all.
The morning was not infinite in its dawn lighting, however unfortunate that was, and soon the two had to remove themselves from the comfort of bed and start preparing for the day. They fell back to their old routines, Ningguang taking the time to change first while Beidou haphazardly threw on everything she owned and sitting herself at the vanity to brush her hair into something manageable.
"Once more, this is why combing out your hair is useful even before you sleep," Ningguang said, emerging from behind the privacy screen to see her comb stuck in the mop that was atop Beidou's head.
Beidou grumbled, "in my defense, I typically don't move when asleep. You need this? I'm almost done, just gimme a few moments to— got it."
The Tianquan sighed and accepted her comb from the pirate, before placing it on the vanity. She'd been reminded of something, and after a moment's consideration, rested her hands upon Beidou's shoulders and her chin upon the pirate's head. "When I was a child," she mused, "my parents thought it would be funny to encourage my mora-making habits by having me do little chores around the house."
Beidou tilted her head up; not enough to dislodge her wife, but enough that she could more easily meet the other woman's eyes in the mirror. Ningguang didn't tend to talk about her family much, so Beidou settled in to listen.
"They didn't enjoy my wandering around the shoal and picking up shells, and thought household chores would be more fitting of a young girl of my age. The usual, you see, the ones expected of a housewife." She huffed, amusement dry but some shade of indecipherable emotion just lurking beneath the nonchalant surface. "These many years later, and I still don't understand why they thought that was the life that I would have enjoyed leading.
"But to get to the point, my parents… in all my memory, they would be plagued by little aches and pains from work, and so we settled on some rudimentary terms— ten mora for twenty minutes of my time and effort, towards either a shoulder or back massage." Her hands, ungloved and slender, pressed at the tight spots between Beidou's shoulder blades. "The money was probably more for humoring me, as ten mora would be a pittance compared to what that time would amount to, but it was… peaceful, at least. They would tell me stories too. At times like that, we felt more like a family." Silence, for a moment, as Ningguang worked at the tension held between Beidou's shoulder blades. "I apologize, that was a bit of a downer my dear. I think what I meant to say is that I apologize if my skills are rusty, it has been a while since I've done this."
"Oh Archons A-Ning, there's no need to apologize. I— thanks for trusting me with that memory." Another beat of silence, and Ningguang could feel Beidou relax under her hold. The pirate hummed, some tune that Ningguang recalled vaguely from the few encounters they shared in their childhood. "You know, it's been a while since we last visited. With this crisis taken care of, how say you we both take a day off to surprise your parents? Or if not," she added hastily, "it's been a while since we've visited Mondstadt? Maybe we could even find Lumine brewing drinks there again."
"Going from pulling our funeral director from the veil between life and death to brewing drinks at a tavern for no reason other than pay, that really does seem to be something that Outlander would do." Ningguang huffed, amused, and rested her chin back on the crown of her pirate's head. "Very well, I do believe there's a trade deal that I need to confirm with Jean anyhow, may as well make the trip in person."
"Sweet! I'll let the crew to pack for tomorrow!"
"Tomorrow? Beidou, my dear, that is far too early—"