Oh, oh, oh it's magic (Xie and Kevin)

[xie_er]

Zhao Jing used to be a nobody, born into influence and wealth but always in the shadow of those around him. In magical circles he was even worse, a barely-remembered witch that didn't have enough power for any familiar to even consider looking twice at him.

Somehow, though, after many years (and a few suspicious deaths), he's managed to climb his way to the CEO of Five Lakes, his power - of both kinds - growing exponentially.

The previous CEO was surrounded by some unfortunate rumorus before his death, so Zhao Jing has been focused on repairing the reputation of he company and solidifying his support, mundane and magical, which means it is far too delicate a moment for Xie to be in the spotlight, even if he was promised he'd be allowed to stop hiding when the position was in Zhao Jing's hands.

He just has to wait a little longer, that's all, and it's not like it's difficult to only appear in his animal form whenever Zhao Jing is in public, just uncomfortable, and the last thing they need is for somebody to recognise Xie for any of the things he's done to help his witch get where he is today, when his position is still so precarious...

He tells himself all the excuses he's heard from Yifu, repeats them in his head like a mantra as he sits through all the meetings and negotiations, a little black cat and Zhao Jing's feet, watching the men and women he's speaking to for anything Yifu can use. He hangs around when Zhao Jing steps out the room, listens to what they say behind his back - that's his job with normal people, to be a pair of ears they don't realise are there. Even paranoid types who scan for bugs would miss him, which he finds funny, privately, because he is a bug of a sort.

Not that he's allowed to take his original animal form - a scorpion would be out of place if anybody caught sight of him, and Yifu doesn't like the idea of him hiding in pockets or anything like that. He says it's dangerous, that something could happen to him, but Xie privately thinks he just finds the form creepy. Even around other magical people, the cat is preferred - his job with them is to be a reminder that Zhao Jing has a familiar, and a relatively powerful one at that.

It's hard for familiars to change the form they can take, but he did it, for Yifu.

He tells people the cat is called Scorpion, and that somebody else named him - which is technically true, Xie does mean scorpion, and his parents named him - and that he's vaguely embarrassed to have such a fiercely named cat.

(He doesn't tell magical people anything at all, they know Xie isn't a pet so they're less likely to ask, at most they will wonder why his familiar always stays in animal form. Zhao Jing just tells them he's shy. He isn't, he doesn't care about people seeing him, but it's easier to do the things Yifu wants him to do when nobody knows what he looks like)

Xie hadn't always known he was powerful - when Yifu had taken him in he'd been told he wasn't much, but that maybe he could be useful. Later, when some witch had made an offhand comment about it, the story had become that Yifu recognised his power and took him in before anybody else could steal him away, that he just wanted to protect Xie from the people who would use him for his power. Xie was already so far gone by that point that he accepted it, that he told himself he was lucky he had Yifu to protect him, to guide him.

It's funny how easy it is to lie to yourself.

When the meetings are over for the day he finally shifts back to human form, spending a few minutes stretching out the kinks that come from forcing himself into a form that isn't quite his, especially with how much he's had to do it over the last few weeks, and then going in search of something to eat. He could probably just head back to his own apartment since he doesn't think Yifu needs anything else from him, not today, but the outsiders have all left and everybody in Yifu's manor at least knows Xie, even if they don't know that Xie and Scorpion are one and the same, so it's safe to be around them.

He likes to spend as much time here as he can get away with, likes to remind Yifu he can be useful in other ways... and maybe he likes to keep an eye on this new apprentice Yifu has taken on. He doesn't understand why he needs anybody else when he has Xie, but the last time he'd questioned somebody new in the house Yifu hadn't spoken to him for a week, so he doesn't voice that thought out loud - he just watches the guy suspiciously every chance he gets, and wonders how easy he would be to get rid of.

He's halfway to the kitchen when something makes him stop. A tug of power, the vague echo of chanting, there's a ritual happening and something about it is drawing him close. He frowns, confused, and follows the pull...

Comments

[xie_er]

Xie watches him go with a sad smile and then goes back to the kitchen to clean up and make himself a cup of tea (chamomile, since he knows he's going to have trouble sleeping).

He can't quite face going upstairs to an empty, unfamiliar bed, so he goes to the living room instead. He tidies away the abandoned chess board and then sits, running through the day's events. What if he'd realised sooner, got there faster? Could he have stopped it? Helped?

When Kevin appears in the doorway he looks up with a start.

"Everything okay?"

