Chapter 94: BUT YOU LOVED MY DICK YESTERDAY

The first thing Guiying registered was pain.

Not sharp, just present, the deep, settled ache of a body that had been thoroughly used and was making its feelings known.

His lower back especially, then his shoulders and inner thighs.

Places he hadn’t thought about in years suddenly had very loud opinions about the previous night.

He lay still for a moment, taking stock.

Bite marks riddled his neck, collarbone, and somewhere on his waist that he distinctly remembered happening and was choosing not to think about too carefully.

The sheets were soft against his skin, and the room was bright with morning light coming through the curtains. He had absolutely no idea what time it was.

He opened his eyes slowly.

Liuxian was beside the bed, setting something on the nightstand with the quiet efficiency of someone who had been awake for a while.

He was already dressed, which meant he had been up long enough to shower and change, which meant Guiying had slept considerably longer than he usually did.

He looked up when Guiying stirred.

"Good morning," he said.

Guiying looked at the nightstand.

Two pills and a glass of water, a small plate with toast and fruit beside them.

"What are those?" he said. His voice came out cracked and unfamiliar, rough at the edges in a way that made Liuxian’s expression do something brief and warm before settling back into composure.

"Pain relief," Liuxian said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "And a contraceptive." He paused. "Personally, I don’t like it. It’s not good for your body over time. But I have no right over your body. I bought it, but it’s entirely your decision whether you take it or not."

Guiying looked at the pills for a moment.

He thought about it seriously, the way he thought about most things that concerned his body these days, with the particular carefulness of someone who had learned the hard way what happened when you stopped paying attention.

He knew contraceptives.

Knew them better than he would have liked.

In his past life, he had taken them so consistently, so desperately, trying to avoid giving Shen Zihao what he wanted, that by the time he was twenty-eight, his body had simply stopped cooperating entirely. The doctors had told him quietly and carefully that the damage was done.

He was infertile.

He had sat with that information in a hospital bathroom and felt nothing because by then he had already stopped feeling most things.

He was going to be careful this time. More careful than he had ever been.

He reached for both pills, swallowed them with the water, and set the glass back down.

"Thank you," he said. He shifted slightly and felt his lower back register a very specific and very emphatic complaint. "My back hurts. I think I’m going to sleep again."

Liuxian raised a hand and pressed it flat against his forehead, checking.

"No fever," he said. "You’re just tired." He looked at Guiying steadily. "But before you sleep, you need to bathe and eat. I cleaned you up last night, but that’s not enough."

Guiying looked at him.

"I know you’re sore," Liuxian said, his voice quieter now, the particular quiet he used when he meant something and didn’t want to make a production of it. "I’ll draw the bath. You don’t have to do anything."

Guiying opened his mouth to say he could manage himself, and then his lower back made its feelings known again, and he closed it.

"Fine," he said.

Liuxian stood and went to the bathroom. Guiying heard the water start running, heard him moving around in there, the quiet competence of someone handling something without needing to announce it.

He sat in the morning light and looked at his hands.

He thought about last night.

About the lake and the moonlight and the things he had said standing at the water’s edge, words he had not planned to say and couldn’t take back and found, examining them in the daylight, that he didn’t want to.

He thought about his past life, how different this was from all of that.

It wasn’t just different.

It was unrecognizable.

He had been so certain, for so long, that this particular kind of morning—waking up in a warm room with someone who had drawn you a bath and left pills and toast on the nightstand—was simply not something that was available to him.

Not something he was allowed to have.

He pulled the sheet up around his shoulders and sat with that for a moment.

Liuxian appeared in the bathroom doorway. "Bath is ready. Come."

Guiying looked at him standing there, dressed and composed, waiting with the patient certainty of someone who had nowhere else to be and no intention of going there anyway. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"You’re staring. Am I too handsome?"

Liuxian smiled.

"I’m thinking," Guiying said.

"Think in the bath," Liuxian said. "The water will get cold."

Guiying almost smiled.

He pushed the sheet back and swung his legs over the side of the bed, and the moment he tried to stand, his lower back sent a message so clear and so emphatic that he sat back down immediately.

Liuxian crossed the room without a word, put an arm around him, and helped him up.

Guiying let him.

He was past the point of pretending his body wasn’t giving him a comprehensive review of last night’s activities.

"Don’t say anything, or I’ll kill you," Guiying said.

"I wasn’t going to say anything," Liuxian laughed.

"You were thinking of something. I just know it."

"I was thinking you should have some of that toast after the bath," Liuxian said mildly.

Guiying looked at him sideways.

Liuxian looked back with complete composure and the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth that he was doing absolutely nothing to suppress.

"I hate you," Guiying said.

"Mm, but you loved my dick yesterday," Liuxian said, walking him slowly to the bathroom.

-_-

Guiying blushed and turned his face away. He wasn’t drunk, so he couldn’t even deny it and say it was the alcohol.

The bath was warm and deep and smelled faintly of something from the hotel’s amenity collection that Liuxian had clearly chosen deliberately rather than at random.

Guiying lowered himself in slowly and felt the ache in his back begin to ease by degrees, the heat working into the muscles that had apparently been through an ordeal.

He leaned his head back against the edge and stared at the ceiling.

Liuxian sat on the edge of the tub beside him, not hovering, just present, in the way he had of being present without making it feel like surveillance.

"Are you in a lot of pain?" he said.