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Cui Buqu had been in his underclothes, reading missives in bed when Feng Xiao strolled into his personal quarters in the Zuoye bureau like he owned the place and began rummaging through his clothing chests. He was coming off a bone-chilling cold that had left him bedridden for days, the fog in his head leaving him with barely enough strength to watch as the other man did as he pleased, mouth pressed into an unimpressed line.
As he felt his head clear and the heat of anger rising in his chest, he scowled and dropped the scroll in his hand with the intention of driving the intruder out. The oleander fairy should really question his retention of His Majesty’s favour if he had so much free time to be harassing him. Cui Buqu startled as Feng Xiao swiftly closed the space between them and moved to corner him against the head of the bed.
He feels the tickle of fur behind his ears and recognises the feeling of his coat being draped over his shoulders, before the familiar hands wrap around his torso and lift him off his bed the way one would a sack of rice. Cui Buqu feels himself toppling backwards and struggles to grab onto Feng Xiao, eventually looping his arms around his neck. His heart pounds as he shouts, “What are you doing?!”
“Since Cui Daozhang is lauded as a genius, is it not obvious what I am doing?”
Cui Buqu could tell the question was meant to be a light hearted mocking but he knows Vice commander Feng well enough to hear the slight strain in his voice. He laid gingerly in Feng Xiao’s arms, carefully positioned in a way to reduce the jostling as he was being carried away. Feng Xiao’s grip was anything but gentle with his fingers exerting enough pressure to mark Cui Buqu’s skin as he jumped across rooftops in what he recognises as the direction of Feng Xiao’s private residence, which he has only visited a couple of times despite the length of their acquaintance. He couldn't help but raise a brow and scrutinised Feng Xiao’s impeccable face, adorned with a breezy smile which didn’t quite reach his eyes. Cui Buqu considers the odds of Feng-er deliberately dropping him and decides not to engage him in the fight he is clearly trying to pick, opting to attempt to regulate his already ragged breathing amidst the cold winter wind against his face. Feng Xiao must have recognised his difficulty breathing as he felt his body being turned towards the ever-familiar chest and a steady stream of warm qi circulating around his body. With his head buried in a warm chest, the familiar smell of soap and floral scented oils filled his lungs. The smell settles the itch in his chest and his breathing eases, something he swears to never tell Feng-er as long as he lives.
They landed in the middle of the courtyard of Feng Xiao’s private manor with a loud thud, startling the maid sweeping the walkways. She greeted Feng Xiao nervously, obviously not used to actually seeing the Master of the House, awkwardly bent at the waist, in anticipation of instructions or a dismissal. A minute passes, and then two. The maid sweats nervously, still bent in half at the waist and wondering if her master’s irritation would cost her her life.
“Spare the girl, won’t you? She’s going to develop a hunched back at this rate. Is this how the esteemed second commander treats his servants?” The courtyard was so silent that even Cui Buqu’s soft, tired voice carried across it.
His chin was gripped tight as he was forced to look Feng Xiao in the eyes. “As demanding as always, Commander Cui,” Feng Xiao sneered, “already trying to manage my household even before we’ve properly completed our three bows?”
A faint gasp escapes from the maid, she had heard rumors of their manor getting ready to welcome a new Mistress of peerless beauty and elegance but did not expect this “Mistress” to not only drop out of the sky, but to be a man no less! The maid trembles and tries to make herself smaller as the reality of what she’s witnessing sets in, if this is her master’s illicit affair, she might not be able to get out of this alive.
Cui Buqu once again wonders if this man was alright in the head but found that he lacked the strength to get angry at Feng Xiao. At his lack of response followed by a good minute of wet, ribcage straining coughs; Cui Buqu watched as the arrogant expression on Feng Xiao’s face morphed into something resembling the panic stricken face he saw in the tunnels of the Daxingshan temple a year ago.
Ah, he thinks he might know what this is about. Cui Buqu mentally runs through the rolodex of servants in the palace and wondered how the information that he had collapsed in the middle of a meeting with the Empress had made its way to the second commander. He sighed, “Er-lang… I know-”
“What do you know?” He was cut off by a cold but strained voice. “How to make it so that the great Zhuoyue bureau falls into my hands as well? I almost wish I’d come back to a funeral instead of news of you being catatonic for a good part of my trip outside the capital!”
Well, that narrowed down the list of people who could have let this information slip. His bet was on Qin Miaoyu who had dropped by the bureau on official business a couple of days ago, and made a note to pit her in the near future.
Before he gets a chance to respond, he is overcome by another coughing fit. He fisted his hand into Feng Xiao’s robes to stabilise himself as he felt himself being moved once again. He faintly heard Feng Xiao barking orders to the maid while sensing that he was being carried deeper into the residence. The rest of his memory was hazy but he sensed himself having been gently rested on the edge of the bathing pool and Feng Xiao’s hands deftly undoing his clothing. Once fully naked, he feels himself being lowered gingerly onto a seat in a pool of warm water.
Throughout the entire process, a steady stream of qi warmed him and soothed the rattling of his lungs. Cui Buqu supposed he ought to have fought against it but could not find any fight in his body. He did, however, feel a touch of self-directed irritation when he realised that leaving himself up to Feng-er had only become so ingrained, it was almost second nature. He watches as Feng Xiao lowers himself into the pool opposite him, all while never once breaking the stream of qi the man was generously pouring into himself via the hand that had never left his thigh.
