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Xie Lian dreamt often, in those waiting months. Sword dreams and fire dreams, mask dreams, death dreams—all of these were his old acquaintances, and he knew how to wake from them. He could shake them off, make himself tea and sit outside with it and let the world be quiet around him until he was quiet too. The touch dreams were new—that is to say, their warm sweetness was new. Not demanding hands that clawed at him but gentle ones spreading across his sides, cradling the back of his head or—

Those dreams were harder to wake from. The squirming restlessness in his body lingered, he shifted smoothly from dreaming into waking into reaching for another person and finding only his own bedding. He woke with his hips moving uneasily and his face burning and he said a name, begging for someone beloved to come to him and make sense of the way his body wanted. Nobody came. He lay in the dark panting like a wounded animal, and then he got up and tried to find calm as he usually did, and it failed as often as it succeeded. Sometimes the dreams sat low in his belly for hours, heavy in the cradle of his hips. And what was he to do with them?

I will break my vows for San Lang, he thought. This was a simple decision. He had decided some time ago. But he did not very much want to break them alone. His arousal felt foreign when not coaxed to life by Hua Cheng's mouth and hands. It felt awkward and uncomfortable, it didn't quite fit—and yet it was difficult, all the same, to put aside. It was an act of discipline which was no longer reflexive, each step a conscious one. Recite. Hold the body just so. Recite. Recite. All through those nights and mornings.

I'm not ashamed, he thought, although he wasn't certain it was true. He was not ashamed of wanting Hua Cheng, but he was perhaps ashamed of what he had to offer, or at any rate self-conscious about it. He would be awkward, he knew. He would be unsure how to move his body. His cheeks heated as he tried to imagine it, the specifics of it. Acts.

Recite. Recite.

And then for weeks at a time the dreams would leave him, and he would be at ease. He dreamed only of altars and swords, the inside of a body that had once been his put on display, towers burning, grasslands burning.

He dreamed only of things he couldn't save.

And now there are lanterns rising into the sky in their thousands—and now there are two men upon a mountain, running, running. Xie Lian has not been dreaming of Hua Cheng's hands these past weeks, his body has been quietly obedient, and so he is not even a little braced against the feeling of being caught up by them and clutched against a broad chest.

Hua Cheng does not need to breathe, but he is breathing, gasping into Xie Lian's hair. "Gege," he says. "Gege, gege . . . "

"I'm dirty, San Lang," Xie Lian murmurs. His eyes are stinging with how much happiness he feels. "I've been out collecting all day, let me down."

"Gege is the one holding onto my robes," Hua Cheng says, and Xie Lian realises belatedly that it's true, that he's holding onto fistfuls of red fabric, clutching in turn.

Red for a wedding, he thinks, and remembers—the palanquin, the young man, the blood rain. He clutches harder, laughing into Hua Cheng's chest. His laughter hiccups.

"Gege," Hua Cheng says again. His hand comes up to the back of Xie Lian's head, cups it gently like it's a precious fragile thing. "Look at me?"

Xie Lian raises his face. Here Hua Cheng is, here's San Lang—tall and grave-pale and lovely, the loveliest man Xie Lian has ever seen. He makes himself let go of Hua Cheng's robes, lets Hua Cheng set him gently down on his feet—reaches up to touch Hua Cheng's cheek, brush his fingers against the edge of his eyepatch.

"Dianxia," Hua Cheng whispers. "I kept you waiting."

Xie Lian's body is awake, awake in this new way that has haunted him since the first time Hua Cheng kissed him. There are so many things to say and so many things to do and all of them knot themselves together hotly in his gut.

"And I you, I think," he says, and he feels the way Hua Cheng shivers, the way it runs through his whole body. He wants to shiver in response. His cheeks are hot. Oh, he has kept Hua Cheng waiting. Eight hundred years. "Kiss me?"

Hua Cheng shivers again, and the shiver settles into him and stays there. He slides his shaking hands across Xie Lian's skin and hair, cups his face between his soft new palms.

They have kissed before, but so rarely without pretense.

They have kissed before, but he has had so much time to dream.

Hua Cheng is still breathing for him, is warm for him. The sky is bright with his devotion.

He bends so carefully.

"For Dianxia, anything," he whispers. His lips brush Xie Lian's as he speaks—and then they are kissing, wet and open, sweet then hungry. Xie Lian presses himself against Hua Cheng, squirms close, an outward movement to mirror the feeling in his insides. He is very aware of his skin—where it's bare, where it's buried beneath layers and layers. He's dirty from his work and from the road and he still wants to be closer, closer. Hua Cheng is here, with him, holding him.

"You're shaking," Xie Lian says, as Hua Cheng pulls back. He takes an uneven breath. Every time he thinks he can't blush any more deeply, he proves himself wrong. "Or I'm shaking. San Lang, San Lang, kiss me again."

Salt kisses, deep and frantic. Xie Lian loves Hua Cheng frantically, clings to him frantically. His waiting felt patient but it wasn't, it wasn't. It had a veneer of patience and underneath was all of this, everything that's making him whimper into Hua Cheng's mouth, everything that's making his eyes ache. Hua Cheng's worship pours into him, into the bottomless well of him.

Here: the bed. Xie Lian, newly bathed and wearing a thin robe, perches on the edge of it; Hua Cheng pauses uncertainly beside it, as though Xie Lian could have any hesitation about sharing it with him, and so Xie Lian pats it, inviting. The wooden frame creaks under Hua Cheng's weight, the wonderful physicality of him—he settles himself behind Xie Lian, presses his face into Xie Lian's shoulder. He has been shivery and skittish all evening, unlike his usual playful boldness. This is real, and real things are harder than games.

He reaches, spreads his hand on Xie Lian's stomach, thumb against the bottom of his ribs. Xie Lian bites his lip so as not to gasp.

"Will you," he says, and breaks off. Real things—

"What?" Hua Cheng asks. "What would you have of your devoted believer?"

"All of him," Xie Lian says. He laughs softly, flushing again. "That is, ah—"

He touches Hua Cheng's hand, nudges it so that it sits lower on his stomach, below the navel. He feels fluttery below its weight.

"You want that?"

Xie Lian fidgets—prods at Hua Cheng's fingers, plucks at the hem of his sleeve. The knuckles of Hua Cheng's hands and the bones of his wrist are so solid, he really does feel so nicely solid. He has been a memory for a year, and a small weight against Xie Lian's chest—a person's ashes, once compressed and caught in metal, weigh very little.

He's glad that Hua Cheng can't see his face. He manages not to laugh or cry.

"Don't make me say it, San Lang. You're teasing."

"Dianxia," Hua Cheng murmurs. He presses his nose into the soft space behind Xie Lian's ear. His mouth finds Xie Lian's neck.

"Oh," Xie Lian says. His shoulder blades must be digging into Hua Cheng's chest, the way he's arching himself. Only Hua Cheng's hand on his belly keeps him from sliding off the edge of the bed entirely.

"This is a greater thing to steal than a kiss," Hua Cheng tells him.

Xie Lian closes his eyes. He thinks of statues and flowers and arrogant words which nonetheless saved just one person, one important person. A parasol, a butterfly, a knotted red thread. Masks worn, masks removed.

"There's no theft," he says. "There's nothing you can steal from me. Don't I owe you a debt of spiritual energy, San Lang? Take it, and then I'll—I'll have you lend it back to me again."

He could bury his face in his hands, curl himself up into an embarrassed ball, but the way Hua Cheng is holding him doesn't allow it. He can only sit with his own words, flustered by himself and by the way his whole body feels warm and light. None of that is how this works, really—his spiritual energy would be dispersed, not gifted. But flimsy pretense has worked well for him so far. He isn't quite ready to let go of all of it yet.

Hua Cheng's grip on him tightens. Xie Lian's robe bunches around his fingertips, pulls askew, and Xie Lian watches with shaky interest as his own knee is revealed, and then a stretch of his thigh and shin. His legs seem pale compared to his hands, although not pale at all compared to Hua Cheng's. He hadn't really considered the differences between skin and skin before—had considered the naked feeling of his unshackled ankle, but had not thought so much about his appearance. The fine details of this body he inhabits, so full of places where marks should be. His bare neck, his unscarred stomach.

He turns his leg, encouraging his robe to slip further. He sort of wants to see his own erection, and is at the same time quite afraid to. He can feel his pulse in it, an achy kind of thudding, the edge of the sensation sharp enough to sting.

"Do something, San Lang," he says. "Please, I—"

He scrambles to turn in Hua Cheng's arms at the same time as Hua Cheng lifts him, and their bodies knock awkwardly together, making him giggle helplessly—and then Hua Cheng manages to move him, tumbles Xie Lian down onto the bed as though he had never hesitated to touch him, and sinks his weight down on top of him.