[weird_cop]

Oh god, Kevin thinks suddenly, this is stupid. It's strained and awkward and what if Xie thinks he's suddenly remembered him, fallen in love or wants a shag or something?

He chews his lip for a second.

"Just having trouble sleeping," he says, which is true. "Uh..."

Okay, here goes.

"You don't have to sleep in the spare room.

"Sorry, no. That's weird."

But he doesn't want to be alone.

[xie_er]

Xie is not naive enough to think it must be magically fixed, and he knows Kevin well enough to think he probably doesn't want to fuck somebody he just found out was a murderer, but not wanting to be alone? That he can understand.

He's quiet for a moment, puzzling through the awkwardness and the options before landing on that conclusion.

"Would you like some company?" He says softly - gentle, no innuendo, just another warm body present. Maybe it's because of the day he had, maybe some part of him is just used to it, either way Xie isn't going to say no.

[weird_cop]

Kevin breathes out in relief.

"Yes please."

He sounds - he feels - horribly pathetic asking this. He can't stop thinking how difficult this must be for Xie, seeing someone he presuambly loves acting like this. He wonders if he's even acting like that man, if Xie is seeing someone else who just looks like Kevin Sefton.

It would even be fine if it was just awkward, that they could be polite stranegrs for a while, laugh about it earlier.

But - and he rubs his wrists, the red raw bald spots left by the duct tape - it's not just awkward. He wants someone with him when he falls asleep.

[xie_er]

Xie nods, setting down his nearly empty tea-cup. The only thing keeping him up was not wanting to be alone either, so he's happy to move now, only...

He eyes the raw skin from the tape and changes his mind.

"Come here a second," he says, patting the couch beside him "you should take care of that first."

Once he sits, Xie talks him through - as best he can - how to use the meditation techniques Kexing re-taught him to heal his injury.

[weird_cop]

This is a revelation. Tony had told him that he had healed him from a stabbing, but Kevin hadn't thought he could just heal himself from something as seemingly minor as this.

He brings his legs up on the couch next to him to sit cross-legged, and listens to Xie explain.

He draws on the power that he knows is there, and uses it to wash the skin on first his wrists, and then his ankles. He doesn't have any sense of a differentiation in that power, it's just all there, so he uses as much as he needs.

When he's done with those injuries, he holds some of the power and tries to direct it into his mind. Just in case he thinks. Maybe it is that simple.

Though it doesn't occur to him to ask why no one else suggested it as a possiblilty.

If it can heal his skin, maybe it can reconnect the synapses...

Fro a second Kevin wonders if he's been shot in the head. The pain fires into his temple, intense and sudden and fleeting. Kevin has a second to cry out before he slumps forward, gasping for breath and reaching one hand out for Xie.

"Fuck," he swears into the link.

[xie_er]

Xie feels the gentle tug of Kevin using his power and honestly he wonders at it, wonders if Kevin even realises he's doing it. It feels familiar, though (pun not intended), and comforting.

He feels the echo of the pain sharply enough that for a moment it's almost like he's in pain himself, but he realises quickly enough that it wasn't his own, and he grabs onto Kevin's hand when he reaches for him.

"What is it, what happened?"

[weird_cop]

Kevin grips Xies hand tightly- maybe too tightly - for a second, reeling in the pain, before he makes himself laugh at himself.

"I can't heal memory loss through magic.

He blinks at the flashing lights in his vision, unable to focus on anything, and raises his free hand to his forehead.

Carefully, slowly, he investigates the new pain, and against his better judgment eases some of his magic there - at the pain, not the hole in his memory.

[xie_er]

Xie squeezes his hand back, huffing a soft laugh in turn.

"If you could, Kexing would have told you as much" He says softly - not accusingly, just in agreement with his discovery.

"Can I do anything to help?"

[weird_cop]

"It was worth a try."

It probably wasn't worth that try.

"It's okay, I think I can fix what I just did."

He breathes slowly and lets the magic heal the physical injury in his head before his grip on Xie's hand finally relaxes and he has control of his mouth and voice again.

"I should go to bed before I do any more damage to myself."

[xie_er]

Xie doesn't disagree with him out loud - the pain has punished him enough, he doesn't need to rub it in.

He smiles slightly, resists the urge to lean in and kiss him, and nods.

"You should," he agrees "come on."

He keeps hold of Kevin's hand as he stands, tugging lightly to pull him up and lead him back upstairs.

