#yzs fic

1.

In the early days, he grinds medicine and Pang Xi practises his words. He clutches the brush awkwardly, drawing crude pictures until his hand cramps. “Again,” Doctor says, swatting his head with a rolled up book.

“Again?” Pang Xi snarls.

Doctor flexes his fingers, his expression doesn’t change. “Again,” he says.

Pang Xi could fight, but he’s decided he likes Doctor better when he smiles than when he scowls. Even though when they do fight, he is close enough to tell that his skin smells like herbs and ink.

His skin smells like herbs and ink even after he emerges from the bath, his joints flushed pink, like blossoms. The promise of spring. The mole at the corner of his eye draws Pang Xi's gaze like some kind of spell. He catches Pang Xi looking one day and snorts. “Don’t think you can slack off,” he says. “The wood still needs chopping.”

“I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“You were the one who forgot to do it. We need wood now.” He shoots Pang Xi a glare. “Don’t use your powers.”

The wood splits easily with the use of his powers. Doctor is fast asleep by now, probably. Or so tipsy he doesn’t care. When Pang Xi is done, he peers into the room and marvels how even when doctor’s eyes are closed, the mole still stares at him.

--

2.

He sleeps through the winter, nursing his wounds. Some days he wakes with a start, panicking as the place in his chest throbs. Death flashes before his eyes, taking the shape of a wooden sword.

Eventually it reforms into Doctor standing above him. He’s talking in a low tone. “Pang Xi,” he says, piling more wood onto the fire. “Don’t you dare piss in my house.”

Pang Xi drags himself out of the room and when he returns, it is hot enough to feel like summer. There is food and water by the fire and he takes his time to eat it. Doctor comes to check on him just after the sun sets. He thinks Pang Xi’s asleep and he piles more wood onto the fire. He smells like ink and herbs and sweat and grass. Pang Xi dreams of Doctor climbing the mountains to gather more wood. He dreams of a calloused hand gently stroking his body.

---

The house is quiet in the winter. The footsteps of patients and guests are muffled by the snow. Pang Xi slinks from room to room, chasing the sun. He scares Doctor from time to time, looming in corners and behind doors.

During the months when even the sun feels cold, he chases Doctor about the house as he does his chores, wrapping around his body or simply watching him from a distance. It feels good to be around him.

That girl was right. There was something about him that made him handsome, attractive. But it was his essence, wasn’t it?

3.

Pang Xi still practises his words, Doctor still scolds him, pulling back his sleeve, to expose his pale wrist, the bone jutting through his tender skin. He points out the mistakes. “Look, it goes like this.” He swings his finger in the air and watches, hypnotised, until Doctor calls him.

“Pang Xi. Are you listening?”

Pang Xi blinks, trying to pretend he wasn’t for even a moment, charmed. “To what?”

Doctor scowls, “One more time.”

--

He wants something other than essence.

The quality of the lust is different. It doesn’t exist like a hunger in his belly that can be satisfied by a whore. It’s more specific than that.

Doctor’s arms, wet and slippery with sweat and water. His hands dirty with soil, rough from picking herbs, washing the clothes. His chest, rising and falling, a wedge of skin peeking through his clothes. The sweat on his brow, the smell of ink and herbs.

Then it bottoms out into something less hungry.

His smile - graceful in the presence of strangers; careless, when they are alone. His laugh, like he understands the bitterness of days, days where there is nothing to laugh about so he does not laugh; like he understands the winter of life and when it arrives the laughter slumbers in his chest, and yet thaws so easily in the spring and falls like a drizzle upon parched ground.