Work Text:
Once, Xiao Chiye had believed with his whole chest that there existed no sight as beautiful as dawn breaking over the mountains and plains of Libei. There was nothing as awe-striking as the clouds mixed in stark shades of purples and vibrant and brilliant hues of pink and red until it was a spread of color spread out over the idle beasts and waking camps. In the eighth month, with the frigid winter ahead of them and the blistering sweat of summer behind them and caught in the space between two seasons and unsure of which side the dawn will come down on - Xiao Chiye has always found dawn even more beautiful.
There is a mystery in it, if the chill of the morning will last until the evening, biting at exposed skin with the howling of wind over the plains or if it will melt immediately under the blaze of the sun.
Once, Xiao Chiye thought there would never be a sight as beautiful.
Once, Xiao Chiye thought that nothing would ever consume his heart like it.
Once.
That was before there came another, more beautiful, wild thing.
Casting his hand to the side of his cot, Xiao Chiye seeks the warmth of the body that most assuredly should not be here. Yes, he'd told his father all about Shen Zechuan, his Lanzhou, and yes his father had chased him halfway across the camp shouting and hollering at him to be clear with his words, and yes Xiao Chiye had called Shen Zechuan his wife and his love and the man he's going to marry and yes his father had threatened to soundly beat Xiao Chiye into submission until he confirmed without a doubt that no, he had not yet eloped.
No, he had not dared to marry without his father and his brother and his sister-in-law there. No, he had not dared to marry without bringing his intended to meet with the grave of his mother and listen for the sound of her voice on the wind.
He intends to do these things, of course - but he just hasn't done them now.
And that he hasn't done them now really means that Shen Zechuan shouldn't be in Xiao Chiye's bed all night.
But camp is camp and soldiers are soldiers and no one in the Imperial Army would dare say word if they saw a specter of white sweeping beneath the flaps of Xiao Chiye's tent in the dead of night and Gu Jin and Chen Yang wouldn't say a word if they heard the sounds that either man under the light of the moon and stars of Libei.
Still...
Xiao Chiye had thought he'd get a few more moments at dawn to take in the most beautiful sight in the world, Shen Zechuan laid out over his stomach, his face flushed with sleep and is hair tousled from the previous evenings sex.
Frowning at the cool space in his cot, Xiao Chiye sits up. His clothes have been tossed haphazardly with his armor - making for a shameful sight if he had needed to don his armor in the dead of night - with his blade sheathed and sitting atop a small chest and his boots split one by the door and one kicked under... ah.
One kicked under a set of snow-white robes.
Scrubbing at his face, Xiao Chiye pulls himself up to sit on the side of the cot, his eyes finally landing upon his lost beauty.
It is early enough in the morning that the skies are still blue, with the creeping paleness of dawn too fresh to paint the skies a myriad of colors. It has just started to lighten, the birds still tucked with their heads beneath their wings as they chase a few more moments of solitude before daring to hunt their morning prey among the chilly stalks of dying grass cropping up from the dirt and sand. Among the dying night and the slow birth of morning, a pale sliver stands in the entrance of Xiao Chiye's tent. One hip rests against the top of Xiao Chiye's shoddy little desk - the very thing he has written every one of his letters to Shen Zechuan on.
It almost seems more like myth than truth, that the divine creature to whom Xiao Chiye had prayed would arrive on the very alter that Xiao Chiye had sacrificed his heart to time and time again.
Shen Zechuan's hair is down, pouring over his shoulders in a silky waterfall and pooling in the contours of the pilfered robe he seems to have collected off the floor. The familiar shape of Shen Zechuan's slight waist and narrow shoulders is obfuscated by a robe that most assuredly does not fit him. The dark blue and dusty brown of Xiao Chiye's outer robe hangs off Shen Zechuan's frame in a way that feels more obscene than anything that Xiao Chiye has ever laid his eyes upon, including the sight of his Lanzhou's bare skin.
"Lanzhou," he purrs at the sight, his voice not yet broken in by the early morning.
Summoned by his name, the figure of pristine divinity tips his head to the side. "Ce'an," Shen Zechuan replies. "I couldn't sleep."
"It's so early," Xiao Chiye tells him, pulling himself up despite the shameless nudity of his body. No one is awake yet but the falcon-tenders, and they are nowhere near the young supply general's tent this morning. His hands find the fabric of his own robe - filthy and dirty from time and war - before shifting and rucking it up so that he can place his hands on the bare skin of Shen Zechuan's waist. The skin beneath his fingertips is soft and supple, a gentle twitch of muscle rippling through the flesh beneath his touch. Feeling Shen Zechuan stiffen up, he leans down until he can feel the radiating heat off a pinked earlobe. "It's a terrible omen to wake up without my wife."
His breath skates over the skin there, a moment of warning before he follows it up with teeth. They clip around the jade token hanging from his ear, giving it a gentle tug until Shen Zechuan muffles a gentle gasp of pleasure. Xiao Chiye releases him with a huff of laughter, nuzzling back into that alluring, jade-slick nape of his neck. He breathes in, then lets the heat of his mouth slide up to the edge of his hairline and then back down to his nape.
Twitching in his grasp, Shen Zechuan leans into the touch ever-so-faintly. "I planned to be back in bed before my husband woke," Shen Zechuan tells him. "Though I was concerned your father might catch us in such a shameless position."
Clicking his tongue, Xiao Chiye lets his palms sweep lower, stroking the trembling tops of Shen Zechuan's lean, narrow thighs. He has always loved Shen Zechuan's thighs. Xiao Chiye's fingertips wash up to his hips and then down again - the place where a hard edge of bone turns into the soft, giving shape of his leg. It is some of the few centimeters of soft skin on Shen Zechuan's body, the curve of his thighs. Shen Zechuan has always been nothing but hard edges, nothing but a collection of shards of broken glass. Yet, Xiao Chiye has never once feared the risk of cutting himself or splitting skin open on the broken parts of him.
That does not mean there exists no solace in the softness of him.
Burying his face then in the hollow of Shen Zechuan's throat, Xiao Chiye draws his hands down to the bend of Shen Zechuan's thighs once more.
"My old man is already awake somewhere," Xiao Chiye tells him. "You'd hear him coming before you see him."
"Mm," Shen Zechuan tells him. "Not better."
"Then we should make this quick then," Xiao Chiye tells him, mouthing down to the exposed, jutting edge of Shen Zechuan's collarbone. "C'mon, Lanzhou, let Er-gongzi give you a good morning."
Laughter bubbles ever-so-faintly from the center of Shen Zechuan's throat. "Mm, after how sore you left me? I don't know if I have the stamina for that. Not if I have to ride back to Cizhou this morning."
Xiao Chiye releases from where he had been nibbling at the side of his throat. "You were so terribly pretty, writhing under me last night." A beat passes. "Why don't I show you something different?"
Turning his head to face him as much as he can, Shen Zechuan's brow raises. "Oh? Does Er-gongzi have new tricks for his wife?"
There is something to the way that Shen Zechuan says it, that sets a fire in Xiao Chiye's bones. It climbs there, making nest and den like a wolfpup left out in the call of nature on its lonesome. It beds down, scratching home out of nothing but sand and mud until it settles and begins to spread the warmth of wild things. It feels unmade.
Untamed.
Xiao Chiye shivers against him. One of the hands caressing the trembling thighs presses against them. "Lean back on me," he instructs, "and press your legs together."
Shen Zechuan does as he's bid, the insignificant weight of his narrow body leaning into Xiao Chiye's arms until they are pressed together - bare chest to bare back, so flush that it is impossible to discern where one ends and the other begins. It is exactly how Xiao Chiye prefers it - entangled so thoroughly that there is no way that Shen Zechuan could be anything but here, nothing but here with him - carried in the hollow spaces of his chest and in his bones. Xiao Chiye uses his hands to guide Shen Zechuan's thighs flush together, the fabric of the pilfered robe the only thing hiding his modesty as Xiao Chiye takes just a moment to toy with the hardness that Shen Zechuan had clearly been suffering from.
What a terrible thing.
Xiao Chiye palms his cock, sticky at the head already, until his palm is covered with arousal. Only then does he push forward, splitting the soft shape of Shen Zechuan's thighs with his hand to smear a thin layer of precome there. "I need to get my wife nice and wet," he tells him. "Get him soaked for me before I shove my cock into the nice little hole he made for me."
In his arms, Shen Zechuan practically squawks. "Ce'an!" He bites, as Xiao Chiye rocks himself forward, his own aching arousal skating over the seam made of Shen Zechuan's beautiful, jade-smooth thighs. He feels himself smearing his own evident desire there, the drooling head catching for a moment before rolling smooth across his flesh again and again and again.
"Such a good little wife," Xiao Chiye sighs, "a good little wife getting his hole so soaked for me. It's a shame I can't fuck my good little wife's ass like I did last night."
Already, Xiao Chiye's words mix with his movements - turning Shen Zechuan into a trembling mess in his arms. No longer certain he could rely on Shen Zechuan's legs to hold himself up, Xiao Chiye lashes an arm tight around his waist to hold them together. The embrace helps guide the slick head of his cock up into the space of his thighs - a slow roll splitting the soft, pale skin there until Xiao Chiye is fully seated between them.
