Chapter 272: FUCK

The car rolled to a stop outside the estate. Guiying blinked awake to Haiyan already holding the door open.

"We’re here."

He stepped out on legs that didn’t quite feel like his own and crossed the gravel toward windows glowing warm against the dark, grateful the house itself asked nothing of him yet.

Old Li’s head appeared around the kitchen doorway the second the front door opened. "Second Master, you’re back." He wiped his hands on his apron and reached for a pot already simmering on the stove. "I kept dinner warm. Give me a few minutes."

"Thank you, Uncle Li."

Wang Chengli passed through the hallway, offered a small nod, and left him to it without a single question. The kind of quiet that only came from years of knowing exactly when not to ask.

Guiying sat alone at the table, chopsticks pushing rice around the bowl more than lifting it to his mouth. Eating felt like a formality tonight, something his body required rather than wanted. Every few seconds his thumb found the hem of his sleeve and worried at a loose thread there, over and over, until it came away in his fingers. He set it down beside his plate rather than face the mess of putting it back.

He rinsed his own dish in the sink, needing something small and physical to occupy his hands before sleep, and dried them on the towel hanging by the window. He made his way upstairs and found Liuxian’s door. He let his hand rest on the handle a moment longer than necessary, weighing the anger still sitting in his chest against the simple fact that he didn’t want to spend tonight somewhere unfamiliar. He pushed the door open anyway.

The sheets still carried the trace of Liuxian’s pheromones, warm and familiar even without him in the room. That alone settled something in Guiying’s shoulders he hadn’t realized was still tense. He pulled the blanket up to his chin and reached for his phone, needing a distraction before his thoughts could circle back to the fight.

A reminder blinked on his calendar: Shen Zihao, court proceedings. He held his thumb on it until the delete option appeared, unwilling to give that name one more line of space in his life than it had already taken.

A message from Jiang Wenxi followed close behind, a welcome interruption.

Jiang Wenxi: Come on Thursday if you can. Final fitting for the runway piece, plus we want your input on the campaign shoot schedule.

He typed back a quick confirmation, then paused, thumb hovering over the screen. With everything that had happened tonight, 404 had slipped entirely out of his mind. The offer was still sitting unanswered since last night. He scrolled to the contact before he could let it slip again.

Guiying: Come by the estate tomorrow.

He attached the address and hit send, glad to have at least one loose end tied up before he let himself rest.

404’s reply landed within minutes.

404: What time?

Guiying: Whenever works for you. I’ll be home most of the day.

He set the phone face down on the nightstand. The small task finally let his mind loosen its grip on the day. Sleep pulled at him before he’d even settled on whether he wanted to be awake when Liuxian got home.

The front door opened past midnight. Liuxian climbed the stairs one at a time. A single lamp burned near the landing where Wang Chengli always left it for him, and each step felt heavier than the last. His body was finally catching up with everything the day had cost him.

He pushed his own door open and stopped in the frame.

Guiying lay curled beneath the blankets, one hand tucked under his cheek, breathing slow and even.

Liuxian’s fingers pressed into the doorframe hard enough to leave four small marks in the wood grain. He’d spent the whole drive home rehearsing an empty room, bracing himself for the possibility that Guiying wouldn’t want to be anywhere near him tonight. He got this instead, and it undid him a little more than the empty room would have.

He crossed to the bed and sat on the very edge of it, weight barely denting the mattress, careful not to wake him. Elbows braced on his knees, he stared at the floor, unwilling to look at Guiying’s face for too long without knowing what to do with everything rising in his chest.

"I need to do better." The words came out barely above a whisper, cracking somewhere in the middle. An admission he’d needed to say aloud even with no one there to hear it properly.

He pressed the heel of one hand against his eye, holding it there until his breathing steadied.

He thought back to his own hand gripping the back of that chair earlier, knuckles gone white, and to the sentence he’d thrown at Guiying like a verdict instead of a question.

I should be the first person you tell things to.

Every guard assigned, every call made, every decision signed and sealed before he’d once stopped to ask whether Guiying actually wanted it handled that way surfaced in his mind, one after another.

None of it painted him well.

He reached out and let his hand hover an inch above Guiying’s hair, close enough to catch the faint edge of his pheromones. He wanted badly to touch him and knew he hadn’t earned that yet. He drew his hand back and folded it into his lap instead.

Standing, he crossed to the closet and pulled down a spare blanket. He chose the couch deliberately over the empty space beside Guiying. His knees bent at an angle his spine would make him pay for by morning, and he lay staring at the ceiling until exhaustion finally pulled him under somewhere close to dawn.

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Guiying woke a few hours later to soft gray light filtering through the curtains. His hand found the other side of the bed on instinct before his eyes had even opened, and the cold sheets there told him everything before he turned to look.

Liuxian lay folded onto the couch across the room, one arm flung over his face to block out the light. His spine curved at an angle that made Guiying’s own back ache in sympathy just from looking at it. Some old, automatic part of him wanted to cross the room and check on him properly, to press a hand to his shoulder and ask whether the ache would need Cousin Yanchen’s attention later in the day.

He didn’t move.

They weren’t ready for that yet.

Not this morning.

Maybe not for a few mornings still to come.

The care hadn’t gone anywhere.

He was fairly certain of that much even now. It simply had nowhere safe to land between them just yet.

Guiying slid out from under the blankets as quietly as he could manage and crossed to his own room instead, letting the door click shut softly behind him.

The moment the latch caught, Liuxian’s eyes snapped open.

He’d been awake the entire time.

"Fuck." The word left him low and rough, aimed at the ceiling, at himself, at the closed door across the room. He hadn’t slept at all. Not really. And now he’d have to spend the rest of the day pretending otherwise.