![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: For I have loved the stars too fondly
Author: marcicat
Fandom: Guardian (TV)
Rating: T
Summary: Planning an anniversary requires careful forethought and a dash of luck. Or possibly just very helpful friends.
Dedication: to starandrea -- may all your seasons be full of love and light!
It would be fine. Better than fine! Zhao Yunlan frowned. It had better be better than fine.
“Since when do we have staff meetings?” Lin Jing’s voice was suspicious. He looked around the room warily.
Zhu Hong flicked a piece of paper at him, but kept her eyes on Zhao Yunlan. “Better question -- since when do we have staff meetings that aren’t just an excuse for you to hang all over Professor Shen?”
“Sorry, sorry!” Guo Changcheng rushed into the room, with Chu Shuzhi looming behind him. “Are we late?”
He waved his hand. They’d probably been out doing some good deed -- rescuing cats from trees, or helping the elderly cross the street. And they weren’t even the last to arrive. No, that was Da Qing, who strolled in after them, tapping away on his phone.
“Damn Cat, can’t you be on time for once?”
Lin Jing took advantage of the distraction to flick the paper at Guo Changcheng, but he quickly sank back in his chair when Chu Shuzhi grabbed it out of the air and glared at him.
Da Qing rolled his eyes. “You didn’t want my advice this morning -- have you suddenly decided to admit the ten thousand year old cat knows best?”
He had not. “Your advice this morning was to ask Shen Wei to cook food for you!”
“For all of us!” Da Qing insisted, throwing himself onto the couch. “He likes cooking. You like eating. Ye Zun likes it when you’re both happy. It’s better than any of your ideas!”
It was, unfortunately, true. “But Shen Wei already cooks for us a lot,” he said, shaking his finger in Da Qing’s direction. “That doesn’t count as something special.”
“I’m telling him you said that,” Da Qing muttered.
“If you do, I’ll tell him you’re the one who ate the squid he was saving.”
Da Qing hissed, and swiped at his arm. “You wouldn’t!”
He leaned sideways and batted Da Qing’s hand away. “I might!”
“You wouldn’t. Then he’d just be mad at both of us.” Da Qing looked very smug. “And then your plans definitely wouldn’t work.”
“Chief Zhao! Are you and Teacher Shen fighting?” Guo Changcheng asked. He sounded halfway to tears over the idea.
Lin Jing still looked suspicious. “Is he going to another academic conference? Because I refuse to get kidnapped again just so you have an excuse to call him back here to help.”
Zhao Yunlan leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling like it could grant him patience. “We’re not fighting,” he said. Then he frowned at Lin Jing. “Did you get kidnapped on purpose last time?”
Lin Jing immediately looked back at his computer. “What? Who would do something like that? Haha, definitely not me. Or any of us!”
Zhu Hong kicked him in the shin. “Be quiet.”
It was probably better if he didn’t know. “We’re not fighting,” Zhao Yunlan repeated. “I --” He paused for dramatic emphasis. “Am planning our anniversary.” It had seemed easier before he’d started trying to do it. But his doubts were increasing as his available time decreased -- enough so that he was even willing to ask the team for help.
Guo Changcheng clapped. Chu Shuzhi crossed his arms. “Anniversary of what?” he said flatly.
“Do you really want him to answer that?” Da Qing asked.
“I think it’s romantic,” Wang Zheng said. “An anniversary should be a special occasion.”
“Thank you, Wang Zheng.” No one could argue with Wang Zheng on the subject of romantic gestures.
“Don’t you mean failing to plan?” Da Qing said. He waved at Zhao Yunlan. “This one can’t decide what to do. Even though food is a classic!”
“You can’t ask someone to cook their own anniversary dinner,” Zhu Hong said. She looked at Zhao Yunlan doubtfully. “Can you cook?”
“No!” Da Qing said loudly. Zhao Yunlan made a face at him, but he wasn’t wrong.
“What about desserts?” Guo Changcheng asked. “Like ice cream. Do you like ice cream, Chief Zhao?”
He tried to think if he’d ever seen Shen Wei or Ye Zun eat ice cream. “Is ice cream an anniversary food?”
