Work Text:
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In Wei Ying’s dreams, he’s drowning. Not in an ocean or a pool or a lake or a pond but in a bath of darkness that tongues at his joints and grips his ankles. If he were awake, he’d text Lan Zhan about it -- send over a photo of the skin right above his socks and say something silly like, look at my toes! even though there wouldn’t be a toe in sight. Lan Zhan would get it. Lan Zhan would see the black-black-blackness hugging his feet and maybe he’d respond practically. Did your socks shrink in the wash again? Be careful of the darkness, Wei Ying . Something like that.
But Wei Ying is asleep. He’s dreaming, or he’s supposed to be, and so Lan Zhan isn’t here, he shouldn’t be here, and Wei Ying gulps in the darkness instead. He sips at it, delicately at first, until the hole in the chest reaches out for more, till it unfolds itself and climbs up his throat, grappling along the slippery muscle. Once it finds purchase along his gums, it elbows its way out till it squats comfortably along his tongue. Wei Ying dreams this, dreams of the hole in his chest lapping up the darkness and then the rest of him. Would it be so bad? Would it be so awful, to float through the air? A bubble of Wei Ying.
And if he popped? If he burst into nothingness? Then so be it. So be it , dreams Wei Ying. So be it.
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When Wei Ying gets hit with the curse, he treats it like the steady ribbon of blood that’s been unspooling from a cut along his forehead. That is, he treats the curse as if it’s nothing because he and Lan Zhan are fucked. Maybe not fully fucked, but at least halfway. Wei Ying can feel it in the set of Lan Zhan’s shoulderblades, like two sturdy envelopes, winged and tensed against his.
They’re in the heart of the Burial Mounds, chasing thieves across the pockmarked remains of a sprawling industrial park. Two weeks. He and Lan Zhan have spent the better part of two week tracking a group of thieves: organ snatchers who’ve lured a dozen or so students to their deaths by promising ‘a unique opportunity to cultivate.’ Wei Ying smiles grimly. He isn’t clear on the details, only knows that the job is too complicated, too grisly, and far too dangerous for a legitimate, licensed cultivator. That’s what contractors like Wei Ying are for. Unseen and disposable. It’s a wonder Lan Zhan even wants to be his partner. It’s not like he’s in need of the money anymore, what with Gusu flourishing again as a hub for wannabe cultivators seeking to workshop their skills. He’s offered to fund Wei Ying once, months ago, but Wei Ying had simply laughed at him. I’m not gonna be your sugar baby, Lan Zhan . Lan Zhan hadn’t spoken to him for a week afterwards.
Still, Lan Zhan somehow continues to pop up and take on jobs whenever Wei Ying needs a second, and part of Wei Ying is half-scared that if he ever brings it up, Lan Zhan will just back away and refute it all.
It wouldn’t be good for the job, Wei Ying thinks.
To your right , Lan Zhan’s voice snakes through Wei Ying’s head, and Wei Ying nods. At least their tech is working. The earpiece hugs along the bony strip of skin behind his ear and vibrates itself into the implant on the other side of his skull. It’ll stay on for as long as Wei Ying wants it to, the product of clever code and a tight weave of energy.
Wei Ying counts for them, readying himself to feint to the side.
One -- Two --
Lan Zhan darts to the right as Wei Ying leaps forward, arcing himself through the air till he’s just a step below but still ahead. His wrists are already brand-hot, and he brings one, two, three fingers to his mouth, then nips the skin of each. From the corner of his eye, Lan Zhan needles through the air, his arm and Bichen one sinuous line of energy.
Good , Wei Ying thinks. Good. He flings out his hand, characters on characters dripping out, their meaning collapsing into something thicker than ink, something more congealed. By the time they hit the ground, two more organ snatchers collapse through the air, more silt than muscle or bone. They land like a drumroll, abbreviating the hot tar of the park.
Solid work, Lan Zhan , Wei Ying thinks as Lan Zhan slices one, then another organ snatcher just-so. An amateur would’ve assumed that Lan Zhan had missed: the men are still alive, and from the looks of relief bannering across their faces, they clearly think so. Wei Ying swallows a laugh. If Lan Zhan wanted the men dead, they would’ve stopped breathing minutes ago.
Yes. Excellent teamwork, Wei Ying , Lan Zhan thinks back, then clears his throat as he tugs off the ear piece. “Better to talk out loud,” he says quietly. He flicks Bichen, slinging off the remains of the night, before sheathing it.
Wei Ying snorts. Trust Lan Zhan of all people to be distrustful of any tech that isn’t Gusu-made. Wei Ying makes a show of using his earpiece. Without his own piece on, Lan Zhan won’t be able to hear a word of Wei Ying’s thoughts, and Wei Ying grins at the wrinkle that daggers its way in between Lan Zhan’s eyebrows. Lan Zhan is always so rigid; it’d do him good to loosen up, especially after today’s success.
“Come on,” Lan Zhan says, striding towards him and reaching out. “Let’s go back to your apartment. It’s closer, and the authorities will be here soon. We shouldn’t linger.”
Wei Ying turns. He’s about to make a joke. He’s about to make a dumbass joke about how they should check to see if their organs are all intact first, given, you know, organ snatchers! Organs! I’ll show you mine if you show me yours! but it’s the hand on his shoulder that gives him pause.
Wei Ying is familiar with Lan Zhan’s touches. They linger, sometimes. He’s not sure if Lan Zhan is intentional about it but they always feel exploratory, as if Wei Ying’s body is simply a pocket for Lan Zhan to dip into. A fold here, a wrinkle there.
This time, Lan Zhan’s touch is different. When he claps his hand along the rounded face of Wei Ying’s shoulder, right where the skin peeks out from a ripped sleeve, Wei Ying shivers, then shivers harder. The touch isn’t hot; his skin is, as if the touch has conducted heat straight from Lan Zhan’s bones into Wei Ying’s. For a moment, Wei Ying stares, open-mouthed, at Lan Zhan. The words shingle the roof of his mouth, wobbling, and Wei Ying coughs when he tries to spit them out.
“Lan Zhan! Lan --” is all that he manages before the heat spreads from his shoulder to his chest to his belly to his hips, swift and dark and wriggling.
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He wakes up in the waiting room of the City Hospital. It’s early enough that the dawn has begun to stretch its way across the slick tiled floor. Hospitals like these are often crowded, damp with illness, but it’s late enough in the summer and early enough in the fall where sickness hasn’t yet spread in waves. Last year there’d been a pox, the year before there’d been a sort of wasting disease.
Wei Ying shakes the sleep out of his shoulders and hair. His right side is warmer than his left, which means that Lan Zhan was probably here, just a few minutes ago. Lan Zhan is probably the reason he’s even here to begin with. If he hadn’t -- if he hadn’t fainted, Wei Ying muses, he would have just gone home.
As it is, he has to deal with a small crowd of nurses and one harried-looking intern, who calls out his name just as Wei Ying unrolls the crick in his neck. Someone herds him into a tight room, gray-walled and astringent, where the intern -- a man who, with his bowl-cut hair, wire-rimmed eyeglasses, and a clipboard in hand, looks more like a cartoon in a show about medicine than a real person -- tells Wei Ying that they’d kicked Lan Zhan out because they couldn’t afford to have visitors skulking around in the waiting room. Wei Ying barks out a laugh at that, nearly jerking away from the spot where the intern is stitching up his forehead, but they ultimately manage. Everything else is just bruised, the kind of ache that goes away with soup and several nights’ rest.
Once the intern is happy with his work, he leans back, snaps off his gloves, and heads for the door.
“I’m going to check on what we need to run on your curse,” he says, and before Wei Ying can ask how much longer this will all take or ask about what these tests will be in the first place, the intern is already out the door and down the hallway. Wei Ying closes his eyes. He may as well catch up on sleep.
The rest of the morning passes by in a blur of napping and not-napping.
The curse, he’s told, is temporary. Nothing he can do about it except wait it out. The nurses handle him with knit gloves and perfunctory care, but Wei Ying doesn’t blame them. As far as they’re concerned, he’s just another nobody, a shadow of a person without the necessary paperwork that would compensate them for their efforts. Wei Ying nearly laughs when one of the nurses asks him if he has insurance.
“Insurance?” he asks, dumb-founded. “I don’t believe in putting a down-payment on pain.”
Maybe it’s because the hospital won’t recoup the cost of patching him up, but Wei Ying eventually finds it easier than he expects to persuade the intern to forego the usual core-scanning assessments. When the intern is called away once more, Wei Ying flicks his way through the keyboard, then palms one of the gray walls and connects to the building circuitry. The implant in his skull rattles to a start again and then it’s easy work to wipe his name from the database. He’d prefer that the Company not find out about this little hospital excursion, and plus, leaving as blank a paper trail as possible is just good practice.
An hour later, the City Hospital spits Wei Ying out into bright gray sunlight with a handful of painkillers. Autumn has begun its chokehold around summer, and if Wei Ying closes his eyes, he can smell the decay that’s begun to crowd up from the dirt.
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Wei Ying. Are you alright? What did the physicians say?
The message chimes just as Wei Ying sinks into his couch with a fork in his mouth and a steaming bowl of instant noodles atop his coffee table, smoking up the air in tune with his thoughts. He’s got a sketchpad out and a pen tucked behind his ear, and he’s cursing (ha, he thinks to himself, haha) himself for not remembering or asking the intern more about the curse itself.
It feels silly, responding to Lan Zhan’s question. As if he’s a child or someone too incompetent to be trusted to keep their body and mind in order. They didn’t say much , he ends up texting back, because it’s true. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me!
He brushes a hand across his chest, thumbs a nipple thoughtlessly. He’s not sure what to think about the curse being attuned to Lan Zhan. A month, the intern had estimated. Curses like these last for about a month.
He supposes it could be worse. His phone chimes again.
Mind if I come over? I’d like to confirm that you’re in good shape.
Wei Ying thumbs out a quick response. Sure. No use in avoiding Lan Zhan. He’ll just have to make sure they don’t touch. He flips open one of his home monitors and waits for the system to boot up, then toggles to the corner icon and begins typing. There’s a growing itch that tingles in between his fingers, but Wei Ying throws his focus into the words that beam into the air.
THEORIES ON RESOLVING CURSES OF THE TOUCH --
Wei Ying reads on.
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“I still don’t understand,” Lan Zhan says slowly. “The hospital just gave you --” he casts an unimpressed glance at the capsule of purple pills that Wei Ying had tossed across the kitchen counter, just out of reach -- “painkillers and told you that the curse would just go away? Even if the curse has nothing to do with pain?”
Wei Ying shrugs. When Lan Zhan puts it like that, it does sound a bit absurd.
“It’s not their fault,” he says, clicking through the pages of a journal he’s beamed onto the opposite wall. He and Lan Zhan are curled up on opposite ends of the couch, and every once in a while, he sneaks a glance at Lan Zhan’s face. Lan Zhan’s expressions are so -- Wei Ying likes them so much, even if he doesn’t have words for why or how or what exactly it is about the way that Lan Zhan crinkles his eyes or frowns. He’s frowning right now, his eyes scanning across the literal wall of text.
“It says that touch-based curses will either peter out over time, or grow stronger if they’re not broken early on.” Lan Zhan highlights a sentence with the remote in his hand, then hums thoughtfully. “I’m not sure why the hospital thinks that yours will be broken within a month.”
Wei Ying waves a hand and flops into the couch, gingerly making sure his toes don’t meet Lan Zhan’s ankles. It’s odd, not touching Lan Zhan. It’s not like he’s usually touchy-feely with Lan Zhan, but it’s more about that potential for touch, he thinks. Lan Zhan has this coiled-spring energy that he keeps in a glass box of politeness and formality and manners.
He also has a healthy sense of doubt, and Wei Ying tilts his head in consideration. Lan Zhan has a good point, but if he’s right --
“I mean...don’t they have software for these kinds of things? Algorithms? Projection models?” Wei Ying says, thinking aloud. He chews on his bottom lip, taps along the sewed up skin behind his ear. Without his earpiece on, the implant is still and silent, but if Wei Ying focuses, he can feel the slight heat of the chip vibrating away along his skull.
Lan Zhan doesn’t say anything, just steals the keyboard and pulls up the specs of the tests that the hospital had run on Wei Ying. He points with the remote again. “Nothing here says that the tests actually estimate the runtime of the curse. I think --” he weighs his words carefully, shifting along the couch till he’s propping himself up against its arm. “I think that they were probably giving you a best case scenario.”
He peers at Wei Ying, his eyes gilded by the dull glow of the screen. Like this he looks like one of the statues that guard the City’s entrance, placid yet unfathomable. Skin lit with a heavy kind of light, the kind that cores through marble and jade.
“Wei Ying, perhaps it would be better if we broke the curse.”
Wei Ying swallows. He tries for a laugh, but Lan Zhan doesn’t buy it, and neither does he. He folds his palms around his knees, till he’s just shin-shoulder-head, half a beetle of a person.
“I don’t even know where we’d start, Lan Zhan. And what if we fucked it up? What if it becomes permanent? The tests at least confirmed it was temporary.” Wei Ying tries and fails to squash down a thread of panic.
“We have an entire library with a section on curses back in Gusu,” Lan Zhan says calmly. He eyes Wei Ying with what looks like infinite patience, colored slightly with concern. “It would probably rival anything the hospital’s physicians or nurses had on hand. I could ask my brother to take a look. He wouldn’t ask any questions.”
Wei Ying rubs his forehead, but he must have a hangnail or something because he nearly scrapes off one of the stitches. Out of habit, Lan Zhan’s hand automatically comes up to brush his fingers aside.
Their thumbs touch. An arrowed kiss of a touch, but a touch nonetheless, and a molten line of heat begins to seep from thumb to palm to wrist to elbow, all the way to Wei Ying’s ribs and his gut.
“ Fuck .”
This time, Wei Ying doesn’t pass out. He sways though, clenching at the couch to keep himself from falling over. The curse ripples strangely, like sweat breaking out across skin, and briefly, Wei Ying can see the way it shrouds him, thin and membraneous, mapping out the front of him -- chest, elbows, thighs. The sensation unfolds across him, makes him splay out his thighs, his hips, makes him tip his head up for air. He gasps, struggles for a bit with the sensation, until the sensation ebbs and flickers and sinks away.
“That was --” Wei Ying tries to clear his throat. He shivers a bit, feeling strange back in his own skin. “What was that?”
Lan Zhan frowns. “I don’t know,” he says slowly, his frown deepening till it divots across his cheeks. “Whatever it is, do you think it’s getting stronger?”
“What do you mean?” Wei Ying says shakily. “You think the curse is just gonna get worse, don’t you? Do you think it’d jump? From touch to...the other senses?”
If Lan Zhan is right, then the logical conclusion -- the logical extreme of the curse -- would be that it’d jump and morph and mutate until perhaps even the smell or the sound or the sight of Lan Zhan would be enough to knock him out. Wei Ying presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. This could be bad. It doesn’t help that Lan Zhan looks as miserable as Wei Ying feels.
“I can speak with my brother,” Lan Zhan offers again. “Gusu should have some texts on curses like this, but I’m not sure about the rate at which this one will mutate.”
Wei Ying nods. Stretches, and then tugs his hair into a half-hearted ponytail, making sure his hands go nowhere near his forehead. It’s not like he has that much to lose. The last job was supposed to be a litmus test for whether or not he still had it in him to continue doing this sort of thing -- the chasing, the quasi-detective work, being roped into a situation where he only knows half the story.
What if the curse got stronger and just -- and just never faded away? Attuned to Lan Zhan, the curse would prevent them from ever touching. The prospect jolts through Wei Ying’s stomach, heavy and bottomless, like an anchor missing the sea floor. No. No, he won’t let that happen. Lan Zhan won’t let that happen.
Tentatively, Wei Ying raises his hand, palm facing Lan Zhan’s chest. When he speaks again, he tries his best Lan Zhan impression. Thinks to himself: Steady. Steady, steady.
“Lan Zhan, why don’t we try to break the curse right now?”
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They decide on a massage. Maybe we can break the curse by overwhelming it , Wei Ying suggests, and Lan Zhan nods, completing his thought. Since the curse is triggered by touch, we could try for a massage .
The first touch nearly bludgeons Wei Ying with a wave of something so strong that Wei Ying can’t speak, can only gag with something that feels too muscular to call desire or horniness or anything other than sensation.
Lan Zhan almost seems to give up right then and there. He nearly walks out the door, with his phone in his hand as if he could call his brother and demand an answer. He’s already at the doorway when Wei Ying gets up after him and begs for him to stop, reaching out and pulling him, pulling him closer till they touch a second time, forehead against forehead.
The second touch is slightly more manageable. Maybe it’s because Wei Ying is already gasping; maybe it’s because neither of them pulls away. Lan Zhan’s skin is cool, dewed with sweat, or maybe that’s Wei Ying’s sweat, his sweat, slathering itself across Lan Zhan’s brow. The touch tilts Wei Ying, till he feels like he’s being sloshed sideways, his insides rocked even as he fights to keep his knees unbuckled and hips righted.
Is this what friends do? This doesn’t feel like what friends do. Friends don’t carry each other gingerly towards the couch. They don’t dip their heads down-down-down till they’re nearly kissing. They don’t proceed to tug off a shirt, then plant their hands across a landscape of skin that isn’t theirs, even if it’s to break a curse.
Or maybe that’s what friends do. Maybe that’s what Lan Zhan does for friends. Wei Ying finds that he’s too confused, too panicked and tired and exhausted, to figure it out.
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Wei Ying thinks about it for days afterwards. The first massage. Lan Zhan’s hot hands on his hot skin. The liquid heat of the curse, the way it had receded, then flooded back, then receded again, leaving Wei Ying feeling like a slab of muscle being tenderized for the skillet.
He’d tried not to moan. Not to rut into the couch like an animal in heat. He’d curled in his toes, tightened his hands into fists, bit his lip and then chewed along the seam of a cushion as Lan Zhan worked his way across his shoulders, then the soft bits above and around his ribs, and finally the twin strips of muscle that flanked his spine.
It had felt as if the curse had primed him for touch, had stripped away the usual thick cloak of skin and muscle, laying bare a network of nerves and tender spaces for Lan Zhan to knead and rub and knuckle into and around. Afterwards, Lan Zhan had stepped back with his customary silence. He’d handed back Wei Ying’s shirt and proceeded to gather his things.
I’ll be back tomorrow night , he’d said solemnly, and for all of one inhale Wei Ying had wanted to press him against the door, to crush Lan Zhan with his own chest. Maybe the curse will break this way , he’d thought, or maybe this is an ill-timed crush. An actual crush, after years of teasing, but then as he hesitated, Lan Zhan stepped away and out and then down the block. Wei Ying had watched as he grew smaller and smaller in the distance, like a pinprick hole against the bland street and grey sky.
Over the next week, Lan Zhan drops in at night. The same time, every evening: 6PM, right after Wei Ying’s afternoon exercises. Wei Ying’s gotten better at using Chenqing over the years, but it’s still useful to learn other forms of defense, offense. There are days when his body doesn’t feel like his to begin with.
The last several massages seem to work at reducing the effect of the curse. Touching Lan Zhan doesn’t elicit as strong a reaction as he’s come to expect, and Wei Ying finds himself looking forward to 6PM. Maybe this can be a ritual they share together, even after the curse breaks. If it ever does. He tries to brush aside the thought.
Today, the massage is thorough. Warm. Lan Zhan lingers, brushing the backs of his knuckles along each knob of Wei Ying’s spine. He dances fingers along Wei Ying’s armpits, then presses two thumbs into the sparse hair and the wrinkled skin, and Wei Ying groans. The sound spools out of his mouth like a second tongue, wet and heavy and clumsy.
But Lan Zhan says nothing, and so Wei Ying simmers.
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Another week passes, then two.
The Company likes to keep him hanging, ever-ready for the next job the minute his funds are stretched thin. Living in the City is expensive. Wei Ying may make a killing but the City bleeds him dry: rent, food, the errant hospital bill that eventually finds him, even though he thought he’d cleaned their database of his name. The intern must have remembered.
At least the massages seem to be working. Repeated exposure , Lan Zhan says, and Wei Ying can only nod. He learns to masturbate before Lan Zhan’s visits, hoping that doing so will lessen the residual heat from the curse and the tremble in his thighs. This too is odd, milking his own cock so regularly. He’s gotten so used to forgetting it exists, like a dead thing hanging between his legs. There have always been bigger things on his mind, more important things: food, survival.
He can’t think of anything else. It’s just been food and survival.
Wei Ying pulls at his cock, rubbing his thumb against the slit before fisting the entire length of himself, rolling his wrist up and down and down and up. It’s unseasonably warm for autumn, and he’d been too lazy to turn on the air, so he sweats into his sheets, except gradually and uncomfortably so, like a frog in a hot bath. After a few minutes, he reaches over for the lube, squirts some into his palm. Lets the slipperiness slick onto his cock like a liquid hug. He exhales, but doesn’t quicken the pace, doesn’t do anything other than tease himself.
How long can I go like this , he wonders. How long can he tease himself, pull himself to the brink without falling off the cliff? He wonders if this is a theme in his life lately: Teasing himself, drawing himself towards some sort of cliff but forever chickening out. He’s stuck. He’s stuck, and he’s trying not to think about it, so he doesn’t.
He rubs his slit again, feels himself smear a trail of want along his thumbprint, wet and messy and bleeding in with the lube. My cock , he thinks, I’m fucking my cock with my own hand. The thought jangles oddly in his head, like something out of tune but catchy nonetheless. There’s an urgency to it, and he grips his cock tighter, watching it redden in all the little gaps between his fingers. He splays out his thighs and stills his hand and experiments with thrusting up, cradling his hips towards the ceiling into his grip. Up-exhale-up-inhale-up-exhale. His cock and his hand. His hand and his cock.
It’s good. Wei Ying twists, shoving the side of his face into the pillow and bites at the fabric of the pillowcase. He imagines the curse restraining him, holding him down, the weave of it threading along his skin and lapping at every pore of him, drilling into him and filling him with -- His mind skips, fractures, reconfigures.
What if he just became a single touch? The idea doesn’t make sense but it slots in with all the other ones and coagulates in his head and along his cock. What if he were one elastic touch away from bursting around Lan Zhan? Wei Ying thinks about Lan Zhan stroking him, pinching him, biting at him. Wei Ying squeezes one nipple, then the other, with his free hand.
His orgasm, when it blooms, is punishing. It leaks out of him like motor oil, like the product of all the gears of his insides churning and turning and grinding themselves into viscous silk. He gasps into the pillowcase, drools and spits and tears up. His hand, his cock. His body. Wei Ying lets his mouth yawn open and his knees fall back as the orgasm shakes him, crests into him, wrings him out until he’s just a swathe of nerve endings, firing and misfiring and firing again.
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When Lan Zhan arrives, he’s quiet as ever. Just drops his things across the kitchen counter and has Wei Ying take off his shirt and spread himself out on the couch in the living room. It’s surprising, then, when his fingers tremble against the nape of Wei Ying’s neck. His subsequent touches are shaky, to the point where Wei Ying wonders whether Lan Zhan is ill or tired or just worn out from all the massaging. When Lan Zhan finishes -- Wei Ying has learned to tell from how Lan Zhan will cough and then shift over to the side -- Wei Ying turns around, shrugs his shirt back on, and arches an eyebrow.
“Everything okay, Lan Zhan?” He gestures at the space between them. The curse has mostly diminished, but halfway through the massage Wei Ying had cried out -- there’d been a wave of energy, and then the curse had sparked up behind his eyelids to the point where he’d nearly cried. It’s happened the past few times that Lan Zhan has come over and always when they least expect it. So far, they’ve been unable to figure out why, and Lan Huan is still digging through the Gusu archives. Jerking himself off to the point of brainlessness was supposed to help -- Wei Ying had hoped it’d help -- but clearly it hadn’t.
Before he can say anything else though, Lan Zhan opens his mouth, bitten-hard and flushed pink.
“Wei Ying, have you been spanked?”
Wei Ying startles. Coughs.
“Excuse me?”
“Have you,” Lan Zhan says, eyes trained at a spot behind Wei Ying’s ear. He looks as shocked as Wei Ying feels. Wei Ying doesn’t know what he expected Lan Zhan to say, only that it wasn’t this. “Have you ever been spanked, Wei Ying?”
Wei Ying shivers. Opens his mouth. Closes it.
When it’s clear that Lan Zhan expects an answer -- any fucking answer, Wei Ying says to himself, trying to figure out what exactly to say -- he works his mouth open into a semblance of a grin and tries to coax out the words.
“No,” Wei Ying clears his throat around the syllable. He swallows, nearly coughing on his tongue, at the muscles that clench and slide between his mouth and his gut. “No, Lan Zhan,” he manages. “I haven’t been spanked.”
Lan Zhan shifts, stretches out his legs, then crosses them. Finally, he trains his eyes on Wei Ying.
“Is there a reason,” he says, sounding as if the words are being dragged out of him, “that you haven’t ever been spanked?”
Wei Ying doesn’t squeak, but he comes close to it. He tries for a hoarse laugh instead. “Lan Zhan! I wasn’t -- I mean, I don’t remember being spanked as a kid, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Lan Zhan presses his lips together. “Maybe not as a child, but what about adulthood? Have you ever -- have you ever been spanked in a sexual way?”
Wei Ying bristles. Has he ever been spanked during sex? He doesn’t remember. The Burial Mounds had -- it’d been a dizzying few months, all bodies and skin and -- Maybe he’d enjoyed being hurt there. But he doesn’t remember being spanked. Only slivered up, the sensation of hundreds of mouths puckered up along rugburned skin, the --
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says carefully, “why are you so curious?”
They haven’t talked about his time at the Burial Mounds, back when the Burial Mounds were still standing, still a hub for the sort of dark commerce that the City pretends doesn’t exist. They don’t talk about the ways that Wei Ying has changed since then. Wei Ying still remembers the way that Lan Zhan had eyed Wen Qing like a competitor. A rival. He closes his eyes. Is it that again?
“If this is about Wen Qing,” he starts, but Lan Zhan shakes his head.
“I spoke with my brother,” he says. “And he said that the massages are only working because of the continued exposure, but that it could backfire on us at any time. You could start to become overly sensitive. There wouldn’t be any trigger -- it’s just something bodies do.” He looks at his palms, breaking their gaze. “Apparently the massages might just be gradually lengthening the time of the curse. He says to break it, we might need to snap it. Physically snap it, which would involve --”
“Which would involve applying the most extreme form of touch,” Wei Ying finishes. “Which is why you’re thinking of spanking.” He feels queasy. Warm and sweaty again, with something formless unfolding and butterflying itself deep in his guts.
“We don’t have to do it,” Lan Zhan says, but Wei Ying can hear the helpless tone in his voice. He’s nervous, Wei Ying realizes. Lan Zhan is nervous because he thinks that Wei Ying will say no.
Wei Ying shifts closer to Lan Zhan, till he can feel the puff of Lan Zhan’s exhales. Two weeks ago, he wouldn’t have been able to do this. They haven’t touched like this, haven’t shared space like this outside of Wei Ying’s contract jobs. Sure, they might have fought, back-to-back, their minds wired together, but it’d been for an entirely different purpose altogether.
This, though. Wei Ying lets himself breathe in Lan Zhan’s exhales, the way they’re a comfortable kind of damp. Maybe it’s because the air he breathes in has been warmed by Lan Zhan’s insides -- is that a weird thought? Is that weird? -- but he’s suddenly aware that his cock is swelling with interest.
And then the feeling hits. The curse. Lan Zhan exhales a bit too hard and even though there isn’t a touch -- even though it’s just a change in air pressure -- Wei Ying feels the curse riot through him, the skin along his cheeks glowing hot-hot, the little hairs standing up on their ends as the curse knots and sears itself across his skin once more.
“Wei Ying!”
“It’s okay. It’s okay, I’m fine,” Wei Ying gasps. His mouth is so dry, and he licks at his bottom lip. An old habit. “We should do it,” he says, wincing as his lungs rebel. They feel like they’ve been squashed.. “Should we do it now?” He stands up, pulling at his sleeve. “It doesn’t have to be sexual, but you’re probably right that it should be. Having some form of emotion behind the touch will probably help break it, the way that other curses bend and break around strong emotions. And since you don’t hate me --”
He trails off when Lan Zhan gingerly stops him from taking off his shirt. Two fingers come around his right forearm, the one that’s still sleeved.
“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Lan Zhan says firmly. His eyes are stormy. Is he angry? Wei Ying wonders why he’s angry. Maybe Lan Zhan still hates him? But that can’t be true. Lan Zhan wouldn’t continue to help him and take on contracts with him simply out of spite.
Lan Zhan’s voice is enough to break Wei Ying’s train of thought. “Tomorrow,” he says. “We’ll do it tomorrow. It’ll be better when it’s during the day, when we’re both fully awake. You should take some time to think it through first.”
He heads for the door and Wei Ying lets him, all of a sudden feeling oddly bereft. Adrift.
“Sure,” he says, calling after Lan Zhan’s back, “Tomorrow then.”
❢◥ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◆ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◤❢
It feels like he’s breaking some sort of rule, fucking himself into the bed the next day, over and over again. Wei Ying wakes up and he has a coffee and then he goes at it, pulls at his cock till it’s noon and he’s gasping, then stops for lunch, and then goes at it again. When his wrist is sore, he tries laying flat on his belly in bed, pillow tucked underneath him, and then he ruts into the soft space, seeking friction and finding none but spilling anyways.
It’s as if he’s making up for months of ignoring his cock. Not that he hasn’t masturbated before the curse. It’s just that, previously, it was just a chore. Another need to take care of, and the most efficient way of taking care of a need is -- well. Better him and his hand than him and a stranger.
He loses track of how many times he leaks into the pillowcase, only knows that soon it’s dark and he’s hungry. He orders takeout and gets it delivered, and when it comes, he sits naked in the living room, his cock soft and sore as he shovels noodles into his mouth. Afterwards, full and warm like a mosquito near bursting, he leans into the couch, flings one ankle along the length of the couch and the other on the floor. Lazily, he toys with his foreskin, at the wrinkled skin of his balls, and smooths a finger at the thin, hot space behind them. He’s not sure what it is -- maybe it’s the curse, or maybe it’s the thought of Lan Zhan spanking him -- whatever it is, it’s pumped all the blood from his brain to his cock. This time, he takes himself on his side, going slower, slower than he’s gone all day, and when he comes, he nearly chokes on his tongue.
Has he ever been spanked? Clearly not, or else he’d remember. Stretched out on the couch, Wei Ying looks at his body. How strange, the muscles that rope along his torso, that gutter his hips. How strange, this palm and that one. One heel and the other. The hairs that curl between his legs, that sprawl along his shins. He gives himself a cursory slap along the inside of his thigh.
Thwack . He shivers. Thwack . He tries to imagine Lan Zhan doing it. A tap along each thigh. Maybe he’d start with the tender skin along the insides, and then make his way around. Maybe Lan Zhan would make him get on all fours. More space, he’d say, in that precision-clipped way of his, and then he’d freckle the air with little thwacks along Wei Ying’s skin. Wei Ying bites down a moan at the thought, then lets it slip into the air like a secret being told: quiet and soft, a sound that ends up hiding in the corners of the room, reverberating as he yanks at a nipple and slaps it, slaps it hard.
Is this what it would be like, with Lan Zhan? Wei Ying rubs a finger through the cooling mess along his belly. Thwack . He slaps at the stretch of skin beneath his belly button. Thwack .
He gasps, bites down on one of the cushions.
Thwack .
❢◥ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◆ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◤❢
Wei Ying knows he should take care of himself before Lan Zhan arrives, but part of him rebels. Maybe it was because he indulged yesterday. When he wakes up, he has to wrinkle his nose: the entire apartment smells like sex. Something sour and almost plastic. He opens all the windows and turns up the heat. There’s a chill in the air, and the wind toys with the screens that stripe shadows along the floor like the grooves of a whale’s underbelly.
He spends most of the day puttering around and running errands. He sorts out his finances; he has enough in emergency savings for about a month’s worth of bare necessities before he has to worry, but the Company has never gone longer than three weeks in giving him a job. He should be fine. Then again, he’s been with the Company for so long -- the longest out of any of the contractors that haven’t died or already left for greener and safer pastures -- so maybe it’s time to quit. To come clean. He’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it. Either way, a change of pace would be nice.
He takes a walk to a nearby bakery just to do something with his time. The auntie there gives him pineapple cakes every time he goes, and today he’s in need of that kind of warmth. Someone who sees him as just another young man rather than a collection of useful skills or memories or obligations. He’s not sure which he is these days, even though he and Jiang Cheng have smoothed things over and things with Lan Zhan aren’t any more complicated than they could be.
The auntie sends him off with a bag full of croissants and buns and a sleeve of pineapple buns. A score. Wei Ying dips into a coffeeshop on his way back, and it’s just in time, really, because Lan Zhan texts him as soon as he’s back at his apartment, sinking into his couch, both hands hugging his coffee.
I’m in the area. Is now a good time? I can come later too.
Wei Ying gulps down the rest of his coffee.
Sure! Good timing, Lan Zhan i just got back from grabbing coffee
Better get it over with. Wei Ying tries to ignore the thrum of excitement. It’s not as if he hasn’t been thinking about Lan Zhan spanking him all day. His inner thighs feel tender from his own slaps from the night before, and they’d chafed against his pants as he walked to the bakery and back. He touches them now, and he can feel the heat even through the denim. Should he change into something more casual? Wei Ying debates it -- anything to keep his mind off the spanking, the thwacks .
Lan Zhan arrives before Wei Ying has time to think about clothing any further. He chimes the door, knocks one, twice, before Wei Ying stumbles to the door, feeling flushed and embarrassed and five kinds of awkward about it.
“Hi, Lan Zhan,” he manages to say once Lan Zhan steps in and slips out of his shoes.
“Wei Ying.” The greeting is soft. Softer than usual. Is Lan Zhan nervous too? Wei Ying searches Lan Zhan’s face for any signs of apprehension or nervousness but finds none. Lan Zhan’s face is the way it always is: still and shimmering, a bit like the moon or the air around a street light. The only halfway tell Wei Ying can discern is the slight unevenness along one cheek, as if Lan Zhan is chewing the inside of it. His ears, as far as Wei Ying can tell, are perfectly pale. No flush.
Hm. Maybe Wei Ying is just the one who’s weird about it then.
“Well,” Wei Ying tries for a smile. He feels weird and strangely naked and vulnerable. “Should we start?”
Lan Zhan nods.
❢◥ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◆ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◤❢
The first slap cracks through the air. Wei Ying is on all fours. He’s not sure why they decided that he should be in his underwear. Probably so that they could see the curse better. Regardless, here he is, nearly naked on his bed, with Lan Zhan hovering over him as he tries not to clench, not to wince when Lan Zhan slices the air with his palm.
It feels -- he’s not sure how it feels. Even when Lan Zhan murmurs something quiet and calming, Wei Ying can only blink. He feels like a single nerve. A needle of a human, with the curse coiling through him. If he looks down, he knows he’ll see the curse glowing, glittering along the hairs of his arms and around his elbows and wrists.
Crack .
“I’m going to aim for your thighs again, right above your knees,” Lan Zhan murmurs. Wei Ying nods. His jaw feels like it’s wired shut, and for that he’s thankful because he’s not sure what sorts of noises he’d make otherwise. Maybe he’d whimper. Maybe he’d plead.
Would it be so bad, begging for it? His thighs tremble, shins digging into the worn springs of his mattress in anticipation.
Crack . Crack.
Wei Ying wheezes out an exhale as Lan Zhan soothes the freshly slapped skin with the entirety of one hand. It’s tempting -- so tempting -- to lean into the touch. To lean in and then rut away. The curse coils around itself, knotting itself deeper into Wei Ying’s creases even as it dims.
“You should turn around and sit. I think the curse is trying to hide, and I might see better this way.” Lan Zhan sounds like he’s out of breath. He tugs at one elbow till Wei Ying collects himself and shifts, folding himself over.
Sitting and facing Lan Zhan is difficult. Embarrassing. Wei Ying places his palms along the tops of his thighs, facing up towards the ceiling so that the curse is visible -- little knots along his wrists. He sucks in a breath and averts his eyes. He can’t help but feel like he’s done something wrong, like he deserves to be spanked for how he’s turned on.
“You okay?”
Wei Ying looks up for a half-breath and nods. This is normal , he tells himself. Lan Zhan looks fine. He looks like he isn’t affected at all, which is good on one hand because if anyone is going to make this whole experience weird, it’ll probably be Wei Ying, but on the other hand --
On the other hand, Wei Ying is a bit disappointed, is all. Is that surprising? This is just another crazy thing that Lan Zhan and I are doing, he tells himself. A normal Wei Ying-Lan Zhan thing to do.
Lan Zhan clears his throat. “I’m going to slap your wrists now, Wei Ying.”
Wei Ying nods.
Crack . Crack. Crack . Crack .
It’s almost worse, knowing that Lan Zhan is about to slap him, and watching it happen in real time. Wei Ying feels his breath coming out in small huffs, forces himself not to flinch and to hold still. Lan Zhan’s hands are so big. One hand comes around the wrist that’s about to be slapped, holding it in place, and the other hand comes down, but what Wei Ying’s brain and eyes seem stuck on is the look of it. The image: Lan Zhan’s thumb and forefinger ringing his wrist as if it were delicate and easily broken and not something that’s killed or wrestled or cracked open a man as if he were an egg or a plate or nothing at all.
Crack . Crack.
Each slap sends the curse shimmering along his left wrist, forcing it to snake and curl itself up into a ball until, after one final slap, it crackles and sparks -- an entire tangle going off like a tiny series of fireworks before disappearing altogether.
Wei Ying looks up just as Lan Zhan cuts him with a glance, heated and dark. He’s all pupils, Wei Ying realizes. His eyes are blown. His ears are a dark, wine red.
“Lan Zhan?”
“Wei Ying.” This time, Lan Zhan’s voice wobbles, shakes a bit towards the end. The finger on Wei Ying’s wrist begins to rub at the skin as it pinks up. It’s --
“The curse,” Wei Ying whispers, “look! You broke part of it.” He shoves his other wrist forward, where another tangle of the curse coils weakly right below his palm. “Here. Try it again. Slap my other wrist.”
Lan Zhan nods.
Crack .
Another set of fireworks, and this time they’re louder, crackling through the still-still air. Wei Ying grins at Lan Zhan. “Fuck,” he says, awed, “I think we’re getting somewhere with this.”
Lan Zhan nods again. “We should see where else the curse is hiding. I think I saw it --” He gestures towards Wei Ying’s legs, where he’s squeezed his thighs together.
“Lan Zhan, I --”
“Wei Ying.” Lan Zhan continues to rub at the spot where the curse had broken and shifts forward. “Wei Ying, it’s okay.”
“Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying breathes. Lan Zhan angles his face closer, till Wei Ying can count each and every one of Lan Zhan’s eyelashes. Briefly, he wonders if the curse has coiled under his eyes or along his cheeks. He wonders whether Lan Zhan would slap his face if he asked.
Would it be hot -- would it be hot if Lan Zhan made him cry? Would he like it?
Wei Ying keens, a high and thready sound. “Please,” Wei Ying says again. Lan Zhan’s lips are so close. So close. He could just --
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. He sounds just as -- just as wrecked. Just as hushed. “Can I kiss you?”
Wei Ying nods.
The kiss, when it happens, is soft. Slow. Wei Ying moans into it, finds his thighs parting, his shoulders pressing forward. He all but sways towards Lan Zhan, feels his mouth curl and heat up as Lan Zhan tugs along his bottom lip with just a hint of teeth. Just a hint of viciousness from his Lan Zhan.
“Fuck --” he says when they part for air. Lan Zhan is still gripping his arm, and there’s a half necklace of spit hanging from the side of his mouth. Wei Ying wants to launch himself forwards and lap at it. He wants to touch Lan Zhan and be touched in turn. He wants to be slapped, to be used, to be --
“Your lips,” Lan Zhan says, voice ragged. It all feels surreal. It has to be surreal. Wei Ying takes a gulp of air just as a hand comes up and a thumb nests itself in the corner of Wei Ying’s mouth. “The curse -- there’s a small knot right here.”
Lan Zhan presses his thumb in, indents it as if he were kneading dough -- as if Wei Ying were a food or a thing to be eaten. A thing to be slapped or spanked or tossed around.
A thing.
Wei Ying shivers. He does the only thing his brain tells him to do, which is to open his mouth and lap at the thumb.
Lan Zhan inhales sharply but he doesn’t pull away and so Wei Ying continues lapping, tilting his head so that he can suck on the thumb, run his tongue against the thumbprint. He eyes Lan Zhan, who looks at him with laser-focus, as if Wei Ying is a problem or a puzzle he’s been asked to solve.
“Fuck, Wei Ying --”
“Slap me,” Wei Ying breathes, releasing Lan Zhan’s thumb. He feels a rush of something in the pit of his stomach. Anxiety? Excitement? Exhilaration. It’s exhilaration. He can feel the curse pinprick itself along the side of his mouth and travel along his cheek, and he gives Lan Zhan a small smile. “Slap me hard, Lan Zhan.” He tries out the words, folds them along his mouth before letting them tumble out. “I want you to slap me so hard I cry. I want you to slap me hard, okay? I want you to make me cry, Lan Zhan.”
Fuck. Is that what he’s needed all this time? Wei Ying flushes. Who knew. Who knew that it’d take an entire curse for him to realize that this is what gets him going.
Lan Zhan shudders. “Yes,” he says jerkily. He swipes where Wei Ying’s cheek drops into his chin -- probably where the curse is wriggling. His thumb is cool, the spit already drying.
For a moment, everything is still. Frozen. Brittle. Lan Zhan cups Wei Ying’s jaw in his hand and then just as Wei Ying blinks, the hand disappears, arcs, and --
Crack.
The slap stings. Wei Ying hears it before he feels it -- a tingling, rubber-band smack that claps through him the way the ocean throws itself against a wall or a barrier or a gate.
“Is it still there?” he asks. He raises one hand but then puts it down. He’s not sure he trusts his body right now, not sure if he trusts his senses.
Lan Zhan shakes his head. Clears his throat. “It wobbled,” he says. “For a minute I thought it’d burst the way the others had but --”
Wei Ying gives him his most determined look.
“Lan Zhan. Slap me again.”
“I --”
“Lan Zhan. I’m not delicate. I’m fine.” He hesitates. Barrels on. “I like it when you slap me.” Wei Ying shifts, rests his hands in front of his cock so that they obscure how he’s nearly fully hard. Is he leaking? He’s leaking. He’s leaking and Lan Zhan is still fully clothed and all that’s transpired are a few slaps. Fuck. He didn’t think he’d lose control of his body so quickly. The curse coils between his legs. Wei Ying prays to several different deities that it’s not glowing and focuses again on steadying his breathing.
“Please,” he says, jutting his chin out. “Slap me again.”
Lan Zhan hesitates, but after a moment he adjusts Wei Ying’s jaw, tilting the chin so that they’re facing each other head-on. This time Wei Ying forces his eyes to stay open, wills himself not to blink.
Crack .
Nothing. No crackle of the curse, nothing except for the blunt sting and a heated numbness that begins to travel along his cheek. His eyes begin to water.
“Again. Again, Lan Zhan.”
Crack.
The third slap has Wei Ying’s eyes streaming. His cheeks are wet; he knows this because he’d felt the splash, the way his tears had flecked the air only to land back onto his skin. He closes his eyes, feeling for where the curse could be hiding.
He waits. Waits for it to move, and then --
“Here, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying points to the slant right below his cheekbone. By now his nose is running too. He must look messy, red-faced and sniffling, dripping with tears and snot. An awful part of him imagines Lan Zhan rubbing his cock across his face, slicking himself with Wei Ying’s snot.
CRACK.
The curse along his face breaks, and Wei Ying laughs, the relief tinkling out of him as a smile unravels across Lan Zhan’s face. Wei Ying crawls forward, cradling Lan Zhan’s face in both hands and sprawling himself into Lan Zhan’s lap.
“Fuck, Lan Zhan. Fuck. That was perfect, you were so fucking — “
Lan Zhan doesn’t let him finish, just pushes up and jolts forward, sucks the breath out of him. “Wei Ying,” he gasps, catching Wei Ying in a more urgent kiss, a more desperate one. “Wei Ying.”
He says Wei Ying’s name as if it’s the only thing that he’s able to think of, as if the name were a rock or a gem or ore. Wei Ying nods. Laughs again, this time a bit hoarser. “Fuck, why haven’t we done this before? We could have been doing this the entire time.”
Lan Zhan’s cheeks crinkle up in Wei Ying’s hands. Eyelashes , Wei Ying thinks. His fucking eyelashes are --
He doesn’t get to finish the thought, because Lan Zhan blinks slowly. Once, twice. “I didn’t know you felt this way about me, Wei Ying.” His voice is like a live wire and Wei Ying can only shiver, can only vibrate like a plucked string. A thread pulled taut. A collar, maybe. Fuck, a collar.
Wei Ying knows his mind is rambling, knows that the thing that exists between him and Lan Zhan is an entire beast, something that they’ve been dancing around for a while now. He doesn’t know what to call it. Like , his mind provides unhelpfully, but ‘like’ is such a pitiful, small world for something so muscular, something so curve-edged and big.
Still, his mouth opens. His throat wobbles. “I like you, Lan Zhan. Fuck, I like you so much.”
❢◥ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◆ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◤❢
If this were a movie or a book or something more normal, something more accepted, they’d kiss again and then cuddle and talk about what this means. Boyfriend , Wei Ying would say, and then Lan Zhan would echo him, nipping along an earlobe and squeezing one of Wei Ying’s hands with his own giant one. Boyfriend, Lan Zhan would confirm, and then they’d fuck like rabbits and Wei Ying would quit the Company and become a kept man at Gusu and turn his whole arsenal of tricks and skills into cute lesson plans for all the young cultivators.
Wei Ying knows this because he’s imagined this when he’s bored, which isn’t often but more frequently than he would like. He’s imagined this when he’s sat next to Lan Zhan, perched along a steel pipe or along the edge of one of the City skyscrapers, or along the perimeter of the Burial Mounds when it feels as if his body is yearning to hollow itself out and start over again.
He doesn’t live in a movie or a book or something more normal though, and so of course he ends up telling Lan Zhan he likes him when they’re trying to break a curse, and of course they kiss about it, and of course Wei Ying asks Lan Zhan for his cock, begs him. Lets the snot hang from one nostril because he has a feeling that Lan Zhan likes this picture of Wei Ying: pliant yet firm like a sapling in the midst of a typhoon, bending with branches dewed in storm.
“Yes,” Lan Zhan says, and was there ever a curse? Was it really the curse that had brought them there, like this? Because after all -- they could have just gone to Gusu. Gone to Lan Huan. He could have submitted himself there. Gotten himself diagnosed for real, by any of the medics there. Asked to be spanked within an inch of his life. The curse, he could have explained professionally, with his most professional face. Please help me break this curse.
We chose to do this instead , Wei Ying thinks, and the thought burns brightly, searingly, along his tongue. We chose.
Time stutters. He and Lan Zhan become an arrangement of bodies, it seems, and Wei Ying submits to it. Submits to the mood, to the thickness in the air as his own cock thickens, makes itself known. He swallows, face slick, his lips slicker, Lan Zhan’s cock slickest.
Gently, unerringly, Lan Zhan guides the head of it in a lazy path along Wei Ying’s slippery cheeks and leaking eyes and wet nose. How wet, they are. So fucking wet , Wei Ying thinks, then shuts his eyes as he opens his mouth and tongues the slit of Lan Zhan’s cock, sucking on it slightly and then kissing it, tasting the warmth of it, the bit of precome that so easily mixes with his own saliva.
How long does Lan Zhan feed Wei Ying his cock, slowly-slowly-slowly? I t’s like being pried open , Wei Ying thinks but doesn’t say. Like being tunneled and hollowed and cored out and then filled, tested, filled again. He doesn’t choke when Lan Zhan’s cock hits the back of his throat, only makes sure that he sucks, that his teeth are sleeved underneath his lips, that the glide of Lan Zhan’s cock remains slick and easy. When he swallows and hums and vibrates, Lan Zhan suddenly comes, spraying the back of his throat hot and warm and welcoming and god, Wei Ying could die like this and die happy, with his mouth full, his throat nearly bulging, his own cock fat and stiff in his hand.
