Work Text:
“Xiansheng,” Hu Tao’s head pops in the office, “there’s someone at the door.”
Zhongli doesn’t look up from his paperwork. “The clinic is closed. Tell them to come back tomorrow.”
“Xiansheng.”
Hu Tao sounds exceptionally cross. Zhongli looks up then; he sees Hu Tao red in the face, gripping the door open with white knuckles. Zhongli glances at the clock, frowning. It’s definitely past closing hours and they have strict rules about late visitors. Hu Tao’s always been good at following them, too.
Zhongli exhales. “Hu Tao, I told you not to let anyone—”
Zhongli’s old chair squeaks when he swivels. Behind Hu Tao he notices tufts of dark hair sticking out from a second head, standing at a similar height to hers. She urges the visitor forward to the door.
It’s Xiao. He gingerly halts at the doorframe. His body shrinks under Zhongli’s wide eyes. There’s blood on his plain gray hoodie; wide open cuts in the fabric that fray at the red edges; Xiao’s skin underneath, breathing, with dark red blotches. Zhongli can smell the iron in the air. Xiao rubs his arm and Zhongli can’t tell if it’s because he’s in pain or because he’s ashamed of himself.
“Xiao,” Zhongli says, rising, “what did you—were you attacked? Is that…your blood?”
For someone whose answer is an honest, “Yes,” Xiao is pretty calm.
Hu Tao is still behind Xiao. “Go,” she hisses, her face so red and furious she could be on the brink of tears. She shoves Xiao inside. “Sit. And get treated.”
The door slams shut.
“Well, you heard her. Come sit.”
Xiao shuffles over to the examination table. He almost sweeps his leg up to climb the table and sit like he’d been told, but that nearly gives Zhongli a heart attack and he rushes to Xiao’s side. He girds Xiao’s hips to lift him onto the table carefully so as to not aggravate whatever injuries he’s here to have treated. Usually Xiao would be visibly disgruntled — it’s the whole height thing — but he just avoids showing Zhongli his face.
First things first. “What happened?” Zhongli asks. “In detail, please, while I gather some things to take care of your wounds.”
Zhongli turns away to his cabinets. He hears Xiao exhaling behind him. “I…got in a fight.”
Zhongli turns back.
“Again?”
“I tried to leave,” Xiao mutters. “They wouldn’t let me.”
Xiao never asked for trouble. He didn’t think he gave misleading looks to the men loitering around rundown buildings and concrete ruins, but time after time — swinging fist after another — he’d learned to just deal with it. Look ahead, watch your feet brisk along the pavement. Avoid eye contact by all means possible. He never went out without a hoodie or jacket on. Something to help him slip by as though he was never there.
He had a stroke of bad luck that evening. Some sort of police altercation blocked the intersection he used to head home. He’d detoured into someplace shadier, less lights and people. Not even cars passed through there. Maybe he should’ve expected one of the guys huddled behind an abandoned gas station to kick a crushed beer can in his path.
“What’s the hurry, little man?” He hawked and spat out phlegm when Xiao turned to him. “I don’t like that fucking look on your face.”
Xiao tried not to glower.
“You could’ve ran when you had the chance, no?” Zhongli has a wash basin tucked in his arm, gathering the cleanest strips of cloth he can find. “You’re quite fast.”
Xiao picks at filth under his nails.
“He had an annoying face.”
Zhongli whirls his head over his shoulder with a grip on the whistling faucet. “Xiao.”
They were staring into each other’s eyes by that point. Sizing each other up. Or at least that was what the guy thought they were doing. Xiao wanted to go home, though he knew it was too late to excuse himself and whirl away from this street until he couldn’t make out the signposts anymore. Running when you were too far in the den only encouraged the pups to chase.
“Y’know, I’ve seen you around,” the guy said, jutting his bottom lip. “Yeah, you’re that pretty boy with green hair. I heard you sent a guy twice your height flying the other day.”
Xiao didn’t say anything. ‘Flying’ was an exaggeration. And most of these guys were plenty taller than him.