A coffin on a black sea. Fevered eyes in a temple as a far-away kiln opened. He has been under the weight of Hua Cheng's aroused body, Hua Cheng has pressed against his hard cock. It was very difficult to be close in the coffin—it was very easy to be close in the temple. The temple wasn't for him. He has held Hua Cheng as he shivered his way through desperate release. Stroked his hair as he cried out. Easy, because it wasn't about his body. Other people's pleasure doesn't embarrass him, although how much he wanted to be trusted with Hua Cheng's did.

This is another thing again.

Those times, he was trying not to want.

Hua Cheng shifts, slots their bodies more comfortably together. His thigh feels huge between Xie Lian's. He's a big man, after all, isn't he—half the time, Xie Lian still thinks of him with the slighter body in which Hua Cheng met him on an oxcart—gives him his true face, lovely in its sharpness and its scars, but thinks that he could easily look Hua Cheng in the eye, could ruffle his hair without stretching.

He feels engulfed. Red robes spread around them. Let's get married, gege—how quickly Hua Cheng took those words back, then.

If I tell him right now that I want to get married, Xie Lian wonders, will he insist we stop and wait for our wedding night? He might—romantic man.

He keeps his tongue caged behind his teeth, holds the words in his mouth, a sugar animal melting and sinking into his body to live there. Hua Cheng nuzzles at his cheek, presses his nose into the corner of Xie Lian's jaw. His teeth scrape very gently against the side of Xie Lian's neck. He is just slightly fanged, Xie Lian's sweet predator, and the slide of those points across Xie Lian's pulse makes him gasp.

Hua Cheng huffs softly, kisses him there instead.

"No, I," Xie Lian says. He can't work out how to say it—sinks his fingers, instead, into Hua Cheng's hair. Presses. Closer, more, please, I liked it.

Hua Cheng mouths at his skin, nips softly, like a question—he's asking so many questions, even without words. Xie Lian misses, briefly, the Hua Cheng who took easy control of kisses and taught Xie Lian's body how to accept them. But Hua Cheng takes his answer from whatever it is that Xie Lian's body does in response—nips harder, drags his tongue across stinging skin. Hua Cheng's hand curls around Xie Lian's waist, squeezes gently—slides into the space between their bodies, spreads itself across his pounding heart. Hua Cheng's thumb finds the edge of the ring which always hangs around Xie Lian's neck—his hand tightens convulsively and relaxes and Xie Lian is being kissed again, hungrily, consumingly. His stomach aches, he feels half-starved. Starvation can't kill him but he's sometimes wanted it to, sat with the hollowed out feeling of it and longed and then felt the twinging ache of it acutely only on seeing food that he thought he'd like to eat. He's so hungry, the lack of this never ached in the past—but then there was Hua Cheng. The idea of wanting, the feeling of it, changed when he had someone to want.

He is making tiny sounds into their kisses, little wordless things. Ah, oh, oh—mm—

Something big and solid rests against Xie Lian's hip—Hua Cheng is hard, hard because they're kissing together on a bed. Xie Lian is hard too. If he turned his body just a little he could tuck their cocks close against each other—so he does—Hua Cheng makes a wordless noise of his own, strangled. The heat and ache inside Xie Lian both surge, mixed up in each other, pulsing and fluttering.

"Do you have any idea," Hua Cheng says. "Ah—Dianxia—"

Hua Cheng's hands are on Xie Lian's skin, under his robe. The robe is doing very little to hide anything now, but there's something about it, about being partly wrapped up in it, which both makes Xie Lian burn and steadies him. He loops his arms around Hua Cheng's neck as Hua Cheng works open the knot of his belt. His fingers clutch at the hems of his sleeves as it happens. The robe is soft because it's well-worn and not because it's expensive, and that's nice, that's good—he will always be Hua Cheng's god but he need not be so flower-crowned or gilded. Hua Cheng has always believed in him. He can be a scrap collector forever and Hua Cheng will believe in him. What praises, and who needs to please the gods? This is enough, it's so much more than enough—just to have Hua Cheng, and to have friends perhaps, and a small home which is his.

I might cry, he thinks. It feels so nice and so strange that I might cry—my body and my heart are both so—

I might cry.

Hua Cheng whines. Xie Lian's robe parts fully for him, his fingers are resting against Xie Lian's bare stomach. His nails pressed lightly where Xie Lian has been pierced a thousand thousand times. He thought his body was a good tool and then he thought it was a poor one, he thought it was just a thing that hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt. He bears no scars from those blows; scars would have been too kind, perhaps. To carry a mark of pain is to know that pain was real, not a fevered dream, not insanity. That's how he did things—that man. Only certain things should leave a mark.

Hua Cheng's fingers shake. Xie Lian wants to ask—is this alright, San Lang? Is it what you hoped for, is my body to your liking? Do you think I'm pretty down there too? Nonsensical things, naïve things. Hua Cheng wants to devour him, he knows that now. It feels strange, this too—to know, to be desired, to be bare. Strangeness on strangeness.

"Let me see you," he says. "San Lang—let me see you too?"

Hua Cheng closes his eye for a moment. He swallows with an audible little click.

"As I am commanded," he says. When he opens his eye again, he seems steadier. Xie Lian focuses on him, on the smile hiding in the corner of his mouth, the way his eye crinkles with it. If he thinks less about how exposed he is just now, he feels steadier too.

Hua Cheng is efficient, undressing himself. It isn't a show, there's no teasing edge. He might be stripping to bathe, except for the way his dead skin carries a hectic flush along his cheekbones, startling and stark.

Xie Lian reaches for him, rubs his thumb back and forth across one of those cheekbones. Hua Cheng turns his head, kisses Xie Lian's wrist. He is breathing, breathing just for Xie Lian, still, still. The heat of it tingles up the inside of Xie Lian's forearm.

They are close to bare together. Hua Cheng kneels over him—muscular shoulders, smooth stomach that hides more strength. The hair between his legs is starkly black, and his—

He's very aroused. He's bigger than Xie Lian—Xie Lian feels shy about making the comparison at all. He's seen plenty of bodies and some of them were aroused. He knows about sex, whatever people might prefer to think—he has existed for a long time, and people do a great many things where they may be caught. But he hasn't—compared. It hasn't been interesting, or—well—personally relevant

"Gege?" Hua Cheng asks. "Are you alright?"

"I'm very—ah—very alright," Xie Lian says. He hopes it's true. "San Lang, you'll have to help me do this right. I might not be any good."

"Gege will be perfect," Hua Cheng says.

"I have some things," Xie Lian admits, and has to hide his face away behind his hand for a moment. "I haven't used them but I—I know what's needed. For you to—"

He parts his legs a little more in lieu of words.

"We don't have to do all that," Hua Cheng says, strained.

Xie Lian shivers, pushes up into Hua Cheng's hands. It isn't that he's not afraid of his body, of whether it will do what he wants it to do, feel what he wants it to feel. But he's much more afraid of taking slow careful steps into the unknown than he is of leaping, and he's much more afraid of his power ebbing without anything to fill him in its place than he is of—well.

"San Lang," he says, and is pleased to have managed to sound fondly chiding.

"As I am commanded," Hua Cheng says again.

"If it's what you want," Xie Lian says, because it should be said.

"Gege," Hua Cheng mumbles. He looks like he's being teased. "Since I've known how to want."

"Then that's alright," Xie Lian says. He rests his hand over his lips. Red thread draws a line across them—he can't see it but he knows. He can feel the fine band of it. Hua Cheng's eyes follow it.

He was twice marked by someone else once and now he is twice claimed by Hua Cheng. Sometimes the necklace with its ring was all that kept his neck from feeling like a stranger's after the shackles broke, and the thread on his finger was all that kept him calm. He has often been bad at existing without ties, ties he can feel and see. Hua Cheng touches him in such a different way, the marks are very different marks—revocable, and therefore to be cherished. But he has always had a tendency to cling—even to things that were bad for him. He knows it. He does know it.

But Hua Cheng is good, so good. He will always try to be good for Xie Lian, he will be good to him. He has no mask, not like that.

Xie Lian lets his hand fall from his mouth. It lands against his throat—deliberately, consideringly, he finds the chain of the necklace and reels it in. He cups Hua Cheng's true self in the palm of his hand, and he lifts it to his lips and kisses it.

Hua Cheng goes beautifully wide-eyed—and then his arms are around Xie Lian, squeezing Xie Lian to him so tightly that Xie Lian's laughter comes out muffled and breathless. The pleasure of skin pressed to skin is shocking, and his legs kick reflexively, his body needing to do something to deal with the weight of it. Arousal together with touch becomes something which sits like a physical mass in his gut. His body feels tight, compressed strangely around it.

"Please," he says. He needs more, needs Hua Cheng to give this thing shape for him—and Hua Cheng obliges him, runs a hand along his side and then across his stomach and then down—

Xie Lian's whole body jerks at the feeling of Hua Cheng's hand on him there. He tips his head back—stares up at the ceiling, gulping down air.