“Knowing someone’s favorite flavor of ice cream is romantic,” Wang Zheng said.
He frowned. Each flavor was good at different times. “Who has a favorite flavor of ice cream?” he asked.
Everyone except Chu Shuzhi raised their hand. Da Qing used his free hand to poke him in the shoulder. “See? This is what you get for not listening to me.”
Lin Jing said, “What about things you did when you were first dating? Recreating a cherished memory is a thoughtful gesture that shows you care.”
“Are you reading that off your screen?” Da Qing craned his neck so he could look over Lin Jing’s shoulder. “Lao Zhao already read that article.”
He had. He put his arm over his face, and didn’t even bother trying to push Da Qing off the couch. Depending on what you counted as their first dates, the answer was either ‘solving crimes,’ ‘deceiving each other about our identities,’ or ‘threatening to kill each other.’ Not really the best options for encouraging fond feelings.
Lin Jing cleared his throat. “Given the circumstances --”
“You walked in the park together!” Guo Changcheng interrupted.
“Isn’t it too cold to do things outside right now?”
“No, no, he’s right! You did that in the past, too,” Da Qing said. “You were always hanging around outside. Especially at night!”
“You did get Professor Shen to wear your jacket when we went to the Northwest Mountains,” Zhu Hong allowed.
He pulled his arm off his face and sat up. “I did!” It had been one of his better ideas on that trip.
Chu Shuzhi snorted. It didn’t seem to deter Guo Changcheng, who turned to him enthusiastically. “Chu-ge, what do you think?”
He was fully prepared for a rude comment -- possibly something about his lack of experience with anniversaries of any kind -- but Chu Shuzhi’s respect for the Black Cloaked Envoy won out. There was a long pause, and then he said, “Focus on your future, not your past.”
“You did just buy a house,” Lin Jing offered. “There must be something you could give them for that.”
Everyone looked at Wang Zheng, who nodded. “Furnishing a home together is romantic.”
“What’s Shen Wei’s favorite color?” Guo Changcheng asked.
That was something he could answer with some confidence, at least. “Blue.”
“And Ye Zun?”
“Gold.” He frowned. “Probably.”
“What about you? You have a favorite color at least, right?”
He was fairly sure he hadn’t been asked his favorite color since primary school. He looked at Da Qing automatically. “Earth tones,” Da Qing answered for him. “Black doesn’t count, and earth tones go well with blue and gold.”
Black didn’t count? He shook his head. “Who am I to question the ten thousand year old cat? And what am I supposed to apply this information to?”
“Kitchen utensils,” Da Qing said immediately.
“Curtains?” Guo Changcheng asked.
Chu Shuzhi looked skeptical. “Aren’t cats colorblind?”
“Throw pillows!” Lin Jing exclaimed.
“I wish I had a pillow I could throw at you,” Zhao Yunlan told him. “Wang Zheng, are throw pillows romantic?”
She gave Lin Jing a pitying look. “No.”
He spread his hands apart. “See?”
Sang Zan rushed into the room. “They’re coming!” he said.
Everyone immediately pretended they were doing something other than failing to give good advice about how to celebrate an anniversary. Half of them only succeeded in looking some combination of guilty and awkward.
Zhao Yunlan sighed. He still had a week. He could figure this out. Right?
********
A week hadn’t been enough. A lifetime might not have been enough. He was going to have to admit it.
He waited until the food was gone, but no one had jumped up to clear things away, and he put both hands on the table. “I have a confession to make.”
Shen Wei looked surprised. Ye Zun looked intrigued. “Really?” he asked.
“Yes.” He took a deep breath. “I wanted to plan something perfect for our anniversary, but -- I don’t know what to do. Nothing I think of seems good enough.”
“Is that it?” Ye Zun asked. Shen Wei frowned at him, and Ye Zun rolled his eyes. “What? Last time he confessed something he’d bought a house! I’m just saying, that set a certain level of expectation that this confession didn’t meet.”
“Zhao Yunlan,” Shen Wei said calmly. “The goal of an anniversary is to celebrate the time we’ve spent together. Of course we would plan it together as well.”
