Work Text:
At some point in his clearly-advancing middle age, Zhao Yunlan became the sort of person who takes baths. He fills them up to the brim with nothing but hot water – which has its own smell, he’s noticed, unadulterated and metallic – and submerges to his neck, thinking over the events of the day amid the gleam of light off tiles. This is one such occasion, indulgent in just how much hot water is involved. The tap drips; the steam rises; the heat is on the knife-edge between pleasure and pain. It’s a good place to contemplate one’s sins.
(This is far from the first time in his adult life that Yunlan has wished his mother were living. It would be good to text someone with I did something stupid today and I’m afraid it wasn’t just stupid but much, much worse and get a reply less concerned with his failings as boyfriend, friend and standard-bearing Guardian and more concerned with his degree of sugar consumption and inability to dress for the weather.)
The other advantage of a steaming hot bath: it’s the only place in his apartment he’s guaranteed not to be followed by that damn cat. Sometimes, a man wants privacy.
Sometimes a man doesn’t get what he wants. “You should not have done that,” Shen Wei intones, stepping away from the cloud of black smoke.
“Did you just… teleport into my bathroom?” Zhao Yunlan says. “Did you – you did. You did just teleport into my bathroom.”
“Zhao Yunlan,” Shen Wei insists, sitting on the edge of the bath. He’s fully-dressed. The trench coat is wet with rain. He did not come here via his own apartment. “You should not have done it.”
“You could have knocked!” Zhao Yunlan says, conscious of Shen Wei’s ability to sweep him off his feet and into whatever glory comes next and how if he’s not careful they’re just going to breeze right past how Shen Wei just teleported into his bathroom. “I could have been—“
He doesn’t feel the need to specify what, exactly, he could have been doing, naked in the bathtub. Shen Wei doesn’t ask. His eyes settle on Zhao Yunlan in implacable expectation.
There’s no getting away from it.
“Shen Wei,” Zhao Yunlan says, and rewinds mentally. Dragon City University, the wet greenery of the park. Dixingren, death, murder, blood in the grass; the Black-Cloaked Envoy doing his job, which is to bring justice. Zhao Yunlan watched as the miscreants disappeared into the portal, towards punishment and expiation. He nodded to himself, reached up without thinking, and took off the Envoy’s mask.
Seconds later it disappeared from his hands, along with the Envoy himself and the portal – but not before he saw the shadow of the cowl on the face beneath the hood. He could only see the Envoy’s eyes. The memory makes a shiver pass through his body. In the heat and steam, it’s obvious, humiliating.
Arousing, too. Zhao Yunlan wants very much to smack himself around the head.
“I’m sorry,” he tries, wanting now just to get this over with, confession and atonement in quick succession. “I know you were doing your job, bringing justice and... you know. I’m not supposed to—“
But as he gets halfway through the sentence, he’s already thinking, not supposed to what, exactly. Not supposed to think of Shen Wei, whom he loves, unmasked; not supposed to do what he learned to do ten thousand years from here, of treating the man in front of him like the human being he is and not just the goddamn embodiment of a covenant.
“I got in the habit of it,” Yunlan says. “When I was… you know. Kunlun. You remember.”
Shen Wei nods. Zhao Yunlan relaxes slightly into the water.
“I just – but I won’t. I mean. If you don’t want me to.”
Shen Wei says nothing. Zhao Yunlan has the urge to pull him into the bath, fully dressed. He looks at the white of Shen Wei’s knuckles on the edge of the tub, and doesn’t.
“Zhao Yunlan,” Shen Wei says, low, dangerous. “I do not bring justice. I am justice” – and then the lights go out. They come back, dimmed, for a half-second and in that snapshot of illumination Zhao Yunlan cries out, at the Black Cloaked Envoy stark as the coming of winter. Darkness again, masking the swoop of cloth and movement: the knife-tip passes through the water.
When the lights come back on, Shen Wei is still on the edge of the bathtub. His hair is curling from the steam and his glasses are fogged up. He takes them off and puts them on the edge of the sink.
Zhao Yunlan can’t breathe. There is an edge of red in the tub. When he lifts his arm he disturbs the perfect line of the cut on the forearm, given to him as lightly as a kiss.
“Fuck,” he says, to no one in particular.
“You have considerable power over me,” Shen Wei says, conversationally. He wipes his glasses on one of Zhao Yunlan’s towels.
“I, ah,” Zhao Yunlan says.
“Please don’t abuse it, Zhao Yunlan,” Shen Wei says, not sardonically; he means it. He folds the towel and hangs it up neatly.
This has been, Zhao Yunlan understands, an object lesson in how one does not abuse one’s power. The cut on his arm is already healing, black smoke whispering at its edges.The blood in the water remains.
Shen Wei puts his glasses back on and stands up. “I’ll leave you to your bath,” he says.
Zhao Yunlan looks up at him. “You chilled the water,” he says, petulantly. “It’s cold now.”
Shen Wei smiles and waves a hand. The water starts steaming again as the door closes behind him. Zhao Yunlan listens as he passes back through the apartment, stacking some plates as he goes, and leaving dried fish out for the cat.