"Don't stop," he says.

Hua Cheng makes a small noise of acknowledgement. His hand curls and uncurls, rubs softly, and Xie Lian shivers and squirms under this slow attention. The mass in his gut tightens in on itself, gets heavier. When Hua Cheng touches the tip of Xie Lian's cock, his fingers slide in a new way—because Xie Lian is getting himself wet—oh, that's so—is he meant to, is this the right thing? The noise Hua Cheng makes now is appreciative, but Xie Lian feels as though something in him is pulling in the wrong direction, pulling so tight it could tear, and then he—

He balls himself up as much as he can against Hua Cheng's body as the tension snaps and everything floods out of him, there's something warm spilling across his stomach, his whole body is shaking so hard, he—he can barely see, his vision feels blurry and scattered. He feels hot all over and empty inside and he—he needed Hua Cheng to be inside him, he needs it, he can't just—

Hua Cheng holds him, hushes him gently. He coaxes Xie Lian out far enough to look at him, scatters kisses across his face—kisses his pleas from his lips. He tastes of salt, or Xie Lian does.

"You have to," Xie Lian gasps, when Hua Cheng dips his head further to kiss his throat and then his chest, and Hua Cheng returns to him—cups his cheek, looks at him with a serious expression.

"You have to," Xie Lian is still saying—babbling, he can't stop babbling.

Hua Cheng kisses the tip of his nose, then his mouth again, soothing. He feeds him sips of power, licks it into his mouth, but Xie Lian is still feeling too shiveringly empty in the pit of his stomach, between his legs. He can't be entirely soothed like this, although his panic eases.

"Alright," Hua Cheng murmurs. "Alright, Dianxia, let me—I promise, I promise I'll look after you."

Hua Cheng finds the small box where Xie Lian had hidden the things he'd bought, unable to look at the evidence of his hope and not feeling terribly daring after all. It's so hard to let him go, to unwind his limbs from around him for long enough. He shifts onto his side to watch as Hua Cheng moves about, curls himself again into a little ball. A layer of Hua Cheng's robes hangs draped across the edge of the bed, and he catches at it with a shaky hand, gathers it to him and pushes his nose into its folds until it's almost like having Hua Cheng right there against him. Just the scent which lingers on the cloth makes him feel a little fluttery again.

So this is what it's like, he thinks—and then Hua Cheng returns to him, and the reality of his body right here in Xie Lian's bed is so perfectly overwhelming, so much better than having just that trace.

"Come here," Hua Cheng says. He sits with his back against the wall and scoops Xie Lian up into his lap. He rubs one big hand up and down Xie Lian's spine.

Xie Lian feels oversensitive and even more squirmy than before, and he needs it terribly, needs to be close, needs everything promised by the way Hua Cheng's hand dips lower on every stroke. Xie Lian's hair is unravelling across his shoulder, his eyelashes feel clumpy and wet. His stomach is a mess. Hua Cheng is big and hard and—and wet too, wet the way Xie Lian was wet before he—so maybe that was alright. He still feels mortified by it. It's a relief that he's soft now, because it means he doesn't have to worry about being hard in the—it sounds stupid even in his head—the right way.

Hua Cheng opens a jar behind Xie Lian's back. His arms move as he adjusts his hold on it, dips his fingers in it, puts it aside.

"It always feels strange at first, gege," he says. He strokes Xie Lian's flank, another soothing gesture.

Xie Lian hums acknowledgement. He finds the ancient tattoo on Hua Cheng's arm, traces the inelegant characters of his own name.

"You've done it before, San Lang?"

"To myself," Hua Cheng says.

"Thinking of me?"

"Dianxia," Hua Cheng says. There's that strain in his voice again. "You'll be the death of me."

"I don't want that," Xie Lian tells him, startled by petulant stubbornness in his own voice. He laughs self-consciously, takes hold of Hua Cheng's hand. Squeezes it.

The fingers of Hua Cheng's other hand are slick when they work their way between his legs, slick like the feeling of Hua Cheng's thumb on the head of his cock earlier but all over. He presses them into the skin behind Xie Lian's balls, kneading with his fingertips, and it feels—it feels like so much, but it's so strangely endearing too. He lets his toes curl. He tries to just sit in the buzzing raw feeling of being touched. It always feels strange, he thinks, as Hua Cheng shifts his fingers back to where they need to be and works carefully at him there too and then—

It doesn't. Or it does, maybe. His body opening up like this is unfamiliar, but so is all the rest. What's strange, what's normal? It feels less definite, somehow, than he thought it would. He loses track of where Hua Cheng's finger is inside him as it sinks deeper, knows more or less how deep it is by the way the knuckles slide in and not because he can feel, in any detail, where the tip of it is. But it does feel like something, like the right thing, just not nearly enough. It isn't even pleasure he's chasing to calm himself, just fullness.

He leans against Hua Cheng, wiggles his hips to see if the feeling changes—it does, a little. Warms his insides in an interesting way. Hua Cheng kisses his forehead, twists his hand a little, and brushes up against a place that feels—very definite, tight and sparking. His hands clench, he whimpers.

"Sorry, gege," Hua Cheng mumbles.

"It's good," Xie Lian says. He doesn't know how to say it isn't what he's looking for yet without it sounding wrong.

But Hua Cheng doesn't touch him there again. He slides his finger in and out until it's moving easily and Xie Lian is barely feeling full at all, and Xie Lian could start to panic about that too but then Hua Cheng huffs a little sigh and there's a new stretch, two fingers, and Xie Lian relaxes. It's good like this, to clench his body down a little and feel something pressing back, to relax it and be rewarded with more. It doesn't feel too good to withstand, even when Hua Cheng has three fingers in him, but it feels good. He smiles into Hua Cheng's shoulder—stretches his hand down without entirely thinking about what he's doing and touches his fingertips to the head of Hua Cheng's cock, a little brush that makes Hua Cheng gasp and jolt up into it. There are tremors running through his whole body, invisible but felt. Xie Lian feels so unspeakably fond of him. He's starting to feel ready for more, too—more pleasure instead of just more touch. He rolls his hips a little more deliberately, testing. He's still soft but he feels warm everywhere between his legs now. And there—there's the place Hua Cheng touched before. He pushes himself into it. He feels it all the way up his back. He feels it behind his eyes.

Ah.

"Please," he finds himself saying again. "Please, please." He squeezes Hua Cheng's cock, clumsy.

Hua Cheng pulls his fingers out of Xie Lian's body, and Xie Lian is whimpering, and then whimpering into Hua Cheng's mouth, whimpering as Hua Cheng lays him down again on his back.

"Yes," he says, then, and his next kiss mostly misses Hua Cheng's mouth, Hua Cheng has to turn his face to meet him and it's sloppy anyway, Xie Lian can hardly concentrate on it, he's too urgently focused on the way he's empty and about to be full.

"Dianxia," Hua Cheng says, like worship and like someone about to cry. His hair hangs around his face, striping it with shadow. His lips are parted. He clutches Xie Lian's hips with both hands, one clean and one sticky. He lifts Xie Lian a little, just his lower body. He coaxes one of Xie Lian's legs up, hooks his arm around it behind the knee to direct it.

Xie Lian's face burns. To be looked at like this is more difficult than any of the touches. He thinks perhaps Hua Cheng has never done this before either, but he seems so sure of what to do—so maybe he has. It isn't a bad thought, that he might have. It could never be bad for Hua Cheng to have had sweet things, in the long years when he didn't have Xie Lian—Xie Lian is just curious. Hungry for every scrap he can collect of who Hua Cheng is and has been, not to weigh them on a balance of virtue and sin but to puzzle them together, to understand more about this precious thing he's been given. The parts that aren't made up only of devotion, beloved as that devotion is.

Hua Cheng lines their bodies up—hesitates—Xie Lian is tired of hesitation. He wraps a leg around Hua Cheng's waist for leverage and pulls their bodies together with—certainly not all his strength. But a fair portion of it.

It aches wonderfully.

Hua Cheng clutches at him. His lips are even more vividly red than usual, kiss-swollen and bitten. A tiny thread of blood runs from the corner of his mouth where one of his sharp teeth has pierced his own skin—Xie Lian cups Hua Cheng's cheek, wipes red away with his thumb. Liquid slides along his forefinger, pools in the hollow formed by finger and thumb—Hua Cheng is crying. Silently, he's crying.

"Oh, my San Lang," Xie Lian murmurs. Hua Cheng is huge inside him, it's breathtaking, he feels wonderfully inhabited after the terrible emptiness from earlier—but Hua Cheng is trembling and crying and clinging, and they just rest together, intimately joined, while Xie Lian throws his arms around Hua Cheng's neck, drawing him down to kiss and pet and soothe.

