Archive of Our Own

Jinshi couldn’t breathe.

This wasn’t something new. He was no stranger to night terrors. When he was younger, many times, his dreams would devolve from the artificial silence afforded by teas and powders to claustrophobic nightmares, cool emptiness replaced with silk sheets that bound his limbs like chains, crisp air filled with choking incense that coated his throat and tongue. Many times, he had thrashed in his sleep, accosted by visions of sharp, grasping hands tearing at his clothes, wide, saccharine smiles painted on rouge lips, shimmering gilded ropes leashing him to his bedposts like a prized hound. 

Sometimes there was a sword through his gut, pinning him to the wall while he watched his one and only being dragged away, hauled off like a corpse by shadowy figures down winding stone stairs, a trail of shining crimson following in her wake. Sometimes it was a curt bow and a cold letter, rough in his hands and still wet with ink despite the arid winds of the west, impartial words speaking of a body found in the ruins of a bandit siege on some remote village, identified only by the hairpin found inside her robes. Sometimes it was his brother, sitting at a lavish table laden with riches and delicacies, ears ringing and feet locked to the ground as his low, even voice spoke every damning word he loathed to hear. That his efforts were for naught, his years wasted, and his dreams senseless and dead, his duty more important than his life. That his love was a frail, foolish thing, worth nothing in the eyes of the court, the silly whims of a child who just couldn’t let go. 

Thankfully, most nights these last few years, Jinshi didn’t dream at all. Her brews were truly magical in that way, and since marriage, many of the fears that once haunted him had long been settled. His nightmares were few and far between, especially so when he had her warmth cradled in his arms or pressed firmly against his back.

But those rare times, when the nightmares returned with a vengeance and became far too much to handle, his mind would roughly shove him over the edge of sleep, back into wakefulness. He would rejoin the realm of the living in a start, throat dry as bone and lungs both chilled and aching. His skin and hair would be drenched in sweat, and his robes would stick uncomfortably to his skin, but it was nothing a quick bath and a warm cup of tea couldn’t fix. Honestly, the worst part of the whole experience was having to disturb his cat, suffering her sleepy grumblings and pinched brows as he peeled off her arms and extracted himself from their bed.

This time, however, when he startled awake — the remnants of unease still clinging to his neck with hooked claws — it was to a crushing, burning weight on his chest, a thick cloth over his mouth, lungs screaming for air, and a primal rush of terror in his heart.

Jinshi tried to struggle, but all of his limbs were pinned in place, only able to twitch and spasm no matter how hard he wished to swing with all his might. It was like someone had rolled a boulder into his bed, heavy enough to make his ribs creak and force his breaths to come short, shallow, and strangled, but just light enough to not crush him flat like a bug on the road. 

There was a low rumble, like rolling thunder and tumbling rocks down a mountainside, and the weight suddenly lifted. It rolled off his chest and hit the floor with an earth-shattering thud, rattling the walls and sending books, inkstones, candles, and brushes thumping and clattering to the ground. Jinshi gasped like a drowning man, filling his sore lungs with much-needed air, then immediately broke into a coughing fit as something caught in his throat. He rolled onto his side, hacking and wheezing, reaching into his mouth as he pulled out wire-sharp fistfuls of — was that hair?! 

The lingering terror didn’t abate, not for one second, as he gagged and spat into the covers, sucking down breath after precious breath while trying to calm his mind. The shuddering, needle-sharp feeling only spiked when his hand fell to the mattress at his side and found it empty. Still warm and a little damp, but horribly, horribly empty.

A low sound curled through the nighttime stillness, a strange cross between a groan and a rumbling growl. Jinshi froze in place like a hunted deer. At first he was terrified to even look over, his shaking hands fisted in the sheets so firmly he could hear the fabric scrape as his nails reflexively sharpened into claws. Byt when he did, even though it was pitch black in the bedchamber, save for a single beam of moonlight from the window’s cracked shutters, that finger-wide streak of light shone just to — positioned perfectly to cut across a massive shadowy form, sprawled out on the carpet. A huge dark shape that was audibly alive and breathing. 

Jinshi didn’t even know he’d started to change until hooked talons were shredding the fine sheets in his grasp to ribbons, a low hiss of his own joining the odd snuffling sounds emitted by the creature on the ground. All he knew at that moment was that his wife, his Maomao, was missing from their bed in the middle of the night, and that something huge and beastly had broken into their bedroom.

Where was Suiren at this hour? Where were his guards? Where was Basen? Where was Chue?

Where the hell was Maomao?!

