throw the keys back

by orphan_account

Summary:

"The thing is, right," Wei Ying said, "this city is supposed to be great for queers, and it's senior year, and I've been out for the almost the entirety of the time I've been at college, and everyone knows me, and I've, like, gone on dates, even, and still, no-one's even kissed me. It's never happened! Not even once! Isn't that crazy? I think I'm very kissable, Lan Zhan!"

She felt Lan Zhan's gaze get heavier.

"You're a virgin," Lan Zhan said, her voice an octave deeper than usual.

"What's wrong with me?" Wei Ying wailed. "I mean, I'm cute, aren't I?"

It was Friday night, the campus bar heaving, thumping music barely audible over the drunken bellowing of students around them, but Wei Ying was grateful. This way, she could whine as loudly as she wanted, and no-one would even look in their direction.

"Yes, baby," Nie Huaisang said, immediately and dutifully, because she was an actual friend. Jiang Cheng scoffed, but said nothing, which was just as well, because in Wei Ying's current fragile state, she felt fully capable of breaking a beer bottle over his head.

"And, like, I know my personality isn't the best, but I'm not without redeeming qualities. I'm charming too, right?"

"Totally," Nie Huaisang agreed. "I'd go so far as to say delightful, on occasion."

Wei Ying slumped forward, her chin resting on the rim of the empty beer glass, tipping it towards her face. "Thanks, pal," she said into the glass, distorting the sound of her voice.

"Honestly," Jiang Cheng burst out. It was impossible for him to stay silent for long. "The way you're acting, you'd think you'd just been left at the altar, not been on a date that was just so-so."

"It was worse than so-so!" Wei Ying argued. "I'm traumatised."

Wei Ying really did feel that way, though if she was honest, it had little to do with the date or the girl. Mianmian had sat opposite her in the restaurant booth for two hours, idly stirring a vodka soda with a cocktail stick and offering small tight-lipped smiles in response to Wei Ying's rambling anecdotes. She never laughed, but Wei Ying had been sure she was winning her over, little by little. By the time the check arrived, Wei Ying was suffused with a warm glow of beery confidence.

"We should definitely do this again," she said outside the restaurant.

"Definitely," Mianmian said. "You should come to my D&D group. We meet on Tuesday nights."

"Definitely," Wei Ying said, and went in for a hug, which Mianmian accepted warmly.

Yes, Wei Ying thought, her chin still hooked on Mianmian's shoulder. Now is the time. You can do this. Jiayou! They drew apart, and Wei Ying didn't give herself a second to think before dipping in for a kiss. Mianmian jumped with a surprised "Oh!" and Wei Ying ended up kind of... head-butting her in the jaw.

"Oh my god," Wei Ying said through the roaring in her ears, sheer mortification drowning out all thought. "Uh. Are you okay?"

"Ah," Mianmian said weakly, massaging her jaw. "Ow."

They'd gone back inside the restaurant to ask for ice, sat side-by-side in the foyer for thirty minutes. Mianmian held the dishtowel-wrapped ice under her chin, while Wei Ying dully repeated, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," until Mianmian finally told her to shut the fuck up. Then there had been silence.

"But you don't even like this girl," Jiang Cheng said now. "You said you had second thoughts about even meeting her."

"I didn't say that," Wei Ying protested, though she might have. It was just that she was sick of the apps. How were you supposed to know you liked someone from a filtered selfie, couple of artfully curated candids, and a few days of stilted text conversation? Mianmian's bio said she was a leftist geek, 21. She looked very pretty in her profile picture with her patchwork waistcoat and floaty white skirt, her long silky hair falling in a loose side ponytail. Wei Ying was also a leftist geek, 21, known to like pretty girls. It was an ideal match. Which was why Wei Ying had nearly cancelled three times. Nerves. Because the match was so ideal. "I really wanted her to like me," Wei Ying mumbled.

"But did you like her?" Nie Huaisang's voice was kind and knowing. Wei Ying hated her.

"Uuuuuuugh." Wei Ying pushed the glass aside, making enough room to rest her head on the table. The wood was beer-sticky beneath her cheek, but she couldn't bring herself to lift herself back upright. "You know, maybe I'm not even gay. Like, shouldn't these things just sort themselves out? Like, I should meet a girl, and it should just work, right? Maybe I'm asexual."

Nie Huaisang coughed, as if to stifle a laugh. "Maybe," she said, but her voice carried a suspicious quaver. Wei Ying supposed that was fair.

"Or maybe," Wei Ying said tremulously, "I'm just fucking doomed."

Jiang Cheng slapped the table hard next to Wei Ying's head, and there was a loud scrape of metal chair legs on the floor as he got up. "Right. Well, I'm out. Best of luck to you both."

"Didi, you're abandoning me?" Wei Ying bleated, but she couldn't really muster the energy for a full guilt-trip.

"Poor baby," Nie Huaisang said, and scritched Wei Ying's head. Wei Ying sighed into it, and let herself drift. It had been a long day, between the early breakfast shift at the coffee shop this morning, the three hours of classes, the outfit selection and pre-gaming ahead of the date, the actual date, the languishing in humiliation and despair immediately following the date. The six beers and two tequilas had softened the raw edges, but also made Wei Ying whiny and maudlin, unable to control her mouth.

There was some kind of commotion at the next table. "I can't, I can't," a girl was saying, while the others chorused, "Aw, come on!"

"You have to!" someone insisted. "Please, take one for the team! One of us has to!"

"Do you think I have a chance?" the girl asked.

There was a brief pause. "Yyyyyeah," someone said uncertainly. "I mean, why not, right?"

Wei Ying wondered if she was about to witness a misguided TikTok challenge in real time. Maybe it'd land somebody in the hospital. Cheered by the thought, she lifted her head.

The main speaker was a tiny freshman kid with flannel, winged eyeliner and a nose ring, and she was surrounded by an assortment of baby queers, all with spiky hair in jewel tones, which made them look sort of like Furbies.

"Okay," the girl said, "wish me luck," wide-eyed, with a nervous grin plucking the side of her mouth, and the others urged her, "Go, go, go!" She made a dramatic show of crossing her fingers behind her back, before skipping over to the bar, and hopping up on a stool next to—

"Oh no," Wei Ying said.

Glossy hair cropped behind the ears, each adorned with a silver hoop. Broad sweep of shoulders. A tiny black cloud tattoo on a well-defined tricep. It was Lan Zhan.

Nie Huaisang followed Wei Ying's gaze, and winced. "Oh, shit. Rest in pieces."

Wei Ying watched as Lan Zhan set down her book and turned her head to look at the kid, cool and attentive. The kid immediately went red. Wei Ying couldn't really blame her. Lan Zhan was the most intense person Wei Ying had ever met. She was not afraid of direct eye contact, and her eyes were luminous gold, like a cat's. Wei Ying prided herself on always having something to say, but even she'd been known to lose the thread of a sentence with Lan Zhan’s gaze on her.

The kid was saying something, her eyes darting, fidgeting with her overlong shirt-sleeve. Lan Zhan's expression didn't change, but she inclined her head slightly, as if to show she was listening. And then the kid was—Wei Ying cringed, but couldn't tear her eyes away—holding out her phone for Lan Zhan to enter her number. Lan Zhan made no move to take it. The kid lowered the phone, looking as though she might atomise into little drops, but then Lan Zhan's lips moved. Wei Ying had no idea what she was saying, but the kid got even redder, beacon-bright, and her mouth twitched into a shy smile.

A moment later, the kid was stumbling back to her table, dazed and flustered. "What did she say?" someone hissed.

"She said no," the kid sighed, "but that she's honoured. She saw me in the student paper that one time, and she knows my name."

"She knows your name," the other kids echoed, awed.

Wei Ying looked back at Lan Zhan. She'd returned to her book, highball of soda water untouched at her elbow, her expression giving no sign she was aware of the furore occuring behind her.

"This is fucked up," Wei Ying declared. "Fucked up and unfair. You know she's only three months older than me? What does she have that I don't have?"

"You mean, besides...?" Nie Huaisang waved a circle over her face.

"Fuck you," Wei Ying said. She felt suddenly revitalised by outrage. "I'm getting another drink, do you want something?"

Nie Huaisang shook her head, and Wei Ying trotted over to Lan Zhan's side to flag down the bartender. He was making something complicated with the cocktail shaker, so Wei Ying took the opportunity to have a good gawk at Lan Zhan.

In some ways, she got it. Lan Zhan was viciously sexy with her clinging white t-shirt and tanned toned biceps and a dark lock of hair falling in her eyes. And Nie Huaisang had a point about her face, the swooping arc of her nose and the cut-glass cheekbones. But looks could only take you so far, and Wei Ying happened to know that Lan Zhan could be really annoying. Like in freshman year sociology, when they had to give a presentation together, but Wei Ying forgot to show up for their prep session, so Lan Zhan snitched on her to the tutor, and they both ended up with zero credit. Or like the time when Wei Ying went to a house party hosted by Lan Zhan's sister, Lan Huan, left behind three quarters of a bottle of wine, and returned to discover Lan Zhan had poured it down the sink. It was fifteen whole dollars! Or like—this morning, even, Lan Zhan had come to the coffee shop exactly two minutes after opening time, caught Wei Ying smoking outside the exit, and scowled at her until she stubbed it out and came inside to make her precious cup of green tea. "You shouldn't smoke," she said, and left without saying goodbye. Lan Zhan was a bore and a scold, and she sometimes got a nasty slant to her mouth when she looked at Wei Ying, like she was barely holding back from hitting her. Do it! Wei Ying wanted to scream. Release yourself! But of course the zoomers couldn't know about any of that. They just saw... whatever they saw. A tall hot butch with perfect posture.

Lan Zhan had noticed her looking, dragged her eyes up from the page of her book to peer contemptuously down her nose at Wei Ying.

"I'm just trying to figure it out," Wei Ying said.

Lan Zhan raised one eyebrow.

"I mean, why everyone's so obsessed with eating your pussy," she explained. At that moment, probably due to the loud vulgarity, the bartender caught her eye, so she ordered a bottle of Miller, Lan Zhan's gaze burning the side of her face.

"Stop judging me," she snapped, when the bartender knelt to fetch the bottle from the cooler. "I'm not that drunk. Well, I am, a little, but I had a hard day, and it's a Friday, I'm allowed. And I'm twenty-one now!" she added, because Lan Zhan had ratted her out for underage drinking at least twice before.

Lan Zhan still said nothing, which was somehow more devastating than if she'd called Wei Ying a wanton tequila-soaked harlot out loud. Wei Ying got the message anyway.

"You're such a dick," she said. "How come everyone thinks you're sexy?"

"I have no idea what you mean," Lan Zhan said.

Wei Ying took a long slug from the beer. It was sparkly and tasteless and sat heavy in her gut, just the way she liked it.

"The thing is, right," Wei Ying said, "this city is supposed to be great for queers, and it's senior year, and I've been out for the almost the entirety of the time I've been at college, and everyone knows me, and I've, like, gone on dates, even, and still, no-one's even kissed me. It's never happened! Not even once! Isn't that crazy? I think I'm very kissable, Lan Zhan!"

She felt Lan Zhan's gaze get heavier, somehow, so she drank some more.

Finally, Lan Zhan said, "You're a virgin." Her voice was an octave deeper than usual. Wei Ying shivered, unaccountably.

"There's no need to say it like that, Lan Zhan. Virginity is a social construct, you know, it doesn't really mean anything. Like, what even is sex, anyway?"

"Mn," said Lan Zhan.

Wei Ying took another gulp, finishing the bottle, and waving the bartender over for another. "That said though," she said, "yeah, I'm a virgin. The most virgin to ever virgin. A turbo virgin. I’ve never slept in a date's bed. I've never kissed. I’ve barely even held hands. Do you think that's pathetic?"

"Wei Ying," said Lan Zhan, with a hint of censure. "No."

Wei Ying squirmed. That was another annoying thing about Lan Zhan. She took everything Wei Ying said seriously.

"Anyway," she said, changing the subject quickly as the bartender slid another beer in front of her, "the point is, Lan Zhan, you don't have any trouble getting women to pay attention to you. Actually, lesbians orbit you like the sun. Why is that, huh? How can I get some of it?"

Lan Zhan's brow furrowed, like she was contemplating the question deeply. "I believe," she said, "it's a matter of knowing what you want."

"But I do know what I want," whined Wei Ying. "I want a girl to have sex with me." An idea suddenly struck. "Lan Zhan. Can you tutor me?"

"Tutor you," Lan Zhan repeated.

"Like, just teach me some basics? Like the kissing thing, that's a big one for me right now." She remembered the face Mianmian had made after Wei Ying nearly bashed her teeth in, and cringed. "Please?"

"You want me to teach you kissing," Lan Zhan said without inflection.

Was she just going to echo everything Wei Ying said? "Yes! Please, Lan Zhan? Pleeeeaaase? You're such a good teacher. Remember when I got an A in philosophy because of you? It wouldn't even need to be a big thing, just an hour or so. We could do it after lectures on Wednesday, what do you think? Please?" She looked up at Lan Zhan through her lashes, pouting. Lan Zhan was very still, frozen as she regarded her, and for a long moment, Wei Ying thought maybe this would be it, the last straw; that she'd finally decide she was done with Wei Ying for good.

Then she said, "I'll consider it."

Wei Ying cheered, and flung her arms around Lan Zhan, nuzzling into her shoulder. Lan Zhan tolerated it stiffly.

"I won't give you any trouble," Wei Ying promised. "I'll be a good student. Really diligent."

"Right," Lan Zhan said. The syllable in her voice was raspy and strange, but Wei Ying, thoroughly drunk now, didn't think anything of it.

-

It wasn't that she forgot about the tutor idea, more that she hoped Lan Zhan would. After the conversation with Lan Zhan, she'd cheered up and dragged Nie Huaisang around three other bars before last call, everything a blur of shots and strobes and dancefloors. It had felt like a weight off her mind, a simple solution she'd been staring at all along. Wei Ying's inadequacies didn't seem so insurmountable. Everything was going to be alright. Lan Zhan would sort it out. Except then she woke up with shame blanketing her like a thick fog, and she couldn't believe her own stupidity. Kissing tutor? If Lan Zhan had any mercy in her heart, she'd pretend Wei Ying never said anything.

But Wei Ying had long known that Lan Zhan didn't.

wednesday 4pm my apt., came the text later that afternoon. 1 hour only.

Wei Ying chewed her thumbnail. She could pretend she didn't know what Lan Zhan was talking about, but if Lan Zhan agreed to try it, maybe it wasn't such a terrible idea after all?

omg!! lan zhan!! thank u 🥰
you rly don't have to do this btw sry if i was rly aggressive about it last night
tequila makes me kind of
mercurial 😔
i mean
so i've been told

you weren't aggressive.

hehe ok!

She typed out, i know it's a little weird, then backspaced. There was no point calling attention to the situation's weirdness.

see you then 😇😇😇

The read receipt appeared, but Lan Zhan never wrote back.

-

Wei Ying had been to Lan Zhan's apartment a couple of times before, but only for college work, and never alone. Lan Zhan's family owned the building, so she stayed there rent-free. It was huge and pristine and modern with clean white walls and linoleum floors, sunlight flooding every room even on grey days.

Wei Ying arrived on time, and Lan Zhan buzzed her up right away.

"Apologies," Lan Zhan said, as Wei Ying was taking off her shoes in the doorway. She was still in school clothes, white button-down collar peeking out over the neck of her navy sweater, gold wire frame reading glasses pushed high on her annoyingly perfect nose. "I have a final task to complete. It should only take a few minutes."

"No problem!" Wei Ying said brightly, and followed Lan Zhan into the living room. Her Macbook was set up at a table next to the window, with a pile of books stacked beside it. "Is this for your thesis? How much have you done? I have lots of notes and stuff but I haven't actually written anything yet. Like literally, I only have the thousand word abstract. I'm totally fucked."

Lan Zhan, settling back into her seat at the table, didn't look up at her. "I prefer silence when I work."

"Oh, right," Wei Ying said, and mimed zipping and padlocking her lips, throwing away the key. Lan Zhan, eyes already back on the screen, missed this little performance. No-one ever appreciated Wei Ying the way she deserved.

Lan Zhan hadn't invited her to sit, and Yu Ziyuan used to have a thing about that. Wei Ying had been made to stand all night once or twice after she'd sat down to dinner before Jiang Fengmian, or sat in the wrong place. She didn't want to be rude when she was already taking up Lan Zhan's time, so she kept on her feet, wandered the room aimlessly. Lan Zhan had lots of plants dotting the room, tiny flecks of colour and life in the cool and empty stretch of white. Wei Ying greeted each one, gently stroking their green leaves. There were a few aloe veras and plenty of succulents, but there were some Wei Ying didn't know the names of, including a little tree, two feet tall, with delicate leaves like a fairy's green fingers. "Hello," Wei Ying said to the tree, enchanted.

Lan Zhan flipped the page of a textbook a little more violently than necessary. She was the only person Wei Ying knew who could somehow express a hateful tone while studying in complete silence. Wei Ying shut up.

There wasn't much else to look at. Everything was tucked away neat and tidy. Wei Ying hovered for a while. Then she pulled out her phone, but she couldn't connect to the wifi without a password. She started prowling again, hunting down the router. It wasn't here, or in the hall. She couldn't go in Lan Zhan's room. Ugh, what was she supposed to do? Stand still and listen to her own thoughts?

It had already been six minutes, her phone said. Lan Zhan was only giving her until five pm. Were they even going to have time to... do anything?

"Lan Zhan," she said, then faltered under Lan Zhan's death stare. "Sorry, sorry! Just, how long are you going to be?"

Lan Zhan took her time answering.

"Longer," she said deliberately, "with interruptions."

"Sorry!" Wei Ying squeaked. "Just. Can I sit down?"

Maybe she was imagining it, but Lan Zhan's face softened.

"You may," she said.

Wei Ying ignored the implicit grammar correction. (Lan Zhan was so annoying.) She bounded over to the couch, sinking back into the soft blue cushions. For a while, she played Bejeweled on her phone. Then she got bored and set it down to watch Lan Zhan from across the room, typing so fast that the clatter of the keyboard was like a musical instrument, the glow of the screen casting her face in pale blue, light dancing in the reflection of her glasses. Apart from her hands, she was still, relaxed, one slippered foot crossed over an ankle. She never bit her nails or chewed a pen cap or fidgeted at all. She was like a lake on a windless day, serene and untouched and shining.

Wei Ying tried to imitate her, shifting and pulling herself upright, shoulders back. It didn't feel as natural as it looked. She took deep meditative breaths to clear her mind. Although Wei Ying didn't really understand what was meant by the concept of clearing one's mind. Lan Zhan meditated and did yoga and knew a lot about that stuff. One time Wei Ying had asked her about it, and she'd said, "It's more important to acknowledge and embrace each thought as it arrives." Wei Ying's mind didn't work like that, though. She pictured herself standing under a waterfall, flailing around with her arms out, trying to catch thoughts as they tumbled down in a torrent.

Maybe there was something to it after all, because the longer Wei Ying sat there, breathing, the more her thoughts slowed, dripping thickly like honey. The light in the room was changing, dimming as clouds drifted over the sun. The room had been gleaming white, but now took on a watery grey, shadows stretching and deepening. There was no sound apart from the persistent clicking of the keyboard, the occasional whoosh of a car passing by, the steady thud of Wei Ying's own heartbeat.

When Lan Zhan finally snapped her textbook shut, Wei Ying started, and realised she'd almost fallen asleep. She checked her phone again. Twenty minutes had slipped past.

Lan Zhan took off her glasses, closed her laptop and replaced her book on the stack. Then she got up and swung her chair around to face Wei Ying, sitting almost far back enough to call it a slouch. Her legs were spread open in their loose grey linens, with her feet planted firmly on the floor.

She looked at Wei Ying, eyes dark, and tilted her head, a clear invitation.

"Oh," Wei Ying said faintly, her heart beating faster. She stood, and took a few hesitant steps forward.

Lan Zhan said nothing, but spread her legs a heel-toe wider.