How long he's waited, while Xie Lian believed nobody was waiting for him at all, not anywhere in the world. How careful he's been with Xie Lian's heart, even in his boldness.

Xie Lian kisses his wet cheeks, kisses him between his furrowed eyebrows. He keeps himself as still as he can, but every little movement of Hua Cheng inside him just feels—good. It feels really, just—even when the movement is Xie Lian's own body tightening and relaxing, it—

He's still only a little hard, he realises, vaguely. It's not a bad feeling, to let pleasure sit a little deeper, be a little more diffuse. It's washing through him in a way he knows already that he's going to crave. Ah, he thought he was so skilled at suppressing his desire, when he'd just never understood properly what desire could be. In the right place, with a beloved person.

"I'm fine, gege," Hua Cheng mumbles, at last.

"Okay," Xie Lian says. He pats the back of Hua Cheng's head, tugs lightly at his hair—arches his body a bit more deliberately, experimenting with how it feels.

Good—it feels good. Still a little diffuse, deep inside, but there's a definite drag right where they're joined, and there's that sparking pleasure-pressure waiting for him, making him draw in a sharp breath.

Hua Cheng moans softly.

"You can go ahead, San Lang," Xie Lian tells him. "Go on."

It really does feel so much better, so much better to be full. Hua Cheng moves in him with care, soft waves, soft waves, until Xie Lian kicks at his back, accidental but reflecting a true need—and then the sound he makes is like a growl, and he covers Xie Lian with the weight of his body, holds him in place with his hands, and pushes hard enough into him that the holding in place really is necessary. Again, again.

Xie Lian cries out, wavering—holds on, urges on—his hands move restlessly across Hua Cheng's back, the strong arch of it, the shifting bones and muscles. He makes little mm—mm—mm sounds high in his mouth with each thrust.

Hua Cheng spreads a hand on Xie Lian's stomach—pressure inside and pressure outside. It feels like the boundaries of Xie Lian's body are very thin, like Hua Cheng is nearly just fucking up into his own hand. Hua Cheng's movements get more stuttery quickly, and he draws his hand lower, curls it around Xie Lian's cock—which feels right when Hua Cheng is sort of holding it, oddly protective. But when Hua Cheng starts to stroke him it feels—it feels strange. The other pressure, the one from before, coils in his gut, heavy and awkward. There's barely space in him for it. His cock is very hard now and aching a little and he wants Hua Cheng to just—just hold it. Maybe do nothing more than press his palm across it and keep it safe, keep it from being jostled by the rocking of their bodies.

He gets his hand between them, lays it over Hua Cheng's until Hua Cheng slows his strokes.

"Like this," Xie Lian says. Uncurls Hua Cheng's fingers, pats the back of his hand.

Hua Cheng gives him a look which is both dazed and searching.

Xie Lian shakes his head, finds a little smile—keeps moving his hips, encouraging. It's—it's a lot. All of this, everything a body can feel. If it gets too sharp he starts to—he—well—

Better if it doesn't, right now.

"I'm," Hua Cheng says, "Dianxia, I'm going to—"

Xie Lian tightens his legs around Hua Cheng, throws his head back.

"I want that," he manages to say. Squeezes deliberately. He feels unsteady with how much he wants it. He wants Hua Cheng to spend inside him the way he's always wanted Hua Cheng's kisses before, before he knew how to deal with wanting and the impossibility of it made it horrifying and lovely.

Hua Cheng's hips snap forward hard, hard, hard, the pace of it harsh, and then he makes a choked noise, involuntary—moves gracelessly in jerks. A new wash of warmth fills Xie Lian, warmth like having spiritual power kissed into him in the midst of chaos. He wants to hoard it. Can he keep this part of Hua Cheng inside himself? Is it possible?

He keeps his hand over Hua Cheng's, between them—wraps the other tightly, again, around the back of Hua Cheng's neck. Presses Hua Cheng's hand a little harder against his cock, lets Hua Cheng curl his fingers. He's floating a little bit in all the warm things, and his release shocked him so earlier, frightened him, but maybe it's right now, maybe it's alright.

He sinks into it. Hua Cheng is still inside him, big and reassuring, stretching him open. He hasn't started softening, but he shivers with sensitivity whenever Xie Lian clenches around him. His hand moves slowly, and Xie Lian lets go of it at last, spreads his hand on his own stomach instead, where he's warmest—rubs his fingers across his skin, presses down, kneading to feel the way his body gives, the physicality of himself to match the physicality of Hua Cheng.

He understands that he's being worshipped. He can feel it. But he's being loved too. He lets it happen. It's good, it's good, until the feeling of it starts to really tighten again, and then it's—it's too foreign, too strange—the pressure feels like a bodily need making itself known but not like ones he's used to dealing with and he—

Hua Cheng stops touching him, and Xie Lian realises his lip hurts—that he's been biting it, that his eyes have been screwed shut. He wants relief but he doesn't want—there's just something about the way it builds.

"Dianxia?" Hua Cheng asks.

Xie Lian buries his face against Hua Cheng's neck.

"I just want you to keep—keep spending in me," he says. He chokes out a little laugh. "Is that selfish, San Lang? Can you do that for me?"

Hua Cheng just groans—moves in Xie Lian slowly, like he's testing himself. "I can," he says.

"Ah, San Lang, San Lang," Xie Lian murmurs. "Good, you're very good. Treating me so well."

"Gege should always be treated this well," Hua Cheng says. "But only by me, alright?"

"Only by you," Xie Lian says. He understands Hua Cheng's earlier tears. You really can cry from happiness.

Hua Cheng fucks slowly into him. It feels right that it's slow, this time. It's noisier, too—the sound of their bodies moving together is wet and obscene. Liquid trickles out of Xie Lian, the lubricant and Hua Cheng's spend mixed together probably, and he doesn't like that—the loss. But it's not terrible, not with Hua Cheng still fucking him. Just a fragment of displeasure, unavoidable.

"Do you want to turn over?" Hua Cheng asks. He kisses Xie Lian sweetly. If Xie Lian was on his front then maybe—

He nods, winces at the feeling of Hua Cheng pulling out—but then Hua Cheng is flipping him easily over, drawing up his hips for him—he runs his fingers over the skin of Xie Lian's ass, pushes them into him—and then it's his cock again, and Xie Lian's eyes are stinging, he feels so grateful and so full and his body is loose and heavy and good and Hua Cheng fucks him and fucks him, fucks him until he feels a little numb with it in a nice way and a hand on his cock is easier to bear again, although he still squirms away from it eventually, twitchy as a cat stroked the wrong way. He wants to find release again quite badly, to learn how it feels without the emptiness, but every time it starts to build he doesn't know what to do with himself, and then it flickers out as he yanks himself back and—

"Hush, gege, you're alright," Hua Cheng murmurs, as Xie Lian groans and twitches weakly under him. "Did I hurt you?"

Xie Lian shakes his head. He can't explain the tangle of satisfaction and frustration he's feeling.

"I feel good, I just don't think I'm going to—ah—"

He waves his hand, indicating nothing in particular—blushes again at his vagueness.

"I'm sorry, gege," Hua Cheng says, and he sounds as though he's the one who—who hasn't—performed. If that's a way it can be put.

"No," Xie Lian says quickly—twists himself away from Hua Cheng and rolls onto his back again, even though it leaves him empty and messy and leaking, makes him aware of the state of the insides of his thighs. He needs to see Hua Cheng, to look at him and kiss him. He tugs Hua Cheng down, looks him in the eye. They're both sweaty and maybe tear-stained and definitely trembling with exertion.

"You're perfect," Xie Lian tells Hua Cheng. "Look at me. You did all this. It feels really good, San Lang. I didn't think anything could feel this good, so don't—don't worry about that silly thing. Come and kiss me."

Kissing is easy. Long slow kisses, passed back and forth, until Xie Lian feels languid and content and Hua Cheng isn't shaking and their bodies have worked out how to settle against each other.

"San Lang is going to have to keep lending me power," Xie Lian murmurs. "And giving me, um—"

His nerve fails him rather, and he squirms closer rather than finish his sentence.

"Anything," Hua Cheng says, so earnestly that Xie Lian giggles a little—which seems, in turn, to loosen some of the tension in Hua Cheng.

Xie Lian smiles. "San Lang," he says. "San Lang—you came home to me."

"I promised," Hua Cheng says.

Xie Lian squeezes Hua Cheng close. Arousal pulses under his skin with nowhere much to go, but that's alright.

"Take me home with you now," he says.

Xie Lian doesn't wake up feeling hollow. Spiritual energy sits easily in his limbs, waiting to be used. His body feels—

He flushes, remembering. The things he asked for. The things he was given.