The creature rolled over, the moonlight illuminating shifting scales and flexing muscle as it slowly pushed itself to its feet. Its shadowy form turned, the edge of a large ear, curled horn, and sparkling blue eye catching in the moonbeam. It made another sound, this time a rumbling sort of chirp.

“What are you?” Jinshi snarled, shifting to a crouch atop his — their — bed. He could feel his flat human teeth extending into wicked fangs, which he bared readily at the threat. “Where is my wife?”

Another chirp. It was followed by even more strange sounds, a garbled series of growls, grunts, and tiger-like chuffs. Then the beast seemingly cut itself off, huffed, and made even more growling vocalizations. There was a pattern to these noises, arranged in a way that almost sounded like language.

Jinshi ignored the beast’s utterances entirely. “What did you do with Maomao? Where is she?”

When the creature only replied with a long, guttural moan, a snarl of his own escaped his throat. He could feel his antlers scraping the roof of the bed. He must look half-feral, with so many of his dragon’s features popping out in such little time.

Good.

He was contemplating whether to obey his instincts, which were to subdue first and figure things out later, or to follow in his Maomao’s teachings and try to assess the situation before acting, when the massive shadow made the decision for him. Quick as a viper, the beast lunged, a sudden heavy weight socking him in the mouth and catching his shout before it could leave his lips. The back of his head collided painfully with the wall, stars exploding before his eyes as his antlers screeched sharply against the wood. 

Jinshi was pinned in place like a bug under a cat’s paw, and on instinct he began to struggle, kicking and writhing and clawing at the crushing weight clamped around his jaw, internally panicking harder when his talons, instead of sinking into soft flesh, scrabbled uselessly against what felt like solid rock.

He was about to risk changing skins completely, thinking maybe his longer body and greater strength could throw the creature off him before he suffocated, but then it leaned its full weight onto his chest, squeezing all the air from his lungs in one pathetic squeak and —

“Stop panicking, you idiot, you’ll wake up the whole house!”

Jinshi immediately went still.

He knew that tone. It was far too loud, practically shouted into his head, but he knew that tone very well.

“What the fuck,” was what he tried to say, but there was still an unknown force covering the entire lower half of his face and he couldn’t draw any more air into his chest, so instead it came out sounding like, “Hwgh a fghhg?”

A curt, heavy snort.

“Are you done, sir? Can I remove my hand now, or will you start shrieking again? I would prefer you didn’t.”

It — she?! — was making more of those animalistic noises at the same time as the words, and it dawned on Jinshi’s now extremely awake brain that these were attempts to speak. In particular, attempts to speak made by a creature who had not yet realized her tongue and vocal chords had been greatly altered.

Jinshi weakly patted the arm (it had to be an arm, but what arm was this solid?) holding his jaw shut. It really was almost impossible to breathe like this. 

Mercifully, the weight lifted. For the second time that night, Jinshi took a moment to simply cough into his arm and breathe shakily, shivering under the cold sweat that had burst across his back.

“…Maomao?” he rasped into the darkness.

“Ourghhrughhgh,” came the reply, a lion’s growl mixed and intertwined with a word: “Obviously.”

Relief washed over him like a tidal wave, sending his mind spinning and his thoughts reeling. He deflated in place, sagging heavily against the back wall as he struggled to process the immense amount of information that had just been dropped into his lap. His antlers clattered where they met the wall, propping up his head at an odd angle.

Jinshi took a steadying breath. “…Maomao? Love? Can I turn on the lights?”

Silence.

Then, a soft grunt, followed by a scratching sound, like heavy claws (claws!!) dragging across the carpeted floor. The looming shadow at the edge of his bed shifted, shuffling aside to give its frazzled occupant a clear path out.

Suddenly spurred on by a burst of energy at the thought, Jinshi practically leaped out of bed to light as many candles and lanterns as he could find, stumbling on sleep-shaky legs and numb feet. By the time he was done, the bedroom was bathed in a soft, yellow glow, just bright enough to chase away the midnight shadows and reveal the entirety of his beloved to his wide eyes.

Tamping down the sudden swell of emotion that threatened to shatter his mask of composure, Jinshi merely stared, for a long, long time, his breath rattling in his lungs. He blinked once, twice, gaze roaming up and down his wife’s new form, then began to subtly tremble, his heart almost full to bursting with excitement and adoration, swelling so high he felt one wrong press would pop him like a balloon. 

Maomao was a dragon.

Maomao was massive.

Maomao was beautiful.

He had never seen a more awe-inspiring sight in his life. She was, to put it bluntly, built like a battering ram. Her front half seemed to be a good deal bulkier than her back half, with her stocky front legs and thick paws almost as wide as his waist. Where Jinshi’s dragon was long and willowy, serpentine in shape with deceptive strength and unparalleled grace (according to Basen and Suiren, at least), Maomao was short and sturdy, with the casual power and confidence of a sharp-eyed tiger.

