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koipudding · 4 days ago

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— the ephemeris of us ⟢

you try to divine a future where you’ll stay with him forever, yet the stars refuse to heed your call. but jing yuan doesn’t need forever. all he needs is you.

★ featuring; jing yuan x gn!reader

★ word count; 3.2k words

★ tags; reader works at the divination commission, the woes of mortality, short life species!reader, angst, fluff, hurt/comfort

★ notes; as uze, crossposting here is late :p i've been told a lot by people that they like how i write jing yuan, and coincidentally i, too, like how i write jing yuan so here we are!!!! this is a bday fic for a dear friend over on x, but i thought to share with you as well :3c

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The headache bloomed behind your eyes around midafternoon, but you ignored it like you always do.

You were supposed to log off two hours ago, yet you’re still transcribing the fourth permutation of Fu Xuan’s “minor” revisions to the celestial calibration doctrine. The ink is drying too fast on your sleeves and too slow on the sigils. Your stomach growls—loud enough to make your ears burn from embarrassment, even though no one’s around to hear it. Probably.

But just when glance over to check an astrological aberration in your notes, the light shifts in the doorway.

“You were meant to be home by the sixth chime,” comes a familiar voice, smooth and impossibly calm. “But instead, I find you composing a symphony of stress.”

You glance up to see Jing Yuan leaning against the doorframe, one brow slightly raised like he has all the time in the world. His hands are occupied with a dark-lacquered lunch box, and the scent of the food reaches you in delayed waves. Your stomach growls again, but you ignore it completely.

“I just needed to finish a few edits before the deadline.”

Jing Yuan hums. “You said that four deadlines ago.”

He’s not smiling. There’s an amused flicker behind his eyes, but the rest of his face is composed into something more serious. You press your fingers to your temples and try not to wince when he steps inside.

“Don’t tell me,” he says, now close enough for the warmth of his presence to register across your skin. “No lunch. Medication left at home. And judging by the clumsiness of your sigils—don’t pout at me—you haven’t had any water in hours either.”

You let your arms fall to the desk. “Why are you like this?”

He blinks innocently. “Like what?”

“Too perceptive. Too… annoyingly attentive.”

He sets the lunch box down beside your elbow, brushing aside a curled slip of annotated paper. His fingers glance against yours—light contact, but enough to startle you out of your irritation.

“I pay attention,” the Arbiter-General says simply. “Especially when the people I care for are trying to quietly ruin themselves under a mountain of work.”

Your breath catches. The words are too soft and direct, even for him. You’d been expecting teasing. Not this.

“I’m not trying to ruin myself,” you mumble. “I’m just… trying to keep up with work.”

“You’ve already proven yourself a hundred times over.” Jing Yuan crouches beside your chair, arms resting on his knees. “You don’t have to keep burning yourself down to ash just to stay visible.”

You look down. Away from the sincerity in his gaze.

“But I don’t want to fall behind,” you tell him stubbornly. “I’m not like you, Jing Yuan. I don’t have centuries to perfect everything. Every mistake feels heavier. Every year feels like it matters more. Like if I waste a single one, it’s already too late.”

He goes still.

You didn’t mean to say it. But once it’s out, it lingers between you like smoke.

A quiet hum vibrates in his throat. “You think I’ve perfected anything?” he says at last. “I’ve just lived long enough to regret more things.”

You glance at him sharply, but his golden eyes are somewhere far away.

“I’ve seen brilliance burn out young. And I’ve seen it slowly dim in silence. Time doesn’t make it easier. It just makes it… Bearable.”

There’s a pause. And then he exhales, like he’s pulling it somewhere deeper than his lungs.

“You always think you’ll have time,” Jing Yuan murmurs. “Until you love someone who doesn’t.”

That lands with more force than anything else. Because it’s not about deadlines or documentation anymore. It’s about the deep unfairness etched into the bones of your lives: that while his story stretches on indefinitely, yours will always have a final chapter.

“That’s your comfort speech?” you ask, a strained laugh escaping before you can stop it. “Outlive the pain, rack up regrets, and call it wisdom? You do realize that felt more like a lance to the chest than reassurance, right?”

“I am only as candid as I am with you because you’ve never needed sugarcoating,” he says softly. “You’ve always been strong enough to hold the truth, even when it hurts.”

