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“I'm a monster,” Gao Shen said bitterly from the darkness. “You don't want to see me, let alone be with me, anymore.”
Ding Liu clicked her tongue. She wasn’t surprised by Gao Shen’s words—Ye Liuxi had grumbled about needing to convince him it was worth having this conversation at all—but she didn’t enjoy being forced to stand outside the tunnel entrance he still hid within. “I'll be the judge of that,” she told him firmly. Nobody had ever been able to tell Ding Liu what she did or didn't like, and she wasn't about to let someone start now.
Something glimmered in the shadows, accompanied by the sound of dragging feet. Gao Shen, presumably; Ding Liu didn’t think anything else was in this area. Ding Liu leaned forward, pulse racing, waiting for a glimpse of him after so long. Months of waiting and thinking he was at best lost and more likely dead. The bright tangle of hope and worry that came with learning he was alive, but changed by the magic of Yumen Pass.
And now, finally, the full explanation was at hand.
“The golden snake changed me,” Gao Shen said, as if Ye Liuxi hadn't told her the same thing. “I'm not exactly human anymore.”
“Show me,” Ding Liu said, as gently as she could when her heart was in her throat. She wanted to demand it of him. Order him to reveal himself to her. Drag him out of the tunnels that kept him safe with her bare hands.
She couldn’t. He needed to do this on his own, or it wouldn’t matter. She couldn’t have him without him wanting her.
Gao Shen stepped into the light, eyes downcast, and it took a long breath for Ding Liu to spot why he was so worried about her reaction. He looked normal, and gloriously uninjured, at first glance: two arms, two legs, his splendidly muscled torso. His hair was long, in need of a haircut to buzz it back down, but that was understandable and not a monstrous problem. But then he moved, an uncertain shifting of weight, and she understood.
Gao Shen sparkled in the sunshine. Scales coated his body, finer than a fish’s, as smooth as human skin. The golden snake had turned him into a child of her own, a beautiful blend of human and serpent, and Ding Liu ached with yearning. Some of it was the delayed gratification of missing Gao Shen—of only truly realising how deeply she loved him after he was gone—but a large chunk of it was the brilliance of his scales and the desire to explore what other changes had touched him.
“Look at me,” Ding Liu whispered. She didn’t trust her voice to be any louder without breaking and leaping into his strong arms. If she did that, he might startle and run away.
The serpentine slits of Gao Shen’s eyes were a piercing dark amber. The wrinkles around them were familiar despite the shining scales: Gao Shen worried about her so often.
Ding Liu smiled and slowly began walking forward. “You’re just as handsome as ever,” she said when Gao Shen flinched back. “How could this make you less beloved?”
“How can you love this?” Gao Shen gestured at his body. Skin glinted through the holes in his worn clothes. She had new ones waiting for him in the car. They might be a little loose on him. Gao Shen had always been lean, but now he was outright skinny; Ding Liu had never before felt the urge to feed someone up, but now it was boiling in her gut with fervor as Gao Shen said, with anguish, “I've changed.”
The scales on his fingers, when Ding Liu touched them, were as smooth and soft as she had hoped. “So have I.” The long months waiting back in China for word to come from Ye Liuxi had hurt. Even with Chang Dong and Fei Tang helping her remember it was all real, sometimes their time in Yumen Pass had seemed like one long dream. Or, depending on the day, a nightmare. Ding Liu lifted Gao Shen's hand to her lips and softly kissed his knuckles. “I'm glad you're alive, Gao Shen. I want to learn every way you've changed. Maybe we can't go back through the gate anymore, but a home here with you…” She smiled. “I think we can make it work.”
He stared at her like he wanted to run away, like she had hypnotized him, like she was his salvation. It was a heady, overwhelming, sensation. Ding Liu wanted to swallow him into her heart. “Alright,” Gao Shen whispered after a too-long moment. “We can try.”
Ding Liu laid her hands on his cheeks and drew him into a kiss. His lips were dry, both from the desert wind and his snakeskin, but they willingly parted for her tongue as Gao Shen’s wonderfully large hands came up to cradle her head.
If she kissed him long enough and often enough, Ding Liu knew he’d believe her when she told him how good he looked and how much she liked feeling his solid body against her own.