Her scales were dark and rich, the color of the freshly-turned earth he’d seen unfurl beneath the farmer’s plows during their trips to the west, yet glossy with a roughened texture, like glass scratched over little by little with years of use. The thick, curling fur that spilled over her shoulders and head like a lion’s mane reminded him of the rough, unpolished jade found within cracked geodes, and it looked so unimaginably fluffy, his hands itched with the desire to sink the entirety of his arms into those dense curls. Two pairs of short, pointed horns sprouted from that glorious mane, curling up and backwards like goat’s horns between tall, pointed ears.

Her snout was short and broad, again more akin to a lion’s than any reptile or hound, and a set of fine silver whiskers twitched as she looked down at herself. And her eyes… her eyes were wide and bright, yet at the same time bottomless, a clear pool filled with dark seagrass, sliced through with a cat’s focus.

In fact, many things about her new form reminded him of a lion. Or perhaps, given the stocky, muscular legs, massive paws, and shorter body, a shíshi statue. Some features weren’t quite right, the two sets of horns for one, as well as how her maw was closed instead of snarling, and she sported a longer tail ending in a curly tuft, much like his own. But if one were to place a stone orb or carved cub under her paw, his wife wouldn’t look out of place guarding a palace or royal tomb.

Said wife was giving him a slightly wary look, shifting her weight from paw to paw as he took her in. Jinshi knew he was staring like a dunce, but… damn it all. He truly was rendered speechless. But when he stumbled closer and lifted a tentative hand to her scaled brow, she shrank back, chin dipping into her voluminous mane like a turtle cowering away in its shell.

It left his hand hovering in empty air, a somewhat pathetic sight, when coupled with his shocked, parted lips and wide eyes. One that, despite everything, Maomao seemed to take offense with, for she glowered sharply at that hand. And then, with what looked like great effort, she stretched out her stocky neck and pushed her big, wet nose into his palm.

Jinshi just about stopped breathing. He watched her snuffle at his fingers, as though surprised they even had a smell, and couldn't swallow down the truly mortifying sound that escaped his lips when a rough, pink tongue darted out to scrape over his fingertips.

“Weird. I didn't expect you to taste different,” came that familiar, clinical voice, nose still pressed to his skin.

“A lot of things will feel different,” Jinshi blurted. Sharp eyes flicked up to meet his own, and he swallowed, pinned in place by that gaze. “They — They did for me, at least.”

Maomao snorted on an exhale and retreated, ears pinning back. She fell back onto her haunches with a heavy thump, then shot a sharp look at her own torso, before raising a broad paw and poking gingerly at her scaled belly, armored with distinct descending plating. She opened her mouth, presumably to speak, but all that came out was a garbled growl. Immediately, she snapped her jaws shut, snout wrinkling and eyes shuttering.

Jinshi couldn’t help laughing, yanking up his rooted feet and approaching her properly. Even on the face of a draconic shíshi, one could not mistake Maomao’s signature flat look of immense displeasure. 

“Does it look as bad as it feels?” he heard her mumble to herself grumpily as he picked up a stray curl, rolling it between his fingers and shuddering with delight at its silken texture. 

“Maomao, there aren’t enough words in all the languages of the world to describe how beautiful you are,” he replied with utmost sincerity. 

Maomao visibly jumped at his response. Then she seemed to remember that yes, as a dragon, she now had telepathy too, and immediately growled at him, the sound rough and dangerous like falling rocks. “Cut that out. I’m asking for the truth, sir, not flattery.”

“Sorry, sorry, I couldn’t resist,” he laughed again. “But really, you look… breathtaking. Powerful. Certainly bigger than usual.”

He crouched down and picked up one of her massive paws, just as solid and heavy in his hands as it looked. He pressed experimentally on the pad of one finger, then marveled at the hooked claws that curved out in response, at the way they shone in the candlelight, sharp and deadly. 

“Your body matches your soul, for once. I don’t think anything short of an avalanche could knock you down,” Jinshi grinned. He leaned down to brush his lips over her knuckles, her velvet fur tickling against his still-raw lips. A lingering gift from the night before, one he hoped to repay soon. “My guardian lion.”

An irritated snort, the force of it disturbing his sleep-mussed hair. “I speak nothing but the truth.”

“I speak nothing but the truth.”