Friction met with heat.
Xiao Chiye groans into the soft space of Shen Zechuan's throat, breathing in the scent of his skin mixed with stale sweat and sex from the night more - each working itself anew as they entangle once again. Soon, Shen Zechuan will have to depart back for Cizhou and Xiao Chiye will return to the front and the war still goes on - both seen and unseen, on fronts and in court.
But for now, with his hips rolling to shove the burning length of his cock through Shen Zechuan's thighs, there is no looming threat.
No Biansha horsemen.
No fierce plots of Qudu.
No hanging blade of Qidong.
Them. Only them.
"My wife," Xiao Chiye whispers, as each stroke of his cock nudges Shen Zechuan's stones aside and slides against the aching length of his arousal instead. "My beautiful wife."
In his arms, Shen Zechuan pants, his fingers clawing at the sides of his stolen robe as if the fabric itself could grant him some small semblance of mercy or dignity as Xiao Chiye takes him and takes him and takes him in the full view of the rising sun.
"H-husband," Shen Zechuan manages to choke from the depths of his lungs. "Er-gongzi, Ce'an, Ce'an, Ce'-ah!"
The honey-sweet words are arrested in the choke of Shen Zechuan's voice by a particularly rough squeeze of his waist and the sharp edge of Xiao Chiye's teeth in his shoulder.
"Careful," Xiao Chiye warns him. "Anyone could be awake right now. It wouldn't do for me to be caught with such a beauty in my bed, would it? So salacious, so shameless." Another nip, another bite - Shen Zechuan catches on his own moan as Xiao Chiye kneads those beautiful thighs closer together.
"I can't help myself, Lanzhou," Xiao Chiye sighs, his fingertips digging so hard into the legs he keeps forced shut to take. "Your legs are so beautiful, my wife's legs are so beautiful. My wife." He knows he is going to bruise him, and that sends an illicit thrill spinning down the length of Xiao Chiye's spine. Shen Zechuan is going to be mottled with bruises from him, his beautiful jade-perfect thighs marred with the shape of Xiao Chiye's fingerprints.
Anyone could line them up and show that it is him, that it is them linked together.
An irreversible touch carved into the only soft, delicate part of Shen Zechuan's body.
The thought turns Xiao Chiye as merciless as it does merciful. He drops his hand from Shen Zechuan's waist to loop around his cock instead - fisting his length and pumping him under the robe to the beat of his own hips driving into the pinked space between his thighs. Each roll punches a noise from Shen Zechuan, as if being between his thighs was similar enough to being inside him. Xiao Chiye knows when Shen Zechuan is close. He knows the way he bucks forward, as if attempting to curl in on himself to protect a vulnerable underbelly in his moment of weakness. Come splatters Xiao Chiye's fist a warm mess that Xiao Chiye wastes no time smearing down his length to milk every last moment of pleasure out of him.
It does not do, in a war, to waste a moment.
Xiao Chiye strokes him until Shen Zechuan's kitten-weak arms are shoving at his in miserable over-stimulation.
Only then does Xiao Chiye huff a laugh against the back of Shen Zechuan's attention-red ear and drops his hand down to smear the final sticky-slick palmful of come over the space he fucks between Shen Zechuan's thighs. The added sensation, the touch of his own hand against himself where the head splits Shen Zechuan's legs, is enough to drive him mad.
He loses himself there, in the only quiet moment in the only quiet place they have allowed themselves. Release comes with an idyllic sense of emptiness - nothingness that can only exist in peace that has yet to be known.
Xiao Chiye stumbles into the abyss with Shen Zechuan in his arms, painting the inside of his thighs and the soft skin of his spent cock.
They return in pieces, with Xiao Chiye still pressed between Shen Zechuan's thighs - as if separating would spur the time towards Shen Zechuan's necessary departure further along. Shen Zechuan pants against him, head tilted back as he scrubs his face against the cut of Xiao Chiye's jaw like a purring beast. His little beast. His beautiful thing. His wife. His Lanzhou.
His.
Shen Zechuan breathes him in, sighing soft and slow. Each intake is deep, as if he's trying to commit Xiao Chiye's scent to memory. "A few more moments," Shen Zechuan's says, as the dawn breaks golden and pink over the mountains - a final straining bleed that begins to paint the horizon. His legs flex around Xiao Chiye's cock, one last little twitch as Xiao Chiye hunches to watch the sun rise once more over the plains of Libei.