He feels empty once Lan Zhan withdraws his cock. He moans a bit, letting the sound whistle through his airway and exit through the slit between his front teeth, and for a moment all he hears is the sound of Lan Zhan breathing. Not his own, but Lan Zhan’s, until he realizes that that’s wrong, that the sound is that of their breaths synced up, accordioning together as one.
“Fuck,” he says, when Lan Zhan doesn’t make a sound. “That was incredible.”
He chances a glance at Lan Zhan, who doesn’t look back but rather cants his eyes down, right between Wei Ying’s legs, where the tail of the curse winds along his hips, winking right below the skin, before circling his cock and then wriggling behind his balls.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. His voice is steady but Wei Ying thinks he can detect the wobble. Not of hesitation, but of want. Of need. “Wei Ying, it’s --”
Lan Zhan doesn’t have to say anything else. Wei Ying clambers to the side and then gets on all fours again, elbows cratering themselves into the sheets, now more damp than they are dry. He can feel the curse coiling and clenching now, right along his crease, and then his hole. It’s an odd sensation, but strangely pleasurable, like being tickled by an invisible, heated feather.
“Please,” he says. It comes out like a whimper. “Fuck. You should spank my hole,” he says. After all, isn’t that what they’ve been hurtling towards? It feels as if every slap, every clap of Lan Zhan’s hand against his body, has led them here, to this moment.
“Fuck,” Lan Zhan says, and he sounds as wrecked as when he had asked to kiss. “God, Wei Ying. You look so --”
Crack .
He doesn’t finish, just lets his hand complete the rest of the thought along the swell of Wei Ying’s ass. He wants this too , Wei Ying thinks. That’s what each smack across his ass says. Lan Zhan’s hand and his ass. Lan Zhan’s hand making music with Wei Ying’s ass. He feels like he’s aflame, like a leaf chewed up by tongues of fire. The curse slithers, uncoils. He feels it coming closer to the surface, rippling with each smack of Lan Zhan’s palm.
The pain stretches and contracts as if elastic, and Wei Ying finds himself crying. Begging. “Please, Lan Zhan,” he sobs. “I need you -- fuck, I want you to -- please. Please, just slap it. Spank me. Slap it. God, I just want --”
He shudders. Whimpers. Scrabbles for balance as his ass sways in the air. The curse feels heavy, as if it’s about to burst, like a creature about to come up for air. His balls ache; the skin behind them tingles as Lan Zhan traces the path of the curse, curves a finger along the delicate skin, tapping for treasure or greeting a friend or --
“Are you ready, Wei Ying?”
Wei Ying nods.
❢◥ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◆ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◤❢
He’s here and he’s not here and he’s here and he’s here. The heavy weight of Lan Zhan’s cock on his tongue feels so far away. Already long-past and nearly forgotten. The curse is --
The curse isn’t. They’d broken it with the first slap of Lan Zhan’s fingers against his hole. There’d been a squirm, a roll, as the curse writhed under the skin around his hole, but then it’d burst, a final crackling sound, and then Wei Ying had inhaled so deeply -- had the curse been caging his lungs too? He hadn’t had time to think because he’d cried out -- Again, Lan Zhan! He’d begged for the sharpness again. The feeling of having his hole spanked. Made pink and puffy and swollen from a slap, a smack, another hit, another please Lan Zhan please .
He feels brainless from it. Brainless or smooth-brained, he doesn’t know which -- the thoughts don’t come now, just sensations, as if the curse has imparted one last gift, the gift of full-blown, full-spectrum sensation. Wei Ying loves it, gives himself to it. He wiggles his ass. He grunts. He moans. He whimpers. He begs. Please.
“Please, please --” He’s hiccuping now, but Lan Zhan doesn’t stop, and for this Wei Ying is grateful. The words bubble out like a chant, like a mantra that weaves its way around them, locking them in together as if they were an entire, self-contained storm. “ Please, Lan Zhan. Please, once more. ”
At some point, Lan Zhan must fumble for lube. At some point, Wei Ying nods. At some point, Lan Zhan thumbs Wei Ying’s hole, then dips it in as if searching for a secret. It goes in easily. Just slips in as if Wei Ying’s body is already hungry, famished for Lan Zhan. He whines, like an animal, like something that’s in need of heat and finally has it, and then Lan Zhan slathers up his cock and then they’re joined. Hip to hip. Chest to back. Sweat on sweat.
“Please,” Wei Ying says, though there isn’t anything left to beg for. Nothing left to need. He’s full, he’s so full, and maybe he can imagine the soft of his belly bowing outwards from just how full Lan Zhan fills him with cock, then come, then fingers.
Does Wei Ying orgasm too? Does it matter? Afterwards, he looks down, at the mess between his thighs, tenses and clenches and feels the squelch of come and lube. Wordlessly, Lan Zhan holds him still, as if he were a baby bird, freshly fallen from its nest, and then he opens his mouth and dips his head and then Wei Ying is drained of come, emptied and crying and shuddering and whimpering.
“Lan Zhan,” he cries out. “Lan Zhan .”
❢◥ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◆ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◤❢
Here’s the conversation that brands itself along the walls of Wei Ying’s mind afterwards:
“You kissed me.”
“I did.”
“How long have you been waiting to do that, Lan Zhan?”
“I --”
“It’s okay. It’s a joke, Lan Zhan. No need to look so terrified.”
“I’m not terrified. I was just trying to tally up the ye- the months.”
“The months, huh.”
“Perhaps longer.”
“So. If it hadn’t been for the curse --”
“Wei Ying?”
“Hm?”
“Kiss me.”
❢◥ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◆ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◤❢
Three months later.
It feels like they’re doing this backwards -- the whole dating thing. It’s weird too, to call it dating, when it feels like something bigger and deeper and more tangled. Wei Ying crouches, then straightens up, pressing himself against the face of a brick wall. He tilts his head and nods.
Coast is clear, Lan Zhan, he says through the earpiece. Lan Zhan nods back and readies his grip around Bichen.
Afterwards, when the job is over and Wei Ying submits his resignation ( it’s hardly a resignation, he tells Lan Zhan, I’m just gonna tell them that I quit and if they try to convince me not to, that the alternative is that I fuck up on purpose on the next job, and do so publicly ), they go and grab ice cream.
“So is this a date?” Lan Zhan asks. He looks so stoic and handsome and cute. Wei Ying can’t help but to kiss his cheek, to press his lips into the divot of a dimple.
“Yeah,” Wei Ying says. He hopes the smile on his face is as bright and cheesy as his insides. “Yeah, it’s a date.”
It’s not perfect. It’s not like Wei Ying is just going to pack his things and go to Gusu. There’s more to the world than just Gusu and the City. At least he hopes there is. He thinks he’s going to wander. Maybe go on an adventure or two. Lan Zhan has agreed to join, and Wei Ying already knows it’s going to be amazing.
Wei Ying hums happily, lacing his fingers with Lan Zhan’s. They’re not perfect, but that’s okay. The night is warm, and it clings to their shadows as they walk home.