She tossed her head, blowing him off with another snort and a flick of her ear. Standing up to give her space, he watched her take a few clumsy steps away from the bed, wobbling strangely side to side. She didn’t think to lift her tail while she moved, allowing it to drag behind her like dead weight, and she kept making aborted half-jumps with her front paws, as though trying to stand on her hind legs, only to be foiled by her own top-heavy structure. Jinshi instinctively tried to reach out and prop her up when she tripped toward him over her paws, but his hands sank down to the elbow into her mane, and even with his strength training, it was like stopping a tumbling statue with only his bare hands. He’d probably have ended up laid out on the floor, if she didn’t partially catch herself in time.

“I don’t know how you can deal with this all the time,” Maomao griped as he gently (with all his strength) pushed her back upright. “I feel like I’ve got weights tied to my wrists and ankles.”

“It is an adjustment,” Jinshi agreed, taking advantage of the close proximity to run a hand down one of her horns. Oh, those lines really felt as rough as they looked! “I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. Your current body is used to walking on all fours, but your mind is still human, so it’s mostly a mental block that makes it feel strange.”

He felt her shudder minutely under his hands, before a massive paw planted itself in the center of his chest and pushed him off. “Is this… going to be a regular occurrence?”

Jinshi blinked rapidly. The sensation of being so easily pushed around made his head oddly fuzzy, but it was gone as soon as it appeared. Then her words caught up to him and he frowned, leaning to the side so she could see his pout properly. “Do you not want it to be?”

“Well, I certainly can’t think of any advantages to gaining an extra head’s worth of hair and a hundred fifty jin,” she replied dryly. Her snout scrunched adorably, whiskers pinning back to reveal long canines in a strange sort of not-smile. “There’s a draft in here. Did you leave the window open?”

“Not to my knowledge.” Jinshi hid his shaking hands in his sleeves and began a small circle around his wife, admiring her new form from every angle. “I can think of a lot of advantages, actually.”

Maomao cut him a dry look, one whose accompanying comment he sadly could not hear. She stumbled over to her writing desk, her steps still shaky but visibly getting smoother as she adjusted to her new skin, and Jinshi swallowed a sudden upwelling of saliva at the sight of the muscle flexing in her arms and legs. Just how strong was she, in this draconic form?

Could he ever convince her to try a spar...?

An irritated snarl broke him from the enlightening mental picture of his lithe dragon being pinned like a common snake under a shíshi’s paw. He drifted over to see his darling wife glaring at an open drawer, where her charcoal sticks and notebooks sat untouched. She had one paw raised, claws flexed, and Jinshi noted with a dawning sense of realization that she lacked proper thumbs.

“…would you like some assistance?”

“No,” he heard her grumble when his hand rested behind her ears, shoving the drawer shut with her jaw. “You can't sketch.”

“Hey! My calligraphy is perfectly fine!”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t write. I said you can’t do diagrams.”

Jinshi huffed, giving the thick fur beneath his fingers an idle scratch. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint. I can still give it a shot, if you like.”

It was Maomao’s turn to roll her eyes. “Don’t bother.” She nudged the drawer shut with her snout and turned to hobble toward the closet, where a full-length glass mirror stood off to the side, a wedding gift from the west. Jinshi hurried to follow. “Let’s focus on something else for now. How this even happened, for instance.”

“…I’m not sure I can be of much help with that, either,” he admitted. “My knowledge in this field is… very limited.”

“You’re the one with the dragon powers, what do you mean you don’t know anything?”

Jinshi winced. “Ah… technically speaking, I was never supposed to reveal it to anyone, not even a potential wife. All the things I was taught were suppression techniques, passed down through word of mouth. I didn’t even know this was possible.”

Maomao frowned. Her huge, sharp eyes snapped up to meet his own in the reflection. “You mean to say there are no records anywhere? Of all the emperors and princes that have ruled this empire, not a single one experienced this?”

Jinshi shook his head. “Maomao, how many other consorts and empresses do you know are willing to do even half the things we do?” he sighed. “You have to admit, we’ve been through more than enough extenuating circumstances.” 

“Surely there must be something,” Maomao insisted, her tail thumping the floor in agitation. She then blinked, taken aback, and twisted around to glare at it, as if to shame it into stillness. “There’s no stories of empresses or forbidden loves becoming dragons? No grand ballads or anything in the archives?”

“If there were, I’d bet both my legs it’d be all over the playhouses,” Jinshi pointed out. “One of our eastern allies fell off his horse during a hunt just years ago, and they still haven’t let it go. I’ve read more about his horse stumbling than any of his policies. If an imperial spouse suddenly turned into a dragon, people would be starting cults left and right.”

Maomao visibly grimaced. Jinshi, realizing the implication of his own words, snapped his head around to make sure both the doors and windows were closed. To his immense relief, they were — although one window was slightly cracked, to keep the incense they'd burned earlier from stagnating. He didn’t hear any footsteps in the hall either, and given the incredibly early hour, they hopefully wouldn’t for some time.