Cui Buqu rests his body weight against the side of the pool and continues to watch Feng Xiao, the damn oleander fairy, work various oils and concoctions through his hair. Cui Buqu finds he cannot find it in himself to blame the man for doubling the number of steps in his hair maintenance routine, especially not after the pains he had to go through to regrow it. Lazily, he reaches an arm out and grabs a cup Feng Xiao had placed next to him, perfectly within arms reach, and takes a sip of the warmed wine. It does not escape his notice that the seat is positioned at a height which allows his feet to align perfectly with the floor and his arms in the perfect position to pull himself up without exerting too much of his strength.
Speaking of the bathing pool, he took the time to marvel at its size and construction; the bathing chambers took up at least a third of the estate, the marble lined pool in the middle just large enough to accommodate two relatively tall men without touching.The temperature of the water could not have been achieved with anything other than a hot spring. He had heard the rumors whispered amongst palace maids that the esteemed vice-commander was re-modelling his private estate, seemingly in preparation to welcome a new Mistress of the House. He won’t deny that the rumor caused another cold war between the two, especially when they were accompanied by more talk of how Princess Lanling had recently been in high spirits, working hard on beautifying herself in anticipation for the vice-commander’s invitation to move into his courtyard. It had taken Feng-er vaulting over the walls of the Zuoyue bureau in the middle of the night for him to obtain a chance to deny said rumors to his face.
Taking in the elaborately decorated walls of the chambers, he wonders how the vice-captain of the Jiejian bureau had managed to convince the artisans who had worked on the emperor’s own bathing quarters to work on this, or how much such a thing must have cost Feng Xiao. Feeling the heat loosening the stiff muscles in his back, he supposes it was a worthy investment, the fact that Feng Xiao had lost a sizable chunk of livable area in his estate to this be damned.
Soaking in the warmth of the wine, Cui Buqu plays with the steam on the surface of the pool languidly and thinks of the unread missives he had left behind before contemplating the possible consequences that drowning Feng Xiao would have on the future of the nation. After the brief moment of irritation passes, he finds himself overcome with an eerie calmness and allows himself a moment of tenderness.
“You built this for me.”
“For you? Don’t be so full of yourself,” came the confident reply without hesitation. “This peerless master loves being clean; what better way to stay clean than a bathing pool. I am simply granting you the honour of sharing a bath with me.”
Okay, moment over. He’s sure the Sui Empire would survive without this Second Commander. His mind ran through the various ways he could assassinate the aggravating man while pinning the blame on some far away nation.
Any hope Cui Buqu had for peace was further dashed as he watched Feng Xiao’s face transform into a smirk as he quipped, “You must have missed me. The little birds you sent were surprisingly useful, we managed to get out a full day earlier than I anticipated.”
Cui Buqu opens his mouth to quip back but Feng Xiao continues, “Ah! But don’t think that the Zuoyue bureau is getting any credit for this. I sent your lackeys away before anything could happen. The success of this mission has been entirely attributed to the Jiejian bureau.” The smugness of his tone reignited the irritation in his heart, leaving Cui Buqu to once again wonder if letting this man around himself was a mistake. He moves to pull himself out of the bathing pool when he feels fingers closing around his forearm, yanking him back into the water and causing him to fall backwards. His fall is cushioned by a warm chest and Feng Xiao drapes himself over his back, hands sliding down his arms and fingers slotting in between his own.
Cui Buqu sighed, resigning himself to being Feng Xiao’s prisoner for the next shichen or however long the cleanliness freak intended to stay in the bath. Tuning out the tirade on maintaining his health that Feng Xiao had started, he focused his attention on their linked hands resting on his lap in the water and admires his reflection of the man behind him in the water.
If this were a few years ago, he would not have imagined letting anyone, much less the vice commander of a rival bureau, such levels of intimacy. It would be all too easy to place the blame on Feng Xiao for persistently worming his way into his life but Cui Buqu had undoubtedly let him. He thinks about how there is no bone in his body that wants to leave the embrace he is folded in and he lets out a laugh at the absurdity of the situation.
“What’s with the smile? Is the honourable commander thinking of little old me?”
Cui Buqu sighed, but the smile that had unconsciously graced his face somehow did not fall. He continues to smile in the face of Feng-er's quiet but desperate consideration. Cui Buqu wants to sew his mouth shut so that this farce would end, but he knows he will miss the quips and rage-inducing flirtations that fall from his mouth like water. He wants to assuage this man’s anxiety but knows that nothing he says will negate the reality of his ailing body. After all, he knows he’s not the one who will have to pick themselves up alone after nature runs its course. He wants to comb through Feng Xiao’s mind and finally figure out what makes him tick; learn what the man sees in him. Cui Buqu wants to make Feng Xiao confess what it took for the capital’s most eligible bachelor to give everything up for a man whose bed he would have to sneak into for the rest of his life.
Instead, he turns to straddle Feng Xiao’s lap and swallows whatever infuriating remark he’s sure was on the tip of the tongue he allows to entangle his own. He feels the grip on his waist tighten and allows Feng Xiao to satiate whatever hunger thrummed beneath his skin. Cui Buqu has never been good at ceding control, but he finds that the thought of having surrendered his heart to the man holding him as one would a precious, fragile object while trailing bruising kisses down the side of his neck, remarkably inoffensive. He scoffs when he feels the graze of teeth on his neck morph into a gentle press of lips and a stream of warm qi; this man truly couldn’t bear to see him hurt.
Looping his arms around Feng Xiao’s neck, Cui Buqu pulls him in for another kiss and thinks he can find a way for the pile of unread missives on his desk to make their way to Feng-er’s instead. If nothing else, after decades of only doing what he should, he decides he wants to let himself bask in the enormity of Feng Xiao’s devotion.