"Cousin... Ma Dai... what will you do when I'm gone?" It's the first time Ma Chao has discussed the eventuality of his passing since the start of his illness. His breath comes in short rasps, the air in his chest rattling as though his bones were wind chimes. Ma Dai swallows, hard, hoping to hide the rapidly rising lump in his throat.
"I... Don't talk like that, young master." Ma Dai lets out a high pitched chuckle, nervous and stringy, a far cry from his usual boisterous guffaw. "You'll make it through this, you always have! Remember when you broke your foot and ran miles on horseback? Nothing can stand in your way, so don't let a little cough wear you out now!" Ma Dai looks down at the piles of parchment in front of him. Since his cousin's illness, the two have had precious few moments to spend together, as Ma Chao had been stationed to negotiate peace with the local Qiang tribes. Here, now, was one of the few moments they had been together alone in almost a year... and Ma Dai was spending it writing correspondences for his lord.
Ma Dai sighs. Truly, the work of a Shu soldier was repairing broken walls as they were being destroyed. Still, the taskload Zhuge Liang had placed upon the two of them proved, if anything, that they were fully trusted with their lord's vision. It would be a shame upon the Ma clan to slack off, and so, instead of taking his lord to view the plum blossoms, he set the young master up comfortably in bed and sat in his room, writing letters to people who would never appreciate the delicate way his handwriting danced off a page.
A long silence stretches out as Ma Dai resumes his writing, stacking, and rustling through scrolls. He almost forgets Ma Chao's question as the silence goes on, until a deep cough interrupts the rattle of his cousin's breathing.
"Ma Dai," he asks again, and his voice is slightly louder, but the tone is... an emotion Ma Dai is unfamiliar with hearing from Ma Chao. Fear, clouding the tone of his voice, caused his normally gruff pattern of speech to convert into a more childish tone. "Ma Dai," he repeats louder this time, searching for something, and the younger cousin stops in his tracks as he's writing. A beautiful character marred with a large ink splot grows as the panic hits Ma Dai's brain with a full force of a tidal wave.
Ma Dai carefully puts the ink brush away, vowing to himself to not forget to clean the bristles when he invariably returns to work. He unties the ribbons holding his sleeves back quickly, letting the wrinkled fabric fall sloppily over his wrists. "I'm here, young master." Ma Dai sits on the side of the bed, and slowly, carefully, he helps Ma Chao sit up.
Ma Chao grabs a pillow, and hugs it to his chest. The pillows chosen for the bed were too gaudy for even Ma Chao's tastes, and they starkly contrast his green hanfu with their embroidered blue and red threads. Ma Chao refuses to look Ma Dai in the face for a long while, and the two of them sit in silence on the bed, neither comfortable enough with the tension in the air but both willing the other to speak first. At long last though, Ma Chao squeezes his eyes shut and mouths something incoherent to himself, and then, with intent, reaches for Ma Dai's wrist, his weathered fingers sending bolts of electricity that Ma Dai wish he could ignore as he focused on his lord's next words.
"If you do not decide on a course of action soon, Ma Dai, you will be as lost to the howling jowls of chaos as I was when we lost our clan." Ma Chao's thumb traces the indent of where a blade had knicked Ma Dai's toned arms. "What will you do when I am gone, Ma Dai? Do not be a seed flown only by the wind, my cousin."
"My lord..." Ma Dai lowers his head, the implications of what his lord childishly skirts around swirling in patterns around his vision not unlike a kite in a turbulent storm. "As long as I serve you, young master, I have purpose. I have no need for-"
"Ma Dai." Ma Chao's voice wavers even as he uses a harsh tone. "We are generals of Shu now. Gone are the days of our lord-servant duties, as we are now both serving the emperor of the land. Please, for your own dignity, stop referring to me as lord." Ma Chao's fingers slide up to the palm of Ma Dai's hand, and Ma Dai has to stop himself from jumping away, the callous touch sending deep waves of simplistic pleasure throughout his body. It feels foreign to be touched so gently, and Ma Dai's first response is to run away, to shut down and smile a lopsided grin, no matter how inappropriate it was for the moment.