“This doesn’t leave this room,” Maomao ordered, hunching into herself. A futile attempt, since she took up twice as much space as he did, but he understood the sentiment. Jinshi gave a curt nod, hurrying over to the doors to ensure they were well-locked from the inside and pushing the window screen firmly shut.

…not that he wouldn’t mind supporting common worship of his wife. But Maomao was already making a foul face at the very idea, as though she’d bitten into something both rotten and non-toxic, so he refrained from speaking his thoughts aloud. She always did prefer to scurry about underfoot, even after their marriage, wherein she promised (promised! To him!) to grin and bear it so long as he kept his own promises (which he would). All those mandatory banquets, ceremonies, and tea parties never failed to sour her mood. She already had a reputation among the masses as a mad genius, the common folk viewing her with a strange middle ground between awe and fear, since so many only got to meet her through the physician’s offices, so anything more than that would probably be too much.

When he returned to her, he found her with one huge paw resting under her chin, so adorably similar to the usual face she made while trying to puzzle out a contradiction or mystery. Jinshi forcefully willed his racing heart to calm down at the sight and took a lock of her mane between his fingers, briefly losing composure as he felt himself quiver at its softness, then listened more intently to her mumbled thoughts.

“…frequent sexual intercourse? He’s got the appetite of a street dog, sure, but we’ve been doing it for years now, and there hasn’t been any change. Maybe it’s related to the skin change, his libido is certainly higher then, so frequent intercourse with one skin could affect the other…”

“Maomao!” Jinshi yelped, scandalized.

“What?”

“That cannot be your first idea!”

“Hm?” she stared at him, visibly puzzled, before realization seemed to dawn over her whiskered visage. “Oh. The telepathy.”

“Yes, the telepathy. Are you honestly saying that all this — ” he gestured to Maomao’s scaly new look “ — is because we’ve been h-having relations in my — ”

“It is my most plausible theory. I can’t think of anything else that would cause a change like this, since we aren’t related by blood and the condition is supposed to be exclusively hereditary,” she shrugged her massive shoulders, curls bouncing with the motion. “Who knows, maybe this is what happens to the female partners who experiment, in place of typical pregnancy.”

Jinshi was certain he was in danger of violent spontaneous human combustion, supposed hoax be damned. “I-I thought you said the only difference was superficial!”

Maomao rolled her eyes. “From my limited observations, sure. I’m not exactly an expert on impossible heavenly afflictions.”

He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath, willing the heat in his face to cool. When he opened them again, it was with a serious look. “Would you like things to… slow down, in that case?”

She averted her gaze. “I didn't say that. Just that it might be a contributing factor.”

His traitorous body immediately relaxed at those words. Jinshi wasn't sure how to feel about it.

“Do you at least know how long this will last?”

“My first change only lasted a few minutes,” he replied, “it took a lot of practice and meditation to stay in my other skin for longer than an hour or two. If I had to guess, depending on when you first changed…”

Maomao exhaled. “So, the window is limited, and we have a theory on what triggered it. Thank goodness.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It means it's probably not permanent, and also that it can be replicated. Assuming anything we've said is true, at least. It's still just conjecture.”

Jinshi nodded in understanding, then felt himself freeze as a sudden realization clunked itself into place. With restrained haste, he shuffled in front of Maomao's confused face and dropped to his knees. She startled, recoiling, but he caught her by the scaled cheeks before she could fully withdraw.

“Can I touch your mane?” he asked, with the dire severity of a general giving his battalion a do-or-die command.

Maomao narrowed her eyes. “Not when you're being so weird about it.”

The big guns were needed, then. Jinshi steeled himself, then molded his face into his most effective “pleading-prettily-yet-not-too-demanding-and-with-just-the-right-amount-of-demure-to-be-convincing” look. It was one he knew she despised more vehemently than his usual charming smiles, since it was one of his fakest, yet it somehow seemed to work with about 50-50 accuracy. 

“Please, my beloved?” he asked smoothly, cupping a hand under the curve of her strong jaw. “Just this once?”

Maomao’s look of putrid disgust was so potent, so viscerally contemptuous, that he almost broke character and burst out laughing. He already adored her colorful expressions, and this time it was only amplified by her dragon’s fierce visage, snout wrinkling and lips curling to reveal razor-sharp fangs, bone-white canines the size of his middle finger. She looked torn between biting his hand off and flinging him bodily across the room, wicked cat’s eyes glaring with enough needle-sharp ice to send shivers right down to the bone. Ah, I missed this. 