“Well?” The guy showed his teeth in an ugly snarl. “Are you gonna stand there all day or what?”
“You’re smaller than him,” Xiao answered.
The guy narrowed his eyes. He took another step forward. He was probably either too dumb to understand what Xiao meant or was looking to finally have a chance to bare his fists.
“Say that again.”
Xiao’s feet shifted, adding a subtle inch to his stance.
“He wasn’t that tough. You would be easy.”
Xiao dodged the guy’s incoming left hook with, as he’d pronounced, relative ease.
“They shouted when he pulled out his revolver,” Xiao recounts plainly. “Most of them ran.”
Zhongli blanches. “Xiao, he shot you?”
He would have fainted if Xiao didn’t shake his head.
“I knocked it out of his hand.” Xiao palms the bloody gash in his hoodie. “He just had a pocket knife on him too.”
That’s hardly any better. “He stabbed you?”
“No,” Xiao says. “I don’t think so. He did try.”
“Xiao, my goodness,” Zhongli stops himself from teetering, “you could have died.”
“I didn’t,” is Xiao’s reply, but there’s soft resignation in his voice that adds his unspoken I know.
Zhongli rests the half-filled wash basin beside Xiao. The water in it undulates gently.
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Xiao says, like it’s been sitting on the tip of his tongue.
Zhongli holds Xiao’s calloused hand. “It’s not your fault.”
Xiao lowers his chin. He squeezes Zhongli’s fingers.
“I mean—I know it worries you. I try not to,” he adds.
“It does,” Zhongli agrees. It really does. Xiao’s good at picking up on these things about him. Sometimes it feels like Xiao knows more about him than Xiao knows about himself.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
Zhongli rolls up the sleeves of his white coat. Xiao hasn’t looked up from his knees since. He doesn’t move a muscle.
“I’m not mad at you,” Zhongli says. “Xiao, look at me.”
His hands cup Xiao’s face, lifting his gaze. Xiao is expressionless much like usual, but he’d perked at Zhongli’s words and now his eyes are open, gleaming, vulnerable.
The sound lags after Xiao parting his lips. “I know.”
Zhongli studies him with a long gaze.
“I’m never mad at you.”
“I know,” Xiao matches Zhongli’s low voice.
Zhongli exhales. So does Xiao. He’s standing in front of Xiao, caged in by Xiao’s lithe legs. He holds Xiao’s face with tender, worked hands, softening his palms, feeling Xiao breathe beneath him.
“Am I too harsh on you sometimes?”
Xiao holds Zhongli closer. “No. Never.”
Their foreheads slow to a touch as Zhongli whispers, “I get scared that you won’t return one of these days.”
Xiao shakes his head, palms pressed flush to Zhongli’s neck. His skin is rough and worn from the laborious work he spends his days on, but the pads of his fingers are youthfully supple still.
“I have people to live for. I wouldn’t let that happen.”
Zhongli almost cracks into a smile. It’s no easy feat to become one of Xiao’s people. “Is that a promise?”
“Yes. It’s my promise,” Xiao says. “You’re the only place I feel safe.”
Zhongli doesn’t think he deserves that title. He opens his mouth in protest but Xiao quickly pecks him on the lips, as though he’d been waiting to steal whatever words were about to leave him, just to emphasize his own.
“You changed my life, Zhongli,” Xiao says. “One day I want to change yours.”
“Gods, Xiao,” Zhongli breathes, and kisses him again, slower.
Zhongli doesn’t change lives. He treats ailments and sews open wounds and offers advice to the best of his knowledge. Zhongli didn’t change Xiao’s life. But it’s of Xiao’s own volition that he tells Zhongli he did, and Zhongli is no cruel god that would mold Xiao’s will to his own.
Zhongli drags his fingers over Xiao’s head, pushing back his ruffled locks.
“Maybe we can save this for later.” Zhongli clears his throat. “Your wounds need my attention.”
Xiao looks embarrassed. He pushes Zhongli back by the shoulders, though he’s slightly hesitant to part.