"Well, young master, I have waited hand and foot on you since your first chin hair. It's only natural that-"
Ma Chao's glance goes cold, the sharp edge alongside his jawline only appearing more rugged in the candle light. He has the look of a man who had thoroughly had his patience tested, time and time again. "My cousin." His nostrils flare, and his chest visibly tightens as a round of coughs threatens to break his composure.
"Tell me, cousin, what does the Ma clan legacy mean to you? What do you see as important to the future of the land?"
"As long as we're side by side, there's nothing that can conquer our spirits." Ma Dai's smile drops off his face instantly. "As a Ma, I will dedicate my heart and soul, every fiber of my being, to realizing your goals. The head of the Ma clan-"
"There will be a day when I am no longer here, and that day will be the day you are tested, Ma Dai." The unpleasant truth spills forth, puncturing any bubble of hope Ma Dai could have held in him, instantly deflating all of his optimism. "I only wish that you could see the battle as I do, as justice versus chaos, as immortality through conviction instead of fading to obscurity as those who fuel the flames often find themselves. Ma Dai... I worry for you, when you are not with me." Ma Chao sighs and relaxes the tightened hold he has on Ma Dai's wrist. His fingers, no longer digging into Ma Dai's flesh, now caress the skin, rubbing tiny circles of apology into the marks he left. "I worry that, like an old stallion, Zhuge Liang will cast you aside to the butcher with the largest pocket."
The only response Ma Dai can fathom at the moment is a simple "Ah," and he looks down, feeling slightly embarrassed. Though Ma Dai tailed after his cousin and cleaned up the mess made in Ma Chao's wake, the older cousin was perceptive, keeping his observations to himself in a way that slightly left Ma Dai puzzled over behaviors the uninitiated would only call "clueless" in social parameters. In truth, despite his rough exterior and callous way of addressing others, Ma Dai's respect for Ma Chao came from the decisiveness Ma Chao carried with him in every action, personal and physical. It was this strength in conviction that Ma Dai feels he lacks.
Ma Chao, sensing the silence trudging on as the younger man mulled over his words, continues. "Zhuge Liang is a wily man. And though a dragon may soar in the clouds, it may not be able to distinguish the specks of dust beneath it. Never forget this, Ma Dai." His spare hand lets go of the pillow in his lap, and instead points directly at his cousin's nose. Ma Dai looks at the accusing finger, and a deep, needing part of him considers kissing the knuckles before he pushes the thoughts away. "I want to know what you intend to do for the clan when I am no longer here."
Ma Dai freezes in place, the reality of responsibility shifting around him. As if sensing the internal conflict in him, Ma Chao softly turns the pointing finger into a caressing touch, idly tracing a stray curl that has been sticking up. Had the touch been from anyone else, Ma Dai would simply laugh, and pass up a joke- but the mere feeling of fingers tucking the strand of hair behind his ear, his cousin's eyes on his face make him feel hot to the touch. "You know me, young master," a wry grin dances on his face, briefly, and he manages to extract his wrist from the tightening grasp by flattening his palm and pressing it against Ma Chao's chest, until the older man is laying flat on his back again.
"I will probably find someone to marry, to have a child with, and to carry on the Ma clan name," Ma Dai stares off into space, refusing to see his cousin's expression. "If he's born a son, his name will be Ma Heng, but if she's born a girl, she will be named Ma Huifeng. If Zhuge Liang asks me to lead a vanguard, I will do it gladly, to honor the peace and kindness our emperor has given us thus far. And," he says, his eyes far off, and the look in it is sad, "I will mourn the lost members of our clan, building an ancestral home as close to Maoling province as I can. Maybe, when I'm old, and no longer able to fight for my lord, I will become a traveling merchant!" He smiles, but the smile does not reach his eyes, and the laughter that leaves his throat is dark, throaty, lacking the belly ache that he was known for.
"You were such a striking merchant that night..." Ma Chao mumbles, and for a moment the two of them sit in comfortable silence, trapped in a reverie of their past. "But Ma Dai..." Ma Chao looks at him, still laying down but turning on his side and letting out a small wheeze.
"Yes, young- Ma Chao?"
"If you plan on becoming married when I die, why not get married now?" Ma Chao's voice is quizzical, but there's a note of something else too, and Ma Dai's stomach positively melts into a pile of acid.