He hesitated. It made so much sense when Shen Wei put it that way. “We would?”
“And we did!” Ye Zun added. “I’m not sure I believe you don’t have a favorite flavor of ice cream, though.”
Ice cream flavors -- they hadn’t even been there for that conversation. “It’s vanilla. Did you get my team to spy on me for you?” That was genius. He wished he’d thought of it.
“It wasn’t spying,” Shen Wei insisted.
“We may have encouraged them to pursue certain lines of inquiry, in the spirit of teamwork and cooperation, and then share that information with us,” Ye Zun said.
He looked back and forth between them. “Ah, it’s becoming clear to me!” He shook his finger at Ye Zun. “Let me guess -- the price of their teamwork and cooperation was that you would tell them how long it took me to figure it out.”
“Wang Zheng told us there was a bet,” Shen Wei said. He even sounded apologetic.
Zhao Yunlan waved it off. “No, no, this is good news. At least my ungrateful team made themselves useful to you.” He couldn’t help leaning forward in anticipation. “So -- what are we doing?”
Ye Zun laughed. “Dress warmly. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”
Something outdoors, then? And cold.
But it was lights that he noticed first, when he stepped through the portal exactly fifteen minutes later. Hundreds of tiny twinkling lights, illuminating a path that led uphill. “Are we in the mountains?”
“Yes,” Shen Wei said.
“It’s beautiful.” He crouched down to look more closely at the lights. They glowed gold, and when he poked at one, it buzzed with dark energy. “You made these?”
“Making them was the easy part,” Ye Zun said. He scooped up a handful of the lights, and they floated above his palm. “Getting them to stay where we wanted was the real challenge.”
“One we haven’t fully resolved,” Shen Wei added dryly. “Clearly.” The lights swarmed around their feet as they walked.
He knew they’d been experimenting with combining different powers, but he’d never imagined something like this -- he slowed his steps so he could watch the lights move. “They’re amazing.”
The path led them around a curve, and then he could see a tent up ahead. “Camping? Ah, you’re too good to me!” Zhao Yunlan had always thought there was something peaceful about winter camping. Winter camping with the two people he would most enjoy spending the night with? Even better.
“Camping tonight, and we all have the day off tomorrow. Dinner with the team tomorrow night.” Shen Wei’s voice was suddenly hesitant. “Is that -- good?”
He tugged them both closer. “It’s perfect.” He was beginning to realize that anything would have been, as long as they did it together. “Where does the ice cream come in?”
“That’s breakfast,” Ye Zun said.
He laughed, delighted. That must have been Da Qing’s contribution. “Perfect,” he repeated.
The lights started to disappear as they got closer to the tent, until there were only a few outlining a stack of blankets on a patch of clear ground. It was too dark to see them easily, but he was guessing he’d find them to be a combination of blue, gold, and earth tones. They’d been very thorough.
“When we were young,” Ye Zun said quietly. “We used to talk about the future.” He was staring at the sky, but he leaned against Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder as he spoke. “Look up at the stars, and make up stories about what it would be like.”
“And now?”
Shen Wei paused, with a blanket half-unfolded, listening for the answer.
“Well, I never expected that something we did for survival would become a recreational activity,” Ye Zun said easily. “But camping’s not so bad. Definitely nicer when I can do this.” He pulled Zhao Yunlan towards the blankets and waved his hand in a circle. The temperature around them warmed noticeably.
Shen Wei beamed at him. “Thank you.”
The blanket turned out to be surprisingly soft, and he happily dropped down in the middle of it and put his hands behind his head. Shen Wei and Ye Zun joined him, and even produced a second blanket to put over them.
He couldn’t imagine a happier moment. The remaining lights around them had disappeared, and the sky was bright with stars. “I’m surrounded by beauty on all sides!” he exclaimed. Shen Wei put his head on his arm and huffed out a tiny laugh.
“You can’t even see us in this amount of light,” he said.
“I don’t need to be able to see you to know you’re beautiful. I would know both of you in the darkest night or the brightest day.” He wiggled one hand out from behind his head, so that he could twine his fingers with Ye Zun’s. “There,” he said. “Now we’re all together.”