Then, quieter: “Especially when it hurts.”

You laugh again, because what else is there to do?

As you rub at your aching forehead, you can’t help but marvel at the absurdity of it all—how a short-life species like you ended up falling for the man who’s occupied the Seat of Divine Foresight for nearly seven centuries. He walks through decades like they’re seasons. You count time in birthdays, deadlines, missed meals, and yet here you are. Tethered to him irrevocably.

But maybe the greater folly is his: loving someone fleeting, when he’s already weathered more losses than most hearts are built to bear. For all his calm and his poise, for all the wars he’s led and years he’s survived, Jing Yuan still chooses you—knowing exactly how little time you have to give.

“Alright, fine. I’ll eat. You win.”

“This is not about winning,” he says. “It’s about keeping you around long enough to make fun of me when my knees start failing.”

You blink. “…You know damn well that mine will go first.”

His grin fades, just a little, and it tugs at your heart more than it should.

“I know,” he says softly.

Jing Yuan straightens and offers his hand, and you take it without hesitation, fingers twining with his like they’ve always belonged between the spaces. As you stand, the room tilts slightly—your knees stiff, your skull light with fatigue and hunger. He notices, of course, and he slips an arm around your back without a word, steadying you as you find your balance.

There’s nothing overbearing about it—just quiet support, the kind that says he’s done this before and he’ll keep doing it for as long as you let him.

“You always show up when I look like death warmed over,” you grumble as you grab the lunch box he brought.

“On the contrary,” Jing Yuan murmurs, guiding you outside, toward the hustle and bustle of the Exalting Sanctum, “I happen to think you’re at your most captivating when you let yourself be mortal.”

You bury your face in his sleeve, hoping he won’t feel how sharply your heart skips. But you suspect he already knows. He always does.

No one expected it.

Fu Xuan certainly didn’t—though she muttered she should’ve seen it in the stars, if you hadn’t constantly “disrupted the Omniscia’s celestial patterns with your interpretive nonsense”.

You’re a short-life species with a long-life temper. A fast-burning match in a hall of timeless candles. Too sharp-tongued, too stubborn, too hungry.

The youngest diviner in the Commission to ever draft a triple-thread predictive matrix all on their own, and the only one to do it while arguing with a senior archivist mid-simulation. Not quite a formal title, but “the most talented diviner with the worst sense of self-preservation” is what the Cloud Knights have taken to calling you.

You wear it like a badge. The stars have favorites, and so do you.

The first time you were in Jing Yuan’s presence, you didn’t even see him. You were too busy arguing with one of your superiors.

It was supposed to be a routine oversight meeting. You’d been summoned to explain why your astral forecast readings directly contradicted the Omniscia’s predicted trajectory for the Luofu. Which pissed you off beyond belief. Their trajectory calculations were wrong. The math didn’t lie, but the higher-ups refused to acknowledge it. They clung to outdated, comfortable visions of the stars as if they hadn’t already begun to shift.

So you stood there, voice sharp and rising in tempo with every slide projection you slammed into the air. You were sweating through your outer robe and still speaking in clipped, defiant tones that silenced the room like a severed thread.

You didn’t even notice when the most important man in the Luofu entered the hall.

Not until later, when a summons arrived in your quarters: Arbiter-General Jing Yuan requests a private follow-up regarding your methodological deviation. Please prepare a brief report.

You showed up an hour late with a half-eaten peach in one hand, and a stack of annotated star maps in the other. You didn’t bother bowing.

“These are written with love and care and excessive overtime,” you said, dropping the papers on his desk. “So please read them thoroughly.”

He raised an eyebrow, amusement dancing across his handsome face.

The Arbiter-General asked thoughtful questions. You gave him answers laced with just a hint of defiance that would probably get you fired. But he didn’t reprimand you. He just listened. Somewhere in the middle of it, when you were ranting about the inconsistencies in the astral convergence model, he smiled. Faint and brief, like someone recognizing an old constellation in a new sky.

You told yourself it meant nothing.

But when Jing Yuan asked for you back again—and again, and again—you started bringing two peaches instead of one.

Just in case.