"O-oh? Oh you know, scrollwork, the time of the year, things like that," Ma Dai's chuckle is high pitched again, and Ma Chao musters up the energy to lift a single eyebrow, as high and as dubiously as his muscles would allow.
"Plus," Ma Dai adds, his face very serious as he faces Ma Chao, "I wonder how dowry would be handled, with you in bed." Ma Chao's eyebrow shot down, wrinkling into a glare, before Ma Dai interrupted him. "Now, don't give me any grief. If I were to arrange my own dowry in your stead, this would only complicate matters for me later, and the less work I have to do the better."
Ma Chao's eyebrows continue to be knit, and the look of severe doubt stubbornly clings to every single muscle in his face, undertones of... guilt? sadness? touching his lips. For the head of a clan, marriage could mean the difference between extinction and survival. And yet, his cousin's stance had always been so flippant, almost casual, as though he himself had no desire for the decorum filial piety demanded.
Ma Chao turns his head away, his hand sliding into Ma Dai's before forming into a loose fist. "You have yet to assume the mantle, and already you have shirked your duty to our forefathers. Do you have shame, Ma Dai?" Ma Chao faces his cousin again, his reprimand meant to pierce through the goofy façade he knew his cousin to harbor. "Or is there something else you're hiding from me?"
Ma Dai's face turns white, then pink, then purple, as the corners of his lips quiver between a smile and disbelief.
"If you still see me as your lord, through all of this, through the chaos and destruction we have wrought on this land, then I suppose I have no choice but to command you to answer me, do I?" The manipulation is thick in his tone, the nasally voice he's known for dropping into a deeper, more baritone note before he quickly removes his hand from Ma Dai's to cover a cough that wracks his body.
"M-my lord, Ma Chao, please, do not overexert yourself on my behalf." The panic is rising in Ma Dai's throat, and he worries that if he does not answer his cousin's answers, it may be another regret added to the pile, not unlike the pyramid of scrolls spilling to the floor in the corner of his eye. "There's so much left for you to do, so much left for you to accomplish, please do not-"
"Soon, I will no longer be with you, Ma Dai, my cousin. Have you ever considered the fragility of our mortality? I feel my life…" The low tone in his voice falters, and the expression on his face pains Ma Dai to his core. "I feel my life ebbing away, as I sit here, useless, while inorder and violence commands the land. And now, my only family refuses to answer my orders."
"What am I but ineffectual at this moment?" He asks himself. Turning back to Ma Dai, he raises his head, and golden hairs, plastered in sticky sweat, thread with his eyebrows. "If my only cousin cannot get married, cannot move forward into the present, how am I to rest peacefully?"
Ma Dai's purple face turns to shame, as he cannot bring himself to tell his cousin his heart. To burden his reason for existence with such… feminine emotions, such ineffectual desires… The face of a woman, much loved by his cousin, comes to mind. Her strength in her convictions all but guaranteed the death she had received. Compared to such love, his devotion to his cousin feels shallow. Flimsy. As though he was wasting his time on sentimentality instead of marriage.
"You are right, my lord." Ma Dai withdraws from Ma Chao's touch, and his cousin looks as though a rod had stuck through his heart. Still, Ma Dai continues in a monotone voice. "I have disrespected our family and you, by extension, with my foolish desires. And-"
Ma Chao interrupts him again, this time with a softened look on his usually rigidly aggressive face. "And what are those desires, cousin?" His fists are balled again in a pillow, as he looks up at his remaining kinsmember. He knows, of course, what those desires are. Felt the jealous looks on his back when talking to women, the distance his cousin has put between them with titles that, in Ma Chao's eyes, were only formalities reserved for a superior and his army. And yet, through it all, Ma Dai has never once closed the gap.
It was infuriating, for Ma Chao, to never know how Ma Dai felt. To always assume, to never have the true confession stated in the open. For if you never receive the letter, how are you to open it, and respond?
"What are those desires, Ma Dai?" He repeats himself, this time tangling his right hand in the messy knot of hair on top of the younger cousin's head. His fingers idly fidget with a stray curl, turning it over before returning it to its proper position. "What are these desires you speak of, these…desires that make you so hesitant to assume the head of the Ma clan?"
"Well, we all know that chaos reigns when I take charge of the kitchen," Ma Dai swallows as Ma Chao's hand brushes his ear.
"Mm. I know this well about you."