He curls in on himself, drawing his knees up towards his chest. This is Hua Cheng's bed—it smells of him, and it smells of sex too. He smells of sex. He feels a little strange between his legs—a little achey. Aware of muscles he has no cause, ordinarily, to consider. He rubs his thighs together, feels the way the ache spreads. He doesn't—not like it. The way it sits deep. He doesn't not like feeling a little claimed. But it's—it's embarrassing, the way he likes it. Isn't it?

That makes him laugh, softly, into the pillow. Amazing that he can feel embarrassed now, about anything at all—he who thought for so many centuries that nothing could cause him shame any longer, that it made no real difference what happened or didn't happen in his life, to his body. That everything was too long gone for there to be any point to the feeling. Am I enjoying feeling embarrassed? he wonders, and laughs again, helplessly.

Hua Cheng stirs behind him.

"Gege," he mumbles. His hand is cool when it finds Xie Lian's side—warms quickly, as though Hua Cheng is remembering to have a body which seems living. It's sweet. Xie Lian doesn't need it, really—but it's sweet. He wonders if Hua Cheng does think it's necessary, somehow.

"Good morning, San Lang," he says.

"You're here," Hua Cheng says. He sounds muzzy. "I thought—"

"Mm, I'm here. You stole me away. Thank you."

Xie Lian catches Hua Cheng's hand, pulls it close so he can toy with it. The skin is pallid, grey-white, and the nails are a little sharper than they were the night before—these he would have felt inside him in a different way. He runs his fingertips across them, brushes kisses to them. They're cute, cute like the little points of Hua Cheng's teeth.

At his own home, there will be visitors, he knows. How many lanterns did Hua Cheng light for him? Well, maybe he doesn't want anyone to shout at him about it—not yet. Maybe he isn't ready for anyone else to look at what he and Hua Cheng are and think it dirty. So he broke his vows—so what—? But if someone else looked at him and told him—

He twists away from the thought—twists in Hua Cheng's arms to worm close to him.

Better that he's here—that's all.

People can say what they want to say and it won't change anything, but he doesn't want to have to be in a bad mood about it when he could keep feeling warm and happy.

"You're feeling alright?" Hua Cheng asks.

"Mm. I'm feeling good."

Hua Cheng catches him under the chin with two fingers, tips his head back to find his mouth with a kiss. Xie Lian hums contentedly, and throws a leg over Hua Cheng's hip.

"Ah," Xie Lian says, between kisses. "Ah, you're—maybe we could—again—?"

Hua Cheng pulls back, which isn't quite what Xie Lian wanted. His expression is a little dazed, or maybe surprised.

Xie Lian blinks at him.

"You want," Hua Cheng says. "You—gege—"

"I want a lot of things," Xie Lian says. Blushes—of course he blushes. Easier to want than to say so.

"I thought you would need to take it so slowly," Hua Cheng says. "If gege had never even felt like he wanted to—"

"I know that." Xie Lian pats him on the head, flicks the tip of his ear. He has little piercings in it, spread along its curve. Xie Lian prods one, twists the loop of metal gently. Untangles it from a lock of Hua Cheng's hair. Hua Cheng tolerates him—it's funny, it's really very funny. The patient look on his face while he's hard against Xie Lian's thigh.

"You're laughing at me," Hua Cheng says morosely, and Xie Lian really does laugh then—kisses it better, still smiling.

It doesn't take very much to coax Hua Cheng into rolling on top of him, taking him, slow and deep and good until Xie Lian is tossing his head, digging his nails into Hua Cheng's back and shoulders. Will I be able to come this time, he wonders—and then realises that thinking about it was perhaps a mistake—he wants Hua Cheng to wring pleasure out of him, and thinking too hard is just—

It must get in the way, just as it does in martial arts or in composition.

He doesn't spend. The pleasure sort of plateaus, the beginning of the tension which is where he needs to be finds him and then—then he sort of—

It's such a big feeling. It's so hard not to flinch. He is very used to very large bodily feelings and it's—well—

Most of the others are worth flinching away from, if you can. How strange that the process of learning that he needn't simply endure is getting in the way of what he wants now.

"I'm sorry, San Lang," he says, breathless, clutching Hua Cheng's hand where he's tugged it away from his cock. "I made you work so hard."

"I'd work much harder," Hua Cheng says. "I could work harder now. If gege wants to come."

He has such a determined expression.

"Ah, it," Xie Lian mumbles. "It's not very important."

He doesn't sound convinced. The problem is, he spent once last night. It happened so easily. His body knows how to do it, and so it should be able to do it again, and he can't help resenting it just a little for refusing.

"Let me try something else," Hua Cheng says. "I think gege will like it, even if it isn't enough."

"Alright," Xie Lian says.

Hua Cheng smiles, like they're sharing a secret. He kisses Xie Lian's chin, throat, sternum. He licks across one of Xie Lian's nipples, sucks on it briefly—Xie Lian pushes into it, makes an involuntary little noise of complaint when Hua Cheng moves on. Then his stomach, the curve of his hip, the skin just above the nest of his pubic hair.

Ah—yes—this he knows about. Funny—people do it in alleys a lot. In shaded corners. He's seen it and felt, thinking of the laundry they were going to have to do, very worldly. He supposes people must do it in beds also. But sex on a bed is quite new to him. Even much of the erotic art he's caught glimpses of—well—

Hua Cheng's mouth is soft and momentarily cool and then hot. He covers his teeth with his lips, takes the head of Xie Lian's cock into his mouth—licks at it, the tip of his tongue light, almost ticklish. It feels—different, very different from a hand. If it stayed light like this he thinks he could sit in this feeling for a long time, let himself be shivery and restless and cared for. He can't really see the way Hua Cheng's mouth looks wrapped around him, the angle of his head obscures it, but he thinks it must look nice. The stretch of his lips. The way his throat must be working—Xie Lian isn't very deep inside his mouth, but he can feel the way Hua Cheng is swallowing, quick and hard.

When Hua Cheng begins to suck on him, begins to bob his head carefully, Xie Lian throws his head back, gasping—throws a hand across his mouth, not to quiet himself but to feel grounded. He pushes two fingers between his lips, unthinking—hooks them behind his teeth, bites down on them. Emptiness is still—still hard to take. It makes him feel like he's drifting out of himself. He throws a leg over Hua Cheng's shoulder, pushing up into his mouth although another part of him wants to twist away.

Hua Cheng hums contentedly, pets Xie Lian's thigh.

"San Lang," Xie Lian mumbles—pulls his hand away from his mouth to try again. His teeth have pressed shadowed dents into his skin. There's an ache there, and he finds he likes it. "San Lang, can you—fingers—"

Hua Cheng pulls off his cock with a wet noise which makes the blush which has taken up residence under Xie Lian's skin deepen. Hua Cheng's lips are messy, his chin is messy. He looks like he's been doing, well—exactly what he's been doing.

"Dianxia really likes having something inside him, huh?" Hua Cheng asks.

"Ah," Xie Lian says. He bites his lip. "I—"

"Hush," Hua Cheng says. "You can like it."

He shifts his weight. The angle seems awkward, but he gets a hand under Xie Lian, and then his—is that his thumb?—his thumb is rubbing back and forth across Xie Lian's entrance. It makes Xie Lian very aware of how many times Hua Cheng has fucked him. They haven't been reunited for a full day yet and—ah.

His body doesn't resist at all. Hua Cheng's thumb sinks in easily. I can't feel the nail, Xie Lian thinks, and wants to giggle—but then Hua Cheng's mouth is back on his cock and the sound stutters into a gasping moan.

He does like it—he really likes it so much. But his body still jerks itself away from the edge. The feeling of arousal itself is still so big and unfamiliar and then—

It's just difficult.

By the time Hua Cheng pulls away and comes to wrap Xie Lian in his arms, Xie Lian feels overworked and shaky, and he—he maybe likes it a little, but he also doesn't like it, doesn't like it because of the thing it isn't.

"Let's go to the baths, gege," Hua Cheng murmurs, and Xie Lian considers it—considers the emptiness of Hua Cheng's residence—shakes his head. He feels very shameless, to want to walk around covered in evidence of the sex they've had, but he finds the smell of it comforting in a way he can't explain. His senses are so full of San Lang.

"Show me everything here I haven't seen yet first," he says. "I've waited so long for a proper tour."

"Ah," Hua Cheng says. "As gege pleases."

There is a shared life unfolding between them. Xie Lian is giddy with it. He feels, sometimes, almost young—feels as though one must be young to be so happy, and then remembers that that's wrong. There is a youthful kind of happiness, and he used to feel it, clean and easy and self-assured—but he doubts that the Xie Lian who felt like that would be able to grasp very much of the happiness he feels now. He is not happy because he is strong and loved by the masses and a source of pride for his family; he is happy to be loved in a more personal way, and he is happy to have his power be something shared, scattered for pleasure and given back for love. You can die a hundred deaths and fail a million people and be manipulated until you are nearly shattered by it and you can find your way to joy anyway. People can think your choices are strange and you can feel joy anyway.