Zhongli has his first onceover of Xiao’s condition at close proximity and — it’s not great. Granted, he doesn’t see much over the hoodie, which is why he asks Xiao if he can help him take it off. Xiao sort of grunts. That tends to be his affirmation so Zhongli tugs the hem of Xiao’s tattered hoodie, dragging it all the way over his head. He leaves it folded on the edge of the table, though he does wonder if he should just toss it out considering its ruined state.
So, it’s worse without the hoodie, as obvious as that is. Zhongli sees blood and more blood. Most of it is caked over Xiao’s wounds. His lips turn into a frown. There are quite a few lacerations on his body. It’s almost black where blood coagulates; the skin is flushed and lifting at every cut. At least they’ve all stopped bleeding, and Xiao isn’t displaying any obvious signs of excessive blood loss. He hardly seems to be in pain, for that matter, and seemed to forget he was injured at all while they had kissed.
Zhongli works carefully. He dunks a fine woven cloth in the lukewarm water, wrings it out of excess water. The cloth soaks up the fresher bloodstains. He wads the cloth and presses it to the edges of the larger lacerations. Xiao has his eyes clenched shut and his body jerks at some of Zhongli’s touches but says nothing, letting Zhongli clean the rest.
The wash basin is a tub of clear rosy water. He tosses the cloth in and stills for a moment. He should dry the wounds. Prepare the ointment and the gauze.
Zhongli visits the sink. He lathers soap in his hands and runs them under the water. A jar of ointment is one hand when he returns to the table. He scoops out a dollop of waxy ointment and treats Xiao’s largest lesion with generosity. The pale abs flex when he starts to coat over flesh. Zhongli inhales.
This is a familiar sight.
Zhongli doesn’t like thinking about it. Xiao’s been in his office plenty of times before, sitting the exact way he is on the examination table with his feet dangled and back hunched. People just…instigate things with him. A lot.
The first instance was a sprained wrist and beaten knuckles. Then there were broken arms. Bloody noses. Even shattered ribs the one time a second guy pulled an iron pipe on him out of nowhere. But he’d never encountered a knife before.
Zhongli doesn’t really think about it when his finger brushes the thin slits in Xiao’s torso. A knife. Some of these are right on top of his organs. He could’ve died. Really died. Bled out in some decrepit old place, alone.
Xiao opens his mouth to tell him firmly: “Stop.”
Zhongli’s arm freezes. “Did that hurt?”
“No.” Xiao puts his hand on Zhongli’s wrist. “You’re shaking.”
Zhongli looks down. He didn’t realize. His fingers hang in the air, quivering, like they’re questioning one of Xiao’s wounds. Xiao weaves his fingers into the grooves between Zhongli’s. That helps with the shaking.
“That’s strange,” Zhongli remarks as if the hand belonged to someone else.
Xiao leans towards him. “Why are you shaking?” he asks.
“I…don’t know.”
Xiao’s expression remains still. “Zhongli.”
Zhongli exhales, “I was—scared, Xiao. Please don’t be so reckless. You are strong but not invincible. I can’t heal everything.”
“I promised you already.” Xiao is the one to nestle Zhongli’s face in his palms this time. “You live for me. I will live for you.”
And is that not enough? is the rest of Xiao’s inquiry that doesn’t make it to his lips, because Zhongli gives him a nod and they shut their eyes like this: with Xiao’s thumb rubbing Zhongli’s cheekbone, with Zhongli muttering his half of the promise onto Xiao’s lips.
The office door flies open when they’re close enough to exchange breaths.
“Xiansheng! Xiao!” Hu Tao shrieks. “Why is there kissing and no wound-dressing!”
Xiao is put to rest at the blue sheet cot after Zhongli has him wrapped in dry gauze and a blanket. It doesn’t take long for Xiao’s breathing to grow light and even. Zhongli reaches his hand out, cards his fingers through Xiao’s soft hair, and quietly resumes his work by Xiao’s side.