“Fine,” his perfect wife snarled, vicious and dripping with venom. “Stop making that face, you look disgusting.”

Jinshi dropped it immediately, simpering seduction swapped out for boyish delight. “Thank you!”

Without preamble, he immediately threw himself around her neck, burying his arms, hands, face, his whole upper half, really, into the luxurious curls of her mane.  

And oh.

Was this what heaven felt like?

Maomao stiffened under him, the heavy muscles of her neck and shoulders flexing under his hands, going from plush and smooth to hard as steel. She inhaled deeply, the sound vast and powerful, like the swell of a storm gale heralding the arrival of heavy rains. He could feel how her body shifted, broad chest expanding outward under his own, lifting him a little off his knees, and heavens above, he didn’t think he could feel so small. The combined sensations were oddly heady, sitting like a delicate pool of warmth in his chest, comforting and light. He wondered how he could get her to stay like this more often. 

She smelled like earth and fresh grass, decaying leaf litter and sweet summer flowers, with just a hint of the particular scent that accompanied approaching thunder. He could very much get drunk on such a combination.

Her head twisted around, and Jinshi fought the urge to recoil when that cold, wet nose the size of his hand suddenly shoved itself into the junction between his neck and shoulder. He shivered instead, enduring her strange snuffling and probing just to maintain the heavenly sensation of her silken mane against his skin. In all honesty, he could probably die here with no complaints.

“Jinshi?” she rumbled through his thoughts. 

“Mm?” Her tone had him drawing back a sliver of focus, but most of him was still lost to a daze.

Maomao inhaled deeply again. “Did you bathe last night?”

That got his attention. Jinshi huffed, affronted. “Obviously.”

“Apologies. Let me rephrase: Did you bathe yourself last night?”

“I did. It was Suiren’s birthday, remember?”

It was the only day of the year he could convince the old woman to let him do all of his own chores, and even then, she only really agreed because he had Maomao to teach him. He’d been getting better at things like laundry and surface-cleaning, but while he did still struggle with doing his own hair sometimes, he was making decent progress. Even if combing through all of it often took up to an hour. How Suiren could get him ready every morning in under fifteen minutes was beyond him.

Maomao made a sound of understanding. “Ah, that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Your hair smells weird,” she elaborated, taking a few more deep sniffs. He was starting to feel like a fresh spring bloom at this point. “I think you only managed to clean the surface. There’s still oils on the layers closer to your scalp.”

Jinshi groaned. “Come on, I didn’t want to take too long. You know why.”

She huffed, the force of it billowing open the collar of his robes and lifting his hair off his back. “It is not my fault you’re an insatiable pervert. I only suggested we retire early, you’re the one who decided to take it farther.”

“You try keeping a cool head when the love of your life is walking around the house in only her inner robe,” he grumbled back, muffled by her mane. “And you kept staring at me, even over dinner, what else was I supposed to think?”

Something huge and heavy thumped repeatedly between his shoulders, shoving his face deeper into her fur and knocking half the wind out of his lungs. It was like being struck over and over again with a flat war club, and he was too busy trying to suck more air into his throat without choking on his wife’s hair to protest. Belatedly, once it stopped and the weight settled against his spine, Jinshi realized it was Maomao attempting to pat him on the back. 

“Truly, I pity you, sir,” she said dryly. “No-one else has it harder.”

Then she stilled, and a violent shiver ran through her sturdy frame, her mane fluffing up like a disgruntled bird. He pulled back, keeping his hands still buried in heaven, to give her a concerned look. “Everything alright?”

Maomao's face pinched as she licked her chops. “My fingers and toes feel tingly.”

He sighed in relief, withdrawing his hands to delicately scratch behind her ears. He tried very hard not to melt when she leaned into it, eyes slipping shut. “Ah, damn.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, that’s normal,” he exhaled, bringing one hand up to card through her silken tresses. “The change is just wearing off. That normally only happens when I’m in one skin for too long, but since your dragon is temporary…”

Maomao made a noise of understanding, the sound rumbling deep in her throat. She pushed her head further into his hand, perhaps without realizing it, as her gaze seemed to be in a far-off land. Jinshi dutifully scratched a little harder, earning him a much louder rumble as his hand all but vanished into thick green curls, all the way up to the wrist.

“Would you like to step behind a privacy screen?” he murmured, thanking every god in heaven he knew for this exact moment. 

Maomao’s ears perked up. “Can you bring me the mirror first?”

Of course. Any worries he had about the skin-change being too uncomfortable or frightening punched straight through the paper window and flew off to the heavens. This was Maomao after all, consumer of deadly substances, operator of patients, examiner and dissector of corpses. Of course she’d want to see her body completely re-arrange itself from the inside, why wouldn't she?

But he couldn't say no to her request, not when she looked so eager and he couldn't see any harm in it, no matter how much it perturbed him, so he dutifully pulled over the silk changing screen and propped it up before their mirror. Maomao thumped over to it eagerly, fluffy tail vanishing behind painted mountains and swooping cranes. Trying to resist the urge to take a peek, Jinshi sat himself down on their bed and turned his back.

The sounds of cracking bone and splitting skin somehow sounded worse, knowing it was coming from another person, but it wasn't accompanied by screams of pain or groans of disgust, so he willed his tapping foot to still and kept his gaze resolutely fixed on the wall. He couldn't hold down a flinch when the scent of upturned dirt grew stronger, like he'd buried his nose in the stuff, but at least the cracking and crunching began to die down. Very fine woodgrain, he thought, biting his lip and ignoring the cackles that spilled through the cracks in the silk screen, very good wood. Good craftsmanship all around.

Jinshi didn't turn back around until he felt lithe, soft fingers tap his clothed shoulder. When he did, he startled badly — not because Maomao had returned her lovely human self, but because she was fully in the nude.

“Where did you toss my robes?” she asked. ”I can't find any spares in the wardrobe.”

“Uh,” was Jinshi's intelligent reply. When Maomao's frown deepened, he swallowed his mouthful of saliva, tore his eyes away from the purpling bite on her shoulder and the dusty red of her soft nipples, and glanced frantically around the room.

“There, they're under the window,” he pointed out with a slightly trembling finger. Heat stirred in his gut when his wife turned to retrieve them, bending over in a way that couldn't have been deliberate. Quiet, you, he thought angrily at his own anatomy.

When she returned, freshly dressed and looking comfortably snug in her cotton sleeping robes, Maomao dropped onto the bed next to him with a huff. He lifted an arm, to which she leaned into his offered side, still frowning adorably.

“What's on your mind now?” Jinshi asked. ”I told you the change would wear off.”

“It's just a shame.”

“A shame?”

“That it didn't last very long.” His wife stretched out her now human arms and flexed her fingers. “I didn't realize it at first, but I would have preferred more time.”

“To self-cannibalize, I’m sure,” he muttered.

“To examine myself.”

“Knowing you, that’s the same thing,” Jinshi sighed heavily, wrapping his arms tight around her and pulling her into his lap, her back to his chest. He let his chin drop onto her shoulder, absently rubbing his cheek into her hair, the side of her neck, the soft collar of her robes. “To be honest with myself, I miss you already.”

“I’m still here, sir,” Maomao replied, patting his arms. “Knowing your appetite, it will probably happen again soon. Maybe even tonight.”

“Is that a request, or are you just humoring me?” he mumbled wryly. Ah, she still smelled heavenly tonight, in both skins. Clean and bitter and earthy, with a hint of his own jasmine and petrichor, proof of his claim she graciously allowed to soak deep into her skin. He sighed again. “Either way, I will refrain. ‘S a rest day.”

“Hm. It is.” 

He felt her squirm a little in his arms, revealing a truly abhorrent amount of wiggle room, so he tightened his grip in response, unwilling to let go. He wasn’t quite done replenishing his charge, surely she understood that? 

“My skinny shoulders can’t be comfortable, sir.”

“Hush. I’d have no other,” he grumbled back, nuzzling further into the wings of her shoulder. “Indulge me, my dearest?”

Maomao stopped wriggling with an exasperated huff. To his immense relief, she merely pulled one of her arms free to reach up above his head. Her rough fingers gently brushed the shell of his ear, tracing the curve as though following the winding lines on an ancient map, sending a bone-deep shiver down his spine, before drifting upward and touching on something firm.

Jinshi jolted. Had those not gone away yet?

Maomao made an intrigued sound, her hand tracing higher up his left antler, sliding up the smooth curve before gently brushing along the hook of the first prong. She drummed her fingers, each light tap, tap, tap, sending faint vibrations through the bone, a strange sensation that made his skin tingle and his teeth itch. The urge to bite something overcame him like a flash flood.

She stroked a little higher, before pressing down more firmly, in the junction between the core and the first prong. “Can you feel this, sir?”

“Mm-hm,” Jinshi hummed back, eyes already growing half-lidded. Did she know the base of his antlers had nerve endings, even without fresh velvet? She had to know, right? She certainly grabbed them often. She once shaved off nearly half a prong, too, enough to send the old madame of the Verdigris hopping mad with greed. But then again, that particular antler was about to be shed…

“I see,” Maomao ran her hand back down to the base, sinking her fingers into his long well washed hair. She felt along his scalp for a moment, before one finger brushed the sensitive, bumpy skin where antler met bone, the slight ridge crawling over the curve of his skull. Blunt nails lightly scratched the area. “And this?”

“Mmmm,” Jinshi shivered. Had her voice pitched down to such a low, delectable murmur, or was he imagining things? His thoughts had slowed down to a sticky crawl, liquid sugar oozing through the cracks in his defenses. Not that he had any left standing around her. Did she know that part too? “What’re you…”

“Don’t mind me, sir,” his wife traced a maddening circle around the pebbly base, the scratchy callous on her forefinger catching on every small bump and crease in his scalp, and he could feel drool start to slowly fill the corners of his mouth. “Did you know that among deer hunters, the number of antler points is what separates common quarry from trophies?”

“Uh huh,” he angled his face downward and breathed in her robes, each inhale and exhale shaking, shivering, almost shuddering apart the longer she kept that hand moving. 

“Master Shikyou told me once that deer with twelve points are called ‘royal stags.’ Symmetry is apparently valued over exact numbers, though,” she scratched again, more firmly this time, and the resulting sensation made his breath hitch. “And stags with higher than twelve points are called ‘imperials.’”

“Makes… sense…” He was melting. He had to be. His arms were made of pudding and his brain was getting soggy, and her voice was sending ripples through his head, through his bones, through the puddle of liquid fat and muscle that was his body, like dewdrops in a crystal pool.

“Master Shikyou says imperial deer have better meat than others. Their antlers are firmer, too, and their velvet highly prized,” Maomao hummed, in that exact tone of voice she used when one of her experimental concoctions provided an unexpected, yet welcome result. “The shed antler you gave me had seven points.”

In the early days, Jinshi had once tried to curb her poison-eating sensibilities with gifts and distractions. But every time he made progress, she always somehow found a way to slip through at the last second, seizing loopholes he didn’t even know existed. Now, the best he could do was keep a careful eye on their ledgers and pay close attention whenever she seemed to be in a particularly good mood.

But as the years went by since they first performed their bows, she seemed to wean off poisons in favor of experimenting with medicine, particularly the acquisition of new techniques and materials. Her workshop, once a dusty unused storeroom beside the kitchens he had refurbished for her use, had amassed quite the hoard of rare ingredients, strange jars and bundles and baskets squirreled away on every shelf, corner, and countertop. Poison was still her truest love, but not her one and only.

But it was only fairly recently, Jinshi struggled to recall through the heavenly tingles racing up and down his spine, that she began asking her husband for parts of himself to add to her stores.

“If I may ask, husband, could I trouble you for a velvet antler of imperial quality?” 

What was she asking? Her nails caught, and he immediately pushed his head further into the touch. Ah, did it matter? His Maomao could have anything from him, anything at all, so long as she kept doing that. He felt himself nod against her shoulder, molten heat starting to pool somewhere in his core.

A low, guttural giggle, pleased and smug. “I will hold you to that.”

Round and round her golden fingers went, light and purposeful, until she traded gentle, teasing touches for firm scratching, like how one would handle a dog. He pressed his lips firmly to her shoulder, jaw shaking with the force of his failing restraint. His mouth had completely filled with saliva, which he struggled to swallow around a heavy lump in his throat. If she hadn't known about the nerve endings before, she certainly did now.

Rest, he thought sluggishly through a veil of sweet syrup. She wanted to rest. Today is a rest day.

“Are you feeling alright, Jinshi?” he heard a distant voice say, millions of li away, muffled by cotton and clouds and rain, before something flat and sharp jabbed into his scalp, right in the divot where bone met flesh.

Jinshi’s fingers tightened, fisting in her robes. There was the sound of ripping fabric, followed by a strange noise, like the startled squeak of a mouse whose tail had been crushed underfoot. It was enough to spook him upright a little, blinking heavily as an unexpected surge of saliva dribbled down his chin, until he caught the wicked corner of his beloved’s smirk, and he realized that mortifying sound came from him. 

Well. Alright then.

“If you’re feeling tired, husband, maybe you could — ” Maomao’s words were cut off by a sharp yelp, sharper than her evil little fingernail, sharper than the teardrop claws digging into her waist and the points of his fangs as they finally, finally found home. Sharper than her cackles as he lifted his wicked wife from his lap and spun in an abrupt about-face from the outer to the inner wall, lips and tongue savoring the familiar heaven of silken skin and curving bone. ‘Unsightly skinny shoulders’ his ass.

Shoved down into a mess of blankets and pillows, Maomao’s self-satisfied grin told him everything he needed to know. She could always have tomorrow for a rest day.