He goes back and forth between worlds. Ghost City, Puqi Shrine, Mount Taicang. The new Heavenly Capital is his least favourite place to spend time, but sometimes it can't be helped—he makes his visits short, and slips away before he can be asked for advice on another topic he doesn't feel entirely inclined to deal with. Rebuilt though it is, it carries strange associations. He can't look at its gilded buildings without thinking about people who are gone—not just the gods he knew but the gods he never did, whose remains were the foundation of another city much like this one. He's used to his own memories, they aren't so hard to live with these days—but that's something else.

And then there's Hua Cheng, with his many faces. Xie Lian is consumingly hungry for him, for his presence, his expressions and his casual touches and his humour. He's hungry for sex, and for slow afternoons spent on teaching, and for every story Hua Cheng decides to tell him. For teasing and being teased. Being made to blush in that frantic squirmy way, and being soothed, and soothing.

He wakes from the old dreams sometimes—Xie Lian does—Hua Cheng does. Many of the things they dream of are the same, or are about the same thing at least—the same things seen from different angles and given different weights, interpreted into the visceral incoherence of this nightmare or that. The plunge of swords, rising flames. A mask, a plague-cloud, a broken body. The inside of a kiln. The inside of a grave. Faces, faces, faces. Failure. Xie Lian wakes crying and clawing and trying to cough long-gone earth out of his mouth. Hua Cheng wakes silent and too-still, only trembling. Sometimes you can comfort a person you love and sometimes you can't. Sometimes there are words and touches and sometimes there's just sitting there, feeling useless but present, which is still better than useless and absent.

This is a useless night. Hua Cheng shivers as violently as if he had a fever, flinches from every touch. Beaten children carry their beatings with them. Xie Lian drapes a robe carefully around Hua Cheng's shoulders, and sits there, not touching him, restless with the not touching. He should be able to pull Hua Cheng into his arms, but sometimes a body can't accept good things. Rejects rich food, rejects pleasure, rejects warmth.

He tells stories. I don't think you'll find this one very funny, San Lang, but maybe it'll interest you. I think this one is quite sweet. This one—until Hua Cheng settles from shivering back into sleep, without really showing signs of awareness, and Xie Lian can curl close against his back.

He still isn't sleeping when Hua Cheng wakes again and rolls over for a drowsy sharp-toothed kiss. Xie Lian won't tell him that he sometimes draws blood before he's entirely awake, because then he might stop, and it'd be a silly thing to feel bereft over but he knows that he would. He'd miss pressing his tongue against the inside of his lip and feeling the sweet little ache of it. He's learning that he likes small hurts that aren't real hurts. Things that sting a little, throb a little.

So the faint taste of blood. Hua Cheng's hands stay above Xie Lian's robes, but they grasp. Squeeze his behind, squeeze his hip. Rub against his nipples.

After bad nights, he sometimes wakes up like this—clingy, needy, then ashamed of being needy, as though he should always be the one seeing to Xie Lian's needs and never the one needing. Xie Lian takes Hua Cheng's face between his hands before he's awake enough to panic, rolls Hua Cheng onto his back and straddles him, caging him in well enough to keep kissing him. He feels the moment when Hua Cheng tenses, and kisses him through it—is rewarded with Hua Cheng sighing into the kiss, and going wonderfully boneless under him.

"Hello," he says.

Hua Cheng blinks up at him, his eye dark. His eyepatch has slipped off in the night, and Xie Lian, looking at the hollow it usually covers, the puckered scar tissue which Hua Cheng is usually so reluctant to show him, feels overwhelmed by affection. Hua Cheng's smile appears slowly, but it appears—spreads across his entire face, the way it always does when Xie Lian takes initiative. When Xie Lian wants him openly.

"Dianxia," he says, and—yes—he's alright, he's alright. A little bruised by the night—that's all.

Xie Lian kisses him again. Kisses are so easy now, so easy. He could kiss Hua Cheng all the time. They kiss on quiet streets and they kiss in bed and they kiss on hillsides and in temples, and he blushes sometimes, he gets flustered—that's all. Like this, what flusters him is the rest—the way their bodies begin to move together mindlessly, arousal heating him from the inside as they harden against each other. It's a good kind of flustered—difficult but good. He can't always be fully naked for Hua Cheng and Hua Cheng can't always be fully naked for him, but Hua Cheng's dead eye socket is bare and so Xie Lian, feeling brave, slips his robe all the way from his shoulders instead of letting it hang open. Shows his body, all of his body, his body that never learned how to die.

It's strange to be ashamed of having few scars, isn't it? But Hua Cheng is so deeply marked by their centuries of entwined fate, and so unhappy about those marks. If Xie Lian could take even some of those marks for him he would—although Hua Cheng wouldn't thank him for it.

He bends again to kiss Hua Cheng's brow where it would usually be obscured by fabric, and then the scar itself. Hua Cheng stiffens, as though only now realising that his face is bare—relaxes with a little sigh, settling his hands around Xie Lian's waist.

"My lovely San Lang," Xie Lian murmurs. The morning air feels cool on his skin, but not unpleasantly so.

"Don't tease," Hua Cheng says.

Xie Lian laughs. "Who's teasing? You're lovely. Really handsome."

"And really good in bed," Hua Cheng says—a smirking little piece of deflection, but also true.

"And that," Xie Lian says, as primly as he can when his cock is hard and trapped between their bodies.

Hua Cheng's smirk deepens. He slides a hand across Xie Lian's skin until he can press his thumb to the damp head or Xie Lian's cock.

"Gege is very handsome too," he says. "Very cute. Down here as well. And back there."

"San Lang," Xie Lian exclaims, face burning.

"What?" Hua Cheng asks, innocently. "It's true. Especially after we've—"

Xie Lian slams his hand across Hua Cheng's mouth, and watches Hua Cheng's eye crinkle with laughter. His tongue drags across Xie Lian's palm.

Hua Cheng was so shaky, their first times. He was so overwhelmed. He still is, often—after, most of all. But he has an ease in him. He's outpaced Xie Lian in that way. Xie Lian still struggles—with his body, with relaxing into pleasure, with orgasm—although he manages it sometimes, sometimes—only when he takes himself by surprise. Hua Cheng's body knows how to feel good now. Xie Lian isn't jealous—Hua Cheng deserves all things, deserves this thing which can so often comfort him. But he wishes Hua Cheng could teach him how.

They settle together. Easy preparation, Xie Lian still feeling how well he was fucked the night before. They fuck so much he's rarely all that tight, so much that the moments when he struggles to take being penetrated have their own novelty. He stays above Hua Cheng, lets Hua Cheng guide him back onto his cock.

When it comes to comforting intimacy, Xie Lian does sink easily into it too. Hua Cheng laughs at how much Xie Lian likes to have Hua Cheng inside him, but it's not mean laughter. It seems—awed, sometimes, Xie Lian thinks.

He braces his hands on Hua Cheng's chest and stomach, lets his head drop forward. His hair curtains his face in whispy loops where his bun has loosened in the night. Hua Cheng helps him move, and he's so deep inside Xie Lian like this, perfect, perfect stretch, perfect ache—an ache which is more emotional than physical, perhaps.

"No," he says, when Hua Cheng goes to grasp his cock. "Just let me, ah—let me focus on—"

Hua Cheng's mouth does something complicated, so Xie Lian bends to kiss it.

"Later," he murmurs. He just doesn't want to have to think, yet, about how cooperative or otherwise his body is going to be today—he just wants the bit he's certain will be good.

It's good—so good. It rolls through him and through him and through him and Hua Cheng's hands claw at him as he spends, moaning so harshly it's almost a shout. Xie Lian grinds down hard, makes sure Hua Cheng stays deep, as deep as possible. Clenches hard around him to let both of them really feel it. One of Hua Cheng's hands clings to Xie Lian's hip, the other slams awkwardly into Xie Lian's stomach, harder than he probably meant it to but not hard enough to really hurt. It makes the feeling of Hua Cheng's cock pulsing inside him sharpen in a startling way, and Xie Lian's cock jerks too—not release but a harsh throb of arousal.

Hua Cheng pulls him, finally, down against his chest—doesn't quite pull out of Xie Lian entirely, but will soon as he softens.

He rubs the back of Xie Lian's neck in a way that always makes Xie Lian melt, kisses him between his eyebrows. Makes shushing noises. Ah, is Xie Lian crying again?

He wipes his nose on the back of his hand, a little embarrassed.

"I should carve you a cock, Dianxia," Hua Cheng says. "Leave it as a temple offering. Let it keep you from getting lonely."

"Not a temple offering," Xie Lian says, as firmly as he can, into Hua Cheng's shoulder.

"A courting gift," Hua Cheng says.

