Luixian chuckled softly at the expression on Guiying's face. "Not too long ago," he tilted his head with a smile. "So…
Guiying raised a brow; he scanned Luixian from head to toe, as though he was searching for something, then he smiled.
"Welcome back."
"Thank you…."
"I will get to the stocks," Guiying abruptly said, unknowingly cutting him off as he turned back to his screen. "I am buying shares first."
Liuxian shook his head as he looked at the selections one more time. Then he stepped back and said nothing further on the matter, which was, in its own way, a form of approval
He moved further into the room and leaned against the wall, his jacket folded over one arm, watching Guiying finish his current transaction with the same quiet focus he had walked in on.
When Guiying finally closed the tab and sat back, Liuxian spoke.
"Our wedding night is fast approaching," he said, his tone completely conversational. "How do you plan on entertaining me?"
Guiying's ears instantly turned red.
He did not answer immediately. His hands rested in his lap, and he looked at the desk in front of him rather than at Liuxian, and something about the set of his shoulders changed in a way that was small but told a lot.
He was not being coy; neither was he feigning shyness. He was doing something quieter and less comfortable than either of those things.
He had never been the one to initiate.
Sex had always been something done to him rather than something he had participated in willingly, and it had never been anything other than painful.
Liuxian looked at him for a moment.
"Don't worry," he said, his voice dropping the conversational edge entirely. "I won't force you. Sex is only enjoyable when both parties want it."
He crossed the room, reached out, and patted Guiying once on the head with the easy, unbothered manner of someone who found the gesture entirely natural.
"I am going to shower and spend some time in my room. If you need anything, you know where to find me."
He turned toward the door.
Guiying stared at his back.
He had just let him go without conditions.
No reminder that it was his duty as a wife, no hand on his wrist and no expectation left hanging in the air like a threat dressed up as patience.
He had just let him go.
Was Liu Liuxian an actual human being or had Guiying accidentally married an angel?
"Can you promise me it won't hurt?"
The words came out before he had fully decided to say them.
Liuxian paused in the doorway.
Then he laughed, a quiet and genuine sound, and turned his head slightly without fully turning around.
"You might feel some discomfort," he said. "But I won't hurt you." A brief pause. "And don't spend too long contemplating it. I was not planning on sleeping with you tonight anyway."
Guiying stared at him.
"Then why would you ask me that?!" he said.
"To tease you a little," Liuxian said and left.
Guiying sat at his desk and looked at the empty doorway for a long moment.
He picked up a handful of mixed nuts from the bag beside him, put them in his mouth, and chewed in silence.
That man, he decided, was absolutely insufferable.
He was also, possibly, the first person in Guiying's entire life who had looked at his hesitation and chosen to step back from it rather than through it.
He stared at the doorway for another moment.
Then he turned back to his screen and opened the stock market tab.
The shower ran hot and long, with no particular purpose beyond existing for a while.
Liuxian stood under the water and let the day settle.
It had been an unusual day.
He rolled his shoulders and felt the familiar pull of tension along his lower back, dull and persistent, the kind that had been appearing with increasing frequency over the past few months.
He was thirty-three, not elderly by any reasonable measure, but his body had apparently decided to begin registering its complaints ahead of schedule.
He was going to have to see a doctor. Since he had been putting it off the way busy people put off inconvenient things rather than urgent ones, it was starting to cross the line from inconvenient to worth addressing.
He turned off the shower and stepped out.
His skincare routine was unhurried and methodical, the habit of someone who had maintained it long enough that it required no thought.
Toner, serum, moisturizer, the same order it had always been.
He dried his hair with a towel in the loose, unbothered way he always did at home, leaving it slightly messy, and pulled on a pair of briefs, his green lounge pants, and a green baggy shirt that had no business being as comfortable as it was.
He picked up the velvet ring box from the dresser.
He slid his phone into his pocket and headed down the corridor toward Guiying's room.
He knocked.
"Come in," came the voice from inside, slightly distracted.
Liuxian opened the door.
Guiying was on the bed.
He had clearly made himself at home with remarkable efficiency for someone who had been in the house less than eight hours.
He was lying on his side in what appeared to be new sleepwear, soft and clearly unboxed, one of the delivered bags of chips open beside him, his new laptop propped at an angle so he could see the screen without sitting up.
He was watching a K-drama.
Liuxian looked at the screen.
A baby; round-faced, enormous-eyed baby, currently doing something on screen that had Guiying's complete and undivided attention.
Our Universe, by the looks of the title in the corner.
The baby let out a sound, and Guiying's expression, which he had absolutely no idea was doing what it was doing, went soft in an entirely unguarded way.
He was completely entranced.
Liuxian stood in the doorway, watching him for a moment.
"You look comfortable," he said.
Guiying startled slightly, his eyes cutting away from the screen to find Liuxian standing there, and his expression cycled rapidly through caught, composing, and arrived somewhere in the vicinity of unbothered.
"I am," he said, without apology.
Liuxian's gaze moved to the screen, where the baby was still doing whatever it was doing that had proven so mesmerizing. "What are you watching?"
"Our Universe." Guiying glanced back at the screen briefly. "The baby is very cute."
Liuxian looked at the baby. Then at Guiying's face. Then he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, setting the velvet box down on the nightstand.
"I brought you something," he said.