Wei Ying went hot all over. God, were they really doing this? She took a final step into the vee of Lan Zhan's open legs. Lan Zhan's hands came up to settle on her waist, her fingers spreading out over the small of Wei Ying's back, her thumbs stroking over Wei Ying's... hips. Wei Ying inhaled sharply, a long, low tug in her gut.

"Lan Zhan," she said, and her voice came out hushed, quieter than she'd intended. She swallowed. "Lan Zhan, that night in the bar, I wasn't kidding, you know. I've never done anything. Not even," she flushed deeper, "this."

"Mn," said Lan Zhan, but it didn't seem like she was listening. Her eyes weren't even on Wei Ying's face, but raking lazily over her body, lingering somewhere to the left of her collar.

Wei Ying glanced down. Her bra strap was poking out of her blouse. Fuck, was she an idiot? She'd been wearing this all day. Her insides twisted with humiliation.

"Lan Zhan," she said, more desperately now. "I'm so serious right now, this is a big deal for me. It's my first kiss."

Lan Zhan gave her waist a squeeze. It was a touch overfamiliar. Proprietary. Wei Ying felt she should hate it, but for some reason, her heart just kicked harder.

"It isn't," Lan Zhan said. She was speaking quietly too, her voice a soft rumble.

"No, it is, that's what I'm trying to tell you," Wei Ying insisted. "It really is!"

Lan Zhan's hands drifted up Wei Ying's sides, her hooded, sleepy gaze following their path. Wei Ying shivered at the sensation of fingertips lightly skimming her ribs, right where she was ticklish, bumping over the line of Wei Ying's bra, over her blouse, travelling over Wei Ying's shoulders, coming to land on the back of Wei Ying's neck, and then applying pressure, a firm suggestion. Wei Ying got it, and shuffled closer. Then she thought fuck it and climbed into Lan Zhan's lap, kneeling over her on the chair, her knees bracketing Lan Zhan's thighs, which felt... good, and Lan Zhan hummed low, and gave her a slow, approving nod, which felt even better.

The pressure of Lan Zhan's fingers on her neck was a searing heat, and Wei Ying could feel herself sinking down towards her, pulled by gravity. They were only an inch or so apart when Lan Zhan brought one hand down to stroke along Wei Ying's jaw, behind her ear; then to grab a greedy handful of Wei Ying's hair, her hand clenching hard, a sharp painful prickle that made Wei Ying's mouth fall open on a gasp.

And then Lan Zhan surged up, and they were kissing, and it was. Not like a first kiss at all. Not like Wei Ying had imagined. Lan Zhan took immediate advantage of Wei Ying's open mouth, working her tongue inside, an intrusion, insistent and forceful, holding Wei Ying's head tight, the better to tongue her thoroughly. Wei Ying couldn't kiss back, could barely move, only submit to Lan Zhan plundering her mouth, exploring and licking and tasting. It felt so strange, Lan Zhan's tongue lapping at her own, hot and wet. Do I like this, she thought vaguely, and then realised she was making little whimpering sounds in her throat.

"This is," Lan Zhan said when they parted. Her eyes were all black and blown-out, her mouth reddened and spit-slick, and her chest was rising and falling visibly with her breath.

"What is?" Wei Ying's voice came out breathy. Lan Zhan just looked at her, her eyes crinkling with amusement, and Wei Ying replayed their conversation. First kiss. This is. "Ahhhhhh," Wei Ying said, "ha, ha, yeah," and then Lan Zhan's hand tightened in her hair and tugged her back down, and Wei Ying moaned before Lan Zhan even got her mouth on her.

This time, Lan Zhan alternated kisses with nibbles, her teeth grazing and tugging at Wei Ying's lower lip, and it kind of stung, honestly, who could have known Lan Zhan would be rough like this, but what was even more confusing was the way Wei Ying kept keening into it, her own hands scrabbling at Lan Zhan's shoulders, fingers hooking into Lan Zhan's sweater, trying to get closer.

"Ah!" Wei Ying moaned when Lan Zhan bent her head to mouth wetly at her neck, and Wei Ying broke out in goosebumps all over her body. "Ahhhh, uhhhh." Wow, she was so fucking loud. Over the years in apartments with paper-thin walls, Wei Ying had mastered the art of jerking off in two minutes flat without making a single sound, but apparently, just a few minutes of working over by Lan Zhan's tongue was all it took to obliterate those efforts entirely.

Gradually, she became aware she was hitching her hips urgently against Lan Zhan's, trying to relieve the deep pulsing throb in her pussy, humping her through layers of denim and linen. So—brazen, she thought, needy, shameless, and she shuddered and whined.

Lan Zhan's hands suddenly loosened their hold on Wei Ying's head, fell to her shoulders. She drew her mouth back from Wei Ying's neck.

"Wei Ying."

"Ah," Wei Ying gasped, "ah, uh, yeah?"

"That's enough now."

Wei Ying thought it was another of Lan Zhan's dumb jokes. She kind of laughed, and leaned back in for another kiss, only to catch the side of Lan Zhan's cheek.

"It's five o'clock," Lan Zhan said, showing her the time on her Fitbit: 16:59. Then she brought her hand down to Wei Ying's leg, nudging behind Wei Ying's knee, like she might try to physically peel her off.

Wei Ying blinked. She scrambled off and tumbled onto the floor, her heart still hammering.

Lan Zhan got up, turned her chair to face her laptop again, and settled back down.

"Are you fucking serious," Wei Ying said, weakly. Lan Zhan's lips were still red and swollen, but otherwise, she looked perfectly unaffected. She opened the Macbook up again; it began whirring exhaustedly.

"Yes," Lan Zhan said, her eyes on the screen.

"But," Wei Ying said, and picked herself up. Her legs were jelly. She could barely stand. "But. What."

"I'll see you in class, Wei Ying," she said absently, and began typing.

Wei Ying stood there for a long moment, staring, waiting for her to change her mind, but of course it was Lan Zhan. She wouldn't.

"Fucking Lan Zhan!" she screamed as soon as she was out of the apartment and in the open air, drawing a few concerned looks from strangers. Wei Ying stomped all the way home, shame and fury propelling her legs.

-

She couldn't concentrate on coursework. Her mouth felt bruised. She kept touching it, running a fingertip along her lower lip, before realising what she was doing and whipping her hand away. She had no marks—she'd checked—but when Jiang Cheng arrived home, she jumped and tugged her blouse further up her neck, as if Lan Zhan's mouth might have left a secret UV print. She expected Jiang Cheng to notice—something, somehow; felt sure he'd look at her and instantly perceive that she had undergone transformation, still a turbo virgin, maybe, but a kiss virgin no longer. He didn't though, just kicked off his shoes, stormed through to the kitchen to stare blankly at the inside of the refrigerator for a moment, then slammed its door and disappeared into his room without so much as sparing Wei Ying a glance.

After a while, she gave up and cracked open a bottle of red wine, taking a long pull from the bottle before she poured herself a glass. She felt better almost right away, chest unclenching, so she drank more, and set up her laptop with Netflix on a chair next to the couch, and by the time she was one hour into Forgetting Sarah Marshall, half-drunk, hazy, floating half an inch outside her body, she could think about Lan Zhan again without wanting to shrivel up. It was fucked up, what Lan Zhan did. Wasn't it? Wei Ying had told her it was her first time, as good as asked her to be nice. She remembered Lan Zhan's fingers tangling in her hair, the sharp shock of pain when she'd pulled, and she tried it out on herself, looping a lock around her knuckles and tugging, but it wasn't the same. There was none of the surprise in doing it like this, and either she was weaker than Lan Zhan, or she just didn't have the guts to really make it hurt.

She was still aroused, she realised distantly, even though it had been hours now. She slid a hand under the waistband of her jeans, swiped a finger between her legs, startled at how slick she was. It was a bad idea to do this on the living room couch, but she was too drunk to care, and besides, it was about to be over quickly. When she dragged her finger over the hood of her clit, her whole body twitched and spasmed. She had to bite down hard on her lip, screwing up her face, her breaths coming shaky and hard, heart already thumping.

It was too intense, too much, too fast. She was oversensitive, couldn't jerk it like she wanted to; just a light nick of her forefinger over her clit had her straining, thighs trembling, feet arching. She brought her other hand up, pressed the heel of her palm against her open mouth, getting it saliva-wet. Then she pushed down hard, grinding it against her lips, recalling the heavy pressure of Lan Zhan's mouth.

She came a few seconds later, unable to suppress a throaty groan, even as she sank her teeth into her palm. The orgasm felt sharp, vivid, despite the insulation of drunkenness, and she lay there for a long time after, panting.

-

She held out for two days before texting Lan Zhan. She was doing pretty well not thinking about it until she'd found herself sitting inches away from Lan Zhan in their sociology seminar, close enough to feel her body heat. When Lan Zhan moved, something shone, caught the light out of the corner of Wei Ying's eye. She swivelled her head around. There was a triangle of pale exposed skin at Lan Zhan's collar, and lower, something glinted silver. A neck-chain?

"Miss Wei," the tutor prompted. It was her turn to report on group-work.

"Yeah," Wei Ying had said distantly, not taking her eyes off Lan Zhan's... chest. She was ogling Lan Zhan's chest in front of a room full of her classmates. The realisation jolted her back to reality.

She cleared her throat, then couldn't resist stealing a final look. Lan Zhan was facing straight ahead, eyes on the tutor at the front of the class, glacial and indifferent. She hadn't returned a single one of Wei Ying's glances.

"Right," Wei Ying said, voice wavering. "So, Durkheim observes..."

it wasn't even a full hour, Wei Ying texted Lan Zhan later, sitting on the kitchen counter with her legs dangling over the cupboard, sipping warm canned beer and waiting for water to boil for ramen.

also, i'm not sure you could call it a "lesson"
no offence!!!

The checkmarks appeared. Wei Ying waited for the reply, but none came. She set her phone down by her side, swung her legs fitfully, then picked it up again, tapped out:

i mean did i complete your learning objectives?
you never even said if i did a good job
😉

It was a joke, but Wei Ying did also have a flicker of genuine concern. All she'd done was sit and allow Lan Zhan to ravage her. It had been so one-sided. Surely it wasn’t right? But Lan Zhan got back to her in seconds this time.

satisfactory.
could have done without the whining.

Wei Ying scoffed out loud.

rude!!!!!!!!!!
YOU could do with showing your GUESTS a little more courtesy tbh

No reply. Wei Ying scowled.

so that's it?
no other areas for improvement?
lan laoshi u rly don't have anything else to teach me???

depends.

on?????????

does xuesheng want further instruction?

At that moment, Wei Ying became aware of a hissing sound, and glanced up in a daze to discover the pot of water bubbling over. She slid off the counter, fumbled to take the lid off, stared at the instructions on the ramen packet unseeingly. Did she want to do another lesson with Lan Zhan? She must, right, or why else would she be texting? But did she really? She still felt scalded from the last one. With the ramen in the pot, she put a pan on the heat with oil for some vegetables. The word xuesheng rang out in her head in Lan Zhan's wry, gravelly voice, and she nearly dropped her spatula at a sudden vivid flash of pornographic imagery, Lan Zhan the teacher all stern and buttoned-up, Wei Ying the student back-talking and snapping bubblegum, until Lan Zhan lost her temper, bent her over a desk and flipped up her skirt. "Ah," Wei Ying said to herself, very quietly, alone in the kitchen, and she felt her face flush hot. What was wrong with her? It was like a thought implanted by an alien. A sex-crazed, un-PC, anti-feminist alien. Wei Ying didn't even watch porn, and if she did, it wouldn't be porn like that. Would Lan Zhan fuck her or eat her out first, she wondered, and then squeaked and hid her face, as if that would do anything to shield her from the images inside her own head.

mmmmaybe, she texted Lan Zhan back. what do you have in mind for the next lesson? 😳

i'm available on wednesday at 4pm, Lan Zhan wrote, which was not even a reply. God, Lan Zhan could be so rude. see you then.

aw come on lan zhan!!! not even a hint? 🥺🙏
give me SOMETHING here!!!
like should i expect more like... courtship advice? date etiquette?
or... more... hands on demonstrations?
not that i'm expecting anything like that!!!!!!
lan zhan, are u ignoring me?
LAN ZHAN?????!!!!!!
😡💢😭😤😢😿🤬

A high, piercing beep! made Wei Ying jump and curse. The smoke alarm had gone off. She moved the pan of oil off the heat, then dragged a chair over from the dining table, clambered up onto it, grabbed a broom, and began batting at the ceiling to try to dislodge the alarm, which was far too high to reach without a ladder. Jiang Cheng, bleary-eyed and furious, appeared like a spectre in the doorway to observe her struggle.

"If you burn down the kitchen," he said, "I won't help you pay the deposit."

"Fuck you, didi," Wei Ying snapped, and caught the smoke alarm neatly with both hands, the broom clattering to the floor. "Anyway, the only reason I'd be the one burning down the kitchen is because you only know how to use the microwave."

"That is not even slightly true," said Jiang Cheng. "What about that house-warming dinner, huh? Who did all the cooking then?"

"That was the first night we moved in here! That was a whole year ago! You're really casting that up now?" Wei Ying ripped the batteries out of the box, and closed her eyes in satisfaction as it cut off mid-beep. "Ahhhh! Blessed silence."

"Your pot is boiling over," Jiang Cheng said, already retreating back into his room.

"Fuck," Wei Ying groaned, and jumped down to save it for the second time. So maybe Lan Zhan had turned her brains into mashed potato. Maybe she hadn't. Wei Ying was conceding nothing.

-

It was unseasonably hot on Wednesday. Wei Ying couldn't concentrate in class. There was no air conditioning in the lecture hall, and every breath she took was stale; she could taste dust on her tongue. She was sweating through her polyester, dark patches under her arms despite liberal applications of deodorant, and there would be no time to change before Lan Zhan's.

That was the other reason she couldn't concentrate, the other reason she kept sliding around in her seat, squirming. Lan Zhan's name echoed over and over, a chant in her head. It rumbled like soft thunder in the background when people spoke to Wei Ying directly; then, when they didn't, when Wei Ying was left alone with silence and her thoughts, it clamoured louder and louder, like lightning getting closer, until it drowned out everything else. She kept checking her phone, hopelessly: there was nothing. She wished Lan Zhan was on the socials just so Wei Ying could see when she was last active. What was Lan Zhan doing now? Sweating in a lecture hall just like this one? Leaving sticky finger-marks on the corners of her books, just like Wei Ying was? Or maybe she was in her apartment; Wei Ying imagined her in the pristine bathroom with the windows flung open, sunlight pouring over her as she soaked in an ice-cold bath, sipping an ice-cold lemonade, head resting against the rim of the bathtub, sunglasses on, sunning her long lithe limbs golden. Wei Ying's mouth was chokingly dry again. She shook the last meager drops from her water flask onto her tongue.

It was even hotter outside, and Wei Ying's backpack full of textbooks weighed her down, the muscles in her back protesting, the straps cutting into her shoulders. She was a bit short of breath by the time she made it to Lan Zhan's apartment, and that was before she climbed the stairs.

Lan Zhan buzzed her up. Inside, it was as sundrenched as in Wei Ying's fantasy, blinding white. And Lan Zhan was—no. Wei Ying almost groaned aloud to see it.

Lan Zhan was once again at the dining table, tapping away at her laptop. It was sweltering, but she looked still and implacable as ever. She'd discarded her button-up and sweater for a plain white tank and grey joggers, in concession to the heat. Wei Ying tried not to let her eyes linger on Lan Zhan's built shoulders, or her cloud tattoo, or the chain she'd noticed under Lan Zhan's shirt before, now on full display. It was a plain silver rope chain. Wei Ying couldn't pin down exactly what about it made her break out in a fresh sweat.

"Lan Zhan, I have a question," she said.

Lan Zhan did not acknowledge her, although Wei Ying thought she saw her lips tighten.

"Are you human?" Wei Ying pressed on. "Because I have some other theories that make more sense. For example, that you're an extra-terrestrial." A sex-obsessed extra-terrestrial, capable of implanting evil thoughts from a significant distance, she did not add. "How can you just be sitting here working? I feel like a fucking fried egg."

"Mn," Lan Zhan said quizzically.

"Hot, Lan Zhan," Wei Ying clarified. "I feel hot. Like I'm being cooked."

"My work will complete in ten minutes," Lan Zhan said. "Sit."

So Wei Ying did, shrugging off her backpack and collapsing onto the couch, but she couldn't quite make herself stop talking. The heat and light had got to her. She felt dizzy, delirious, her mouth moving faster than her brain. Besides, maybe if she annoyed Lan Zhan enough, she'd give up and finish early. "You're not even sweating," she marvelled. "Is that some quirk of your alien DNA? Are you cold-blooded, like a snake? Or are you a living statue made from marble?" Abruptly, Wei Ying remembered she had touched Lan Zhan's skin, and it had not felt like marble. Cringing, she rushed on. "Oh, I've got it! You're like one of the X-Men, right? I bet you're one of those guys like Iceman who can freeze things at will." She demonstrated by stretching out a hand, making an intense face and a gusting whooooooo sound effect. "Don't worry, Lan Zhan, I'll protect your secret with my life."

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan said dangerously.

"Whaaaaaat?" Wei Ying whined. "Can't you just hurry up and be done already? What do you even have that's so urgent? Lan Zhan, it's really not the type of day for any kind of work! We have plenty of cold and miserable days ahead of us to write our thesis, and don't even act like there's something else to do, because no-one will be answering emails right now. They'll all be at the pool eating ice creams, I guarantee you, one hundred per-cent!"

Lan Zhan ignored her.

"Rude," Wei Ying muttered, and hauled herself further upright on the couch. Her clammy hands made prints on the seat cushion. "Lan Zhan, does your aircon go any higher? I'm sweating so much, I'm actually soaked. Like, I'm so sticky, I'm literally glued to your couch right now."

It was subtle, but Wei Ying noticed Lan Zhan's gaze flick over in her direction for a split-second. Victory! She knew she could get Lan Zhan to break.

Then Lan Zhan said, "So take something off."

Wei Ying's mouth fell open. "Huh?"

"Take off," Lan Zhan said slowly, "a piece of clothing."

Wei Ying kind of laughed. It came out strangled. "Good one, Lan Zhan," she said.

Lan Zhan did not respond. One corner of her mouth had turned down. Wei Ying realised suddenly that it wasn't a joke, and furthermore, it wasn't a suggestion.

She tried to draw in a breath, but all of the air had been sucked out of the room.

"Like," Wei Ying said, and licked her lips. "Ah. What. What should I take off."

"You decide," said Lan Zhan, sounding bored.

Wei Ying had to think about it. She'd been desperate to peel off the polyester shirt for hours now; it had only got damper and stickier during the walk to the apartment, and she was aware of a faint sour odour beginning to make itself known. On the other hand, if she did take it off, she'd be left in just her bra and jeans, and that was a lot to expose: her arms, her shoulders, the tops of her tits, her soft stomach. Wei Ying's legs weren't shaved, but she still felt there was room for manoeuvre there; she could curl up, cross her legs, tug her shirt down to cover the tops of her thighs. Decision made, she shucked off the jeans quickly, kicked them onto the floor beside the backpack.

Lan Zhan rewarded her with another glance over. This time it lasted longer. Wei Ying was quick to pull her legs up underneath her, resettling in a mermaid pose, but she still felt Lan Zhan pausing over her pale sweaty thighs.

"Mn," Lan Zhan said, but this time, the syllable was infused with meaning and intention, with approval. Wei Ying felt it like a shot of liquor, a rush to the head.

Lan Zhan returned to her laptop, but Wei Ying had lost her monologuing momentum. She couldn't hear her thoughts over the sound of her pulse hammering in her ears. The silence stretched on. She shifted on the couch, her bare skin making an embarrassing rubbery squeak against the cushions.

Wei Ying couldn't bear it.

"Laoshi," she said, "you never said what we were going to do in our lesson today."

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan said. Her voice was flat, but Wei Ying heard a hint of mockery in it. "What did you think we were going to do in our lesson today?"