Xie Lian tugs at Hua Cheng's ear. He doesn't say no, I don't want it, because that would be an untruth, but he can't say yes either. His tongue is pressed hard against the roof of his mouth, saliva pooling under it. He wants and wants. Hua Cheng's come is leaking out of him, leaving him sloppy, and if he could just hold onto it for a bit longer then that would be—it would be good.

"San Lang," he mumbles. Catches at Hua Cheng's hand and guides it down until Hua Cheng understands and wraps his long fingers around Xie Lian's cock, squeezes it lightly so that Xie Lian shudders.

"Yes?" he asks.

Xie Lian nods. Arches a little so that he can keep his face and shoulders pressed safely into Hua Cheng's body but still give Hua Cheng space to move his hand.

Hua Cheng plays with him more than strokes him—rubs at his balls, at the shaft of his cock, the head. Pulls at the foreskin, drawing it up, pushing it back down. It's what Xie Lian likes best, apart from having Hua Cheng inside him—the exploratory way Hua Cheng touches him, the way it doesn't feel like being pushed towards an end point he might just recoil away from. He can squirm pleasantly under the attention, sigh and gasp and curl his toes and cling, and eventually it'll settle into the two of them curled quietly together or build into something else.

It could build today, he thinks. He's feeling all tight low in his gut already. There's the potential.

He lets it build a little, whining, nipping at Hua Cheng's neck to have something to do with himself. It feels good, it feels really good.

"Stop," he gasps, and Hua Cheng lets go of him so fast that he sort of wants to laugh—loses the struggle after a few breaths and giggles into Hua Cheng's neck, the kind of laughter that comes from feeling something a lot and not from finding something funny.

There's none of the terrible rawness that he sometimes feels when he knows he isn't going to come. He still feels like—like he could. He hasn't hit the point where he knows, and so the potential gets to sit there in him, all heavy and sweet.

"That's enough," he says, and sits back enough to blink down at Hua Cheng, smile at him, feeling a little dazed. Hua Cheng looks even more dazed than he feels. "It was very nice, San Lang. Would you like breakfast?"

It's an interesting feeling, to have his desire frustrated but in a different way. After breakfast he perches on the edge of Hua Cheng's desk and Hua Cheng takes him in his mouth, and Xie Lian holds onto the rolling diffuse pleasure of it until he begins to feel tight inside again—not the level of tightness that scares him but just—just a little less.

"That's enough," he says, and smiles at Hua Cheng's wounded expression. "Let me—?"

He closes his robes delicately, shivering at the drag of fabric across wet skin—slips off the edge of the desk to kneel on the floor and nudges Hua Cheng back, tugs at Hua Cheng's clothes until he can touch his cock.

It's very wet at the tip, very blood-dark. Hua Cheng hisses at Xie Lian's touch, shivers with his whole body when Xie Lian bends to take it in his mouth. He comes quickly, and Xie Lian swallows it all down.

"Gege," Hua Cheng says weakly, "are you really going to make me write after that?"

"Yes," Xie Lian says. He feels curiously serene, sensitive as his body may be. He ruffles Hua Cheng's hair.

"You're doing this on purpose, gege," Hua Cheng whispers. They're pressed together in an alcove, and Xie Lian is rearranging his robes yet again, smoothing them down and drifting a little while he waits for his erection to go down enough for him to be presentable.

He considers this, face tucked against Hua Cheng's neck, surrounded by the scent of him. "Yes," he agrees. "I think maybe I like it?"

The tension has started staying in his body, sitting there low inside him, as though he winds a little tighter every time he denies himself—slowly, slowly.

"You think," Hua Cheng says.

Xie Lian stretches up and kisses him on the cheek. "I like it," he says. "I, ah—if you wanted to just—just—"

"You want me to tease you, gege?"

"I want you to help me feel good," Xie Lian says. "But not, ah—not too good—"

He is trying something, something specific, but he doesn't want to say it, as though saying it would make it less likely to work.

"Any time you like, today," he says, although he's blushing very deeply.

"Gege," Hua Cheng says. He does the thing where his face turns sharp and dangerous, where he draws himself up and becomes something vicious-looking. "Don't just offer these things."

Xie Lian smiles. "Ah? San Lang, don't be silly. You're hardly going to hurt me."

"Gege," Hua Cheng says again.

Xie Lian pats him on the chest, waits for him to subside—it doesn't take long.

"You can keep me in bed for a week if you want," he says, "if that's what that look means. I imagine it would get a little—"

Hua Cheng kisses him, deep and messy, fumbling. Bites at Xie Lian's lip—harder than he usually does, nearly as hard as Xie Lian wishes he would.

"Any time I like," he says. His voice is a little hoarse. Maybe just choked.

"Mm," Xie Lian agrees. "Come along now, though."

He takes Hua Cheng by the hand, takes him out into the streets of the city Hua Cheng governs. Hua Cheng walks at his side, his gaze cool as he watches the ghosts they pass and warm when he turns to Xie Lian. He touches Xie Lian through his robes in a shadowed doorway until Xie Lian is shaking, fingers hooked into Hua Cheng's belt, crumpling the neat fabric.

They visit Puqi Village, walking arm in arm in the pale sun. Hua Cheng, full of frantic energy, draws them out of human sight as they leave the village proper and takes him against the wall of the shrine, so near the place where they began a life together. Back then there was just single straw mat and the warmth of another body and the strange stuttering birth of happiness. Xie Lian would never have imagined those first moments becoming everything this is. He would have been terrified of it, wouldn't he? He was terrified—when Hua Cheng kissed him for the first time.

Nothing happens in the Gambler's Den. The possibility of it sits in Xie Lian's bones. What if, what if. Hua Cheng is languid and dangerous, lounging behind draped silk, and if he asked anything of Xie Lian then Xie Lian would give it—no need to bet. Hua Cheng is at work, here, of course, and all he asks of Xie Lian is his opinion—but he could ask. He could take, give.

"Let's get out of here," Hua Cheng says. "I've had enough of this collection of garbage and their wretched little squabbles." He stretches as he stands, smiles down at Xie Lian. Offers his hand.

A doorway you step through with Hua Cheng can lead to anywhere. Xie Lian leans against him and goes where he's led—

Mount Taicang is quiet, in the way nature is quiet—full of small animal sounds, plant sounds, insects. The air washes over them, clean and light after the incense-heavy warmth of the den. There is fruit on the trees, fallen leaves on the uneven ground.

"I wanted some peace," Hua Cheng murmurs, and draws Xie Lian into a slow kiss.

Xie Lian gasps softly, presses close. Arousal never left him, not through all the time when Hua Cheng wasn't touching him, and it pulses now with each brush of lips. They stand together in the entrance of the little house, leaning into each other. The sky is star-scattered and moonless.

They leave the door open as they eat—don't make the house into a sealed space which could be anywhere at all, but let it be exactly where it is. This place is not what it was in Xie Lian's youth, but it's something new, no longer desolate so much as comfortable in its solitude. The kinds of fruit which were considered so precious, reborn after all the fires, ripen for the birds.

"Can you undress for me, gege?" Hua Cheng asks.

It feels a little difficult, but Xie Lian nods. Closes the door and slips out of his robes. Ruoye, which has been sulky over their behaviour all day, slithers away along with the robes unprompted.

"I want to do something new again," Hua Cheng says.

He leads Xie Lian to the bed, and encourages him onto his hands and knees, and kneels behind him—rubs his face against Xie Lian's hip until Xie Lian laughs and feels a little less exposed. Here they are. The coolness of his skin is strange, makes him feel a little numb but also not. He's still so sensitive and aroused, but a little less aware of the edges of it somehow.

Hua Cheng kisses the hollow curve of Xie Lian's spine. His hair tickles across Xie Lian's flank, his hand curls possessively around Xie Lian's hip.

"San Lang," Xie Lian murmurs—shivers. Ah, he's a little cold, he doesn't think he likes it that much. He doesn't know why it matters now, cold doesn't mean anything to him usually. Or—maybe the last time he noticed he was cold was when very little of anything mattered to him. When his body was just a makeshift home.

"Oh," Hua Cheng says. He sounds briefly stricken. "Gege, I didn't think—"

There's a rustling pause, and then Hua Cheng is standing—a red robe is draped across Xie Lian's shoulders, tucked around him. He turns his face to press his cheek into it, and Hua Cheng bends and catches his mouth in a brief kiss.

Xie Lian sinks down onto his elbows as Hua Cheng settles on the bed behind him again, and that makes the robe pool a little around him, shielding him more from the night air. It's better than having kept his own robes on. It's a hotter feeling, it's like belonging.

Hua Cheng nuzzles up against Xie Lian's hip again, making him laugh—pushes fabric aside to kiss the curve of Xie Lian's behind, lick a ticklish stripe across his skin there. His hands find Xie Lian's hips, and His thumbs dig in at the tops of Xie Lian's thighs, slide higher, press, spreading him so that Hua Cheng can—can look at—

"Allow me, Dianxia," Hua Cheng says. He breathes heavily against Xie Lian's skin, it's so cute when he does that—breathes not because his body does it to live and not to make Xie Lian feel comfortable but because he just needs to do something to cope with whatever feeling is overwhelming him. He doesn't need to breathe for breathing's sake but he needs to breathe through things. Sweetly human, or—whatever it should be called. Unmonstrous, from a man who often thinks himself a monster.

He could be one if he wanted. Xie Lian would mind far less than Hua Cheng seems to believe. He's Xie Lian's, and Xie Lian will keep him safe. Monster, ghost, god, human—what hasn't he been, what couldn't he be? He's Xie Lian's, Xie Lian's. Xie Lian is older now, isn't the boy who cried when things which belonged together were separated, but that boy is still in him. The hoarder, the needy child. He clings—not so much to material things—but he clings. Hua Cheng believes that he, of the two of them, is the possessive one—

Hua Cheng squeezes Xie Lian's ass, makes a hungry little sound—kisses Xie Lian where his body is still a little soft from being fucked. Not all that clean, perhaps, but—but Hua Cheng will laugh at him if he says so. Ghost and god. What does it matter, if Hua Cheng likes it? He's trying to learn that.

"Oh," Xie Lian says. "Oh, San Lang, that's—"

Hua Cheng hums. It vibrates through Xie Lian, and his gasp hitches into a moan as Hua Cheng licks at him, a slow light drag from his taint and up.

Of course Hua Cheng is good at this too, Xie Lian thinks, letting his head drop onto his forearm on the bed. He's so good at kissing me, of course his mouth would feel—

It doesn't stay the same. Hua Cheng tests different pressures with his tongue, sucks gently, breathes open-mouthed and hot across Xie Lian's skin. He holds Xie Lian open and works his tongue inside him, pushing deep, oh, deeper than Xie Lian would have thought he could—and then back to licking lightly—

It doesn't feel like being pushed towards orgasm. It just feels good. He might think he was being selfish, accepting all of this—he thinks he must be selfish, sometimes, in bed. In life. But Hua Cheng is moaning too, and his hands are urgent. Because he doesn't need-need to breathe, he doesn't pull away—stays nestled close, consumes Xie Lian in little licks while Xie Lian cries out softly, desperately. He's drooling on his arm a bit, he thinks. His cock is dripping. He can feel the way liquid pools there, slides free. Hua Cheng's saliva gathers behind his balls. It's all a little disgusting, but in the most decadent way Xie Lian can imagine, the most perfect way. He always forgets his shame with Hua Cheng touching him.

"Please," he says. "Please, please, San Lang—"

He grasps at a corner of the robe Hua Cheng draped across him, claws at it. Something snags and tears under his nails.

"Please what?" Hua Cheng asks. It could sound like Hua Cheng ordering him around, but it doesn't. Hua Cheng sounds as pleading as Xie Lian does.

"Fuck me, fuck me," Xie Lian says. He shocks himself with his words, not the begging but how crudely he puts it. He reaches awkwardly back with one arm, grasping after Hua Cheng—tugs when Hua Cheng takes his hand, and cries in relief when Hua Cheng presses him down into the bed, grinding against him, grinding him in turn against the covers.

Do I want to come this time, he wonders. He isn't sure yet. He feels squirmy with arousal. It's still big and heavy in him but it feels like it lives there, like he's making a space in himself for it that he might be able to keep, with a little care. He doesn't know if that's how it works—but it's how it feels.

Hua Cheng eases into him, his slick cock opening Xie Lian again. Is there a limit to how many times Xie Lian can want to have him like this? There must be, but it doesn't feel like it. His body learned to recover fast from pain, and it occurred to him only belatedly that he might not feel much of the discomfort he's heard described as following certain kinds of sex—but that's how it is. He feels insatiable.

Hua Cheng fucks him in shallow thrusts, body moulded to Xie Lian's back. Xie Lian's cock rubs against the bedding with each thrust, and Xie Lian can feel that there's a spreading wet patch under him. He tilts his hips a little, looking for the angle where the sparks Hua Cheng's movements send through him will turn blinding—finds it with a sob. Hua Cheng takes his cue well, attentive as ever—holds Xie Lian there, in that position.

Xie Lian doesn't often seek the sharpest pressure-pleasure part of being fucked like this. He likes lighter pressure, to feel Hua Cheng brushing against that place inside him but not pushing into it. But he needs it now, needs it terribly. I think I'm going to come after all, he thinks, as Hua Cheng starts to fuck him harder. It's going to happen, isn't it—

The pressure is still strange, a little frightening—but only a little. He's been sitting with all this tension for hours and hours. The swell of it is—is less dramatic, maybe, by comparison—maybe that's not the right word—it still feels—it's so—

"Oh, oh, oh," he gasps. "Don't, San Lang, don't stop, please don't stop, ah—"

He's clawing at the sheets, frantic, frantic. Only Hua Cheng's hands keep him from twisting away. His legs try, weakly, to kick. His hair is a mess, it always ends up being such a mess, one of its pins hangs uselessly half-tangled in the spill of it. He can hardly breathe, gulps air in laboured sobs. The shift from enjoying denial to this need was so sudden, it swept over him all at once, it swallows him entirely. He bites down hard on his forearm, screams into it, ragged—oh, he's—there, there, he's coming. Is he coming? He's coming. He didn't think it would go on like this. It's usually so flickering and shallow when it happens.

This is deep and whole-body. He convulses with it. He thinks he screams again, smacks his hand hard against the bed, open-palmed. The shocks of pleasure just keep coming, even as his breathing evens—make him laugh, surprised, as his body twitches again.

Hua Cheng rolls him over onto his back, near the edge of the bed to avoid the worst of the mess. Xie Lian blinks up at him.

"Well," he says. Takes a shaky little breath in, laughs it out. "San Lang, that was—mm."

He means to ask if Hua Cheng has come, but he can feel, once he thinks about it, that he did. He isn't sure when. He lost track of everything for a little while there, went so gloriously blank.

"Are you alright?" Hua Cheng asks. He looks—he looks worried. Cute. He gets like this sometimes. Are you alright, are you alright.

Xie Lian pats his cheek—catches sight of the deep bite mark he left on his own arm, and flushes.

"Don't look so afraid," he says. "You wouldn't hurt me."

"Not on purpose," Hua Cheng says.

Xie Lian smiles. "It just—it was really good. It was so good. I didn't know what to do with myself. Oh, I'm a mess."

He is—snotty, which is undignified, and wet-eyed, which he doesn't mind.

"You're perfect," Hua Cheng says, with feeling. "Dianxia, I'm not—"

"None of that," Xie Lian says. He feels too boneless to push himself up and hug Hua Cheng to him, so he makes ineffectual grabbing gestures with his hands until Hua Cheng lifts him, finds himself crushed safely against Hua Cheng's chest.

He feels so dazed, a little loopy. Everything makes him want to laugh or cry.

"Let me bathe you," Hua Cheng murmurs, and Xie Lian clings harder, shakes his head. He can't let go of Hua Cheng yet, can't not be touching him for long enough. A bath takes time to draw, water has to be warmed. Hua Cheng is always in such a hurry to care for him.

"What if I carry you to the baths at Paradise Manor?" Hua Cheng asks.

That would be better. The baths there are always ready to use, in Xie Lian's experience.

"If nobody sees me," Xie Lian mumbles.

"Don't worry," Hua Cheng says. He kisses the crown of Xie Lian's head. "I'll gouge their eyes out first."

Xie Lian giggles, pats Hua Cheng again, not aiming for anywhere in particular and finding his ear. "Alright," he says.

"You're not meant to agree to that part," Hua Cheng says, pained.

"It's okay," Xie Lian says. "I know you won't do it in front of me anyway."

"Gege," Hua Cheng says.

"Come along," Xie Lian tells him. "You really do have to carry me, San Lang."

Hua Cheng stands, holding Xie Lian to him—arranges the red robe more closely around him. This is nice—it's so nice. The weak feeling of relief, all the tension drained out of him. To be held. It's nice to know he can do it, too. What a silly thing to feel proud of. But he does. It just took a little waiting—a little patience. Even if it doesn't happen again for a while, he'll know he can—can in a way that satisfies him down to his core, can without panic following.

He doesn't need it every time, he thinks. But he can have it—if he does.

Hua Cheng is the one who's most clingy as they bathe, in the end—wraps himself around Xie Lian's back, mouths mindlessly at his neck while Xie Lian combs out his hair—not a prelude to more sex, but a simpler kind of intimacy.

Xie Lian, feeling indulgent, leans back against him—takes his time—these days there's always time.