Chapter Text
“All packed? The bellboy is on his way up,” Stelle asks, clad in a sleeveless off-white dress this time, not at all bothered by the way it hides nothing of the gash on her bicep.
“Going home?” Blade asks as he crams his clothes alongside his clothes in one bag.
“I’m not going back. …Not yet.”
“Hmm. Going with your brother then?” Blade asks, trying to figure out how to shove in his last pair of socks in the already full suitcase.
Dr. Caelus A. Ronn had managed to pull through and live despite the bullet wound near his neck, thankfully, Dan Shu’s partial sightedness had made her miss her mark for his neck since Caelus had been too far for her to see clearly.
Stelle bites her lip and finally says what she wants to say, head tilted down. “I’m sorry.” She clenches her hands into fists. “I really wanted to tell you, the both of you, but…”
Blade shakes his head and says, voice gruff, “It’s okay.” He’s been in this game too long to hold grudges about things like this. “You might want to apologize to Jing Yuan more.”
Stelle chews on her lip again as she nods, having found out about what her actions had brought down on Jing Yuan’s head. She’ll apologize to him when she leaves this room, she decides with a nod of her head.
“Jing Yuan invited us for a drink later, if you’d like.”
Stelle hums in thought, nodding slowly. “Sure. Maybe later though. I have to see Mr. Yang and go to the hospital for, you know…” She motions with her hand. Her brother.
Blade nods, an understanding glint in his eyes.
She is about to turn to the door when suddenly she remembers and whips around, taking off the ring on her finger and handing it back to him. “Maybe get these a little smaller, huh?” Stelle quips.
Blade huffs a quiet laugh as he takes it. “I’m working on it.”
Just then, the bellboy barges in after a quick knock. Shortly after, the phone starts ringing.
Blade picks up the phone after a few long strides, waving back at Stelle when she goes to leave, the bellboy carrying her luggage away.
Blade doesn’t talk, only waiting for the one on the other end of the line to speak. He knows who this is. He has a bad feeling.
“Good morning, Bladie,” Kafka croons over the line. “Sleep well?”
“…” Blade taps his finger on the table as he wait for her to get to the point.
“Doctor Ronn’s research disk, do you have it?” Kafka’s voice turns a little more serious, losing some of that dreamy quality.
“It went down with Dan Shu and the boat.”
“Then why have we been told that your… acquaintance has it?”
Blade’s heart drops. The ringing is starting up again, nearly deafening.
“Remember, Blade, whoever has that disk can control the world. Complete your mission. Am I clear?”
“…” His heart pumps in his ears, louder, louder, louder. A drum crescendos and his heart follows.
“Get it done. They want results.” Blade can barely decipher the faint apology in her voice, the quiet, My hands are tied.
“Understood,” he says distantly, putting down the phone when the line closes.
He leans down on his knees, shaking, shaking. He tap, tap, taps at his thigh in a futile attempt at calming himself down.
He breathes, in and out and in and out and it’s not helping.
Everything turns red.
He doesn’t remember much of what happens when everything is red in his gaze and it does not change this time.
He comes to, rocking himself side to side, back bowed as he leans on his knees, surrounded by the wreckage of what had once been a pristine hotel room, knowing that he had done it but having no full recollection, as if he had been possessed and taken over, a puppet on a string for a puppet master he could not see.
His panting breaths ring loudly in the ringing silence that greets him after episodes like this.
He digs out his gun and arms it with a click, storing it under his jacket before zipping it closed.
He has a mission to accomplish.
Blade stares at the door in front of him, his entire body shaking near-imperceptibly with an energy that Blade cannot reliably name.
He traces the numbers with his eyes, 807.
He brings a hand up to knock and sees it shaking, shaking, shaking.
He clenches his hand to stop it forcibly.
He knocks.
Knock, knock, knock!