She looked over at Wei Ying again, nailing her with hard eye contact, so Wei Ying couldn't mistake the question as rhetorical. Wei Ying fought the urge to shrink back, to duck her head; forced herself to tilt her chin up and smile, flashing her teeth.

"I don't know what we're going to do today, Lan Zhan! You won't even give me a clue, and it's rude to assume!"

"Please," Lan Zhan said. "Assume."

Wei Ying rearranged her legs again. Squeak, squeak.

"Well," she said. "I guess I thought maybe there would be more—kissing?" She nearly stuttered over the word. Why was it so mortifying to name what they had done aloud? Wei Ying's ears and neck were burning. "Not that you weren't, ah, thorough about that before, but I figure it's like learning how to deadlift at the gym, you probably have to do it a whole bunch to make sure your form is correct, right?"

Lan Zhan's head dipped slightly. It was almost a nod, Wei Ying thought, and pressed on, encouraged.

"And then, maybe, like, second base?"

"What is second base," said Lan Zhan.

Wei Ying brightened further. "Oh, Lan Zhan, you don't know second base? So, it goes like: first base, kissing. Second base, touching over the clothes. Third base, touching... uh, under the clothes. Or oral, that counts as third base, too. And then after that you can say a home run, which is just fucking. But also, I never hear anyone say that. Anyway, we've only done first base, so I thought we could... progress. Only as far as you're comfortable with, of course!" Consent is key, she thought, and mentally gave herself a gold star.

"You want me to touch you over your clothes," Lan Zhan said. Her voice had deepened. At the sound of it, Wei Ying squeezed her thighs together.

"Or I could touch you," she said.

"Mn." Lan Zhan sounded unimpressed, and Wei Ying did drop her head then. It was too much, what she was asking. Lan Zhan had seemed okay with kissing her, but kissing probably wasn't a big deal to most people. She'd been vaguely aware of her high school classmates playing games like Spin The Bottle and Truth Or Dare, which seemed to involve a lot of making out with one's friends; Wei Ying had never participated, because Yu Ziyuan never let her go to parties or sleepovers. Once she'd asked Nie Huaisang about her first kiss, and Nie Huaisang said she didn't remember. Wei Ying couldn't fathom not remembering, but she supposed if you'd had hundreds and thousands of kisses, it was possible. But touching and sex—that was different, even if you were queer. Even Nie Huaisang knew her “body count”. Lan Zhan might have hundreds of girls gagging for her strap, but that didn't mean she'd be careless about who she took to her bed.

Wei Ying was about to blurt, "Sorry," or "Never mind," or "Can we forget I said all that?", when Lan Zhan said, "And where do you want me to touch."

"Uh." Wei Ying wondered if she'd misheard. "What?"

Lan Zhan pushed back in her chair, away from her laptop, angled her body towards Wei Ying's. "Show me, if talking is too difficult."

Wei Ying stared at her. Lan Zhan only raised her eyebrows, very slightly. Anyone else would have said her face was impassive, but Wei Ying thought she saw a challenge.

Wei Ying couldn't stay silent, though.

"Okay," she mumbled. "I mean, I guess when people talk about second base, they're usually talking about tits, right."

Lan Zhan's eyebrows climbed infinitesimally higher. Daring her.

This was so fucking humiliating. Wei Ying wanted to die. She reverted to her only coping strategy in dire situations, which was to smile and act like she was exactly where she wanted to be.

"So, like," she said, and brought a hand up to trail down her neck, her collar, and trace the outline of her bra cup through her shirt. Then she let it fall to her side, and grinned up at Lan Zhan defiantly.

Lan Zhan looked unmoved.

"Is that how you'd like to be touched?" she asked. "How you'd touch yourself?"

Wei Ying was already hot all over, but still managed to flush. The smile fell off her face. "Hey, fuck you, Lan Zhan."

Lan Zhan only folded her arms, waiting, so Wei Ying switched tactics, made her voice buttery, eyes wide. "Please, do you have to be so cruel to me? Won't you have mercy on this poor virgin?"

"Show me how you'd like me to touch you," Lan Zhan said. Her eyes were like bright shards of amber, impenetrable.

For some reason, it didn't occur to Wei Ying to disobey.

She used both hands this time, cupping her tits and squeezing over her bra. Across from her, Lan Zhan unfolded her arms and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her parted thighs, watching her intently. Under the weight of her gaze, Wei Ying shuddered.

Her nipples were getting hard. Wei Ying could feel it even through the layers of material. She brushed over them, and it sent little tingles shooting through her body, so she tried it again with her fingertips, rubbing and pressing, with her thumbs digging deep into the sides of her tits. She heard her own breath hitch.

"You're sensitive," Lan Zhan observed.

Wei Ying bit her lip, nodded.

"How does it feel?"

Unsatisfying, Wei Ying wanted to say. She could pinch and squeeze and grope as hard as she liked, but the sensation was dulled through her clothing. Still, she didn't dare slide a hand under her shirt. It'd look too—greedy, too desperate.

"Ah," she said, her voice wobbling. "It feels good."

"Hmmm," Lan Zhan said sceptically, and rose from her seat. Wei Ying blinked up as Lan Zhan bore down on her, bracing one hand on the couch cushion behind her head. Lan Zhan's gaze travelled over Wei Ying's body, slow and contemplative. Wei Ying held her breath.

In a blink, Lan Zhan reached out, pinched Wei Ying's right nipple, and twisted roughly.

Wei Ying yelped.

"Ow! Lan Zhan, what the fuck?"

It hurt, a pulsing ache even after the initial sharp burst of pain had faded. Lan Zhan spread her hand out, grabbing a handful of Wei Ying's tit, and started massaging, jiggling and kneading the soft fat.

Wei Ying moaned. "Lan Zhan, that really aches."

Lan Zhan drew her hand back and gave Wei Ying's other tit a sharp slap. That didn't hurt so much, but it gave Wei Ying a shock: she made a stupid little "uh!" sound, and jolted back against the couch.

"You like it," Lan Zhan said.

"What?" Wei Ying's breath had gone uneven, her voice thready. "No, I don't, I—"

"You're wet," said Lan Zhan, and Wei Ying remembered that she didn't have pants on, and glanced down. Sure enough, there was a damp patch blooming, dark and obvious on the front of her grey briefs.

Lan Zhan placed her knee on the couch next to Wei Ying, and a hand on Wei Ying's ankle where it was tucked behind her, gave it a light tug, coaxing, until she unfolded her bare legs. Then Lan Zhan kneeled over her, pressing her back against the couch cushions, and gave her tits a good and thorough grope with both hands. She was stronger than Wei Ying, her hands bigger, and she worked Wei Ying like clay, her thumbs flicking and scraping over Wei Ying's nipples until Wei Ying's skin felt tight. Lan Zhan's mouth was slightly open as she watched Wei Ying. It looked red and soft and slick. Wei Ying remembered how it felt, the violent heat of it, and wanted it so fucking bad she could cry. She let her head fall back, eyes fluttering closed, begging as best she could without words, and when she felt the warmth of Lan Zhan's body drawing closer, she gasped, harsh and loud in the quiet room.

She could feel Lan Zhan's breath tickling her face, so close. Then, at the last second, Lan Zhan veered to one side.

Wei Ying cried out, her eyes flying open as Lan Zhan sank her teeth into Wei Ying's neck; then heard herself dissolve into a low keening moan as Lan Zhan licked and sucked at the abused skin. It shouldn't have felt good; it hurt, and it felt as though Lan Zhan was using her as a chew toy, like she was barely interested in Wei Ying's response. All the same, she could herself weakening, her clit throbbing.

Lan Zhan's hands were roaming, palming down Wei Ying's sides, firm and sure. Her mouth was still fastened to Wei Ying's neck as she squeezed her waist, skimmed fingertips just under her shirt, along the waistband of her briefs, making her shiver, and then. And then. Lan Zhan drew her fingertip in a line over the wet patch on Wei Ying's briefs, directly over Wei Ying's clit. Wei Ying made an agonised, guttural sound, grabbed hold of her wrist with both hands to keep her in place, ground up once, twice, and came with a sob.

"Uh," Wei Ying gasped as she twitched through endless aftershocks. "Uh, huh, huh, fuck."

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan said, her voice heavy with disapproval.

Wei Ying slowly, ashamedly, dragged her eyes up to Lan Zhan's face. Her expression was unreadable, her eyes depthless black pools.

"I," Wei Ying said, then abruptly realised she was still clinging on to Lan Zhan's wrist, and dropped it. "I'm sorry, Lan Zhan. I couldn't stop."

"Couldn't," Lan Zhan echoed, and there was an edge of nastiness to her voice now. "Did you try? Be honest," she added, as Wei Ying opened her mouth to respond.

Humiliation engulfed Wei Ying, swallowed her whole. "Ummmm." She dropped her gaze.

Lan Zhan grabbed her by the ponytail and yanked her head back hard, making Wei Ying hiss, her eyes watering. "Look at me," Lan Zhan said.

Wei Ying did, through the stinging blur of tears.

"Which of us is the teacher?"

"You are."

"Who knows more? You or I?"

"You do."

"Interesting," said Lan Zhan. "Yet you think you should decide when you get to come?"

"No. No. It was a mistake. I'm sorry, laoshi."

Lan Zhan let go of her hair, giving her head a shove as she did, then got to her feet. "From now on, I decide. If you want to come, you ask."

"What?" Wei Ying's head jerked up. Lan Zhan looked content now, almost smug: posture loose, hands behind her back, lips curving slightly upward. "Lan Zhan! But I—"

"Understood?"

"I—" And then, for some reason she couldn't parse no matter how many times she went over it in her head later, Wei Ying bowed her head, and said, quietly, "Yes."

"Good," said Lan Zhan, and turned away, pushing her chair back into place at the table, closing and stacking her books. "See you next week."

It was only 4:45, but Wei Ying didn't bother protesting this time. She scrambled for her jeans and staggered towards the door on unsteady legs.

-

It was a struggle for many reasons.

Lan Zhan had left an impressive hickey on Wei Ying's neck—deep violet, huge, and high up, just under her ear. Wei Ying didn't often wear make-up, so she had to physically go to a drugstore and colour-test tubes of concealer, leaving peach-coloured stripes on the inside of her wrist. It was a whole ordeal. After all that, she rubbed the make-up all off anyway, because she couldn't stop herself from touching the hickey, pressing down until it twinged.

"Did you get your head caught in a door frame?" asked one of the regular old geezers at the coffee shop.

"What the fuck is that on your neck," Jiang Cheng barked.

Wei Ying winced. "Well—"

"No, no, don't you fucking dare tell me, or I will jump out of this window right the fuck now."

She couldn't stop picking over it in her mind. It was like getting a humiliating memory stuck in your head right before you went to sleep, but a thousand times worse. She couldn't believe she'd got so wet Lan Zhan could see it through her underwear, or that she'd grabbed Lan Zhan like that, or that she'd come in about ten seconds flat, or shed tears when Lan Zhan had pulled her ponytail. Worst of all, apparently the years of abstinence and repression had left her sexually fucked up for life, because the more embarrassed she was, the wetter she got.

She held out as long for as long as she possibly could before texting Lan Zhan. Which was to say, 48 hours. The first night was tough. She'd lain in bed with her hands just resting between her legs, trying to breathe deeply, trying to resist the urge to hump up against her palm.

The second night, she'd slipped fingers into the crotch of her briefs, and they'd come away glistening, thickly coated all the way to the knuckle.

She had to do it sooner or later, she told herself. And Lan Zhan had already seen her come. How could just asking to come be so embarrassing?

lan zhan i need to

please can i

i rly have to

Her hands were shaking. Fuck.

laoshi may i cum now pls

She hit send, feeling like her heart was about to explode.

Less than a minute later, her phone vibrated with a call, because of course Lan Zhan would have to make this as excruciating as possible. Wei Ying had no choice but to pick it up. She put Lan Zhan on speaker, and placed the phone on the pillow next to her head.

Lan Zhan's voice was buzzy and distorted through the phone. "If you want to come," she said without preamble, "you have to earn it."

Wei Ying bucked against her hand, and groaned. "No, Lan Zhan, please, you don't understand, I can't, I can't hold on. I'm so close, Lan Zhan, it'll only take a second. I need it. Please, just tell me I can come."

"Stop touching yourself," Lan Zhan commanded.

Wei Ying hissed, and wrenched her hand out from between her legs with effort. Her pussy was clenching, hips still twitching against nothing.

"You're spoiled," Lan Zhan said. "You need to learn better self-control."

"No," said Wei Ying. Her eyes were watering again. She screwed them shut.

"You want to learn to fuck, you must accept correction. Where are your hands?"

"Uh. By my sides. On the bed."

"Good," Lan Zhan said, softer now, and Wei Ying bit down against a moan, her back arching just from the praise. "Are you dressed?"

"Y-yeah."

"Take off your clothes and bra."

Wei Ying sat up and did as she was told, chucking her t-shirt on the floor, kicking her shorts halfway across the room, before announcing, "Done." She felt cheerful again, with Lan Zhan telling her what to do. There was a plan, a series of tasks to execute, and at the end of it, an orgasm.

"Prove it."

Wei Ying frowned. "Huh?"

"Take a picture."

"But," Wei Ying protested feebly. "Lan Zhan." Revenge porn horror stories flashed through her mind. She'd never taken even a mildly risqué photo of herself. What if Lan Zhan's or her phone was hacked, and it got uploaded to the Internet, and someone sent it to the dean of the college, and she got kicked out of school before she could complete her degree, and she got disowned by her family and had to work in the coffee shop for the rest of her life?

"Do you want to come?"

"Yes!"

"Then earn it. Show me you can be good."

Wei Ying took the picture, shuffling down the bed and holding the phone high for a good angle. She looked wild with her flyaway bangs, hair escaping its ponytail and spilling across the pillow. The hickey had faded to pink, but could still be picked out on the pale, delicate skin of her neck. Her tits looked smaller lying down, her nipples dark and tight. She wasn't smiling, but her lips were parted like she was about to speak, her eyes glassy, like dark mirrors. She had on an old, threadbare pair of black briefs—nothing very sexy, and she fretted over this for a few seconds, until she heard Lan Zhan's breathing and remembered she was still on the line.

She sent it.

Wei Ying heard Lan Zhan exhale.

"Very good," she said. Wei Ying wriggled with pleasure. She'd never got a "very" before.

Then Lan Zhan said, "Do you have a vibrator?"

"Huh?"

"A vibrator," she repeated, loud and slow, like she thought Wei Ying couldn't understand English.

"Oh, uh. Yeah, it's somewhere around here." Wei Ying didn't use it often. So much direct stimulation on her clit was overwhelming. The day it had arrived in its discreet brown box, she'd taken it to bed, turned it on at a medium setting, rested it on her vulva, not even pressing down, and she'd come four times, each orgasm harder than the last, until her legs cramped up and the back of her t-shirt was soaked through with sweat. It was a little excessive; not an everyday kind of thing.

"Fetch it," said Lan Zhan, so Wei Ying got up to rummage around and unearth the black silicone bullet from her underwear drawer.

"Got it," she said, bouncing back on the mattress. "But, Lan Zhan, I gotta warn you, if you don't want me to come so fast, I'm not sure a vibrator is such a good i—"

"Lie down," Lan Zhan interrupted.

Wei Ying did it, and when she said, "Okay," her voice was breathy.

"I want you to get your toy good and wet for me," Lan Zhan said. "Put it in your mouth and suck on it."

The silicone was soft in her mouth. It was one of those curvy bullets which narrowed to a point at the top for precision. Wei Ying's tongue found its contours, her mouth filling up with spit as she sucked.

"Are you sucking it?" Lan Zhan's voice had dropped, almost to a croon.

"Mmmm, mhmm."

"Good baby," Lan Zhan said, and Wei Ying felt a tingle on the back of her skull, like phantom fingertips running through her hair. Her eyes fell closed. "Now you're going to fuck your mouth with it. In and out, like it's my fingers. Like it's my cock."

Wei Ying pulled it out, then covered her teeth with her lips before wrapping her lips around the tip, as if Lan Zhan might be able to feel it. As if she'd be able to tell if Wei Ying was doing a bad job. She pushed it in and pulled it out. It should feel stupid, she thought, dragging the tiny toy forward and back over her tongue, but with Lan Zhan's harsh breathing amplified through the speakers, it didn't. It didn't at all.

"Enough," said Lan Zhan. "Did you make it wet, Wei Ying?"

"Mmmm, uh huh."

"Now you're going to use it on your tits," she said.

"Do I." Wei Ying's mouth was still watering; it came out gurgly. She swallowed. "Do I turn it on?"

Lan Zhan hummed. "Low."

Wei Ying clicked it on the first setting, ran it lightly along the top of her chest, drawing a letter M upside down. The trail of spit cooled rapidly on her skin, making her shiver.

"How does it feel?"

Wei Ying arched into it; rubbed her bare legs together luxuriously. "It's good, it's good," she sighed. "It's not enough. I wish it was you, Lan Zhan. Can't stop thinking about your mouth, keep thinking about it, ever since the first time." It was more honest than she had intended to be, but talking felt good, felt like releasing. "Your mouth feels so fucking good on me when you kiss me. Feels like I'm gonna melt."

Lan Zhan grunted. Was she getting off on this too, Wei Ying wondered. Her heart thumped faster.

"Turn it up high," Lan Zhan said. "Use it on your nipples."

Wei Ying tested the vibrator's tip on the hard peak of one nipple, and gasped, her whole body convulsing. "Ah, too much! Way too much!"

"Don't stop.".

Wei Ying mewled and twisted, turning her face halfway into the pillow, and then lowered the vibrator down again. She couldn't apply pressure, couldn't stand even the barest brush of contact for more than a couple of seconds. Her nipples were too tight, too sore. Even though she bit her lip and tried to hold it down, her hand kept automatically jerking away whenever the discomfort got too much. The buzzing was so loud, even louder whenever it touched her skin. It felt like metal grinding, sparks flying. She switched to the other nipple to give herself a break.

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan said, voice like sirens blaring. "I can hear you stopping."

"I'm suh," Wei Ying tried, "Suh." Her whole body was tensed and straining, flinching away from the vibrator. She was holding her breath without meaning to, had to force herself to exhale. "Suh—sorry, laoshi, I'm, I'm trying, it's just sensitive, it feels like too much, it hurts, I can't do it."

"Let me help you," said Lan Zhan. "You hold it down, I'll count to ten."

"No, I'm serious, Lan Zhan, I can't, I won't be able to do it!"

"You will if you want to come," said Lan Zhan patiently. "Are you ready?"

Wei Ying let her head drop back on the pillows, took several deep breaths. "Mm hmm," she said, eventually.

"Go."

Wei Ying stuffed one hand in her mouth to muffle her whine as the vibrator juddered next to her skin. She focused hard on not jerking away from it, waiting for the sound of Lan Zhan's voice.

Definitely more than a second passed. Definitely more than six seconds.

Wei Ying took her fingers out of her mouth. "Lan Zha—"

"One," Lan Zhan said, and Wei Ying howled.

By the count of two, Wei Ying was writhing on the bed, kicking her heels on the mattress, calling Lan Zhan’s name like an incantation, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, the sensation zinging through her body like electric shocks. At around four, Wei Ying began sobbing, loud, embarrassing, dramatic sobs, like a toddler having a temper tantrum at a grocery store. At six, her tits went numb, so she stopped, but the tears kept flowing of their own accord, dripping down the side of her face, soaking her pillow as she lay trembling, and it felt kind of... good. Kind of like letting go.

By nine, she wasn’t flailing anymore, lay almost still, fine tremors racking her body. She took deep gulping breaths. Her head spun, vision swimming.

"Ten." Lan Zhan's voice sounded warm and sympathetic. "You may turn it off now."

She let the vibrator roll between her tits, her hand flopping to her side. "Thank you, laoshi," she slurred, her tongue thick.

"You may come," Lan Zhan said, and she stayed on the call to listen to Wei Ying get herself off.

"Did I," Wei Ying panted as she flicked her clit furiously, seconds away from coming. "Did I do a better job this time, Lan Zhan?"

"Mn," Lan Zhan said. "Wei Ying did well."

