Jin Guangyao knows he’s dying.
There’s a sword through his chest and blood in his lungs but all he can feel is regret. Because Lan Xichen is looking at him with his beautiful, beautiful eyes wide with shock, lips slightly parted.
He never wanted this to happen. He never wanted to hurt Lan Xichen but he did and that’s one, massive regret he’ll be taking to the grave with him.
”A-Yao,” Lan Xichen whispers, horrified. His hand trembles where he holds Shuoyue. It reverberates through Jin Guangyao and shakes more blood into his lungs.
”I didn’t,” he whispers back. ”I didn’t move.”
He does now. He grips Lan Xichen’s wrist and drags himself forward, skewers himself further, ignores the searing pain in the stump of his cut-out arm and the wet slide of Lan Xichen’s sword inside him. He pauses when his forehead touches Lan Xichen’s and for a moment, he just concentrates on breathing through the pain.
The Guanyin Temple is eerily silent around them. He can feel the others’ eyes on him but he doesn’t care.
Nothing really matters anymore.
Nothing but this.
”I’m so sorry,” he whispers and moves his grip from Lan Xichen’s wrist to his neck. ”I never wanted to hurt you.” He lifts his head and looks at Lan Xichen through his tears and presses one, desperate kiss on his lips. They’re warm and slack and Lan Xichen doesn’t kiss him back but it’s okay.
And then he rips himself from Lan Xichen, pushes him out of the way, and takes on the full force of Baxia slamming into him. As the sabre pins him to the floor and the Temple trembles above him, he closes his eyes and thinks about Lan Xichen’s lips.
And then he thinks of nothing more.