Now, you're curled sideways on your couch back home—throat raw, sinuses aching, eyes gritty with exhaustion. Your star charts lie scattered across the floor, victims of an earlier outburst when the numbers stopped making sense and your patience finally snapped. Between the fever clouding your thoughts and everything else quietly unraveling, it’s fair to say the day has not been kind.

Nothing was lining up. Not the timeline on the prophecy Fu Xuan gave you yesterday, not the medication schedule you forgot to follow, and definitely not the part where you were supposed to eat hours ago.

The door to the living room creaks open.

You don’t look up. You just sigh.

“I brought soup,” Jing Yuan greets with a lopsided smile. “And medicine.”

“Fu Xuan’s been tattling again,” you mutter.

“No,” he replies, and you hear the soft clink of ceramic as he begins unpacking something from a bag, “your silence tattled all on its own. You haven’t contacted me in exactly twelve hours.”

You bury your face deeper into the pillow, equal parts mortified and moved. Your apartment smells faintly of incense and dried oranges, and now, of medicinal broth. It’s the scent of care wrapped in routine—something you’ve never been especially good at holding onto. The quiet comfort of being cared for without having to earn it, ask for it, or explain why you need it.

Jing Yuan sets the bowl on the coffee table and crouches beside you.

“You skipped the noon dose,” he says quietly.

“I was working.”

“You also skipped breakfast. And your charting shows signs of mental fatigue.”

You pull the blanket over your face. “Stop reading my patterns like they’re reports.”

“I’d rather read you than any report.”

You hate how fast your heart reacts to that. Because he always says things like this. Soft, steady declarations delivered like promises, like you’ll be around long enough to carry them with you.

But you won’t. And you both know it.

That’s the grief neither of you are brave enough to name. The quiet, inevitable sorrow that lives between your hours. He will still be here when your bones are dust. When your name is nothing more than a footnote in some archival file, tucked away on a shelf he’ll walk past for centuries to come.

You burn bright, and he endures. That’s the curse. The stars never lied. You just kept trying to make them.

Just last week, when the corridors had emptied and the Divination Commission was asleep, you broke protocol. Lit a soul-compass alone and trembling, laid out your personal threads with ink-stained fingers and a desperation that bordered on madness. You tried to divine a timeline—any timeline—where your life ran long enough to match his. Where you didn’t have to leave him so soon.

You whispered Jing Yuan’s name like a prayer. You begged the stars to show you something. A future where you grew old in the shadow of his smile.

But the threads refused to yield.

Or maybe they did. Maybe they answered you in a language you already knew—one written in silence, in absence, in the terrible stillness of a map with no road leading forward. You couldn’t finish the reading, couldn’t bear to see it printed in starlight. Because if you did, you’d have to admit what you already fear most:

That no matter how tightly he holds you now, he was never meant to keep you.

Jing Yuan brushes your hair back from your forehead, startling you out of your thoughts. You hadn’t noticed he’d moved closer.

“I wish you wouldn’t push so hard,” he says, fingers warm and careful. “You are not a dying star. You don’t have to burn out to be brilliant.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” you murmur hoarsely. “You have time.”

His expression doesn’t change, but something flickers behind his eyes—like a candle guttering in a sudden rush of wind.

“That’s exactly why I say it,” he replies. “Because I know what time does. How it stretches. How it hollows.”

Jing Yuan brushes his thumb over your temple, a soothing pass of warmth and worry. “You think I don’t see it? The way you measure your days like rationed light? You’ve convinced yourself that every second has to be earned. That if you rest, you’ll fall behind. That if you slow down, the world will forget you.”

Your breath catches.

“But I won’t,” he says simply. “Even when time pulls you away from everything else, I will still remember.”

You shut your eyes.

Because how do you live with that? How do you carry the knowledge that you’ll fade—and he’ll carry what’s left of you? That long after your name is lost to history, he’ll still be here, meandering through centuries, with your memory folded quietly between each one?

“What if I could find it?” you whisper. “A future where we stay like this. Forever.”

He doesn’t answer right away. Just lets the silence stretch between you, gentle and solemn. Then:

“I don’t need forever,” Jing Yuan sighs. “I only need you.”

You go still.

He shifts a little closer, his voice steady in that way that breaks you more than if he were shaking. It’s the kind of calm that comes from someone who has made peace with the things he cannot keep.