“Still looking up at the stars.” Ye Zun squeezed his hand. “Even though they’ve changed, they’re still there.”
Shen Wei pointed up. “The dragon is almost the same.”
Zhao Yunlan squinted. He’d never been good at the constellations. “That starts with the bright one, right? Near the trees?”
“That’s a satellite,” Ye Zun said. He used his free hand to trace a shape between the stars, and a glowing line followed his finger. “That’s the dragon.” He connected the last arc, and prodded it carefully.
Zhao Yunlan startled when the line shimmered -- the dragon’s wings flapped in a graceful curve, and then it disappeared. He laughed, delighted.
Shen Wei started drawing next. “The tiger, too. It’s leaping now.” He thought it looked a little more like a house cat than a fearsome predator, but it leapt across the sky at Shen Wei’s touch.
“I always liked the rabbit,” Ye Zun said. He drew two enormous ears that took up half the sky, and filled in a much smaller head and body underneath. “Animals were a lot larger back then, obviously.” The rabbit swiveled its ears before disappearing into a rain of sparkles.
Zhao Yunlan could feel Shen Wei laughing next to him. “And the night bird, of course,” he said, tracing a curved V across the entire sky. “A perennial favorite.”
Ye Zun lifted their clasped hands, and one bird turned into three. “Even better.”
It was beautiful. It made him want to stay in the moment forever -- but even more, to keep going, to see what happened next. “All these hidden talents!” he said happily. “Imagine what we’ll know about each other by next year!”
The birds faded into sparkles, and he felt Shen Wei turn to look at him. “Happy anniversary.”
“Happy anniversary.”
Ye Zun squeezed his hand again. “You know I feel the same. Many happy returns, and all of that.” There was a pause, and then he added, “Are you sure you don’t want a throw pillow? They’re really very comfortable.”
Pillows started appearing all around them, and his laughter echoed through the clearing. Yes, he thought. Many happy returns was right. And he looked forward to each and every one of them.
Author: marcicat
Fandom: Guardian (TV)
Rating: T
Summary: Planning an anniversary requires careful forethought and a dash of luck. Or possibly just very helpful friends.
Dedication: to starandrea -- may all your seasons be full of love and light!
It would be fine. Better than fine! Zhao Yunlan frowned. It had better be better than fine.
“Since when do we have staff meetings?” Lin Jing’s voice was suspicious. He looked around the room warily.
Zhu Hong flicked a piece of paper at him, but kept her eyes on Zhao Yunlan. “Better question -- since when do we have staff meetings that aren’t just an excuse for you to hang all over Professor Shen?”
“Sorry, sorry!” Guo Changcheng rushed into the room, with Chu Shuzhi looming behind him. “Are we late?”
He waved his hand. They’d probably been out doing some good deed -- rescuing cats from trees, or helping the elderly cross the street. And they weren’t even the last to arrive. No, that was Da Qing, who strolled in after them, tapping away on his phone.
“Damn Cat, can’t you be on time for once?”
Lin Jing took advantage of the distraction to flick the paper at Guo Changcheng, but he quickly sank back in his chair when Chu Shuzhi grabbed it out of the air and glared at him.
Da Qing rolled his eyes. “You didn’t want my advice this morning -- have you suddenly decided to admit the ten thousand year old cat knows best?”
He had not. “Your advice this morning was to ask Shen Wei to cook food for you!”
“For all of us!” Da Qing insisted, throwing himself onto the couch. “He likes cooking. You like eating. Ye Zun likes it when you’re both happy. It’s better than any of your ideas!”
It was, unfortunately, true. “But Shen Wei already cooks for us a lot,” he said, shaking his finger in Da Qing’s direction. “That doesn’t count as something special.”
“I’m telling him you said that,” Da Qing muttered.
“If you do, I’ll tell him you’re the one who ate the squid he was saving.”
Da Qing hissed, and swiped at his arm. “You wouldn’t!”
He leaned sideways and batted Da Qing’s hand away. “I might!”
