Work Text:
Mei Changsu came home on a stretcher, Lin Chen’s constant stream of curses and encouragement at his side. The light hurt, the blankets hurt, the jostling of the carriage hurt. Even the words Lin Chen kept repeating hurt: I’m not going to let you die.
(But he was broken; how could anyone still need him now?)
He stared up at the too-ornate ceiling as Lin Chen shouted orders at a rotating team of doctors. Sometimes he wondered when Lin Chen slept; he always seemed to be awake whenever Mei Changsu was. Once, he’d seen Lin Chen blinking his way into coherence from a cot set off to the side, and he’d shoved aside his flurry of emotions because there wasn’t space for them around the pain.
(Fractured femur, shattered elbow, three things wrong with his gut, the ever-burning fire he’d long accepted as his due.)
Xiao Jingyan came by when he could, sword-bright and regal until he broke down crying. “I lost you once,” he said between the sobs. “This is an imperial order: Don’t leave me again.”
“My emperor—”
“Don’t you dare.”
Mei Changsu closed his eyes. “Jingyan,” he said, softly. “I can’t promise you anything.”
“You don’t need to.” Xiao Jingyan’s hand was gentle on his cheek. “You just need to obey.”
Mei Changsu nodded. He could do that.
An unexpected kiss on his forehead. “You’re going to live to see my child’s birth.”
His eyes flew open and he almost tried to sit up before Lin Chen shoved him back down and began berating Xiao Jingyan for inciting him to overexertion.
Xiao Jingyan left, but the smile on his lips never did.
A year later, leaning against Mu Nihuang at the 100th day celebration of Xiao Jingyan's firstborn child, Mei Changsu thought:
This is worth living for.