“If all I have is one year with you, or ten, or fifty… I’ll take it. And if you leave this world before I do, then I’ll remember you longer than any stars ever could. You’ll live in every breath I take, in the pauses between them. In the quiet where your voice used to be. That will be enough.”

Your throat burns, and this time, the ache comes from deep inside your chest.

“Even if I forget myself,” you murmur, “you’ll still remember me?”

He smiles—tired and fond. “You think I could forget the person who always acted like my summons were a waste of time, yet continued to bring peaches for me anyway?”

You huff a soft laugh, the tears threatening to spill over. He presses the cup of soup into your hands, wrapping his fingers lightly around yours.

“Drink,” he encourages. “Live.”

And you do.

Because even if love like this can’t rewrite the stars, Jing Yuan makes it feel like every moment might still be worth defying them.

You sip the soup slowly. You still feel like hell, but the tightness in your chest has eased—less from the broth, and more from the quiet way he sits beside you, steady and present. Across from you, Jing Yuan watches with an expression that always lingers on his face: a flicker of amusement dancing at the edges of his eyes.

“I should do this more often,” he murmurs. “Show up uninvited, bring food, get you to actually rest. It worked last time, too.”

You narrow your eyes at him over the rim of the cup. “You act like I’m difficult.”

“You’re infamously difficult,” he says smoothly. “Even Lady Fu agrees. I believe her words were, ‘that reckless little star-stain will work themselves into a coma if you don’t bribe them with food or a raise.’”

You snort. “She did not say that.”

“She absolutely did.”

You slump back into your nest of blankets, grumbling. “Bribes, huh.”

Jing Yuan shifts forward slightly, resting his elbow on one knee. His tone turns casual—too casual.

“Well. If bribes work... maybe I’ll make you a deal.”

You eye him warily. “What kind of deal.”

He holds your gaze, voice dipping just a shade lower.

“If you eat your meals. Take your medicine. Sleep when I tell you to…” He pauses, just long enough to let the implication settle. “You get a kiss for each task completed.”

You blink. Then squint at him.

“Is this supposed to be a threat or a reward?”

“Depends,” he says mildly. “Are you planning on misbehaving?”

You toss a pillow at him. He catches it with one hand, laughing, and for a moment, your small living room feels a little bigger—lit not by lamps, but by something gentler.

Something like love. Something like hope.

You don’t get sick anymore. Not like that, anyway.

Since that week, you’ve started taking your breaks when you’re supposed to. Eating proper meals. Sleeping like a semi-responsible adult. Fu Xuan nearly choked on her tea the first time you turned down an overtime simulation with the words “I’ll finish it tomorrow.”

It wasn’t easy—learning to slow down, to stop treating your life like a countdown timer you had to outrun. But it helped. You recovered faster than you expected. Stronger, even. As if your body had simply been waiting for you to stop working against it.

And true to his word, Jing Yuan kissed you for every completed task. Every dose taken. Every empty bowl he found in your sink.

Even when you got better—when you stopped updating him like clockwork, when you went back to managing your schedule without spiraling—he didn’t stop.

He still shows up.

Still kisses you when you hand him a used meal container or let him see your pill sleeve half empty.

Still presses warm, lingering gratitude into your skin for doing something as simple as taking care of yourself.

Which is how you end up outside Fu Xuan’s office, in full view of a handful of baffled attendants, with Jing Yuan leaning in to kiss the corner of your mouth like you’re not standing two steps from the Divination Commission’s most sacred archives.

You jerk back, blinking. “Jing Yuan!”

“What?” he says, entirely unrepentant.

You glance around, mortified. “People are going to see! What are you even doing here?”

The Arbiter-General just smiles, slow and absolutely shameless. “I saw you eating your lunch earlier. Very good.”

You smack his arm, half laughing, half scandalized. “You’re unbelievable.”

But you don’t move away when he kisses your cheek again.

And when he slips a peach into your hand before vanishing down the corridor like he hadn’t just committed affection-based misconduct on government property, you can’t help the stupid grin that follows you all the way back to your desk.

You were never meant to last forever, but Jing Yuan seems like he’ll love you that long anyway.

#head in hands he so soft anf sweet and augh #recs★#need to cuddle him so bad omfg

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