“You wouldn’t. Then he’d just be mad at both of us.” Da Qing looked very smug. “And then your plans definitely wouldn’t work.”
“Chief Zhao! Are you and Teacher Shen fighting?” Guo Changcheng asked. He sounded halfway to tears over the idea.
Lin Jing still looked suspicious. “Is he going to another academic conference? Because I refuse to get kidnapped again just so you have an excuse to call him back here to help.”
Zhao Yunlan leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling like it could grant him patience. “We’re not fighting,” he said. Then he frowned at Lin Jing. “Did you get kidnapped on purpose last time?”
Lin Jing immediately looked back at his computer. “What? Who would do something like that? Haha, definitely not me. Or any of us!”
Zhu Hong kicked him in the shin. “Be quiet.”
It was probably better if he didn’t know. “We’re not fighting,” Zhao Yunlan repeated. “I --” He paused for dramatic emphasis. “Am planning our anniversary.” It had seemed easier before he’d started trying to do it. But his doubts were increasing as his available time decreased -- enough so that he was even willing to ask the team for help.
Guo Changcheng clapped. Chu Shuzhi crossed his arms. “Anniversary of what?” he said flatly.
“Do you really want him to answer that?” Da Qing asked.
“I think it’s romantic,” Wang Zheng said. “An anniversary should be a special occasion.”
“Thank you, Wang Zheng.” No one could argue with Wang Zheng on the subject of romantic gestures.
“Don’t you mean failing to plan?” Da Qing said. He waved at Zhao Yunlan. “This one can’t decide what to do. Even though food is a classic!”
“You can’t ask someone to cook their own anniversary dinner,” Zhu Hong said. She looked at Zhao Yunlan doubtfully. “Can you cook?”
“No!” Da Qing said loudly. Zhao Yunlan made a face at him, but he wasn’t wrong.
“What about desserts?” Guo Changcheng asked. “Like ice cream. Do you like ice cream, Chief Zhao?”
He tried to think if he’d ever seen Shen Wei or Ye Zun eat ice cream. “Is ice cream an anniversary food?”
“Knowing someone’s favorite flavor of ice cream is romantic,” Wang Zheng said.
He frowned. Each flavor was good at different times. “Who has a favorite flavor of ice cream?” he asked.
Everyone except Chu Shuzhi raised their hand. Da Qing used his free hand to poke him in the shoulder. “See? This is what you get for not listening to me.”
Lin Jing said, “What about things you did when you were first dating? Recreating a cherished memory is a thoughtful gesture that shows you care.”
“Are you reading that off your screen?” Da Qing craned his neck so he could look over Lin Jing’s shoulder. “Lao Zhao already read that article.”
He had. He put his arm over his face, and didn’t even bother trying to push Da Qing off the couch. Depending on what you counted as their first dates, the answer was either ‘solving crimes,’ ‘deceiving each other about our identities,’ or ‘threatening to kill each other.’ Not really the best options for encouraging fond feelings.
Lin Jing cleared his throat. “Given the circumstances --”
“You walked in the park together!” Guo Changcheng interrupted.
“Isn’t it too cold to do things outside right now?”
“No, no, he’s right! You did that in the past, too,” Da Qing said. “You were always hanging around outside. Especially at night!”
“You did get Professor Shen to wear your jacket when we went to the Northwest Mountains,” Zhu Hong allowed.
He pulled his arm off his face and sat up. “I did!” It had been one of his better ideas on that trip.
Chu Shuzhi snorted. It didn’t seem to deter Guo Changcheng, who turned to him enthusiastically. “Chu-ge, what do you think?”
He was fully prepared for a rude comment -- possibly something about his lack of experience with anniversaries of any kind -- but Chu Shuzhi’s respect for the Black Cloaked Envoy won out. There was a long pause, and then he said, “Focus on your future, not your past.”
“You did just buy a house,” Lin Jing offered. “There must be something you could give them for that.”
Everyone looked at Wang Zheng, who nodded. “Furnishing a home together is romantic.”
“What’s Shen Wei’s favorite color?” Guo Changcheng asked.