Jing Yuan does not delay in opening the door, inviting Blade inside with a flourish of his hand. “Come in. I’m just finishing up.” He closes the door behind Blade and walks back to the bed with his luggage, saying, “Feel free to fix us a couple of drinks. I think we’ve earned them, don’t you think?”
Blade walks silently to the table holding a bottle and two tumblers, surveying the room as he does.
“I guess we’ll be back to business as usual, hm?” Jing Yuan chuckles, gathering his things on the nightstand. “Back to…” Jing Yuan sighs. “…how things were.”
Blade spots a shade of blue he remembers clearly during that debrief at the lakeside restaurant. The computer disk is just under the vest Jing Yuan had yet to pack.
“Politics being how they are,” Jing Yuan continues, popping to the side from behind a wall looking at Blade as he speaks, then trailing off a little when he notices something off.
Still, Blade has not said a word since he’d come in.
Jing Yuan calms his body, trying to figure out what was wrong as he turns around and—
Damn. The computer disk is peaking out from under his vest.
He had plans for that disk, plans he is sure that Blade is unaware of, given his quiet but loud tension.
He does not let himself pause in his movements, leaning down to add his toiletry bag to his impeccably packed suitcase.
Jing Yuan hesitates as his hand hovers over his handgun under his already packed vest, stored in a holster.
He has learned that Blade is not so different from the man he had known before. He’s still vain, still prideful, still a prick. He is still eye-catchingly gorgeous. He still has his keen eye for beautiful things. He still has pride over his creations, things he has made even after everything. He is still so so kind, he is radiant with it when he lets himself go.
Still, he is unsure about his standing with him despite Blade saving him not even a full day before.
Jing Yuan cannot quiet his doubts, not as quickly as before. Not anymore.
He is unsure if he can trust that Blade would put Jing Yuan above his orders, if Jing Yuan is still that important to him or even if he had only risen through the ranks of important people in his life once more.
So, Jing Yuan keeps his handgun close, uncovered and unholstered but hidden by the height of the edges of his suitcase. He hopes he doesn’t have to use it but he can’t trust so easily anymore.
He hasn’t lived this long in this thrice-cursed job through his trust alone. Not in a long time.
Especially since he’d been under the heel of the preceptors.
Still…
Jing Yuan palms at the feel of metal of the accessory he had stolen back yesterday.
The sound of liquor filling glass tumblers echoes throughout the room.
“Are you feeling alright?” Jing Yuan asks, still bent over his suitcase.
He straightens up and turns to look at Blade who nods tightly, mouth in a thin line, screwing the bottle in his hands closed.
Jing Yuan sighs again, fixing his things in slow motions, watching Blade with a mirror on his nightstand showing him from the torso and up. He talks to keep up the pretense, “So, what now? Mission accomplished?”
Behind him, Blade slowly unzips his jacket open, the zipper hushed and quiet, unheard from this distance, even in the silence.
“Going… back to the Underworld, I suppose?” Jing Yuan puts away the clothes still on his bed leaving only two items on the bed, one more shirt and the vest covering the disk.
At last, Blade speaks again, his voice undeniably tense. He couldn’t act for anything back then or now. “Something like that.” Blade’s eyes are focused tightly on the disk he can still see. “You?”
“Back to Luofu, of course. HQ won’t let me go so easily,” he jokes but it’s very much still true. Years more of being stuck under the preceptors, as agreed. All for the people he loves most, including the man behind him who just might take his life in next minute.
He can see Blade reaching into his jacket. He moves to hold his gun in his hand but his head drops a little, tracing the grooves and engravings with quick eyes as it gleams in the morning light. His eyes close for a quick moment then opens them as he makes a quick decision paired with a quick prayer to Lan.
“Almost forgot.” Jing Yuan stands up with a quick twist, throwing something in Blade’s direction, saying, “I got something for you.”
Bewildered at this turn of events, Blade removes his hand from his jacket to use both hands to catch whatever Jing Yuan had just thrown at him, pulling it up to his eyes to see—
It’s his watch. Is it his watch?
Blade fumbles with it, hands suddenly clumsy and shaking for a different reason as he searches for the hidden button that opens it.
He hears a faint click and the back of it drops open at the hinge and out falls—
A red ribbon. Blade runs it between his fingers. The weight, the texture, the color, and the length are all the same. It’s the ribbon they had exchanged years ago, long before everything, long before this stupid, stupid game of politics and blood and gunpowder and betrayal and pain.
Blade looks at Jing Yuan, disbelieving, his mouth hanging open. He has no words yet his mouth trembles all the same at the words stuck in his mind, words his tongue cannot bear to say, not just yet.
Jing Yuan smiles at him as he opens the back of his own watch and pulls out a red ribbon that matches the one in Blade’s hand.
“Jing— Yuan—” Blade’s voice breaks, eyes shining with unshed tears. “You—”
Jing Yuan can’t even get a word in to answer with a quip because Blade rushes right into his space to crush his lips with Jing Yuan’s.
The pressure of it stings but Jing Yuan kisses back just as hard, uncaring that their teeth clack together or that their noses bump, both the least and most perfect kiss he’d ever had. He steps forward, burrowing further into Blade’s space, hands coming up to hold Blade by his waist in a tight grip, the material of the jacket crumpling from the force. He pulls him closer, closer.
Maybe, if they pull each other close enough, they’ll bind together tightly enough that nothing and no one could ever draw them apart again.
Blade is pulling him in just as much, opening his mouth at the slightest prod to meld their tongues, his hands grip tight on the back of Jing Yuan’s neck, fingers digging into his hair, surely unraveling his hard work that morning of putting it into professional presentation.
Jing Yuan can feel the unshed tears in his eyes stinging his nose. Finally. Finally. They may not last, estranged as they are, attached as they are to their own organizations in their own ways, for their own reasons, but nonetheless he will treasure this moment all the same, just as he had with the Quintet, tarnished they have been with that tragedy, that clusterfucked culmination of mistakes.
They pull apart to gasp for air, the wretched thing. Yet, they don’t pull apart far enough, their breaths mingling, thick enough to taste.
“Yingxing, Yingxing,” Jing Yuan chants into the heated space between them only to choke a little once his mind catches up with his mouth, starting to pull away to apologize.
“No… no.” Blade pulls him back, his grip tight on Jing Yuan’s arm. His ears are red. “Call me… Call me that again.”
“…Yingxing?” Jing Yuan whispers into Blade’s mouth.
“Jing Yuan.” Jing Yuan wonders what he has done to earn such a reverent utterance of his name.
“Yingxing,” he says again, marveling at the feel of it on his tongue again after holding himself back for the entirety of this mission.
“Jing Yuan, Jing Yuan…” Yingxing’s voice lowers, as if his mouth is caressing the syllables. “Come closer.”
And just like that, they fall into each other again.
Finally, those unspoken words have been brought out into the open.
A little while later, they are cocooned in the warmth of Jing Yuan’s large hotel bed. Yingxing looks at the foot of the bed. Jing Yuan definitely has to repack his things again, as they had pushed it off the bed in their haste a half-hour earlier.
He refocuses when he feels a nose nuzzle into his chest.
Yingxing runs his hand through Jing Yuan’s hair, feeling the uneven lengths. “We should fix your hair.”
He can feel a puff of air on his collarbone and the rumble of laughter against his chest. Yingxing feels unbearably warm.
Yingxing feels both a little annoyed that Jing Yuan lifts himself up from his chest to look right at him and a little overwhelmed to see Jing Yuan in all his fluffy, sunny glory in close proximity. He hates it. A little.
His hand is still in Jing Yuan’s hair.
“Would you like me to cut my hair so we can match?” Jing Yuan’s smile reaches his eyes, his face crinkling.
“Mm,” Yingxing says noncommittally, a little distracted by the mole under Jing Yuan’s eye, enough so that his unoccupied hand rises to hold his cheek to sweep the mark with his thumb.
Jing Yuan’s smile widens, a sparkle brightening his eyes further, leaning into the hand in contentment but Yingxing knows that won’t stop Jing Yuan once he gets an idea into his head.
“No,” he says before Jing Yuan says anything stupid, but of course Jing Yuan would continue, undeterred.
“What if I cut it all off—”
“No.”
Jing Yuan’s smile takes a more mischievous line before he pouts. “You wouldn’t like me if I was bald—”
He silences him with a rough kiss. Yingxing feels triumph thrumming throughout his chest.
The smug bastard meant for that to happen. This fucking cat—
“Oh my! How enthusiastic!”
“You really need to stop speaking like an old man.”
“Hmm, if you truly want to then make me.”
Oh, he will. And he’s going to enjoy it.
Yingxing flips them over and Jing Yuan follows easily. How convenient that his bed is so large, able to fit the two of them at the same time.
Before he gets to do anything further, though, Jing Yuan presses warm palms on Yingxing’s cheeks, tilting his head into a quick kiss.
Jing Yuan’s eyes crinkle and Yingxing only barely resists kissing the mole under his eye again, as he did multiple times earlier. “I love you, Yingxing.” His thumb brushes the skin under Yingxing’s eye, mindful of the still-healing gash from the motorcycle yesterday.
Yingxing isn’t quite sure what sound came out of him at that but he pushes through the lump in his throat to say it back, “I love you too, Jing Yuan, you brat.”
Jing Yuan laughs in unbridled delight and Yingxing can’t help but follow, a planet in his unescapable orbit. He hasn’t smiled this wide nor laughed so loud in years.
He pulls him in for a deeper kiss.
There wasn’t much talking after that. Coherent ones anyway.
They pant as they look up at the gilded ceiling to catch their breaths, splayed out beside each other on the sheets.
“…Jing Yuan.”
“What is it, Yingxing?”
“…Could you—”
“…”
“…Call me Blade, still. Especially when…”
“When it’s not just us?”
“Mm.”
“Okay, Blade. …Should I ask what name you’re feeling alright with, so I can be sure?”
Instead of words, the answer is a grateful kiss.
Later, at the balcony, they set up a little bonfire on the table under the afternoon sunshine, its tinder the tape of the world-shaking computer disk.
Jing Yuan picks up the bottle they had yet to finish to top off his drink before moving to lean on the railing right beside Blade.
“Absolutely hated working with you, darling.” Jing Yuan chuckles into his glass.
“You’re a terrible spy, dear.”
They exchange a look and their shoulders start to shake in quiet laughter.
Jing Yuan calms himself to offer his glass for a toast which Blade accepts, clinking it with his own glass.
They take deep sips and then they hear footsteps coming up through the door behind them.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” Mr. Yang greets, making them turn around in mild confusion.
The mission is done. Why is he still making contact? With Stelle in tow, at that?
“A rather… touching scene. A nice view, glasses of whiskey…” He looks down at the burning tape, turning into embers and ash as the fire merrily eats it away. “…And a little bonfire to you warm. A rather good idea.” He flashes them a smile.
Jing Yuan silently offers a glass from the table which Mr. Yang refuses with a shake of his head.
“I have news.”
That makes the two men straighten up.
“Some unpleasant business has arisen.” Mr. Yang puts his hand in his pocket in a casual pose, his fashionable cane at his side as always. “I’ve talked to your superiors, and now that we are all such good friends, they have all kindly agreed to let me keep the team together for a while.”
Blade and Jing Yuan exchange a look.
“We leave in an hour.”
“…Where are we going?” Blade dares to ask.
“Amphoreus, Mr. Blade.” Mr. Yang smiles. “You’ll have to bring your linens.”
With that, he turns away to leave them but he speaks up as he walks closer to the door, “Oh, and you three have a new codename.”
“Code name?” Jing Yuan asks.
“Yes, quite a good one.” He stops for a moment, only a step away from the exit. “The Nameless.”