[weird_cop]

Kevin wonders at that - whether he was just imagining that sense of an urge, or if it's indicative of something. He hasn't been told that his Sighted ability comes with empathy.

He smiles shyly and obediently lets Xie lead him back upstairs, where he hangs hid robe up and gets back into bed.

Its easier, with Xie here, but still he lies awake for a while. When he finally dreams he's walking dark, wet tunnels, beside a man in a suit of newspaper.

"I can't help you get back to the light," the man says. "I can only keep you company while you're lost."

[xie_er]

Xie moves around the room getting ready for bed, comforting himself with the familiar routine - though as he's undoing his own braids he can't help but think about how long it might be before he feels Kevin's fingers running through his hair again.

He pushes the melancholy aside, convincing himself they're going to fix this, and soon, and goes to join Kevin in the bed.

He's careful not to get too close - near enough to be a comforting presence but trying to keep it from being awkward.

It takes him a while to get to sleep as well, Kevin feeling both right next to him and a million miles away, but eventually he does drift off.

[weird_cop]

Some time in the night, as he struggles to find his way out of the tunnels in his dreams, Kevin rolls over, towards the warmth in the bed beside him, the comforting presence.

He curls up on himself, knees bent and hands tucked against his own chest, but as the night comes on he shifts closer.

[xie_er]

Xie is so used to sleeping beside the man he loves that it's hardly surprising he responds to Kevin moving closer by shifting close in turn.

Sometime in the early morning, half awake and not really thinking about it, he moves automatically, cuddling up to Kevin to wrap an arm around him and tangle their legs together, burying his face into Kevin's shoulder with a sigh of contentment before letting himself drift off back to sleep.

[weird_cop]

Kevin wakes slowly, struggling to surface from his dreams which feel like they're pulling him back down. The warmth of a body next to him is comforting, and at first he reaches for that warmth.

Until he wakes up enough to realise that he's next to a man he barely knows, so he disentangles himself as carefully as he can, feeling both the wrongness of being with someone he doesn't know and the guilt because he should know him.

[xie_er]

Xie grumbles sleepily as Kevin pulls away, his grip tightening for a moment to try and hold him in bed - just like he does every morning.

Except then enough reality filters in that he realises what he's doing and he lets go abruptly, feeling a rush of guilt. It's not fair to cling to Kevin like that, not when he's already dealing with so much.

"Sorry" he says sheepishly, shuffling away from him and opening his eyes cautiously to give him an apologetic smile "Habit..."

[weird_cop]

"It's okay."

Kevin uses the link because Xie did, not out of any specific habit, and trying to smile despite his own guilt.

"I'm sorry."

Sorry he can't be who Xie needs, or wants. Sorry he can't just be Kevin.

[xie_er]

"You don't need to be sorry, this isn't your fault" Xie tells him firmly - the last thing he wants is for Kevin to feel guilty about how much he's struggling with this.

Even though, really, that's probably the most Kevin thing he's done so far.

"We should get up anyway, Lisa said they were sending a car round" He's awake now, and his usual comfortable lazing while Kevin cooks breakfast just doesn't have the same appeal.

[weird_cop]

Kevin nods, trying to banish the guilt, and not quite managing it. But he does manage to get dressed - and makes another comment to Xie about his own dress sense and how easy it is to distinguish their clothes.

"What do we usually have for breakfast?"

[xie_er]

He laughs lightly at the comment about their clothes - he does laze a little longer, but then gets up to dress himself.

"Whatever you feel like cooking that day..." he admits, slightly sheepishly. He wonders if that's bad, if he should be making more effort to choose or help with the food, but Kevin's never given any indication that he minds deciding what they're going to have for dinner, and Xie will offer up an opinion when he's asked for it.

[weird_cop]

"Oh."

Well, okay, he thinks. A reason to see if he remembers how to make breakfast.

"Can you show me where everything is?"

[xie_er]

Xie nods, tying his hair into a single braid with deft fingers - he'll come and braid properly later, but for now it seems sensible to help Kevin out in the kitchen.

"Do you know what you want to make or do you want me to pick something?" He offers as he starts downstairs, assuming Kevin will follow.

[weird_cop]

"I thought I'd see what there is and what I think I could make?" Kevin admits.

"I believe I could probably cook eggs and not poison us. And I'm sure I could work a toaster?"

[xie_er]

Xie nods, happy enough with that answer.

"You can definitely normally cook eggs without poisoning anybody, I assume that hasn't changed" he confirms with a faint smile "Eggs and toast sounds good, though"