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Months on the northern front made Maomao forget how stifling the capital's summers can be. While not as unforgiving as those of the I-sei province, the heat is still dizzying, the humidity oppressive, and the stagnant air downright suffocating.
Suiren had been her usual thoughtful self, offering Maomao sleepwear made of linen in place of the heavier cotton; the type Maomao would never have purchased herself because the material is far too delicate even with careful handling. For now, she appreciates the inoffensiveness of the weave against the patches of irritated skin.
There's a quiet knock on the door just as she was about to drift off—sleep comes easily without the cacophony of anguished groans and pained cries all around her. The door opens after a three-second pause, just enough time for her to have objected. The door isn't locked, of course. She's in her old room in Jinshi's palace, and servant girls shouldn't get too cocky with demands for privacy. Regardless, this comes to mean that Maomao doesn't have to get out of bed to unlock it.
The darkness does very little to conceal the familiarity of the figure that slips through the cracked-open door. Maomao wonders when she'd gotten so comfortable with a faceless man sneaking into her room late at night (there are actual guards roaming the hallways of the Imperial Brother's residence at all times). She tells herself that it's the considerate knock, a courtesy she appreciates immensely. She'd never wish to deny him entry, but just maybe halt him if she were in the middle of getting changed or otherwise indisposed.
The door closes with an inaudible click behind him, and he remains standing by it. For a moment, Maomao wonders whether he'll cower away from her like always, and braces to keep her disappointment in check.
"I don't want you going back to the battlefront tomorrow."
Maomao turns her neck back to the center, bringing her face up to the ceiling. She doesn't need to look at him to know his fingernails are biting into his palms from how tightly he curls his fists at his sides.
"Is that an order, sir?" She also doesn't need to look to see him wince; a rather unflattering twitch of one eyebrow, even for someone as beautiful as he is.
"It's far too dangerous. The situation is... uncertain; who knows what could happen out there." It's not like he can assign her a bodyguard like he'd done with Lihaku in the Western Capital. He'd be making her stand out as a person of interest at a time and place where anonymity is the greatest guarantor of her safety.
"Someone has to do it."
There's already a lack of young doctors with surgical experience whose parents aren't wealthy enough or powerful enough to quietly erase their names from the obligation to serve the empire, unlike herself. And regardless of Maomao's own set of hard-earned skills, no one in their right mind would've taken a woman, especially one as physically inept as herself, to the front lines had they not been desperate.
Then, in place of the ceiling, her vision is filled with Jinshi.
Sitting on the side of her bed, Jinshi leans over her, hands planted firmly on either side of her head. Without the usual twists to keep it up, his hair falls like a silk curtain around them. It frames his lovely face, reminding her of how close he is. Maomao holds back from cupping his cheek and caressing the somewhat-faded scar, satisfied with simply admiring it after months of deprivation.
"Does it have to be you? Let them take someone else," he says, words pointed and voice dropping, unlike his usual high-pitched and exasperated complaints and objections; this is a threat.
Jinshi pushes closer, elbows bending and further caging her between himself and the bed. Even with the compounded heat of his breaths scorching her parched skin, Maomao finds she doesn't at all mind the proximity. His eyes are sharp; she knows he's trying to intimidate her. That might've worked several years back, but she knows by now that he'd never lay a hand on her.
Instead, she says: "I've made up my mind."
He searches her eyes for any hesitation and sighs in defeat when he finds none. To his credit, Jinshi knows when he's beat, that when she puts her mind to something, nothing and no one can change it. Maomao wonders whether this time he'll actually give an order. There's no helping it then.
Jinshi straightens up, but doesn't withdraw from her. He continues to give her a hard stare. She worries he's going to argue with her all night when she wishes he'd just let her sleep—she's got a long trip to make tomorrow.
In a fleeting thought, she wonders whether all the time away from her has made him sloppy; made him forget how to read her in earnest, and feels a sting to the underside of her ribs. The pain only barely distracts her when his hand goes to her hip, thumb brushing affectionately at the sliver of exposed skin between the hem and waistband. "Sometimes I find myself thinking that I should just get you pregnant."
Maomao arches a brow despite herself. A few quiet seconds confirm she hadn't misheard him. "And how would that be of any help in this situation, sir?"Another one of his careless musings, huh?
"It'd help. A lot, in fact." His voice has softened again, and she lets go of a breath that had overstayed its welcome in her lungs.
His eyes drop from hers as he shifts closer and into her space, the proximity forcing her legs to shift a little up and to the side over his hip. The linen is lightweight and soft enough that it follows the downward slope of Maomao's torso unprompted, slipping to fully expose her lower abdomen to the warm air of the room. His long fingers take this as an invitation, spanning tentatively over the newly bared skin.
"You're not in the habit of recklessly endangering others, particularly children. This way, maybe you'd stop putting yourself in harm's way. You'd..." His touches grow more bold; exploratory, no longer meager, cursory pets. The pads of his fingers skim over the skin right below her belly button, and Maomao wonders what he thinks of the muscles contracting to the ticklish sensation. "You'd stop trying out poisons on yourself."
Palm flush to her stomach, skin to skin, he takes his hand back to her hip, letting the protruding bone dig into the center of his palm: "You'd eat more; put on a bit of weight," he says, and weakens his grip on her, imposing a definition of fragility onto her. It shouldn't surprise her that Jinshi is quick to notice that more and more of her bones are poking out. Food isn't exactly abundant, and when it is, it goes directly to the active combatants.
"The way I see it, this could fix a lot of things."
She wants to object, but he looks at her belly with such longing and fondness in his eyes that Maomao decides to just let him. It's not like he could get her pregnant tonight even if he tried. It's just not the right time.
"You're failing to account for all the downsides of a pregnancy at this very moment." Maomao dislikes how out-of-breath she sounds to her own ears.
"I'm simply choosing to ignore them for the time being." Jinshi guides his palm higher up, following the narrowing span of her ribs, and taking the hem of her top with him. He doesn't miss when Maomao inadvertently flinches at the brush of his fingertips against a particularly nasty bruise to her sternum. One that she'd been nursing for a little over a week now.
Maomao isn't on the front lines, far from it, but it's not always easy holding down a trained soldier for surgery without any sort of pain relief having been administered. It is base human nature to want to fight back against those causing you pain. Not to mention, poor nutrition, especially a lack of hearty foods like meat and eggs, can make the body bruise more easily and hold on to the discoloration for longer intervals.
She's surprised to realize the elaborate explanation had remained unspoken despite its factual nature; Maomao doesn't clarify the cause of this bruise—or any of the many others. It's rather unwise, leaving it to Jinshi with his habit of always assuming the worst, and yet she does.
"If you have nothing of value to say, then if you'd excuse me, I'd like to get some sleep. I have quite the long journey tomorrow."
He pulls her top back down over her stomach and pats it in place. "Maomao."
"Sir?"
"You're not to go back north tomorrow. That's an order." Jinshi's eyes, usually warm with affection, are ice cold. They almost remind her of the first few weeks on the northern front, back when winter hadn't yet broken into spring. Maomao wishes she had her usual cotton sleepwear on.
"Yes, sir."