Wei Ying felt something hot and bright expand in her chest, warmth flooding her veins. She arched back and came. It felt like she was floating.

Maybe they talked more after that; Lan Zhan had to have said goodbye before ending the call. Wei Ying didn't remember. She licked her lips and tasted salt. Her bangs, damp with tears, were sticking to her face. She felt drunk, but not drunk. She was still shivering.

I did well, she thought hazily, as she wormed under her comforter, pulled the blankets up to her neck. I was good.

-

On Saturday, Wei Ying asked Lan Zhan to come again, and she texted back, maybe later., and ignored all thirty-two increasingly aggrieved messages Wei Ying sent after that. On Sunday at two pm, Lan Zhan sent her two words: want it? Wei Ying had been sprawled listlessly on the couch, eating grapes and watching Cardcaptor Sakura while Jiang Cheng did ironing and jabbered about his fantasy football playoff bracket. When the notification appeared, she jolted upright. The bowl of grapes balanced on her stomach toppled to the floor.

"Fuck's sake," Jiang Cheng said. "Can you at least keep it down this time?"

She did try. "I have to be really quiet," she'd told Lan Zhan on the phone, and Lan Zhan gave an indifferent "Mn" as if to say that sounds like a you problem, then taunted her while making her fuck herself with the vibrator on high for twenty full minutes before finally letting her come. When the call ended, she saw Jiang Cheng had Venmo requested $60. Noise-cancelling headphones, said the note.

On Monday, she ran into Lan Zhan in the library. Ran into wasn't exactly accurate. It was more that she became aware of a dark malignant energy haunting the stacks, and glanced up from her laptop to see Lan Zhan examining titles on the shelves, tall and devastating, glasses on, satchel slung over one shoulder, and—Wei Ying gulped—a soft-looking leather jacket over her white shirt and belted linen slacks. Wei Ying did her best to get back to her assignment, ignore the blush creeping up her neck, but her desk faced the sociology section, which was why she'd chosen it, so Lan Zhan was always in her direct line of sight, and Lan Zhan seemed very absorbed in whatever she was looking at, and disinclined to move. Wei Ying typed a sentence, deleted it, then typed it again, word-for-word. She stared at Lan Zhan's shoulders in the leather jacket, and tried not to get too turned on by the rustling and creaking sounds whenever Lan Zhan shifted. Then she gave up and went outside for a cigarette.

She was trying to cut down—Jiang Cheng hated it, Jiang Yanli hated it, Lan Zhan hated it; it simply wasn't worth beating back the tide of disapproval every time—so she didn't have a lighter, had to borrow one from a stranger. Whatever. It was an emergency. She inhaled so deeply on her first drag she got dizzy, and slumped back against the wall, rough brick digging into her back.

She'd almost regained her composure when Lan Zhan appeared. Had she followed her out? Not for the first time, Wei Ying wondered if Lan Zhan's constant smoldering into the distance wasn't some kind of misdirection tactic; if she wasn't secretly watching Wei Ying the whole time.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying blurted, and regretted it immediately, going hot all over.

Lan Zhan halted, turned towards her slowly, and placed a hand on the wall behind her, a faint echo of how she'd braced herself above Wei Ying on her living room couch. "Wei Ying," she said, and then—so quick Wei Ying didn't have time to react—she plucked the cigarette from Wei Ying's fingers and stubbed it out.

"Hey," Wei Ying protested in an embarrassingly small voice. Then she licked her lips, and let her head tip back against the wall, looking up at Lan Zhan through lowered lashes. Kiss me!!! she thought, as loudly as possible.

Lan Zhan's lips parted; her eyes zeroed in on Wei Ying's mouth. Wei Ying bit down against a smile. Got her.

"Has Wei Ying been studying hard?" Lan Zhan asked softly.

"Really hard, laoshi," Wei Ying breathed. "I've been so diligent today. Don't you think I deserve a reward?"

Lan Zhan hummed, and brought her hand up to Wei Ying's mouth.

Wei Ying stopped breathing. Her mind went static, blank.

Lan Zhan's hand cupped Wei Ying's chin as she ran her thumb along Wei Ying's lower lip. Wei Ying's mouth dropped open on pure instinct, her eyes closing, and she forgot that she was standing outside the library in broad daylight at three in the afternoon, forgot that there were other students milling around, forgot everything except Lan Zhan's fingers pushing past her lips, her scent of leather and musky cologne, her breath on Wei Ying's cheek.

Lan Zhan added two fingers, then three, stretching Wei Ying's mouth tight and shoving in deep, and Wei Ying moaned quietly, and began to suck, just like she'd practiced with the vibrator before.

"Good baby," Lan Zhan murmured, and Wei Ying got lightheaded, knees weak.

Lan Zhan took her fingers out, wiped them off over Wei Ying's lips and chin, smearing the spit around. Wei Ying blinked up at her, feeling drugged.

"Office hour is on Wednesday," Lan Zhan said, letting her hand fall. "Don't be late."

That was it? Wei Ying gaped.

"Seriously, Lan Zhan? I thought—but—reward!"

Tiny creases appeared at Lan Zhan's eyes, which was how Wei Ying knew she was laughing at her. "See you then," she said, hitched her satchel further up her shoulder, and took off.

A freshman with an undercut was staring at Wei Ying from across the courtyard with open envy, and quickly looked away, blushing, when Wei Ying made eye contact. It was just like Lan Zhan to leave her at the mercy of her rabid fans without taking responsibility, Wei Ying reflected. Typical.

-

She wanted to come that night, but she couldn't give Lan Zhan the satisfaction of asking. Wei Ying felt worn down from asking, from being exposed. She felt like the embarrassment should be lessening now, or getting easier to cope with, but it was like every time Lan Zhan spoke to her, she found a new way to debase herself. Panting and pleading down the phone. Doing whatever Lan Zhan asked, and liking it. Sending Lan Zhan whatever pictures she asked for, and liking it. She felt raw all the time. It was Lan Zhan's fault, but Lan Zhan was also the only one who made it better with her soft praise, quiet hums of approval. She wondered what would happen on Wednesday. She couldn't trust herself not to take one look at Lan Zhan and burst into tears, crawl into her lap; bury her face in her strong thighs, beg her just to stroke her hair, to tell her she was good one more time.

Wei Ying didn't come, but she dreamed of a darkened forest scene. She was stripped naked, pressed face-down on the muddy grass, her hands tied behind her back, and someone was there. Wei Ying never saw their face, but she knew it was Lan Zhan. She could smell her leather and cologne, feel her firm hand pushing on the back of Wei Ying's head, her breath in hot blasts on the back of Wei Ying's neck, her thick silicone cock nudging between Wei Ying's legs.

"No, Lan Zhan!" she'd cried out. "We can't!"

It felt very serious. There was something she had to do, an appointment she'd forgotten. Maybe a deadline she'd missed. The point was, she didn't have time to get defiled on a forest floor, but Lan Zhan was totally unreasonable about the whole thing. When Wei Ying cried out, Lan Zhan had produced a—whip from somewhere. It made terrible cracking sounds in the air, and made Wei Ying bleed, although in the vagueness of her dream, it hadn't hurt that much. Then Lan Zhan had fucked her, fast and hard and selfish, wild animal rutting, while Wei Ying sobbed and begged her to stop.

She'd woken up on her front, seconds from coming. She ground down against the sheets a couple more times before the alarms started blaring: Not allowed! Not allowed! She groaned and bit down hard on the back of her own hand, dragging herself back from the edge. She lifted her hips, carefully making space between her swollen clit and the mattress, and tried to catch her breath. She'd had maybe two or three sex dreams in her life before this one, and they'd never felt like this. Out of nowhere, she got another flash of it, Lan Zhan's hands spreading her thighs, fingers sinking deep in the tender skin, possessive and bruising, and Wei Ying whimpered, certain for one terrifying moment that she was going to come completely untouched. Somehow, she managed to breathe through it until it was safe to collapse back on the bed. She turned on her side, drawing her knees up to her chest, curling into a protective ball, and lay with her eyes closed until her alarm went off.

She felt truly ill, feverish and shivery, and in no fit state to work the open at the coffee shop, but she didn't think calling in horny was an option. Her skin was oversensitive, the collar of her work shirt chafing against her neck. Her bangs needed cutting; they kept falling in her eyes and tickling her cheek. At least it was quiet. She killed an hour cleaning and reorganising the dry store and sipping a pilfered can of Sprite. When she re-emerged, Lan Zhan was standing at the counter.

Wei Ying didn't even try to act surprised, just fetched the paper to-go cup for her green tea without a word.

"I won't be available by text today," Lan Zhan said mildly.

Wei Ying's stomach dropped.

"That's fine," she managed.

"Is it?"

Irritation sparked. "Yes, Lan Zhan, don't be ridiculous. It's fine. It's only for one day." Thirty-one hours to be precise. Not that Wei Ying was counting. Unless Wei Ying lost her mind and tried to beg for an orgasm first thing on Wednesday morning, but she could imagine how well that would go for her.

Lan Zhan quirked an eyebrow. "Can you wait that long?"

No, Wei Ying thought despairingly.

"Of course I can wait that long!" she snapped. "What, do you think I'm so needy? Lan Zhan, I can't imagine the size of your ego. As if all I do is lie around waiting for you to fuck me."

The words rang out far too loud in the empty coffee shop, echoing, bouncing off the tiles behind the bar. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me. One corner of Lan Zhan's mouth turned up.

Wei Ying flushed deeper, and busied herself, screwing the lid on the coffee cup. "Here," she said, thrusting the cup over the counter.

Lan Zhan reached over the dome-shaped cake stand, and covered Wei Ying's hand, wrapped around the cup, with her own. Wei Ying dropped the cup. She watched dumbly as tea poured over the cake stand in rivulets like a water fountain, leaking onto a pile of napkins, soaking them through.

"I can make it," Wei Ying insisted. "I'm doing fine."

Lan Zhan cleared her throat. Wei Ying got her a new cup.

As soon as Lan Zhan left, Wei Ying bent double over the counter, resting her head on her folded arms and taking deep cleansing breaths. Thirty hours and fifty four minutes.

-

Wei Ying spent two hours in the campus gym after class, mostly running, her feet pounding the treadmill so hard she could hear it over the hip hop beats blasting through her headphones at earsplitting volume. She took an ice cold shower, then jogged home, wobbly with fatigue. After all that, she still didn't trust herself to keep her hands out of her pants, so when she finished eating, she dedicated another two hours to scrubbing every inch of the apartment until she was dizzy from breathing in cleaning chemicals, then turned in with a bottle of wine and the latest Netflix original.

Easy, she thought fuzzily, right before she passed out.

In the morning, she was hungover and her muscles ached so bad she had to move as though she was underwater. Jiang Cheng had already destroyed her progress in the kitchen by messily sawing a loaf of bread and leaving crumbs all over the counter, and she was fully ten minutes into a whiny lecture about how hard she'd worked to clean up last night before she realised she sounded insane.

To summarise, the situation was not sustainable.

"This is not sustainable," she announced as she crashed into Lan Zhan's apartment, kicking off her shoes at the door.

"Quiet," Lan Zhan said, without looking up.

She was in a different spot today, lounging in a grey tub chair, glasses on, reading a printed journal article. She looked soft and relaxed in silky blue sweatpants. Her ankles were showing above her trainer socks.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying whispered. It was still obedience, in her opinion. Whispering counted as quiet.

"Sit," Lan Zhan said.

Wei Ying moved towards the couch, and only then did Lan Zhan raise her eyes.

"Not there," she said, and with a meaningful look, gave a tiny jerk of her head towards the floor in front of her.

Wei Ying gulped.

She knelt at Lan Zhan's feet, floorboards hard and unyielding under her knees. She was about eye level with Lan Zhan's stomach. She could read the back of Lan Zhan's paper. It was something about Bourdieu and objectivity.

Lan Zhan's gaze had returned to the page. She didn't say anything, so Wei Ying focused on staying as still as she possibly could with her knees already aching in protest. It was easier when she sat back on her heels. She rolled her shoulders back, straightening her spine.

Tell me I'm good, she begged silently. Lan Zhan didn't, but after she'd turned a page, her hand floated down towards Wei Ying. She placed two fingers under Wei Ying's jaw, tilting it back. Then, slow and deliberate, her thumb stroked over the shell of Wei Ying's ear.

Wei Ying let go of a breath.

Finally, Lan Zhan spoke.

"I am giving Wei Ying an opportunity," she said. "You may earn back the right to come, if you behave."

Wei Ying wasn't sure if she was allowed to talk yet, so she edged closer and gave Lan Zhan's knee a tiny inquiring nudge with her forehead.

"My room is down the hall," said Lan Zhan. "The door is open. Go there and wait. No," she added sharply when Wei Ying moved to stand.

Wei Ying placed her knee back on the floor. Did Lan Zhan mean—?

She rocked forward onto her hands, chanced another look up.

Lan Zhan gave a slow nod.

Oh, God. Wei Ying cringed. Kneeling was one thing, but crawling on her hands and knees was inexplicably worse. Lan Zhan was still looking at her, eyes piercing, and she knew she didn't have a choice.

She was very aware of Lan Zhan's gaze on her ass as she shuffled out into the hall.

Wei Ying had never been inside Lan Zhan's room before. She wanted to look around properly, but she didn't dare, knowing Lan Zhan might follow her inside any moment. She peered around as best she could from her station kneeling at the foot of the bed. It was darker in here, the only room with blinds drawn over the windows. There was a sweet, woodsy smell like incense, and there was a candle in a glass on her bedside table, a deep sinkhole in the wax. An enormous bookcase occupied one wall. Wei Ying's eyesight wasn't good enough for her to pick out titles from far away, but there were plenty she recognised from their familiar spines, Cinema and Desire, Gender Trouble, The Wretched of the Earth. The king-sized bed was made up with white sheets, hospital corners.

Wei Ying fidgeted with a loose thread at her sleeve, rocked a little in place. She wasn’t sure how long she waited, but her knees were aching, her calves prickling with pins and needles, when she heard, “Good,” and started.

"Now stand and strip,” Lan Zhan said.

Wei Ying hastened to comply. Lan Zhan stayed behind her, a small act of mercy she was silently thankful for. Wei Ying needed that last, faint illusion of modesty.

Her hands were trembling: she fumbled with the fastening of her bra.

Then she was standing naked in Lan Zhan's room. Something gave way then, reality shifting along with the afternoon sunlight through the blinds, because Wei Ying, virgin, wouldn't be here. Wei Ying, virgin, couldn't do this. She didn't have a body that could be looked at, but Lan Zhan was looking. Wei Ying could feel it like the heat of a spotlight.

Slow footstep, floorboard creak. Beside her, Lan Zhan came into view.

"On the bed," she said. "Facing me."

Wei Ying turned and sat on the edge of the bed, instinctively folding her arms over her chest, but Lan Zhan only had to say warningly, "No," for her to drop them by her sides. She knew why that was wrong.

"Further back," said Lan Zhan, and then, "Good," when Wei Ying settled against the pillows, back to the wall. Her legs were parted at first, stretched out in front of her, but then she became aware of Lan Zhan’s heavy gaze dropping down between them, and snapped them shut so fast her knees knocked together; blushed, and drew her knees up slightly.

Wei Ying never slept naked, even when it was hot. The feeling of a cotton coverlet under her bare ass felt unfamiliar, dirty. And if she had to be naked, shouldn’t Lan Zhan be naked too? But Lan Zhan just stood there, making no move to take anything off. She was still and serious-mouthed as she appraised Wei Ying, but her eyes were glinting.

Wei Ying knew she needed to behave if she wanted to come, but even more than that, she needed to speak. Everything was too heavy in the silence.

She grinned. "What's the matter, Lan Zhan? Never seen such a fine pair of titties in real life before?" She gave a little shimmy, making them jiggle.

Lan Zhan's lip curled in displeasure.

A second later, Wei Ying squeaked: Lan Zhan jumped on the bed, bouncing Wei Ying on the mattress. Lan Zhan crawled forward, eyes intent and predatory, grabbed the backs of Wei Ying's knees, and gave a sharp tug, pulling her down with effortless strength, until Wei Ying lay flat with her head on the pillows.

"Okay, okay, I get it," Wei Ying said, breathless, "you're super big and super strong and I shouldn't mess with you, right, point taken, no need to keep going on about it."

Then she felt Lan Zhan's lips press to her—her thigh—and gasped, legs spasming.

"Wei Ying," she said. She kept her mouth where it was, lips moving against the skin, a spot on Wei Ying's inner thigh, just above her knee. "Remind me. Which acts comprise third base?"

Wei Ying shuddered. "T-touching under the clothes. And, ah." She squeezed her eyes shut for a second to steel herself before forcing the word out. "Oral."

"Mn," Lan Zhan said, hot breath, low vibration. "Wei Ying isn't ready for that."

It took a moment to process the words. Then Wei Ying propped herself up on her elbows to glare down at Lan Zhan's glossy dark head.

"'Not ready'? Lan Zhan, what do you mean, 'not ready'? Are you baiting me?" Lan Zhan was definitely baiting her. And succeeding. Wei Ying was livid.

"You won't last," Lan Zhan said, like it was a point of fact. "You'll come."

"But!" Wei Ying spluttered. "But, I've been getting better at that! You've been helping me! Lan Zhan, I definitely think I can last much longer now! Especially with you here keeping me in check!"

Lan Zhan propped her chin on Wei Ying's leg, and looked up at her thoughtfully.

"If you can stand it for ten minutes," she said, "you may have your rights back."

The words came out of Lan Zhan so smoothly, Wei Ying realised with dawning dread that it must have been Lan Zhan’s plan all along. Which meant that it was probably a trap. But before she'd given herself permission, her mouth said, "Fine! No problem!"

Lan Zhan sat up, and fiddled with the Fitbit on her wrist. "Ten minutes," she said, showing her the timer on the screen.

Ten minutes wasn't that long. She'd held out for longer than ten minutes with Lan Zhan on the phone. She settled back on the pillows, exhaled, slow and steady.

"Now, pay attention," Lan Zhan said. Her hands curled around Wei Ying's thighs, prising them further apart, stroking up and down in slow sweeps. "This is an important lesson, xuesheng."

Before Wei Ying could think of a suitably annoying retort, Lan Zhan lowered her head.

She hadn't even opened her mouth yet. Just the brush of Lan Zhan’s nose along the crease of Wei Ying's thigh, the heat of her breath, and Wei Ying's eyes rolled back in her head, mouth falling open, hips rising sharply off the mattress.

Lan Zhan pinched her inner high so hard Wei Ying cried out in shock. "Still," she said, pushing her legs back down. "I'm restarting the timer."

"No!" Wei Ying bleated. "Don't restart it! That counted, Lan Zhan! That definitely counted as something. Please don't restart it, Lan Zhan. I can be good."

Lan Zhan ignored her, withdrew her hands from Wei Ying's legs to tap at something on her Fitbit. "Ten minutes," she said. "Any misbehaviour, I'll stop the clock."

"I won't misbehave!" said Wei Ying.

She quickly learned that Lan Zhan had a wide-ranging, all-encompassing definition of misbehaviour. Wriggling and writhing: penalty. Lifting her hips: penalty. Touching Lan Zhan's head without permission: severe penalty. Each resulted in a clock stoppage. Some incurred a pinch, a slap, a twist of Wei Ying's nipple.

It was impossible. Lan Zhan's fingers were hooked in the fat of Wei Ying's thighs. Her eyes were closed, lashes thick and dark against her cheek, and she was suckling hungrily at Wei Ying's pussy, no finesse, open-mouthed and sloppy, groaning softly like it was the most delicious thing she'd ever tasted, and Wei Ying was just supposed to withstand it. She clenched and unclenched her fists in the sheets, her feet arching and relaxing. Her thighs were straining, one of her calves already starting to cramp, and she could feel a bead of sweat trickling down the arch of her lower back. Twice, she felt an orgasm rising, and managed to stave it off, throwing an arm over her eyes and biting the inside of her cheek. The third time, it didn't work: she'd picked up too much momentum, hurtling towards it, urgent and inexorable, and Wei Ying, panicked and out of breath, slapped her hand down on the mattress beside her and wheezed out, "Lan Zhan, stop, stop, I'm about to—going to—Lan Zhan!"

"Three minutes, forty-five seconds," said Lan Zhan, and Wei Ying's exhale turned into a long, piteous whine. Three minutes. It had definitely felt longer than three minutes.

Lan Zhan sat up to let her catch her breath while the timer was paused, watching her pant and heave on the bed. Her mouth and chin were shiny with slick.

"You may forfeit, if you like," she offered. "I'll let you come."

Wei Ying really wished Lan Zhan would stop saying the word come in that raspy, turned-on voice. "What do you mean, forfeit? Like—I say I forfeit, I admit you're the greatest sex genius of all time and you win forever, and then—what? I can go back to jerking off whenever I want?"

"No," Lan Zhan said, after a beat of consideration. "Then you may come, this time only."

Wei Ying groaned, and banged her head on the pillow twice in frustration.

Then she said, "Okay, fine. I'm ready. Start the clock," and Lan Zhan did, and lowered her head once more.

It got harder. There was roaring in her ears, her heartbeat pummelling her ribs, and she could hear herself making noise almost continuously, high, anxious whimpers, like a puppy with an injured paw. The duration between clock stoppages kept getting shorter and shorter, two minutes, and then one, and then thirty seconds, and then finally, Wei Ying was gasping, "Ah, fuck, fuck, stop," every ten seconds, increasingly sure that this would be it, this time she wouldn't be able to stop herself from teetering over the edge, the terror of it making her throat close up.

"Six minutes, forty-eight seconds," Lan Zhan said, and Wei Ying started to sob.

"I cah—can't!" Hiccupping, her shoulders quaking. "I can't, I'm not going to m-make it, I—"

"Just over three minutes left," Lan Zhan said, almost kindly. "Do you forfeit?"

"I—" She fought to pull air into her lungs, deep, shuddering breaths. "I." She could forfeit. She could come. It would be ruined, and she would have gained nothing from so many minutes of slow torture, but it would be over. Was it worth it just to relieve the strain, make her body unspool, have it over and done?

Three minutes. She was sweating so much it had got into her eyes, stinging, mingling with the tears. The coverlet beneath her was drenched.

Make a decision, she thought wildly. See it through.

"No," Wei Ying said, watery, but clearer now. "Keep going."

Lan Zhan nodded, tapped something on her watch, and returned.

It felt more targeted now, the way Lan Zhan's tongue flickered over Wei Ying's clit, precise and unrelenting, so intense it was almost painful. Her hands worked their way up the backs of Wei Ying's thighs, and then her fingers dug deep into the soft flesh of Wei Ying's ass cheeks, and she began to knead. Wei Ying had never had much interest in playing with her own ass, but for some reason, it made her whole body light up, made it harder than anything not to kick and flail.

She gritted her teeth, and began to count down from a thousand. With her renewed determination, she made it all the way to nine hundred and fifteen before her hips began stuttering again, gut giving that tell-tale swoop.

"One minute and thirty," Lan Zhan said, and her voice carried a note Wei Ying had never heard before, something soft and awed, something holy.

She was going to make it. The realisation washed over Wei Ying in a blissful wave, caught some of the tension in its tide; her body went lax and loose. She was going to do it, she was going to be so good, so good, the best student for Lan Zhan.

When Lan Zhan mouthed at her clit again, she sighed, her head lolling back. She might even have smiled.

And then the timer went off.

"Good baby," Lan Zhan said. "Come for me."

Tingly chills, her spine liquefying. Wei Ying threw back her head, bared her throat. Uh, she could hear someone groaning. Uh. Uh. And then it broke, over and over again. Wei Ying had no idea how long it lasted; coming down was slow, like a bird's feather drifting towards the ground. Lan Zhan didn't let up at all, still making out with Wei Ying's pussy, the sound obscenely loud and wet. Wei Ying could feel it rumbling through her when Lan Zhan gave a long, low, throaty moan, and Wei Ying bucked up and came again, this time punishingly fast and sharp, leaving her winded.

After a while, she became aware of Lan Zhan murmuring, though she couldn't decode the words, and then Lan Zhan's large, capable hands were moving her, manipulating her upright. She blinked through the tears in her eyes, and Lan Zhan was there, straddling Wei Ying's legs, her face inches from Wei Ying's own, glowing and soft and more open than Wei Ying had ever seen it, and Wei Ying couldn't hold back anymore. She sat up the rest of the way, and clumsily bumped her mouth against Lan Zhan's.

Lan Zhan saved the kiss, turned it into something slow and sensual and exploratory, sliding a hand along Wei Ying's jaw, stroking the sensitive shell of her ear, sucking lightly on Wei Ying's tongue, pulling closer, the length of her torso against Wei Ying's, her clothed breasts pushing hard against Wei Ying's bare ones, material chafing and dragging. Her mouth was salty and sour. It took a moment for Wei Ying to remember it was from her slick.

Wei Ying gave herself up to it, mouth hanging open for Lan Zhan to probe, huffing deep breaths of Lan Zhan's scent, sinking against the wall as Lan Zhan crawled all over her, blanketing her. Yes, she thought blurrily, this. This was what she wanted, maybe all she wanted, all she ever could want. This, this, this.

-

Lan Zhan made her drink a glass of water, and eat a few cubes of mango. Wei Ying whined about having to get dressed and leave, so Lan Zhan bribed her by draping the leather jacket over her shoulders. It had a fleece-y lining, soft and nice against Wei Ying's skin. While they waited for an Uber to arrive, Wei Ying turned her nose into it, inhaled the cologne scent, and purred happily.

It wasn't until she came home to Jiang Cheng grousing about how he would've ordered enough takeout for them both if Wei Ying would've just answered her phone for once that she noticed it was six pm. Their lesson ran almost a full hour overtime.

"What are you smirking about?" Jiang Cheng sniped. "That was rhetorical, I really don't want to know."

She didn't take the leather jacket off for the rest of the night, even though she had nowhere to go. Whenever she caught a waft of Lan Zhan's cologne, she blushed to her toes.

-

She'd expected the fervour of her obsession to die down now that she'd got back her right to jerk off. There was no reason to agonise over Lan Zhan; she no longer had to compose text messages begging for her next orgasm, or second-guess what the next round of torture would entail. She didn't need to turn their last encounter over and over in her mind, zoom in on mental screenshots, though she did. What did it mean when the left side of Lan Zhan's mouth turned up like that? Why did her voice change when she said Wei Ying's name?

She wore Lan Zhan's jacket to work, to lectures, drew a few startled glances from Lan Zhan's groupies. It gave her a guilty thrill, knowing what they thought it meant. Of course, it wasn't like that at all. She'd been so sex-drunk and out of it, so whiny when she'd begged for something of Lan Zhan's to wear. Lan Zhan had only lent it to her as an indulgence, and Wei Ying already felt bad about taking it home. Just not bad enough to stop wearing it. Still, she told herself, she'd return the jacket during their next office hour.

Nie Huaisang had a knowing gleam in her eyes when she met Wei Ying at the campus bar, but she didn't say anything about the jacket.

"Seen Mianmian again lately?" she asked instead.

Wei Ying scowled. "I thought we agreed never to talk about that again."

"I agreed to no such thing," Nie Huaisang replied serenely. "Lucky for you, I'm a kind person, A-Ying. But you can't let one bad experience destroy your spirits! You need to get back out there! Have you had any interesting matches lately?"

Matches. Dating apps. Wei Ying had almost forgotten the original objective of her lessons with Lan Zhan. She hadn't opened Tinder in weeks, swiped away any notifications when they appeared like mosquitoes. "Ah," she said, and took a pull of beer. "I haven't really..."

"Actually, I am asking for a reason," Nie Huaisang said, and her eyes glinted with evil zeal. Uh oh. "I have this friend. Do you know Mo Xuanyu? She's a little younger than us, a sophomore, I think."

Wei Ying cocked her head, frowning. The name was familiar. "What does she look like?"

Nie Huaisang seized on Wei Ying's apparent interest, a bloodhound. "Oh, you'll like her. She's like, gothy, pale, always with the makeup and the hair, the thigh highs and the chokers, that type."

"Sounds hot," said Wei Ying vaguely.

"And she's cool! She likes all the gay little animes you like. I think you'd be really good together. You two have so much in common it's scary."

"Hmmmm." Less than a month ago, Wei Ying would have been sobbing at Nie Huaisang's feet in gratitude. Now, she just fiddled anxiously with the sleeve of Lan Zhan's jacket.

There was no rational reason the idea of going on a date with someone else should strike such an ugly clanging chord, make Wei Ying's chest feel so tight and achy. Lan Zhan was only giving her lessons, hadn't even fucked her yet. Wei Ying had no claim to her. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't surprising. Wei Ying was such a virgin, so untouched that someone only had to pet her and tell her she was good once or twice, and she'd fall to her knees, panting like a bitch in heat.

She swallowed against a lump in her throat, a sudden swoop of shame.

"I'll text you her number," Nie Huaisang said.

"Okay," said Wei Ying, and finished her beer. "Shots?"

Nie Huaisang had grown sensible and boring in her middle age. Wei Ying told her so when she refused to try a flaming absinthe shot, and again when she claimed she had to go home early to get ready for work in the morning, and again when, to Wei Ying's shock and outrage, she actually held true to this and peaced out at seven o'clock, leaving Wei Ying to stumble home before the streetlights had even turned on. "Sick and unhinged," Wei Ying muttered to herself, and stopped at a store for a bottle of vodka. She'd already mixed her drinks, she was going to be hungover no matter what, and she could feel Lan Zhan's jacket heavy on her shoulders, the weight of her own wretched need.

Jiang Cheng was out, so she put on some thumping guitar music and twirled around the living room, gulping down shots until her throat burned and her eyes teared up. Then she got tired, and lay down on the couch, legs splayed wide, and an idea struck her. A great idea. She started giggling aloud in the empty room.

The selfie took some time to set up. She had to wriggle out of her t-shirt, and then pull the leather jacket on over her bra, and arrange her hair to look sexy-windswept instead of just an unbrushed mess, and then experiment with different poses and angles. And then she had to take a lot of pictures, because in each one, her eyes were glazed and unfocused from booze. Finally, she caught one she deemed adequate: leaning back, her head turned slightly to one side, better to show off the line of her jaw and all the delicate tendons in her neck, pouting, her eyes heavy-lidded in a way she hoped was sultry. The dim lamplight turned her skin creamy gold, deepened all the hollows and shadows, emphasising her cleavage dramatically. She wrote, i think it looks better on me tbh, and hit send.

She had to drink deep to distract herself for the next couple of minutes, nauseous with nerves. The check appeared, but Lan Zhan didn't reply. Maybe Lan Zhan was busy. Or maybe she'd really overstepped this time, and Lan Zhan was embarrassed for her. In that case, was it better to leave it hanging? Or to send something else, and give her the chance to ignore her blunder? Double-texting was annoying too, though, and would make it obvious that Wei Ying was desperate for Lan Zhan's approval. It might be even more pathetic than the selfie on its own. No, she definitely couldn't text again.

She waited another two minutes, then broke.

jkjk i'll bring it back wednesday office hour of course 😇
how are you how is your night
i'm drinking alone bc huaisang abandoned me 😭😭 so boring lan zhan

Dot, dot, dot. Wei Ying sat up straight, clutched her phone with both hands.

wei ying. apologies. i am unavailable this wednesday.
you should keep the jacket.
don't stay up too late.

Wei Ying's heart jumped into her throat. She stared at the lines of text until her eyes blurred. Giving her the jacket—from anyone else, Wei Ying would've taken it as a gesture of kindness, but from Lan Zhan, and paired with the soft rejection, it felt somehow like a goodbye. Or was Wei Ying just maudlin and insecure?

lan zhan is everything ok??
i know i talk a lot of shit all the time but i am capable of listening sometimes too

i am well. thank you.
see you in class.

And that was it. Wei Ying's playlist had ended, and a new one was autoplaying, dizzy hyperactive techno beats, a sonic Tilt-A-Whirl, but Wei Ying's limbs weren't working, she couldn't get up to change it. She sat there numbly, phone held in limp fingers, the first twinge of a headache starting behind her eyes.

Maybe it was over. Maybe it wasn't; either way, Wei Ying had put too much stock in this entire situation. Lan Zhan didn't owe her anything just because she'd eaten her out once. If Lan Zhan never invited her over again, if they reverted to being cordial classmates, that would be fair. Wei Ying wouldn't have been wronged. They didn't have any arrangement, any agreement. They weren't in a relationship.

Wei Ying let out a long, shaky exhale, blinked back tears. God, Lan Zhan made her cry so much. Stupid, stupid.

She remembered something, opened up her conversation with Nie Huaisang. The last message read, Hot goth Mo xuanyu!!!!!, followed by a number. Wei Ying saved it.

She should wait until tomorrow to text, probably. It was getting late.

She took a swig of vodka, and wrote: heya it's wei ying!!! i got your no from huaisang. lmk if you're free to meet this week! Then she muted notifications, got up unsteadily, and dragged herself, her bottle and her laptop into her room. She sat up in bed, wriggled her arms out of Lan Zhan's coat and drew it up to her chin like a blanket. For about half an hour, she scrolled through options on Netflix, but then the liquor hit her all at once, and she was suddenly so drunk she could only focus with one eye open, and when she put on an old romcom, she lasted ten minutes before she was nodding off, still upright, bottle tucked under her arm like a teddy bear, nose buried in Lan Zhan's collar.

In the morning, she'd forgotten all about it, until she opened her messages and saw:

omg hey °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°
i'm super free haha! how's tomorrow night?

-

They'd gone back and forth for a while about a date venue. Wei Ying would've been happy just meeting at the campus bar, but she could admit it wasn't very special. Mo Xuanyu wanted to go for dinner and a movie, but Wei Ying didn't have any money. She'd clicked around online for a while, found out a bunch of film students were screening Snowpiercer in the basement of an old campus building. She'd sent Mo Xuanyu a link with the flyer: Pizza + Snax + BYOB! Mo Xuanyu had agreed.

Wei Ying thought it would be funny to dress up a little for sci-fi and greasy basement pizza, so she'd gone kind of slutty punk Barbie, black crop top and red plaid skater skirt and a long red ribbon in her hair. It was less funny when she arrived at the building and discovered Mo Xuanyu waiting outside, phone in hand, wearing an almost identical outfit.

"Great minds," said Mo Xuanyu, gesturing between them and grinning. She'd committed to the outfit harder, with fishnets and thigh high boots and her mouth smeared with black lipstick, the whole look verging on fetishwear. She still looked like Wei Ying's little sister. Wei Ying swallowed a sigh.

They went inside, descending the shadowy steps into the basement, fluorescent lights flickering overhead, Mo Xuanyu rattling on at her elbow—"Huaisang said you like anime, that's so cool? What kind of shows do you like? I am really into Neon Genesis Evangelion, have you seen it? Everyone is always talking about the games but I’ve never played them before, how about you?" Past the double doors, Wei Ying scanned the room anxiously, but it was just a few scrawny nerds drinking out of red solo cups, few faces she recognised. Boxes of pizza were spread out over the desks. The lights were low, the cheap projector displaying someone's blown-up desktop screen, casting everything faintly blue.

Wei Ying grabbed a solo cup, added a generous splash of whisky from her flask, which she offered to Mo Xuanyu, who stuttered something about alcohol interacting badly with her medication. They settled in the corner, propping their legs up on plastic chairs, and Wei Ying was just starting to relax enough to tune back into Mo Xuanyu's rambling, when the double doors swung open, and a new party walked in.

Wei Ying had to stifle a groan. There was no escape, not in this town, not on this campus, not even in the safety of her own mind. Lan Zhan was with another girl, equally tall, with Lan Zhan's exact face, except smiley and wearing lip gloss. This had to be Lan Zhan's sister, of whose existence she was vaguely aware. There were a couple of others, too: a round-faced, dimply one with a high ponytail, and a taller one in sleek black leather with neatly combed facial hair.

"Oh my God," Mo Xuanyu squeaked, hiding her face in Wei Ying's shoulder. "Are they looking at me? Please tell me they're not looking at me."

"Why, do you know them?"

Lan Zhan's eyes, all black in the projector light, were roving over Mo Xuanyu, the way she was leaning, whimpering into Wei Ying's side. She caught Wei Ying's gaze, held it.

"Actually, I just really embarrassed myself with one of them before," Mo Xuanyu mumbled into Wei Ying's skin. Gross. Wei Ying hoped she wasn't smearing black lipstick and drool all over her arm. "See that one with the dimples?"

Wei Ying didn't back down from Lan Zhan's stare. She tilted her head back, arched her eyebrows. You didn't say I couldn't.

"I didn't know they were all together," Mo Xuanyu whined. "Now I seriously think they might kill me! You know, Nie Huaisang's jie is into some hardcore shit, knives and needles and bondage. She has every murder weapon you could possibly think of just lying around her house..."

Lan Zhan's mouth turned down, like she was disappointed in Wei Ying for her shoddy taste. Wei Ying experienced a tiny stab of shame. Whatever. What did Lan Zhan know, anyway? But then Lan Zhan's eyes slid past her to the room beyond.

"Are they looking?" Mo Xuanyu asked again.

The party swished by, rustle of satin and leather.

"They're gone," Wei Ying told her, and Mo Xuanyu finally lifted her head.

The last light clicked off, and someone hit play on the laptop; the movie started. Wei Ying cursed Lan Zhan for taking a seat at the back of the room. She had to swivel her whole body around to steal looks at the dark figure Lan Zhan cut against the wall in her tight black t-shirt, light glancing off her silver chain. She was sure Lan Zhan noticed—it would be hard not to, Wei Ying the one flurry of restless motion in a sea of still bodies—but she never looked back, her eyes fixed on the screen. Wei Ying tried to focus on the movie, but she'd lost the thread of it somehow. Beside her, Mo Xuanyu kept gasping and giggling and softly exclaiming, "Oh no," at the unfolding action. Every so often, she knocked her knees against Wei Ying's, flirtatious and playful, setting Wei Ying's teeth on edge.

When Wei Ying could take no more, she stood up.

"Bathroom," she whispered, in response to Mo Xuanyu's wide questioning eyes, and slipped out of the door, blinking as the automatic lights in the hall flickered on. The air was cooler. She felt like she could take a full breath again, and it was such a relief, she briefly considered making a break for it and texting Mo Xuanyu to tell her there'd been a family emergency.

That was kind of excessive, though, and besides, it would be really obvious she was lying, and Wei Ying wanted to improve her dating karma, not perpetuate her baby dyke curse. She just needed to stretch her legs, she decided, and mounted the steps, heading towards the bathroom to splash water on her face.

In retrospect, she should not have been surprised when the door banged open, and Wei Ying glanced around from the sink to find Lan Zhan standing there.

"Oh hey," she said, turning before she could stop herself, her voice coming out high and strangled. "Do you like the movie? I think the set design is sick, honestly, all of the visuals are really imaginative, it would have been great to see at a real cinema, I—oh," she faltered. Lan Zhan had been advancing closer as she spoke, slow steps, unsmiling, her eyes intent on Wei Ying. "Lan Zhan," she breathed, the boundaries between the words dissolving, LaZhan. "What are you—"

Lan Zhan grabbed her wrist, and Wei Ying's brain shorted out. Lan Zhan's long fingers encircled its width easily, thumb meeting forefinger, bone-crushing grip.

"Lan Zhan," she said again, a little desperately. Lan Zhan took a step forwards, walking her back until the edge of the sink was digging into her lower back. Her eyes dropped to Wei Ying's mouth, and her own lips parted.

"Is it because I brought a date," Wei Ying said, "because I—"

Lan Zhan assaulted her mouth, all sharp teeth and hot breath, the force of it knocking Wei Ying's head back on her neck. It hurt, didn't feel good at all: Lan Zhan's mouth was like a knuckle duster with spikes, punching her over and over, and Wei Ying cried out and struggled, trying to twist away from her, but Lan Zhan caught her other wrist and reeled her back in. Wei Ying had been dreaming about Lan Zhan's mouth for days. She should have figured Lan Zhan would find a way to give her what she wanted in a way that stung, like a monkey's paw wish.