That was something he could answer with some confidence, at least. “Blue.”
“And Ye Zun?”
“Gold.” He frowned. “Probably.”
“What about you? You have a favorite color at least, right?”
He was fairly sure he hadn’t been asked his favorite color since primary school. He looked at Da Qing automatically. “Earth tones,” Da Qing answered for him. “Black doesn’t count, and earth tones go well with blue and gold.”
Black didn’t count? He shook his head. “Who am I to question the ten thousand year old cat? And what am I supposed to apply this information to?”
“Kitchen utensils,” Da Qing said immediately.
“Curtains?” Guo Changcheng asked.
Chu Shuzhi looked skeptical. “Aren’t cats colorblind?”
“Throw pillows!” Lin Jing exclaimed.
“I wish I had a pillow I could throw at you,” Zhao Yunlan told him. “Wang Zheng, are throw pillows romantic?”
She gave Lin Jing a pitying look. “No.”
He spread his hands apart. “See?”
Sang Zan rushed into the room. “They’re coming!” he said.
Everyone immediately pretended they were doing something other than failing to give good advice about how to celebrate an anniversary. Half of them only succeeded in looking some combination of guilty and awkward.
Zhao Yunlan sighed. He still had a week. He could figure this out. Right?
********
A week hadn’t been enough. A lifetime might not have been enough. He was going to have to admit it.
He waited until the food was gone, but no one had jumped up to clear things away, and he put both hands on the table. “I have a confession to make.”
Shen Wei looked surprised. Ye Zun looked intrigued. “Really?” he asked.
“Yes.” He took a deep breath. “I wanted to plan something perfect for our anniversary, but -- I don’t know what to do. Nothing I think of seems good enough.”
“Is that it?” Ye Zun asked. Shen Wei frowned at him, and Ye Zun rolled his eyes. “What? Last time he confessed something he’d bought a house! I’m just saying, that set a certain level of expectation that this confession didn’t meet.”
“Zhao Yunlan,” Shen Wei said calmly. “The goal of an anniversary is to celebrate the time we’ve spent together. Of course we would plan it together as well.”
He hesitated. It made so much sense when Shen Wei put it that way. “We would?”
“And we did!” Ye Zun added. “I’m not sure I believe you don’t have a favorite flavor of ice cream, though.”
Ice cream flavors -- they hadn’t even been there for that conversation. “It’s vanilla. Did you get my team to spy on me for you?” That was genius. He wished he’d thought of it.
“It wasn’t spying,” Shen Wei insisted.
“We may have encouraged them to pursue certain lines of inquiry, in the spirit of teamwork and cooperation, and then share that information with us,” Ye Zun said.
He looked back and forth between them. “Ah, it’s becoming clear to me!” He shook his finger at Ye Zun. “Let me guess -- the price of their teamwork and cooperation was that you would tell them how long it took me to figure it out.”
“Wang Zheng told us there was a bet,” Shen Wei said. He even sounded apologetic.
Zhao Yunlan waved it off. “No, no, this is good news. At least my ungrateful team made themselves useful to you.” He couldn’t help leaning forward in anticipation. “So -- what are we doing?”
Ye Zun laughed. “Dress warmly. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”
Something outdoors, then? And cold.
But it was lights that he noticed first, when he stepped through the portal exactly fifteen minutes later. Hundreds of tiny twinkling lights, illuminating a path that led uphill. “Are we in the mountains?”
“Yes,” Shen Wei said.
“It’s beautiful.” He crouched down to look more closely at the lights. They glowed gold, and when he poked at one, it buzzed with dark energy. “You made these?”
“Making them was the easy part,” Ye Zun said. He scooped up a handful of the lights, and they floated above his palm. “Getting them to stay where we wanted was the real challenge.”
“One we haven’t fully resolved,” Shen Wei added dryly. “Clearly.” The lights swarmed around their feet as they walked.
He knew they’d been experimenting with combining different powers, but he’d never imagined something like this -- he slowed his steps so he could watch the lights move. “They’re amazing.”