"Well… I fear that I do not have the… fortitude, to lead others to their death. Or the bravery or courage."
"And how does this translate to desires?" A calloused finger traces the shell of Ma Dai's ear, and he has to bite his lip to suppress the shiver that would cause his cousin to freeze.
Ma Chao's halflidded eyes are scrutinizing his. In the moment golden brown meets silver, Ma Dai's inner monologue bleeds into his outer words.
"I wish to always serve you, my lord."
"That is not my name. Try again, Ma Dai." His low voice commands Ma Dai.
"Whatever you say, young master." It is a reflex, and to his chagrin Ma Chao stops fiddling with his ear.
"Try again."
"Y-Yes Ma Chao." A soft hum of approval is given in response, and Ma Chao immediately goes back to tracing the side of his cousin's face.
"Now, those desires, Ma Dai….please tell me more, for I can feel my strength giving…." Ma Chao sits himself up, and the distance between them is less than an arm's length. "...Away."
The smell of sweat lingers on Ma Chao's ill frame, but Ma Dai finds the smell more distracting than repulsive.
"Well… I cannot imagine settling down with a wife and children, taking myself away from you in your current condition. Nor can I imagine them being terribly pleased with how busy I am, how busy I always have been. But! When the land is united, and Emperor Liu's dream is made a reality…"
"... Happiness is not required for a clan leader, Ma Dai. Nor is it expected. But-" He cups Ma Dai's wide jaw in his hand, and watches as Ma Dai internally implodes, the conflicting emotions he always hides rising to the surface. "If being married would cause you internal agony, I cannot command you in good conscience to do so. Now, tell me, my cousin," he strokes the scruff under his fingers. "What is the real reason you do not wish to marry?"
Ma Dai feels thousands of miles away emotionally, and he watches as his body responds in kind to Ma Chao's touch. His hand grasps the hand touching his face, as though afraid a phantom would tear the touch away at any given moment.
Instead of answering, he reaches for Ma Chao's face with his free hand, his thumb carefully, softly, slowly, tracing the wrinkles at his lord's mouth. The space between them has gotten increasingly smaller, and Ma Dai can feel the heat from his cousin lingering between them. Stable, enveloping warmth, though the two barely touch, is all he needs to melt the firm boundaries he's encased himself in. The rules he's carefully told himself again and again, under the guise of protecting the duty between him and his lord, suddenly stop mattering as much the minute Ma Chao starts to trace small patterns into his scalp. The touch is undeniably intimate, and for a moment the skeptic in Ma Dai goes silent just long enough for his mouth to move without a moment of hesitation.
"To marry would discard my devotion to you. If I married, if I had pursued a family before now, who knows how many battles you would have gone into without a plan, without anyone by your side? If I marry now, if I marry while you live, I would be discarding all of the time we've spent together, and…" Ma Chao's fingers knot themself in the thicket of his hair.
"...and I can't live with myself without you, Ma Chao." The name bubbles forth from his lips, creaking from disuse. "I can't bear to see you like this, to suffer and to be so… frustrated with me." His eyes dart to the pile of scrolls again, and he realizes that his cousin is purposely holding him in place, daring him to move away. It was a side Ma Dai always found hopelessly attractive; Ma Chao's ability to sense the discomfort in others and discard it for justice was a burden he could never stomach.
"I can't stand to see you alone. I can't stand to see you with others, though. It's so selfish of me, isn't it, how I always say I want the best for you, but get upset when you do what you think is right. I can't stand the idea of being the head of the clan. It feels like… I'm just me, you know? You're charismatic and brave, and I'm just the guy who helps others."
"Ma Dai…" Ma Chao pulls himself up to fully sit before putting his free hand on the younger's face. "Ma Dai. Your dedication is admirable, but is there something you aren't telling me?" He moves ever closer, and Ma Dai can feel under his thumb the wrinkles in Ma Chao's mouth bending upward slightly.
Oh. Ma Dai nervously flicks his eyes back to Ma Chao's face, and where the harsher features of a frown had been was most definitely a gentle smile. His bronze eyes held just a hint of playfulness, and if Ma Dai had not been certain before, he could certainly tell now he had been trapped, perhaps from the very beginning of the conversation.
"Young M-"
"My name."
"Ma Chao… I… my dedication for you is…"
"Admirable, of course."
"W-well, I would hope so, but…" His voice trails off, and a small chuckle at his own failures as a human being wells forth before he can suppress it. "... but the dedication I hold for you is more akin to how you felt dedicated to Lady Yang, rather than how one would feel towards a superior."
Were Ma Dai's eyes playing tricks on him? Was Ma Chao really smiling now? He couldn't believe it. The look of a victor who had won effortlessly on a battlefield was on Ma Chao's face, giddy and full of adrenaline. How could his cousin delight in this? Ma Dai had always known Ma Chao to have a turbulent conflict in his heart, so how could he be so happy that Ma Dai was failing him?
Indeed it was glee in Ma Chao's heart, but not from any supposed failure. Instead, he felt relieved, almost, as though he was able to at last live out a fantasy of his. He moves, slowly, steadily, to Ma Dai's ear, reveling in the way his cousin's long lashes flits close and his nostrils flare with a sudden inhale. He licks his lips, and whispers, "And what about that dedication is so wrong?"
"We-we're cousins, and men, Ma Chao, I can't very well lo-"
Ah. He can't bring himself to continue the rest of the sentence, and he prays to the heavens above that Ma Chao does not embarrass him further. Every moment they touch is an eternity too long, as he waits for his cousin to tease him, to push him away, to do anything-
And then, before he knows it, his head is being jerked to the side, and Ma Chao's lips crash into his, violent yet desiring. Ma Dai freezes instinctively as the feeling of chapped lips brush against his, the spittle and blood that had been removed coloring his with the taste of copper. "Young Master!" his voice squeaks, and he feels absolutely mortified. "My lord, what are you doing did you not just hear what I said?"
"Hush." Ma Chao's grip on his hair loosens, and insteads smooths down the curls that had been twisted out of shape. "Do you not want me to?"
"I didn't say that, but Young Master-"
"My name," Ma Chao emphasizes with a small peck to Ma Dai's neck, "Is Ma Chao."
"M-m-ma Chao, please think of our stations."
"I don't want to. This is what I want."
Simple. Everything was so simple, Ma Dai realized. All the contradictions he had contrived came tumbling down. If this is what his cousin wanted, if his cousin wanted him as he wanted his cousin and they weren't married and no one was in the room then-
"I love you too, Ma Dai." Ma Chao whispers in his ear. "I love you and want you, the same as you want me. Is that not enough for the moment?"
Ma Dai's brain could not comprehend. Perhaps he was making it all up, perhaps this was a dream, perhaps perhaps perhaps-
"Hush." Ma Chao's voice is uncharacteristically soothing, and he places another kiss to Ma Dai's neck, this one longer, more languid. Ma Dai shivers and lets out a sigh of appreciation as his hand slips to the back of Ma Chao's neck, and before he knows it, he's kissing Ma Chao again, finally letting the optimistic part of him take over. Their lips part, and soon Ma Chao is pulling him in tighter, until their noses are bumping and their teeth clashing in a struggle to show who wants the other more.
Something about the kiss is just so right, like a sweet bun with a bitter cup of tea. And though Ma Chao pulls away much too soon to cough into his sleeve, Ma Dai can feel the warm touch of calloused hands intertwined, reassuring Ma Dai without words that Ma Chao refused to go without a fight.
"At last, my dear Ma Dai." My dear. It seems like there were many new things to get accustomed to. "At last, you've told me what I've known. I have been waiting so long for you to say what you felt." Ma Chao flops onto his back and grimaces as the wind is knocked out of him. "Did you know," he wheezes, "Lady Yang had wished for you to tell her how you felt? She would have welcomed you with open arms, and our love with open arms."
"I am sorry."
"Do not be, for there is a time for everything, and the time for us is now." Ma Chao rubs Ma Dai's cheek affectionately. "And for now, it is time for me to rest. Would you be so kind as to be my sleeping partner for the time being?"
Ma Dai lets out a short laugh, a genuine one with actual humor for the first time since they began talking. "Of course, Ma Chao. I would be honored to fulfill my role as your human blanket." He lays down next to his older cousin, and soon their arms and legs are tangled, and their breath in tandem.
"Next to work on," Ma Chao yawns, before snuggling into the bed, "Is getting you to call me Mengqi."