All the same, Wei Ying was panting, her legs opening to admit Lan Zhan closer before she'd even thought about it, like that was just her body's natural reaction to the proximity and feel of Lan Zhan. The days spent huffing Lan Zhan's leather jacket must have had some addictive effect, because she was gulping deep lungfuls of her musk, feeling a corresponding tug in her belly, a throb in her clit. Lan Zhan broke off to graze her teeth along Wei Ying's jaw, freeing Wei Ying's mouth enough for her to say, "Lan Zhan, ah, what are you—we can't—"

Lan Zhan placed both of Wei Ying's hands on the edge of the sink behind her. "Keep them there," she instructed, and covered Wei Ying's mouth with her own again like a makeshift gag while she ran a hand up Wei Ying's skirt, pulled aside her already-drenched underwear, and pressed two fingers roughly inside her.

A dull sting of resistance, and then a sweet, easy slide the rest of the way home. "Mnnn, nnnn," Wei Ying protested into Lan Zhan's mouth, her eyes shooting wide open—this is a public bathroom, Lan Zhan!—but when Lan Zhan drew her fingers back an inch, Wei Ying's hips rose up to meet her next thrust. Three fingers this time, opening her up wider. Oh, it was so different from the times Wei Ying fingered herself. Lan Zhan's hands, fuck. They were so firm and strong and golden, and now they were—inside of her. Lan Zhan bent her knuckles, curving her fingers up, pressing the pads of her fingertips to a soft spot inside Wei Ying that made her keen and accidentally bite down on Lan Zhan's tongue.

She couldn't hold herself up. Her legs were weak, her grip on the sink behind her was slippery with sweat, the pressure of the sharp edge on her back was starting to hurt. There was no way she was going to come like this, she thought, and then Lan Zhan grabbed the bare underside of her thigh and started fucking her properly.

Ah.

The force of it rocked Wei Ying's whole body, rattled the sink behind her so hard she worried distantly it would break. The motion jolted their mouths apart, a string of spit breaking between them. Wei Ying blinked up at Lan Zhan through sweat-damp eyelashes, and Lan Zhan looked—wild, furious, the least composed Wei Ying had ever seen her, her eyes all pupil, sweaty lock of hair falling in her face, mouth bitten red. For a few seconds, the sight shocked Wei Ying into silence. Then Lan Zhan's thrusts sped up, and Wei Ying's head fell back, a near scream torn out of her throat.

"Ah! Hnnnnn, Lan Zhan!"

Her voice echoed, deafening in the empty bathroom. It could probably be heard from halfway down the hall, but Wei Ying couldn't shut up, no way to stifle her cries with her hands still obediently gripping the sink. She was burning up with embarrassment and terror and arousal. She squeezed her eyes shut, bit hard on her lower lip.

"You like this," Lan Zhan said. "Taking it in the bathroom where anyone could walk in, anyone could hear you."

"N-no," Wei Ying tried to say.

"You like playing the cheap slut."

Wei Ying started, cried out in surprise. How could Lan Zhan call her a slut? That was so sexist, that was so mean. The shock of it was lighting up her nerves, sending ripples of heat through her body.

"Don't you?" Lan Zhan was still talking, had slowed her thrusts. How come she never had anything to say unless it was meant to hurt Wei Ying's feelings? "No one could guess you are a virgin. I bet you wish you could be on your hands and knees on the floor all day. Just letting anyone use your mouth, your pussy, your asshole, whenever they want. However they want."

"Nnn—" Wei Ying was going to come, fuck, she was going to come, any second now, and then she'd be in so much trouble. She tried to think clearly. "N-no."

"You wouldn't like that? Wouldn't like getting fucked every day? Being a free hole for anyone to use?"

Wei Ying managed a shaky breath, lifted her head to look in Lan Zhan's eyes. "Not for anyone."

"No?" Lan Zhan punctuated the syllable with a vicious stab of her fingers.

"Ah!" Wei Ying's knees gave out; Lan Zhan had to steady her with her free hand. "No, no! Not for anyone! Just for you, Lan Zhan! Just for you."

For the first time, Lan Zhan's rhythm faltered. Her expression, through Wei Ying's teary blurred vision, was unreadable.

"Wei Ying," she said, and her voice was hoarse. "Say it again."

"I don't want to be a slut for anyone," Wei Ying repeated. "Only you. Ah!" Lan Zhan had folded forward, pushing their bodies together and burying her face in Wei Ying's neck, speeding up her thrusts again as she did.

"Come," Lan Zhan growled, mouth moving against her neck. "Wei Ying, come."

Wei Ying sobbed, arched up, and came, feeling herself clench and gush around Lan Zhan's fingers. All the remaining strength drained from her muscles; her arms, still held awkwardly behind her, were aching, her knees turned to water, and soon Lan Zhan was the only thing holding her remotely upright.

Lan Zhan was breathing heavily into her hair. "Good," she said, and Wei Ying shuddered through another few microbursts of pleasure, because Lan Zhan sounded wrecked.

She drew her fingers out of Wei Ying's underwear, showed Wei Ying the thick, goopy coat of slick. "My pretty slut," she said. "You made so much."

She pushed her fingers into Wei Ying's mouth. Wei Ying sucked obediently. When she was done, she saw Lan Zhan's fingertips had gone wrinkly, and she laughed a little.

Lan Zhan smiled back at her, a subtle cant to her mouth, a lowering of the eyes. It was barely there, but Wei Ying saw it. It looked like pure joy.

-

Wei Ying was so wet that she could feel it... squelching when she walked.

"Are you okay?" Mo Xuanyu hissed, as she came back into the basement with half an hour of the movie to spare. "You were out there for ages!"

"Ah," Wei Ying said, and abruptly realised she would have to sit down next to Mo Xuanyu while still reeking of sweat and sex. "Actually, I'm not feeling too well. Stomach ache. I'm going to head home, if that's all right. But it was lovely to meet you."

"Oh my God, yeah," Mo Xuanyu said, so enthused that she missed Lan Zhan, who had patiently waited for five minutes after Wei Ying for reasons of deniability, enter through the double doors behind her. "We have to meet up again when you're feeling better! You can come over to my apartment, you can have a look at my anime collection, borrow anything you want..."

"Yeah, yeah," Wei Ying said. She was going to kill Nie Huaisang. "Sounds cool, see you then."

She shot Lan Zhan a last look before she left. Lan Zhan raised one eyebrow in response, somehow managing to slut-shame her with a single gesture, and Wei Ying stuck out her tongue, blushing, and then left before she could do anything even dumber.
She walked on air all the way back to the apartment.

-

"Huaisang," Wei Ying said, hesitantly. Standing in line for coffee between classes was a bad place to ask, but she couldn't wait. "How did you know when you'd lost your virginity?"

Nie Huaisang crowed so loudly several people turned heads. "What's that, A-Ying? You're telling me it finally happened? You lost it? For real?"

Wei Ying shushed her, looking around frantically in case anyone she knew was listening in. "No, no!" She lowered her voice, then admitted, "I don't know. Maybe just misplaced it?"

If Wei Ying was really honest with herself, she hadn't felt like a virgin since she took off her clothes in Lan Zhan's room. She knew that stripping in front of a human being she was attracted to was not anyone's definition of a sex act, but it had felt like the hardest and most significant part. After that everything had been instinctive, easy, a sweet slow slide into oblivion under Lan Zhan's tongue. If being deflowered had to mean getting fucked—well, Wei Ying had been fucked now. It was fact, immutable, undeniable. She could still feel Lan Zhan's fingers pressing around the edges of her pussy, forcing her open, making space inside of her. She could still feel the brutal force and hectic rhythm of Lan Zhan's thrusts, how they'd rocked her whole body. God, and if anyone ever asked her how she'd lost her virginity, she'd have to remember it was in a public bathroom while on a date with another girl. Lan Zhan had ruined her.

Wei Ying coughed, feeling herself go hot.

"When did it happen? Who was it?" Nie Huisang pressed. "And here, after you were so reluctant to meet Mo Xuanyu, and complained about her so much, and berated me for days!"

Wei Ying scowled. "Don't give yourself credit for Mo Xuanyu. I'm not into clone fucking."

"Quadruple shot cinnamon latte for Wei Ying?" called the barista, and she went up to collect her to-go cup.

Nie Huaisang waited for her, and then hovered outside in the courtyard while she awkwardly lit a cigarette with one hand while balancing her coffee and phone in the other.

"It was the leather jacket owner, wasn't it," Nie Huaisang said, and Wei Ying was glad she had the excuse of a cigarette. She took a long sip of coffee and a deep drag before she replied with a very dignified, "I don't know what you mean."

what do you think laoshi???, she wrote to Lan Zhan with her left hand later that night, sprawled on the bed in a sports bra and pair of basketball shorts. Her right hand was between her legs, idly stroking herself through the slippery material, not enough to get off, just enough to tease, to feel good. am i still a virgin??? have you popped my 🍒?? or do i need further education???

yes. no. and yes. The reply came quickly, as if Lan Zhan had been waiting for it.

what do u mean "no"? lol what was that in the bathroom then???

that was my appetizer.

Ew, Wei Ying thought, and groped her own pussy absently, palm sliding against her clit. Lan Zhan could be so disgusting. Why Wei Ying liked it was a case for Unsolved Mysteries.

GROSS, lan zhan!!!
ok but if that didn't count as fucking then
what should i like
expect

She set her phone down to wait for a reply, then got bored a few seconds later and picked it up.

like
are you going to carry me over the threshold like a new bride
ravish me until the sheets are bloody lol

Lan Zhan probably could carry her, Wei Ying thought, and pressed her thighs together, squeezing the hand caught between them. Wei Ying didn't weigh much, and Lan Zhan was tall and looked like she worked out, though Wei Ying couldn't understand when she fit it in around all the studying. Wei Ying had felt her subtle strength before, in her finely corded forearms, her broad shoulders, her steady hands. She could probably—pick Wei Ying up and slam her against a wall, just like in a movie.

do you want that? Lan Zhan replied.

hahahahahaha
obviously not lan zhan!!
surely the whole point of being a dyke is we get to escape these creepy patriarchal rituals??!

hmm., Lan Zhan wrote. Very deadpan, with the period. Sometimes her clipped little messages still made Wei Ying nervous, but she couldn't give Lan Zhan the satisfaction of ever knowing that. What did "hmm." mean? Did it mean she wanted to fuck Wei Ying until she bled? Wei Ying shivered. She wouldn’t put it past Lan Zhan.

i mean i'm amenable to SOME ravishing
a little is okay
😇
and like
—and she paused, and blushed. Was she really shameless enough to write this?
like
you can be mean to me again
like you were in the bathroom that time
i didn't mind it

you mean you liked it when i called you a cheap slut.

Fuck. Wei Ying inhaled, sudden sharp pull of arousal low in her abdomen. She pushed her fingers against her clit. She thought she could feel her pulse beating there.

She was trying to think of something to say, but Lan Zhan was typing again.

that wasn't "mean", wei ying. it was the truth.
i never imagined you'd be so easy.
whining and pleading from a kiss, coming from a single touch.
you'd do anything for me to fuck you. anything i asked.
so easy.

Wei Ying's breaths were coming uneven, heavy and loud to her own ears. At some point while reading, she'd started shifting her hips restlessly. The friction of the polyester against her clit wasn't enough any more. She slid a hand into her shorts.

yreah i would
i am so easy
lan zhan i want it so fucking bad you cant believe how bad
im always htinkng about it i dream about it all the time now i just want it
want your hands on me want you holding me down want you fucking me
anyhting youll give me i want it

be careful with that mouth.
you could get in trouble, acting like such a desperate slut.
someone might get the wrong idea and take advantage of you.

Wei Ying let out a weak groan, and had to stop touching herself, flex her hand. A powerful wave of heat lapped over her whole body, too intense, too soon.

wrong idea how
take advantage how
lan zhan tell meee

The replies appeared quickly, one after the other.

someone might assume you want to be fucked any time day or night
bent over the breakfast table first thing in the morning
and up against the wall in the coffee shop skirt pulled up apron still on
and in the stacks at the library
gagged so you don't make a sound
and at night when you're sleeping
because your cunt is always so sloppy wet it's easy to slide in and fuck you from behind

It was the most Lan Zhan had ever said at once, in text or in conversation, and she was still typing. Wei Ying was frozen, her heart thudding.

someone might assume you want it even when you say you don't
just push you to your knees grab your hair and shove your face down on my clit
maybe you'd even cry and beg to stop but i know better
you need it so much you'd come before i got my hand on you

Wei Ying squeezed her eyes shut, threw her forearm over her face, bit into the meaty flesh there, teeth sinking in. She lay there, taking shaky breaths for a few long moments, before she took her arm off and reached for her phone again to tap out:

fuck lan zhan i am goign to cum right now

Her phone vibrated. Wei Ying's hands were sweat-slippery, and it took a couple of tries to swipe accept.

"How long were you touching yourself?" Lan Zhan asked.

"The," Wei Ying shut her eyes again, burning with embarrassment. "The whole time. Since we started talking. I'm sorry, Lan Zhan, please let me come?"

"The whole time," Lan Zhan repeated. Her voice was flat, a hint of incredulity, derision.

"Yes, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just like you said," Wei Ying whimpered. "I'm always ready for it, always need it, always so wet. I could take it any time, anywhere. I'm your slut."

"That's right," Lan Zhan said. "Be a good slut and let me hear you come."

She cried out at the shock of sensation when she finally returned her hand to her clit. She'd thought she would come instantly, but it took a few strokes, her breaths and moans rising, getting louder.

She turned her face towards the phone on the pillow.

"L-Lan Zhan!"

"So good," Lan Zhan breathed. "Doing so well. Training so hard to be my perfect hole."

Wei Ying came, soaking her hand, thighs tensed and straining. Through the speakers, Lan Zhan's breathing got heavier too, and Wei Ying heard a soft grunt, and felt arousal surge through her body again, like she'd never released at all. She writhed in frustration.

"Lan Zhan," she gasped, "it's not enough, I can't take it anymore. I need you here with me, I need you to touch me again. Please, please, when will you touch me again?"

"Wei Ying is nearly ready," Lan Zhan said. "Be a good girl and wait a little longer."

Wei Ying let out a long, pitiful moan, opening her mouth against the pillow. A damp patch had gathered there from her drool.

"I can't wait," Wei Ying said. "I want you so bad it hurts."

"Be patient," said Lan Zhan, and there was a beep as she hung up.

Wei Ying nearly screamed. She lay for a long time, catching her breath, her hips still making tiny, twitching thrusts, until she forcibly stilled them. She felt revved up, like she could come another five times, or run a marathon, or punch someone in the face.

She didn't do any of that. She got up, stripped the bed and washed her linen.

-

Wednesday was miserable. The long hours of her coffee shop shift followed by class were unbearable without the promise of seeing Lan Zhan after; Wei Ying couldn't remember how she used to get through it before. Maybe there would never be another office hour again after Lan Zhan devirginized her. She felt a pang. The end of an era.

The lecture was drawing to a close, and she was gazing out of the window at the courtyard in the watery sunlight, contemplating spending the hours between four and six just... going for a walk, or doing homework in the library, or something equally tragic, when her phone lit up. Huaisang had added her to a new, manifestly unnecessary group chat.

nhs
! ! ! PARTY ! ! ! PARTY PARTY! PARTY TONIGHT! OUR APT!
finally have the all clear from jiejie!! she says "one night only" and "no hard narcotics" and "i refuse to drive anyone to the ER after midnight" in other words it's a rager!!! any time after 6pm plz bring booze snacks games etc etc

wq
are we definitely doing games or are those up for veto because i'm not about to experience another 5 hour game of risk that ends in jiang cheng screaming like a wild chimpanzee and tearing a rule book in half

jc
That is an insane exaggeration and also that game was rigged

nhs
NO RISK

wq
or monopoly

nhs
OR MONOPOLY

Wei Ying wrote omg karaoke plz? i will lavish u with 🍸🍸🍸, and, somewhat mollified, set to planning her outfit. She had the breakfast shift again tomorrow, and knew herself well enough to know that she'd be suffering a lot, but whatever. Lan Zhan wasn't here. Wei Ying deserved some ill-advised short term gratification.

She arrived at the Nie apartment far too early, backpack clinking with wine bottles. Huaisang let her up. There were still dishes in the sink, washing machine churning. Carly Rae Jepsen was playing tinnily from Huaisang's phone.

"I got bored," Wei Ying explained as she slid the backpack off her shoulder, and hung Lan Zhan's leather jacket up on a coat hook.

"You can help us get ready!" Huaisang said. "I still have to tidy up and put the dishwasher load on! There's tons to do! Hey, do you know how to unclog a sink drain?"

"I think," Wei Ying said delicately, "I shall make us some drinks."

In Wei Ying's opinion, she made excellent cocktails. Despite the Nie sisters' deficiencies in the area of housekeeping, they always had a well stocked bar with ice and a cocktail shaker, and on the rare occasions she'd visited before, Huaisang let her play with it. It was Wei Ying's very favourite thing to do. She was a pioneer and a genius and her innovations were probably celebrated all around the world in the timeline where people realised they were actually good. Today, she discovered a tiny bottle of chili oil tucked beside the bitters, and, seized by inspiration, began selecting alcohols and mixers from the shelf by intuition, like she was drawing tarot cards. This was going to be great.

"What are you making?" came a gentle, husky voice.

Wei Ying spun around. Ah: here, finally, was the elder Nie, up close and in the flesh, standing at the bar with a hand braced on the wall beside her, peering down her nose at Wei Ying. She was even taller than she'd looked from a distance in the basement cinema, and handsome in an overly chiselled kind of way.

"It doesn't have a name yet," Wei Ying told her. "You can give it one, if you're willing to be my taste tester."

Nie Mingjue considered this. "Deal." She watched, benevolent smile twitching the ends of her moustache, as Wei Ying rattled the ice and tossed the shaker from side to side like a pro. Then Wei Ying poured the caramel coloured liquid into two martini glasses.

Nie Mingjue raised hers. "Ganbei," she said, downed it, then choked.

She was still coughing when Wei Ying finished her own glass.

"Ugh," she groaned. "Ginger beer and what?"

"And Fireball. And chili oil. And... some other things."

"That is foul," Nie Mingjue declared.

"Name? You promised."

"Fire Piss," said Nie Mingjue, without hesitation.

Wei Ying started laughing, and so did Nie Mingjue, deep, rich and bassy, her shoulders quaking.

"So you're hanging out with us tonight?" Wei Ying leaned forward, elbows on the low bar, looked up at Nie Mingjue through her lashes. Maybe she was flirting a little. It couldn’t be proven in a court of law.

Nie Mingjue did not return the lean. She stilled, said carefully, "Just for a few hours, until Lan Huan gets back." For a moment, she studied Wei Ying, smile faltering. "You're Wei Ying, right? Lan Zhan's girl?"

That shocked a laugh out of Wei Ying. "Ah. Kind of? My name is Wei Ying. I'm not Lan Zhan's girl. Not really."

"Isn't that her jacket?" Nie Mingjue nodded towards the coat hook.

"Well, yes, but..." Wei Ying straightened up, taking the weight off her elbows, rocking back on her hands. "Lan Zhan did give me it, but it's not that serious. She's just super sweet, always humouring me, haha!"

Nie Mingjue's smile returned, but this time, tinged with pity and concern. Wei Ying hated that. Was her helpless, full-throated devotion so obvious to a stranger?

Then Nie Mingjue said, "Kid, I'm going to give you a piece of advice for free. I've known A-Zhan since she was eight years old. With her, it's always that serious."

Wei Ying was still thinking about that when the door buzzer went, and Huaisang shrieked, "Coming, coming!"

The party was boring. Wei Ying made another round of Fire Piss, and was subsequently yelled at and banned from the drinks station. She performed a rousing rendition of Livin’ On A Prayer, and was banned from Singstar, too. Guests traipsed in and back out again. Jiang Cheng and the Wen siblings, with whom Wei Ying had shared a dorm for a semester in freshman year, sat on the kitchen floor and played a furious and complicated game of cards, Jiang Cheng's face going crimson with rage, everyone else subtly shifting out of their way until they were an isolated little crop circle on the linoleum. There were a few hot people—Wei Ying got in a rambly tipsy conversation about climate justice with a lanky androgyne in a white t-shirt called Xiao Xingchen, until their grim-faced butch girlfriend swooped in like the Batman, all in black, and killed the vibe. Nie Mingjue didn't talk to her again. Eventually, Wei Ying began to wilt from lack of attention, and she slumped in an armchair and glugged from her bottle of wine.

She was bleary drunk by nine-thirty, when the buzzer went again. At the sight of a tall, glossy-haired figure emerging shoulder-first through the doorway, Wei Ying sat up sharply, her heart beating double time; but it was only Lan Huan.

"How was it, baby?" Nie Mingjue said, getting up to kiss her hello.

Lan Huan gave a wan smile, accepting a glass of wine into her hand. "It was as expected. Shufu had a few things to say—building upkeep, and A-Zhan's grad school selections, you know—"

Everyone went back to their conversations, the volume rising to drown out whatever Lan Huan said next, and then she and Nie Mingjue were squirrelling themselves away in a corner to converse in private. Wei Ying watched them, Lan Huan's tense shoulders and creased brow, her lips moving silently, Nie Mingjue's hand snaking around to massage the back of her neck. A-Zhan's grad school selections—so, it had been a family dinner? Why couldn't Lan Zhan just have told her that? Didn't she know she was sending Wei Ying out of her mind with anxiety and doubt? Maybe she liked Wei Ying this way, obsessed and consumed, hanging on her every word, teeth rattling with the need of her. Wei Ying sunk a few inches further down the chair, feeling morose.

When she finished the bottle of wine, she decided it was time to take advantage of Jiang Cheng's distraction and sneak out for a smoke. The balcony overlooked the street, asphalt glistening with recent rain, reflecting pale orange from the streetlights. The weak flame from Wei Ying's shitty lighter kept sputtering out in the breeze, even when she covered it with her hand.

"Fuck!" she said aloud, the third time.

The sound of the glass door sliding shut behind her, and then—"Here, borrow mine," said Lan Huan, suddenly at her elbow, offering a Zippo.

Wei Ying took it. The flame was bright and true. She took her first drag of the cigarette, exhaled in a rush, the smoke pouring out in a long thick stream. "Thank you," she said. "Hey, it's Lan Huan, right? I didn't know you smoked." She didn't know anything about Lan Huan, actually, but Lan Zhan was so strict about Wei Ying’s smoking, it was still a surprise.

"I don't smoke," Lan Huan said, then paused, and added, "cigarettes."

"Nice," said Wei Ying hopefully.

Lan Huan laughed and shook her head, said, "Not tonight. Hey, are you okay? You're all by yourself in there."

"Oh, thanks! It's really considerate to ask, but I'm great, actually, just a little tired!" Wei Ying's voice came out hysterical. She winced to herself. "Have you had a good night? You were at dinner with your uncle and Lan Zhan, right?"

"My night went well, thank you," Lan Huan replied. "Our shufu is in town for just a few days, so it was a special occasion. A-Zhan and I have been preparing for days to ensure it went off perfectly. Hence..." She lifted her glass of wine.

"You deserve it!" Wei Ying said, as sincerely as she could manage. God, she was even getting envious of Lan Zhan's sister now, for being close enough to share Lan Zhan's life like that. She was so fucked. She remembered the way Nie Mingjue had touched Lan Huan when she arrived at the apartment, comforting her like they'd been through it together. Nie Mingjue had figured out some way to breach that Lan glass bubble, gain access to the fortress. Wei Ying needed to take notes.

"You know," Lan Huan said, distracting her from this train of thought, "Lan Zhan's told me a lot about you."

Wei Ying snapped her head around to look at her. "What? She has?"

Lan Huan was watching her with a tiny, enigmatic smile, eyes gleaming under the street lights. "You should know this is a big deal for her. She's never really dated before."

Wei Ying's brain ground to a halt. "Lan Zhan said we were dating?" Then she processed the rest of the sentence. "Wait, she's never dated before? What do you mean, she's never dated before? Lan Zhan has hundreds of girls, like, begging at her feet."

"I tried to set her up many times," Lan Huan said mournfully. "I even offered to write her dating app profile. But she was always so stubborn."

"But," Wei Ying gibbered. "But." Her sense of reality was crumbling. She felt like she was in The Matrix. Lan Zhan... didn't date? But she had hooked up, right? Was she or was she not a sexpert? She seemed like she knew what she was doing during their lessons. Then again, it was also true that she spent a lot of the time directing Wei Ying while she got herself off. Was it a scam?

"As her jiejie," said Lan Huan, "I feel I must entreat you to take good care of her."

"Ah." Was this really happening? "Ah, ha, ha, well. I can promise that you definitely don't have to worry about Lan Zhan! I mean, my intentions are pure and everything—" Wei Ying didn’t have intentions. With Lan Zhan, she was stumbling blindly in the dark. Still, it seemed like the thing to say. "—but, also, Lan Zhan can take care of herself. Like really, ah. Trust me. She's got it handled." She didn't know any other way to convey the sentiment Lan Zhan has me in thrall via dense multi-layered psychosexual mind games but she hoped Lan Huan would catch that from her wide-eyed traumatised stare.

"I'm glad to hear you say that your intentions are good," said Lan Huan. "Do you like her?"

Lan Zhan. Her capable hands, her vicious mouth. The drop in Wei Ying's stomach whenever she saw her, even from across a crowded room. "I. Yeah. Oh my God. I like her so much."

Lan Huan nodded seriously. "Good. Make sure she knows it, okay?"

She winked at Wei Ying like a corny grandpa, and went back inside. Wei Ying stood there dumbly, feeling as if all the booze just hit her at once, the cigarette burning to ash in her hand.

Fuck.

-

Wei Ying was livid at Lan Zhan for the duration of her hangover the next day, but by the time she'd drunk a Gatorade, eaten a bagel, and taken a forty minute power nap, she saw things quite differently. Actually, it was kind of funny. Objectively a good prank, to fool a virgin into thinking you were a sex genius, and Wei Ying respected nothing more than good pranks. Mostly though, she felt pleased with herself, and glad of her new advantage. She knew something Lan Zhan didn't know she knew. It was an opportunity to gain the upper hand.

She texted her, laoshi when can we schedule our makeup class for this week???
i don't want to get out of practice 🥺

saturday 5pm.
be on time.

or what?? Wei Ying wrote, with her newfound daring. you gonna punish me???

No reply, which meant probably yes. Wei Ying imagined Lan Zhan calling her nasty words in a soft, lilting voice, and had to jerk off, hot and furious, on her front, hand caught between her hips and the mattress, stifling a moan with her pillowcase.

It was only two days, but it felt like the worst kind of tease. Lan Zhan visited her in the coffee shop, and for the first time ever, she sat in to drink her tea and watch Wei Ying work. Lan Zhan had her glasses on and her laptop and books in front of her, but whenever Wei Ying glanced up from the bar, she was leaning back in her chair, looking right at her, eyes intent, unnerving bright gold, making Wei Ying drop whatever she was holding. Once, when Wei Ying was walking past her, Lan Zhan's hand shot out and caught her hip, fingers digging in through the material of her apron.

It took Wei Ying a few seconds to hear what she was saying. All her attention had narrowed to the heat of Lan Zhan's hand, the bite of her thumb into Wei Ying's pelvic bone. up against the wall in the coffee shop skirt pulled up, she remembered, and had to fight to keep a straight face.

"A refill, if you don't mind," said Lan Zhan.

"N-No problem," Wei Ying said. It came out in her customer service voice, but about three octaves too high. She turned and fled into the store room, where she pressed her forehead to the cool stone wall and hyperventilated for a minute.

It was no good. How could a fellow virgin do this to her? Where was the solidarity?

She decided to get her revenge on Friday in the library. Lan Zhan was in a booth on the other side of the room, working on her laptop. She wasn't looking at Wei Ying, but her phone was on the table. Worth a try, Wei Ying thought, and typed out:

lan zhan i rly don't think i can wait until tomorrow
i'm soaking wet and so empty i need you to fill me up right now

She watched as Lan Zhan picked up her phone and read the message. The white glare from the screen reflected in her glasses made it difficult to see her expression. She didn't glance over at Wei Ying, just set her phone back down and returned to her work. Unacceptable.

Wei Ying typed faster.

i've been cumming every night thinking about what you're going to do to me
how are u gonna wreck me
will u make me eat your pussy
pull my hair and ride my mouth for hours until my face is all covered in your juice??

She could feel herself flushing. Her chair squeaked as she squirmed in it.

are u gonna fuck me with a strap on??
i think about that a lot
all the time actually
want to feel your dick stretching me out
want u to hold me down and push me into the pillows
pound me so hard i can't speak or breathe

She chanced another look. Lan Zhan's phone was lighting up with the messages, but she wasn't reading them anymore, instead was typing on her laptop with the occasional pause to cross-reference something from a book. Ugh. Leave it to Lan Zhan to set a worthy example. Wei Ying scowled, and flipped open her own notebook, set to her notes.

She ended up getting absorbed in her work, didn't lift her head for another three hours, and forgot all about the messages she'd sent, until afterwards, when she met the Nies and the Wens for a drink in the campus bar. She was a couple of beers in, loose and relaxed and unsuspecting, and walking though the hall between the bathroom and main bar, when footsteps sped up behind her.

A rush of movement; before she could turn around, a strong pair of hands grabbed her wrists, and she was body-slammed face-first against the wall, barely turning her head in time to avoid breaking her nose. Wei Ying was too shocked even to scream, her body tensing, ready to take a hit; and then the person pressed the warm length of their body against Wei Ying's. Wei Ying inhaled a familiar cologne, and sighed out in relief. "Lan Zhan."

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan said, breath hot on the back of Wei Ying's neck, and pushed her hips forward, and that—that was something long and hard bumping between Wei Ying's ass cheeks.

Wei Ying's gut twisted with arousal, so sudden and intense it almost hurt, and she made a weak sound and arched her back, pushing against the hefty ridge of Lan Zhan's dick. Lan Zhan's hands dropped to her hips, and with a bruising grip, she held Wei Ying in place as she ground against Wei Ying's ass in slow, slow circles. A real moan fell out of Wei Ying's lips then, involuntary and too loud. She felt the fight go out of her body, limbs going slack.

A door opened, and the cacophony from the bar drifted in, drunken conversation, chink of glass on wood, and then there was a gasp and murmured, "Sorry," from whoever it was who saw them there, the slam of the door falling shut again, and silence. Wei Ying barely cared. Her eyes had fluttered closed.

"Shameless," Lan Zhan said, mouthing it against her neck, sending chills down Wei Ying's spine. "Everyone knows you're a slut, but they don't know how much. Whining for my dick in the library. Would you take it right here?"

Wei Ying was dissolving. "Mmmmn," she said into the wall, "yeah, Lan Zhan."

"Would you beg for it?" Lan Zhan gave a sharp, sudden thrust, jolting Wei Ying's body forward, a mimicry of fucking.

"I'd beg for it," Wei Ying echoed.

Lan Zhan bit hard on the back of her neck, making Wei Ying yelp. "Beg."

"Ah! Please, Lan Zhan, please, give it to me, I need your dick so bad. I'm so wet. Please."

Lan Zhan hummed thoughtfully, barely half an inch from Wei Ying's ear. Wei Ying shuddered.

"Good," Lan Zhan said, and then she—swung back, letting Wei Ying go.

It took Wei Ying a couple of seconds to react. She stayed in place, still for a long moment, before she pushed herself off from the wall, and turned to face Lan Zhan. "What?"

"Wei Ying will have the opportunity to earn it tomorrow," Lan Zhan said, and adjusted her pants to hide the hard packer. She was a little breathless, a lock of hair falling messily into her eyes, one side of her mouth curving up, but otherwise, she was decent, and didn't look like someone who violently assaulted defenceless girls in hallways. God, Lan Zhan was so evil.

"God, you're so evil," Wei Ying complained, and Lan Zhan's smile deepened, and she dipped her head to kiss Wei Ying, one hand guiding Wei Ying's jaw. For once, she didn't push, just grazed Wei Ying's mouth with her own, and when Wei Ying tilted her head back and opened up, the flicker of Lan Zhan's tongue on hers was almost delicate.

"Tomorrow," Lan Zhan whispered, and was gone.

Wei Ying left early after that.

-

Saturday arrived, and she was a wreck. "Shut the fuck up," Jiang Cheng said as Wei Ying ate cubes of watermelon one by one with her fingers, sitting up at the kitchen table.

"What? What did I say?"

Jiang Cheng narrowed his eyes. "I don't know. Your energy is loud."

"My energy," Wei Ying mocked, but she knew what he meant. She was all charged up, humming like a power line. The air was crackling with it.

It was impossible to get work done, to concentrate; she kept starting one task, forgetting about it, and starting another, until she had one page of a journal article highlighted, a third of the laundry put away, the kitchen floor half-mopped, leaving an uneven soapy line on the floor. She smoked cigarettes until her head was spinning, walked to the coffee shop in the sunshine for a cold brew. She thought about drinking a beer to take the edge off her nerves, but she realised she didn't really want the edge taken off. She wanted to feel everything as it was, bright and painful and real. Eventually, she devoted herself to choosing her outfit.

It was stupid. It didn't need to matter what she wore. Lan Zhan wouldn't care; in all likelihood, she'd have Wei Ying stripped naked and laid out on the bed within minutes of her arrival anyway. But Wei Ying wanted her to see her eyes go soft, wanted her to nod and approve of her with a husky, "Good". She wanted to be good. Lan Zhan's good slut.

She didn't have too many nice dresses, but when she dug through the back of her closet, she found a skimpy slip of a thing she must have bought in the early days of college when she actually went to clubs. Dark red lace, a waterfall cut, longer in the back. Low neckline and spaghetti straps, exposing Wei Ying's bony shoulders, her clavicles. She didn't know what she'd thought about the dress when she'd first bought it, but when she looked in the mirror now, she saw that the deep bloody colour made her skin shine pale and the clinging material shrank her waistline. She looked fragile and small, a young virgin bride, a lamb to the slaughter.

She wore her hair half-down, falling around her shoulders, and Lan Zhan's jacket over the top, a layer of protection, and at four thirty, she called goodbye to Jiang Cheng, and stepped out of the apartment, into the dying sunlight.

-

Wei Ying's fingers were sweating as she pressed the buzzer, her heart beating a complex jazz drum lick in her chest. The door opened, and when she went up, for once, Lan Zhan met her at the door.

"Hey," Wei Ying said, voice sounding breathy and meek and stupid.

Lan Zhan reached out, and Wei Ying's breath stuttered, but it was only to take her coat. When she'd hung it on the wall, she stepped back and surveyed Wei Ying, who fought the urge to fidget, cross her arms over her chest.

Lan Zhan's eyes travelled up the length of her body, catching on the line of her waist, on her braless tits. Wei Ying waited for anything—a blink of acknowledgment, a nod, a half-smile. Nothing. Lan Zhan turned and walked back into the living room.

Wei Ying hastily struggled out of her shoes, hopping down the hall behind her. Damn! She'd really thought Lan Zhan would be into the dress. She'd been half expecting Lan Zhan to just grab her and pin her against the door, fuck her in the hallway, get it over with. Maybe she didn't look as good as it had in the mirror? Maybe it was too much, too obvious. She'd wanted to present herself to Lan Zhan like a gift to unwrap, but it was also true Lan Zhan never asked for that.

In the living room, Lan Zhan was pouring tea. Pouring tea? Had she been possessed by the spirit of someone's grandmother? Wei Ying stood a few paces behind, and watched her very carefully, scrutinising Lan Zhan's face. She was still with concentration, lips parted. No hint of a tremor in her hands, but Lan Zhan never betrayed her nerves that way.

Maybe she was nervous, though. Wei Ying had been so caught up in her own virginity narrative, but Lan Zhan had one, too. Wei Ying's heart ached in sympathy. Here she'd been, feeling so marked by her inexperience that she'd complained loudly and at length for months about the shame and horror of it, and how uniquely defective it made her, while Lan Zhan was going through the same thing! Could Wei Ying be any more of a heel? On top of that, she'd made Lan Zhan take the lead every time they'd done anything together! Of course Lan Zhan must be nervous—Wei Ying had put her under so much pressure on her first time!

"You know," Wei Ying said, "if you want, we can take it slow. Just watch a movie, or something like that."

Lan Zhan turned and lifted her head to stare at Wei Ying. Her gaze was hot.

"Do you want to watch a movie?"

"I—" Wei Ying tried not to shrink back. "I mean, I wouldn't mind. I'm just giving you the option."

Lan Zhan's eyebrows rose.

Ugh, why keep secrets like this! Wei Ying gave up.

"Lan Zhan, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to find out, really! I ran into your sister, and she told me you don't really go out with girls much, and this whole time I've been making you do all this work just because I assumed you were the expert!"

Lan Zhan calmly walked over and seated herself in the tub chair, cup of tea in hand, then tilted her head back to regard Wei Ying.

"Mn," she said. "Wei Ying has been very selfish."

Wei Ying's cheeks burned. She hung her head, eyes on the floor. "I'm sorry," she said again. "Do you forgive me, Lan Zhan? How can I make it up to you?"

The sound of the cup setting down on the table, then a tiny creak, Lan Zhan leaning further back in her chair. Wei Ying peeked up again. Lan Zhan didn't look angry. The line of her mouth was soft, the tilt to her head curious.

"Make it up to me," Lan Zhan said.

It took a moment for Wei Ying to realise that she wasn't just echoing Wei Ying, but directing her.

"Oh," Wei Ying muttered. "Okay."

She stepped forward and climbed into Lan Zhan's lap.

It wasn't unlike their position the first time they'd ever kissed, but in the tub chair, they were cocooned, cupped. Wei Ying knelt with her legs outside Lan Zhan's thighs. The skirt of her dress threatened to ride up, so she tried to tug it back down, but Lan Zhan caught her wrist, pulled it towards her, placing Wei Ying's hand up on her own shoulder, then circled Wei Ying's waist with her big hands and squeezed, which—fuck, that feeling never got old. Through her worn cotton t-shirt, Lan Zhan's skin was warm, and Wei Ying's thumb fit perfectly in the dip above Lan Zhan's collarbone. Wei Ying brought her other hand up, so she was leaning over Lan Zhan with both her hands on Lan Zhan's shoulders.

Lan Zhan looked up at her, eyes on Wei Ying's lips, and said in a low murmur, "Show me what you have learned."

Wei Ying's stomach dropped with nerves.

"Okay," she said, half to herself. Making it up to Lan Zhan. Taking initiative. Taking charge. She could do this. "Okay."

She bent her head and kissed her.

Lan Zhan gave nothing back. Wei Ying had to coax her mouth open to slip her tongue inside. Lan Zhan's hands remained chastely on her waist, like they were in a high school dance, which was so frustrating. After so many lessons, Wei Ying still didn't know how to make things speed up, click into place.

She tried one of Lan Zhan's signature moves: ran a hand up the back of Lan Zhan's neck, grabbing a handful of her soft spiky hair. Lan Zhan permitted it, but when Wei Ying dared to tighten her fist and tug, she made a warning sound in her throat and pulled back from Wei Ying's lips, glaring.

"Sorry," Wei Ying whispered. Lan Zhan's mouth was dusky-pink and shiny and a little swollen, and Wei Ying couldn't tear her eyes away from it, her gut clenching at the sight. "Sorry, I," and it was pure instinct the next time she sank down, moaning low when Lan Zhan's mouth opened under hers, the slow wet slide of her tongue.

Lan Zhan's body felt so good beneath her, firm abdomen, thick thighs. Wei Ying couldn't stop herself from making little purring "Mmmm" sounds, hitching her hips against Lan Zhan's. She could feel her pussy releasing a steady pulse of slick, wetting the front of her briefs, and then one of Lan Zhan's hands slipped down to grope and squeeze Wei Ying's ass cheek through her dress, like she just couldn't resist, and Wei Ying cried out, mouth slackening, breaking the kiss.

