Chenzhou looked as shocked at his actions as Mingzhe felt.
Mingzhe raised a hand to his lips; they tingled from Chenzhou's kiss. A warm feeling settled in his stomach as a vicious blush tore across Chenzhou's face.
"I-"
He was going to run, Mingzhe realized, and it made him laugh.
Chenzhou stared at him, starting to look insulted on top of embarrassed, but at least he wasn't looking for the door anymore. "Was it that bad?" Chenzhou winced. "You're the first man I've ever kissed, and I didn't think…"
Mingzhe managed to get his laughter under control. "I wasn't laughing at you."
Chenzhou didn't look convinced.
"I promise, I wasn't. It was just…surprising."
Chenzhou's blush came back. "I'm sorry."
"You don't need to apologize." Mingzhe started to blush himself. "I liked it."
Chenzhou offered him a small smile. "You did?"
Mingzhe nodded and valiantly ignored the fact that they were acting like inexperienced children. "You have more experience than I do, I'm sure."
Chenzhou shook his head. "No, I mean, there was only ever Anna."
Mingzhe snorted. "Chenzhou, you were in a dedicated relationship for a decade; you have done far more than my limited fumblings with strangers." Mignzhe paused. "And Eirian."
Chenzhou fidgeted with his sleeves. "Eirian and I haven't…done anything yet."
Surprised, Mingzhe waited for him to continue.
"We kissed when we married, but that's it."
"Oh." Mingzhe wasn't sure what to say to that. He knew how they'd started off, of course, knew it wasn't typical, and Chenzhou had still been deeply in love with Anna, but Eirian was a vibrant, confident woman. Far more than either Chenzhou or Mingzhe and Mingzhe had watched Chenzhou fall for her day after day. When they'd all started sharing a bed during the war, they'd already seemed so comfortable with one another that he'd just assumed they'd at least consummated their marriage or slept together before.
Chenzhou shrugged awkwardly. "We never…We agreed not to when we first got married, and I had Anna. I figured she'd find someone else." From his expression, it was clear that he'd thought that was what Mingzhe was. "But nothing has gone as I expected, so I don't know why I'm surprised now."
Mingzhe couldn't help but smile at the annoyance in Chenzhou's voice. "That does tend to happen."
Chenzhou huffed.
Mingzhe needed to ask for his own sake. "Do you want…that kind of relationship with both of us?"
It was gratifying how quickly Chenzhou nodded. "Yes, of course, I just didn't want to rush. So much has been going on."
It was Mingzhe's turn to scoff. "That is putting it lightly. I suppose I didn't really recognize that you two have only been married for a matter of months."
"Not even a year yet," Chenzhou agreed, trying to digest that himself. "I didn't have a future for so long, and now that I do, I haven't had time to stop and think about what I want to do with it. The only thing that I do know is that I want you and Eirian beside me in it. However that works out, I'll accept."
A bit of worry that Mingzhe didn't realize he'd been carrying faded away at that. Part of the reason he didn't have much sexual experience was that he'd never felt driven to get any. He'd never been interested in someone the way he was interested in Chenzhou and Eirian, and he hadn't even really thought about sex with them.
How would that even work? He'd gotten the basics during a very disturbing conversation with his mother when he was much younger, but putting it into practice with a woman and a man was still an unknown.
"Do you think Eirian wants the same?" He asked Chenzhou.
"We haven't talked about it." The other man admitted, but he offered Mingzhe a bright smile. "But I think we should. She likes sex; she probably knows more about it than either of us."
"That is a relief." And made it slightly less intimidating.
"Eirian respects boundaries. I'm sure the reason she hasn't said or done something is that she's waiting for us to approach her." Chenzhou glanced at the scroll he'd been reading when he first arrived. "We should talk to her tonight at dinner."
Mingzhe bit his lip, nerves suddenly returning. "We could wait. Let her finish the investigation."
Chenzhou shook his head. "I think we should do it as soon as possible. Put everything on the table so we're all on the same page going forward. Especially with the investigation."
"This is not the time to start a relationship like this," Mingzhe argued. There was so much going on; letting them get more invested in him wasn't a smart idea.
But Chenzhou stayed firm. "No. There will always be something happening. Some reasons not to take that step. It's because it's scary. It's big. This will change everything for the three of us."
"All the more reason to wait." Mingzhe's palms grew clammy, his mind racing with all the ways this relationship could go wrong.
"Which is the very best reason not to." Chenzhou smiled again, softly, and reached out and brushed his fingertips across Mingzhe's cheek. "Waiting does nothing but cost us time we could have been together. Besides, Eirian will not want to wait."
That Mingzhe agreed with. Eirian would throw herself in headfirst the way she always did, and they would be pulled along in her wake.
***
With a more solid timeline, Eirian had a better idea of how the entire thing had started. The plan had to have been in place before the actual ambush. Given the time it took to lay plans like that, it was probably in place before Mingzhe's forces had even left the Camelia.
So how had they known it would be his soldiers?
Did it matter?
Technically, the rumors would have hurt any family whose forces had been lost. Eirian played it through in her head as she walked down the hallway to her rooms. Yuze and Kai Low had peeled off to finish their argument in private. They hadn't said that, but Eirian had assumed based on the growing chill they both gave off that managed to make the cooling autumn evening seem warm.
Maybe they'd fuck again and come out on the right side of it all this time.
Eirian couldn't shake the feeling that something was off with what they'd discovered today. She trusted Vitali, and she believed the information was accurate, but something about it didn't fit right. The rumors worked so well because they were against Mingzhe, who stood at the top of the Camelia's nobility and was close enough to Chenzhou that anything that hurt Mingzhe would also hurt Chenzhou.
That wouldn't necessarily be true for every other noble in the Camelia, so the point of the plan couldn't have been targeting Mingzhe unless they had some way of guaranteeing it was his forces that took over those outposts.
Hell, if Mingzhe had been a few hours slower, it probably would have been the soldiers of the Yangs, and the rumors wouldn't have half the power they did now, because Lady Yang, while respected, wasn't as close to Chenzhou.
So, who was the plan made to attack?
~ tbc