"I will get to them," Guiying said, turning back to his screen. "I am buying shares from startups first."
Liuxian 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 went pink.
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 very small and very telling.
He was not being coy.
He was not pretending to be shy.
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. No conditions. No reminder that it was his duty as a wife. No hand on his wrist, 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 simply.
He walked out.
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, the kind that had no particular purpose beyond existing in it 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 showing up with increasing regularity 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. He had been putting it off in the way busy people put off things that were inconvenient rather than urgent. 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 just unboxed, one of the delivered bags of chips open beside him, his new laptop propped at an angle in front of him so he could see the screen without sitting up.
He was watching a kdrama.
Liuxian looked at the screen.
A baby. Round faced, enormous eyed, 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 a way that was entirely unguarded.
He was completely entranced.
Liuxian stood in the doorway and watched 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 mesmerising. "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.