"Please," she panted into Lan Zhan's mouth. It had barely been five minutes. Whatever; she was past shame. "Please, Lan Zhan."

Lan Zhan squeezed her ass again, like an admonishment. "This isn't what I taught you," she said, her mouth moving under Wei Ying's jaw.

"I'll take a failing grade," Wei Ying gasped. "Just, please. Please fuck me, Lan Zhan."

Lan Zhan hands caught Wei Ying under her thighs, and then she—stood up, lifting Wei Ying like it was nothing, and walked through the living room, down the hall to the bedroom.

"What the fuck," said Wei Ying, dazed and limp in her arms. "What the fuck." She'd known Lan Zhan was strong, but not like this.

And then they were in the room, and Lan Zhan stood at the foot of the bed. There was no sign of strain on her face, and her arms weren't shaking. Her mouth had a determined set to it, and Wei Ying realised what she was going to do a split second before she did it, squealed, "Lan Zhan!"

Lan Zhan didn't so much as drop Wei Ying as she did—toss her. Wei Ying bounced when she landed on the mattress, bedsprings squeaking. She lay there on the pillows, chest heaving like she was the one who'd just dashed the length of the apartment carrying the weight of a fully grown woman. Then she propped herself up on her elbows, but Lan Zhan climbed on the bed, bracketing her with her legs, pushed her back down with a firm hand in the centre of her chest, kept her pinned against the sheets while she kissed her, properly this time, hard and forceful like a reprimand. Wei Ying's legs drifted open. She moaned, and brought her hand up to the back of Lan Zhan's neck to encourage her closer, but Lan Zhan peeled it off, shoved it down on the mattress beside her.

Lan Zhan gave one last bruising peck before she reared back, and Wei Ying made a sad little bleat of protest, but Lan Zhan was just pulling at the hem of her dress. Wei Ying obediently sat up, shimmied to let Lan Zhan pull it over her head; and then Lan Zhan was tugging down her briefs, and she was naked.

She wanted Lan Zhan to kiss her again, to cover her with her body, press her back down on the sheets. She wanted to feel the heat radiating from Lan Zhan's t-shirt, the soft scrape of Lan Zhan's pants against her legs, wanted to feel the weight of her. She expected Lan Zhan to kiss her again, but Lan Zhan was getting up to stand beside the bed.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying whined. "Where are you going?"

"On your hands and knees," Lan Zhan said. "Face the wall."

Oh, Wei Ying thought, a little comforted, as she did what Lan Zhan said. Lan Zhan was getting up to change positions because she wanted to fuck her. Finally! This was it! Wei Ying, a virgin no more! She arched her back and wiggled her ass a little, enticingly.

"Stay still," said Lan Zhan, so she stopped.

There was a breath of silence. Wei Ying wondered why Lan Zhan wasn't moving to get back on the bed. She turned to peer over her shoulder, and then—

Smack! Wei Ying's whole body jolted forward on the bed from the force of Lan Zhan's blow. She yelled in shock.

"Ow! That hurt, Lan Zhan, what are you—"

"Wei Ying is a disobedient student," Lan Zhan said evenly.

"But," Wei Ying gibbered, "uh—" and Lan Zhan hit her again, and a wave of heat and shame washed over her whole body. She could picture how she must look, naked with her ass up like a girl in a porno, blushing all over, her ass cheeks a deeper shade of crimson with Lan Zhan's hand prints. She dropped her head between her arms, squeezed her eyes shut.

"Lan Zhan, corporal punishment isn't even used in schools anymore. I don't think this is very—ah!"

Despite the force of Lan Zhan's hits, they hadn't hurt much at first, Wei Ying mainly squawking from the embarrassment and shock, but it was getting worse. The skin of her ass felt delicate, tight and hot and oversensitive, a slow sting building with every blow.

"You must accept correction in order to learn," Lan Zhan said. She sounded unsteady for a moment, tiny stutter, cor-r-ection. That caught Wei Ying's attention: she jerked her head up, craned her neck and peered over her shoulder at Lan Zhan again, but it only earned her another slap, this one so hard she collapsed forward.

"Ah! Lan Zhan, please don't, I ca-can't, it hurts!"

"What hurts?" Lan Zhan's voice was deep, velvety with amusement.

"My—" She couldn't say it. "My—ah!" She wasn't trying to be coy or play it up. She felt so exposed with her legs spread apart, her pussy and asshole on show. How could people like this? It hurt so much, it was so embarrassing. It made her insides feel funny and squirmy. "Lan Zhan, I don't like it, please stop. Please, please, please stop!"

Lan Zhan did stop, but Wei Ying stayed tense, eyes squeezed shut, just waiting. Then there was the sound of rustling, her belt unbuckling. This time, Lan Zhan must be going to fuck her, surely. She let out a ragged breath, let her muscles relax, gasped out, "Thank you, Lan Zhan, thank you. I won't misbehave anymore, I promise, I'll be so good—"

Crack. Wei Ying screamed.

That was—Lan Zhan's belt, and it hurt, fuck, it hurt so much worse, the sharp bite of the thin leather. It felt like it must be breaking the skin, must be making her bleed. Tears were dripping down Wei Ying's cheeks. She tried to suppress a sob.

"Ten strikes," said Lan Zhan.

"Ten? Lan Zhan, that's too much, I—"

"You need it," said Lan Zhan. "You can take it."

She sounded so unshakably certain, like she knew something Wei Ying didn't. Maybe she did.

"Count for me," Lan Zhan said, and then Wei Ying felt the quick rush of air behind her, and the crack of the belt once again, her body spasming.

There was a knot in Wei Ying's throat. She knew she couldn't utter a word without breaking down.

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan said, warning.

"W—" Wei Ying struggled. Her tears were raining down, making dark splotches on the streets in front of her. "One."

Lan Zhan didn't give her a chance to recover before she hit her again.

Wei Ying stopped moaning out loud after every blow, instead, her mouth dropping wide with silent scream after silent scream. It was excruciating, even worse with the way Lan Zhan kept striking the same spot over and over. She never let her rest, each blow following swiftly on the heels of the last, as soon as Wei Ying managed to choke out a number, so Wei Ying's whole ass felt hot and throbby; but Wei Ying recognised there was a kind of mercy in this, too, getting it over with. She'd only just adjusted to the shock of the belt when they reached strike five.

"Halfway," Lan Zhan said, and Wei Ying heard the praise in her voice, felt it licking down her spine, shivered.

She could take what Lan Zhan gave her, she decided. She could do it. She straightened her back, and was ready for the next hit when it came. The next three went quickly, and then Lan Zhan paused.

"L-Lan Zhan?" Wei Ying was still crying. Her voice was snivelly, pathetic. She peered over her shoulder again. Lan Zhan was staring down at her, amber eyes fierce like a jungle cat's, tiny sheen of sweat on her forehead. She saw it when Lan Zhan raised her belt high.

All the air poured out of her in a rush. Her arms gave out entirely. "Ten," she said, mouth crushed into the pillow.

"Wait," said Lan Zhan, and at the sound of her footsteps on the floorboards, Wei Ying lost it again.

"Nooooo," she moaned, mouth full of cotton sheets. "Come back, Lan Zhan! Wasn't I good? Please, Lan Zhan, I need you to touch me!"

It was too late; she could already hear Lan Zhan moving around in a different room. Wei Ying lay in child's pose and cried, big indulgent sobs, throat raw, shoulders quaking.

Lan Zhan took so long doing whatever she was doing, Wei Ying lost all sense of time. For some reason, it didn't occur to her to get up and go to look for her. Instead, she just lay there, drifting.

When she came back, Wei Ying's sobs had wound down. She felt odd, floaty, kind of high, and sensitive all over; very aware of the soft material of the sheets, how good it felt when she rubbed her cheek against it, breathed in the faint aroma of Lan Zhan's shampoo. The pain from her beating still throbbed, but it didn't feel so sharp and urgent now. Instead it felt warm, almost comforting, like a physical touch.

She felt the bed dip as Lan Zhan climbed onto it behind her, and sighed happily. "Lan Zhan," she said, as she felt Lan Zhan's hands wrap around her hips, guiding her further upright. Wei Ying obediently got back up on her hands, stuck her ass in the air. Then she started at the feeling of Lan Zhan's dick sliding between her thighs, bumping against her pussy.

"Good baby," Lan Zhan said, hitching her closer. "I had to break you down for me to use. Now you're ready."

"Mmmm," said Wei Ying, enjoying the sensation of rumbling in her throat. "Yeeeeaah, Lan Zhan, I'm ready, so ready. I'm yours to use. Please do it, please give it to me, please."

Lan Zhan didn't hesitate. One second, the tip of her dick was nudging at the outer lips of Wei Ying's pussy, and the next, it was forcing its way inside, huge and thick, spreading her walls apart, working her open. It fucking burned.

"Ah, aha," Wei Ying protested weakly. Lan Zhan ignored her, slid further in, inch by slow inch. It was deeper than hers or Lan Zhan's fingers had ever gone, deeper than any toy Wei Ying had ever tried, deeper than she'd imagined possible and still going. Still going.

Wei Ying lifted her head up between her shoulders. She was, she realised, making little gasping whines.

"Lan Zhan, ah," she said, edge of panic creeping in, "I don't think it can go any deeper."

Lan Zhan grunted.

"No, I'm serious," Wei Ying insisted. "I think this one is too big, you have to get another. You're going to seriously hurt me, and then we'll have to go to the emergency room, and the whole night will be ruined, it'll be so embarrassing, I—ah—"

Lan Zhan shoved in the rest of the way, until Lan Zhan's hips were pushed against Wei Ying's hips, the harness straps digging into her sore skin.

"No more whining," she said, and snapped her hips once, fucking the last scant thoughts out of Wei Ying's head.

Lan Zhan started out with long thrusts, dragging all the way out, then punching in hard. Her hands slipped from Wei Ying's hips, came around to cup her ass cheeks from behind, and then Wei Ying felt her spreading them apart, as if to get a better view of her dick sawing in and out. Her thumb pried at Wei Ying's pussy, pushing in alongside the dick, stretching Wei Ying even wider. It felt so—ugh, so degrading, like Wei Ying was just Lan Zhan's toy. So much of her was on show. What more could Lan Zhan want from her, she wondered desperately. Lan Zhan had seen everything now. What next? Would she turn Wei Ying inside out to get a good look at her guts?

It wasn't quite satisfying like this. Wei Ying was full, so full, but Lan Zhan was going so slow, and Wei Ying's clit was aching, untouched. Maybe Lan Zhan felt the same, because after a few minutes, Wei Ying heard a frustrated grunt, felt Lan Zhan's dick slipping out of her.

"Ah?" It came out sad and bereft. Wei Ying felt like her hole was gaping, like cool air was rushing in.

Then Lan Zhan's hands were pushing between her shoulder blades, pressing Wei Ying down onto her stomach, face against the sheets again. Wei Ying felt Lan Zhan reposition herself, heard the slick, squelchy sound as Lan Zhan fucked in with the tip, a couple of shallow, experimental thrusts; and then she drove forward, draping herself over Wei Ying's back, and, ah, in this position somehow it felt even deeper. Wei Ying hadn't thought it possible. It didn't feel possible now.

"Fuck," she gasped. Ringing in her ears. "Oh, fuck. Fuck."

Lan Zhan's arms came up around Wei Ying. Her hands caught Wei Ying's where they were gripping the sheets, covered them, a silent reassurance.

"Lan Zhan," said Wei Ying, tearing up again, voice catching.

Lan Zhan snarled, and started fucking. Not slow this time: she stayed deep inside with short, jabbing thrusts, and enveloped Wei Ying with the warmth of her body. Wei Ying could feel her, all the bare skin pressed along hers, Lan Zhan's broad shoulders like a shelter, the brush of her soft tits and hard nipples, her lightly hairy thighs bracketing Wei Ying's, her mouth, open, hot and wet, moving absently over Wei Ying's neck and shoulders. So close, so deep, the tender squeeze of her fingers locked over Wei Ying's a counterpoint to the merciless ramming of her dick. Wei Ying could only crumple and sob a litany of Lan Zhan's name. God, if only she could stay here forever, never have to think again, just let Lan Zhan take her and use her, mark her claim over and over.

Maybe she said some part of this out loud, because Lan Zhan suddenly said, "Wei Ying," the first words she'd spoken in a while, breathing hot against Wei Ying's ear, and then her rhythm faltered. She thrust deep into Wei Ying, then began pulsing against her, her whole body tensing and trembling as she came, teeth sinking into Wei Ying's neck.

God, Lan Zhan must really want her bad. Wei Ying felt a fresh burst of arousal, shuddering at the thought; but Lan Zhan was slowing and stilling, and—pulling out?

"Lan Zhan, please, don't stop," she said, unable to keep the fear out of her voice. "Please, I need to come."

"Mn," said Lan Zhan agreeably, extricating one hand from Wei Ying's to adjust her dick. She leaned back over Wei Ying then, resting her dick between Wei Ying's ass cheeks, tangled her sweaty hand in Wei Ying's ponytail, and jerked her head back towards her to catch her mouth in a lazy sidelong kiss, their mouths moving slow and open, spit getting all over Wei Ying's cheek and jaw.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying moaned, breaking the kiss and rocking her hips against the mattress.

Lan Zhan kissed her earlobe, her neck, pressed a smile into her shoulder. She was probably trying to be subtle about that, but Wei Ying could sense her aura of post-orgasmic smugness.

"How much do you want it?"

Wei Ying twisted around to glare at her. "Lan Zhan! Are you kidding?"

Lan Zhan's mouth twitched, and twitched again. Her shoulders started shaking. Wei Ying watched, transfixed, as Lan Zhan laughed—really laughed, for the first time in Wei Ying's memory.

She rolled off Wei Ying, lay beside her, head propped on pillows, then reached out and grabbed her wrist with one hand. "Come here," she said, giving a tug, and Wei Ying pouted and got up on her knees to straddle Lan Zhan.

Lan Zhan was dewy with sweat. She hadn't gone pink, apart from at her ears, and a little dusting along her chest and collar. Wei Ying had never seen her body like this, and she got lost in it for a moment, her glowy, healthy skin, her defined arms and abdomen, fine hair covering her long legs. Her dick lay between them, utilitarian black silicone, still shiny from Wei Ying. Lan Zhan gripped it right at the harness ring. Her eyes flicked up to Wei Ying's, hooded and sardonic.

"How much," she repeated. "Show me."

Wei Ying bit her lip, nodded, then sat up on her knees to let Lan Zhan guide her dick back inside her, where she was still open and slick. Even on the second try, it was a stretch. Wei Ying hissed through her teeth as the tip breached her.

"Open your eyes," Lan Zhan said sharply. Wei Ying hadn't realised she'd closed them.

"Ah," she said, lashes fluttering. She made herself focus on Lan Zhan's face, on her heavy eyes, black pools of lust. "It's so fucking big, Lan Zhan, it feels like—like an iron bar." She bit her lip, slipped down as far as she dared before she had to stop for breath, which was only a couple of inches. "Fuck, it's huge. What made you think I could take it?"

"It's what Wei Ying needs," Lan Zhan said. Her hands flew up to Wei Ying's waist to hold her in place as she shoved her hips up, burying her dick the rest of the way inside Wei Ying, making Wei Ying yelp.

"Ahhhhh, ah, Lan Zhan, too much, too much! You're so mean to me." The tears were back, and now she was face-to-face with Lan Zhan, no hiding it in the pillow. She scrubbed them away with the back of her hand, sniffling. "Why are you always so mean to me?"

"What did I say?" Lan Zhan held her tight, muscles flexing in her powerful thighs.

Wei Ying had to rewind. "It's what Wei Ying needs?"

Lan Zhan didn't answer, but squeezed her waist, and gave her a look. A tilt of the head, a silent directive. Get to work.

"It's what Wei Ying needs," said Wei Ying again, slowly, thoughtfully, and she obediently rose and sank on Lan Zhan's dick. Because Lan Zhan knew what Wei Ying needed. Lan Zhan was a virgin, but she was still Wei Ying's teacher. Lan Zhan knew how to give Wei Ying what she liked, what she craved, even the things she couldn't admit to herself. Lan Zhan was always watching. Lan Zhan cared. Something was slotting into place, only Wei Ying couldn't exactly parse out what, because she was full of Lan Zhan again, and all of the heat and desire and arousal from before had come rushing back in, fogging up her mind and sending her careening towards the edge, and soon she wasn't so much riding Lan Zhan as she was just—frantically bouncing, and for once, when she reached for her clit, Lan Zhan didn't try to stop her, just watched, her gaze heavy and hot, raking over Wei Ying's tits, her abdomen, the needy, convulsive motions of her hand.

"My good little slut," she said, reached up with one hand, pinched Wei Ying's nipple hard, and twisted.

Wei Ying jolted, cried out.

"That's it," Lan Zhan said. "Now come."

Wei Ying's head fell back, and a broken, feral sound tore out of her mouth, and her whole body locked up as she came, her pussy clenching and pulsing.

-

The realisation came back to her later, after they'd made out for another hour, and Wei Ying had come twice more, once rutting against Lan Zhan's thick, muscular thigh, and another time under her mouth, while three of Lan Zhan's fingers kept her full. They'd ordered soup and dumplings, and once the food had arrived, and they'd spread it out over the kitchen table, Lan Zhan got up silently, went into the kitchen, and brought back a large bottle of a IPA and goblet-shaped beer glass, which she set in front of Wei Ying.

"Oh, sweet!" Wei Ying inspected the beer label, then blinked curiously up at Lan Zhan. "But I thought you never drink?"

"Mn." Lan Zhan was avoiding Wei Ying's eyes, which immediately set sirens blaring in Wei Ying's mind.

She decided to wait until Lan Zhan had finished at least half her meal before launching her next attack.

"Be honest," she said. "For how long have you been obsessed with me, Lan Zhan?"

Lan Zhan didn't choke or splutter or anything like that, but she did spend a suspiciously long time chewing her next mouthful of food. So long, in fact, that Wei Ying got bored waiting for a reply.

"Okay, okay," she said, "I'll make it easier. Before or after I asked you for sex lessons."

Lan Zhan swallowed. She lowered her eyes, and said in tones of defeat, "Before."

"Ah ha HA!" Wei Ying crowed. "I knew it! Okay, but how long before? Was it this year? Was it after I got bangs? I know I levelled up in hotness after I got bangs."

She peered at Lan Zhan closely. Lan Zhan delicately popped another dumpling in her mouth.

"No? Before that? Hmmmm... Was it one of those times we had to do a project together in sociology? I guess we did spend a lot of time kind of... jammed together in those library study booths." Now that she thought about it, they had ended up paired together an unusual amount, considering she'd thought Lan Zhan really hated her, and this had regularly resulted in them sitting on one side of a table, Lan Zhan's thigh pressed against Wei Ying's thigh, elbows knocking and forearms brushing as they made their longhand notes, static shocks jolting between them in the heat of the library. Was this Lan Zhan's design?

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan said, and that. Was that a note of plea Wei Ying heard in her voice? Oh, today fucking ruled.

She got up and bounded across the room, hopping sideways onto Lan Zhan's lap, Lan Zhan steadying her with a hand on the small of her back, and then beamed up at Lan Zhan, who just gazed down at her, wide-eyed and nonplussed; and then Wei Ying threw her arms around Lan Zhan's neck, and leaned up to kiss her.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting," she said, and felt Lan Zhan's grip tighten, her exhale against Wei Ying's cheek. Wei Ying nuzzled against her; and then one of Lan Zhan's hands came up to cup her jaw, tilt her head back, and Lan Zhan kissed her, first deep and thorough, then with tiny, nipping bites, catching Wei Ying's lower lip between her teeth, then sucking bruises under Wei Ying's jaw, and Wei Ying, breathless again, murmured promises and nonsense, you won't have to wait anymore, I'll stay right here, I'll take what you give me every time, and the food on the table went cold.