The path led them around a curve, and then he could see a tent up ahead. “Camping? Ah, you’re too good to me!” Zhao Yunlan had always thought there was something peaceful about winter camping. Winter camping with the two people he would most enjoy spending the night with? Even better.
“Camping tonight, and we all have the day off tomorrow. Dinner with the team tomorrow night.” Shen Wei’s voice was suddenly hesitant. “Is that -- good?”
He tugged them both closer. “It’s perfect.” He was beginning to realize that anything would have been, as long as they did it together. “Where does the ice cream come in?”
“That’s breakfast,” Ye Zun said.
He laughed, delighted. That must have been Da Qing’s contribution. “Perfect,” he repeated.
The lights started to disappear as they got closer to the tent, until there were only a few outlining a stack of blankets on a patch of clear ground. It was too dark to see them easily, but he was guessing he’d find them to be a combination of blue, gold, and earth tones. They’d been very thorough.
“When we were young,” Ye Zun said quietly. “We used to talk about the future.” He was staring at the sky, but he leaned against Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder as he spoke. “Look up at the stars, and make up stories about what it would be like.”
“And now?”
Shen Wei paused, with a blanket half-unfolded, listening for the answer.
“Well, I never expected that something we did for survival would become a recreational activity,” Ye Zun said easily. “But camping’s not so bad. Definitely nicer when I can do this.” He pulled Zhao Yunlan towards the blankets and waved his hand in a circle. The temperature around them warmed noticeably.
Shen Wei beamed at him. “Thank you.”
The blanket turned out to be surprisingly soft, and he happily dropped down in the middle of it and put his hands behind his head. Shen Wei and Ye Zun joined him, and even produced a second blanket to put over them.
He couldn’t imagine a happier moment. The remaining lights around them had disappeared, and the sky was bright with stars. “I’m surrounded by beauty on all sides!” he exclaimed. Shen Wei put his head on his arm and huffed out a tiny laugh.
“You can’t even see us in this amount of light,” he said.
“I don’t need to be able to see you to know you’re beautiful. I would know both of you in the darkest night or the brightest day.” He wiggled one hand out from behind his head, so that he could twine his fingers with Ye Zun’s. “There,” he said. “Now we’re all together.”
“Still looking up at the stars.” Ye Zun squeezed his hand. “Even though they’ve changed, they’re still there.”
Shen Wei pointed up. “The dragon is almost the same.”
Zhao Yunlan squinted. He’d never been good at the constellations. “That starts with the bright one, right? Near the trees?”
“That’s a satellite,” Ye Zun said. He used his free hand to trace a shape between the stars, and a glowing line followed his finger. “That’s the dragon.” He connected the last arc, and prodded it carefully.
Zhao Yunlan startled when the line shimmered -- the dragon’s wings flapped in a graceful curve, and then it disappeared. He laughed, delighted.
Shen Wei started drawing next. “The tiger, too. It’s leaping now.” He thought it looked a little more like a house cat than a fearsome predator, but it leapt across the sky at Shen Wei’s touch.
“I always liked the rabbit,” Ye Zun said. He drew two enormous ears that took up half the sky, and filled in a much smaller head and body underneath. “Animals were a lot larger back then, obviously.” The rabbit swiveled its ears before disappearing into a rain of sparkles.
Zhao Yunlan could feel Shen Wei laughing next to him. “And the night bird, of course,” he said, tracing a curved V across the entire sky. “A perennial favorite.”
Ye Zun lifted their clasped hands, and one bird turned into three. “Even better.”
It was beautiful. It made him want to stay in the moment forever -- but even more, to keep going, to see what happened next. “All these hidden talents!” he said happily. “Imagine what we’ll know about each other by next year!”
The birds faded into sparkles, and he felt Shen Wei turn to look at him. “Happy anniversary.”
“Happy anniversary.”
Ye Zun squeezed his hand again. “You know I feel the same. Many happy returns, and all of that.” There was a pause, and then he added, “Are you sure you don’t want a throw pillow? They’re really very comfortable.”
Pillows started appearing all around them, and his laughter echoed through the clearing. Yes, he thought. Many happy returns was right. And he looked forward to each and every one of them.
Tags: