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When Xie Lian comes to visit today, he brings an item wrapped in cloth. Feng Xin, ever the brute, gestures to where it sits beside him at the tea table and asks, “What is that?”
“It’s a sword.”
Feng Xin frowns. “I know it’s a sword. What sword is it? What did you bring it for?”
Xie Lian picks at the frayed cloth. “Oh, it’s nothing, really. Just something I picked up while collecting scraps. Really, it’s nothing much…”
“Can I see?”
With Xie Lian’s permission, Feng Xin unravels the cloth and places the sword on the table to marvel at it. “This is a shit sword.”
It is indeed a shit sword. The blade is rusted and cheap-looking, the leather band around the hilt faded and falling apart. It’s clearly the standard blade of a lowly footsoldier, nothing special. Feng Xin quirks an eyebrow at Mu Qing across the table, seeming to ask, have His Highness’s tastes really fallen so far? Mu Qing doesn’t dignify this with more than an eye roll.
Xie Lian snatches it back and begins wrapping it up again, almost embarrassed. “I told you it’s nothing special.”
“If you need a sword, I have plenty in my armory. You don’t need to go around using that crap.”
Xie Lian laughs. “Okay, Feng Xin. I would love to come visit your armory sometime. I haven’t seen it since you remodeled.”
Mu Qing can see Feng Xin’s chest puff up in pride. “It’s nothing too fancy. We just added some new sword racks, and expanded…”
He lets Feng Xin rattle off for a while before interrupting. “Stop bragging. He’ll have nothing left to be impressed by if you tell him every single change you made.”
“Shut up! I’m not bragging!”
“You are.”
“I’m not!”
“You are.”
“You–”
“Guys, guys.” Xie Lian waves his hands. “Please. By the way, did I tell you about the town San Lang and I traveled to the other day? They had a tree there the size of…”
It amazes Mu Qing, sometimes, that Xie Lian still has an open-eyed wonder for mundane things in the world. After living for so long, Mu Qing once thought that there was nothing left on this earth that could surprise him. Recent circumstances have changed that, of course, but he knows it’s not an uncommon problem for immortals to have. You’ve seen one great wonder or catastrophe, you’ve seen them all, as the saying goes. But Xie Lian doesn’t seem to have this problem. It’s certainly quite… something.
Eventually, Feng Xin excuses himself. He’s off to have a visit with that horrid child of his again, Mu Qing is certain. As he walks to the door, he gives Mu Qing a long look over his shoulder that Mu Qing is beginning, these days, to understand means something different than what he used to think it did. He feels his face heat and turns away.
At the table, Xie Lian is fiddling with his empty teacup. When the chamber doors have closed, leaving the two of them alone inside Mu Qing’s quarters, he clears his throat. “So. Um. I prepared myself.”
Mu Qing coughs. Right. That.
He can’t say he wasn’t expecting something of the sort today. Xie Lian’s been jittery since he arrived, and when he rose to say goodbye to Feng Xin earlier Mu Qing caught a wince on his face that was quickly covered up by a smile.
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Mu Qing.” Xie Lian moves towards him, a determined little pout on his face.
“Do you kiss all of your friends these days?” Mu Qing asks when their lips part, Xie Lian’s hands firm on his shoulders.
Xie Lian smiles. “Just you.”
He had stopped worrying after the first few times whether this was some twisted form of retributive guilt and pity, because Xie Lian doesn’t do anything by half measures and if he truly just wanted to curry Mu Qing’s favor there were far easier ways. But at those words the fear rises up in his chest again and he wonders, How can you put up with me, how can you possibly put up with me and still want to come back.
In the west bedchamber, Xie Lian kneels obediently on the floor while Mu Qing attaches a leather harness to himself over his trousers. He runs a hand along the length of the bronze shaft attached to the front, imbuing it with spiritual power to warm it to a more pleasant temperature. When he’s finished, he walks over and coaxes it into Xie Lian’s waiting mouth.
If he exerted enough spiritual power, Mu Qing could, ostensibly, use transformation magic to have any parts he wanted. Xie Lian has never asked him why he prefers it this way. He probably assumes it has something to do with Mu Qing’s cultivation, which isn’t entirely untrue.
Beneath him, Xie Lian’s eyes have fluttered shut, a bit of drool pooling at the sides of his mouth as he holds it inside. Mu Qing can’t help but release a breath at the sight of the former Crown Prince of Xianle on his knees before him. He places a hand gingerly on the top of Xie Lian’s head and starts to fuck into his mouth. Xie Lian opens up easily– he’s gotten quite good at this, as he has a tendency to with most things he tries, and that thought makes Mu Qing push deeper, until he starts to feel resistance. Xie Lian’s eyes are watering, and Mu Qing can tell he wants to cough, but he holds him there a little longer, looking down at him, Xie Lian looking up, heat swirling in the pit of Mu Qing’s belly. Finally he relents, pulling the toy out along with a thick string of Xie Lian’s saliva. Xie Lian clears his throat hoarsely.
“Good,” Mu Qing says, and immediately feels stupid for saying it. “Strip.”
Xie Lian doesn’t have to be told twice. He stands and begins stepping out of his robes. When he’s finished, he climbs onto the bed, breathing still slightly ragged, and bends over away from Mu Qing, ass in the air. Mu Qing can now see the jade plug filling his hole that must have been the source of all that restlessness earlier. He comes to stand before Xie Lian at the edge of the bed, and runs a hand down his back to rest on the cleft of his ass.
He’s less emaciated, these days, than Mu Qing had noted him being following his third ascension; a little more muscle on the bone, but still scrawny compared to the well-fed youth Mu Qing had once known. A few love bites mark the inside of his thighs. Mu Qing smacks the skin above one of them.
“You’re too skinny,” he admonishes. “Shouldn’t your husband be fattening you up?”
Xie Lian responds with something between a breathy laugh and a whimper. He always gets quiet when they start to do this, but Mu Qing will know he’s done well if he has him mouthing off thoughtlessly by the end.
He reaches to pull out the jade plug and realizes exactly what Xie Lian meant by having ‘prepared himself’ earlier. Come begins to dribble out of his hole, some of it rolling down Xie Lian’s leg and onto the bedspread. Xie Lian exhales shakily. For some reason, the first rational thought in Mu Qing’s mind is a ghost shouldn’t be able to do that.
He dips a finger in and watches Xie Lian’s hole pucker and twitch in response. Pulling it back out, he rubs the tacky residue of Hua Cheng’s spend between his thumb and forefinger. It certainly feels real. He wonders briefly what it would taste like, before dismissing the thought as too disgusting and wiping the remainder on the back of Xie Lian’s leg. “Did you want me to tie you up?”
Xie Lian nods curtly. “Tie my hands and gag my mouth.”
Mu Qing has never gagged him before. At this request, his gaze falls to the other thing in the room Xie Lian had never asked him for before, leaning against the wall by the side of the bed. Mu Qing has been equal parts hoping that Xie Lian will forget about it and exciting at the idea that he won’t.
“On my back, though. So you can stab my heart.”
There it is. Mu Qing takes a deep breath.
“Okay.”
Really, the whole scene is wholly indecent. Mu Qing imagines, as he always does, what his reaction would have been if the Crown Prince had offered himself up like this to him eight hundred years ago. Mu Qing would have rejected it on principle, for one thing, but if he hadn’t… No. It’s foolish to linger on ‘what if’s. It only would have made all of what came after more difficult. It’s best things ended up this way, and they can do this now without fear of attachment or circumstance getting in the way. They’ve both of them changed, he supposes.
Xie Lian lays flat on his back in the center of Mu Qing’s guest bed, hands bound in silk above him and mouth gagged, loose hair spilling across the bedspread, a pillow beneath his naked form to prop him up for easier access. He had mentioned something about wanting his feet restrained, too, but Mu Qing had drawn the line there; unnecessarily, really, His Highness could break any of these binds if he wanted to, but Mu Qing feels more secure with the knowledge that if nothing else Xie Lian can easily kick at him if this goes too far. Whether he will is another question.
Mu Qing tries to settle the pounding of his heart and let things unfold as they usually do, ignoring the knowledge of what’s to come later. He sets the sword apart but within reach and joins Xie Lian on the bed, looming over him with his cock newly coated in oil.
“Ready?” he asks. Xie Lian nods.
They both groan when he pushes in. Mu Qing doesn’t think he’ll ever get over this feeling, which his younger self would have found perverse to the point of nausea. There’s always something so exhilarating about being in control. He can feel Xie Lian’s insides quaking around him, around this part that is not Mu Qing but is attached to him and belongs to him and no one else. He slides a hand up Xie Lian’s chest to squeeze at one erect brown nipple, flicking the sensitive skin there and making Xie Lian shiver. Mu Qing, admittedly, always has a hard time looking at his face when they’re intimate like this, so he lets his eyes roam over the rest of him. Xie Lian’s cock is dark and flushed where it twitches against his belly, and Mu Qing wonders how long it’s been that way. Since they started? Since before then, when they were all having lunch together, and he was having to sit still for an hour with Hua Chengzhu’s come burning inside him? Mu Qing has certainly been aroused since this began. But it swells and recedes like the tide, and he doesn’t let it overtake him.
Mu Qing isn’t like Feng Xin or Crimson Rain Sought Flower. He has always admired Xie Lian, but he never worshiped him. He’s just a man, after all, the same as any other, a fact that only became more clear after his first ascension to godhood. Still, there is something reverent in the way Mu Qing touches him now, just as there is something supplicating about the way Xie Lian arches up to meet his touch.
Xie Lian moans around the gag as Mu Qing fucks into him, hands braced on either side, breath coming in warm pants that tickle across Xie Lian’s skin. It takes a few minutes of Xie Lian’s increasingly desperate noises before Mu Qing realizes he’s trying to say something to him. He pauses, pulling the gag from Xie Lian’s mouth.
“What?”
Xie Lian cranes his neck to wipe his mouth off on the side of his arm. “The sword. Do it now.”
Mu Qing must fall silent for too long, because Xie Lian begins to amend, “If you don’t want to, then–“
“No, I–“ he can’t say I want to, that sounds sadistic. “I’ll do it.”
He reaches beside him to grab the blade. It really is such a poorly made thing. Mu Qing understands why Xie Lian wanted to use something like this instead of a proper sword, but still. Isn’t it a bit tasteless?
Xie Lian waits patiently below him. Mu Qing, hands trembling, raises the sword above his chest, stopping when the cold metal tip rests above his heart.
“I trust you,” Xie Lian assures him.
I wish you wouldn’t say that, Mu Qing thinks. I really, really wish you wouldn’t say that to me right now.
“Please.”
Mu Qing closes his eyes and drives the blade through the center of Xie Lian’s heart. It occurs to him, abruptly, that he’s going to need to throw out these bedsheets later. Maybe the whole bed, while he’s at it. He’s not sure he’s ever going to be able to look at it again.
Xie Lian immediately cries out, a sharp, gutwrenching sound that has gooseflesh rising all over Mu Qing’s skin. Mu Qing hears rather than sees Xie Lian spit out a mouthful of blood. “The gag,” he croaks.
Mu Qing stuffs the cloth back into Xie Lian’s mouth. He knows what else Xie Lian wants from him, now, and so he begins driving into him again, quick little ruts against his prostate, Xie Lian making an “Ahn, ahn, ahn,” sound around the gag, precome-slick dick bobbing against his stomach as a trickle of blood from the sword sticking out of his chest threatens to wet it further. Mu Qing pulls the sword out by the hilt, feels Xie Lian’s flesh give against it, and Xie Lian makes another muffled exclamation of pain, and, Mu Qing knows, something else. It’s awful and sickening and Mu Qing wants to vomit, and he drives the sword back into Xie Lian’s chest again and again, and Xie Lian bites back a whimper, arching off the bed, his hole clenching tight, and Mu Qing doesn’t think he’s ever been this aroused in his life.
The bed is an unsalvageable mess below them. There’s blood and viscera all across Xie Lian’s chest, and Mu Qing keeps stabbing into the same hole with such force that the sword plunges through into the bed and Mu Qing has to pry it back out. He braves a glance up at Xie Lian’s face for the first time since all this began and sees tears and snot streaked across it, Xie Lian practically hiccuping into the cloth. Mu Qing pries it out.
“Your High– Xie Lian, why are you crying?”
Xie Lian coughs out a mouthful of black blood, lips and teeth stained red. “Don’t worry. Please. If I need you to stop, I’ll tell you. Please keep going.”
“I...” Mu Qing squeezes his eyes shut tight. He recalls carrying Xie Lian out of a cave so many centuries ago, robes torn, covered in wounds of his own making. Mu Qing has done Xie Lian ill in his life, but he’s never, he believes, betrayed him as such, and never desired him hurt. Xie Lian’s headstrong impulse to rush into danger at the cost of himself is often infuriating, but he has never really stopped to consider what it means for Xie Lian, really.
“Okay,” he says, teeth gritted, but he doesn’t put the gag back in Xie Lian’s mouth. Selfishly, he thinks, if Xie Lian is asking him to do this, Mu Qing at least deserves to hear him.
He is suddenly afraid to touch the sword again, and so he leaves it there, penetrating Xie Lian’s heart, and holds Xie Lian’s legs up by the backs of the knees. Xie Lian’s hole is red and slick where it surrounds the toy.
Mu Qing snaps his hips into him relentlessly.
“Please, please, ah, ah, mmn, please–“ Xie Lian’s voice cracks, struggling against his restraints, the blade all but pinning him to the bed. Every muscle in his body must be taught right now.
“So selfish,” Mu Qing finds himself saying, as if this is their usual affair. He frees a hand to twist the hilt of the sword inside Xie Lian’s chest, hearing it scrape against bone, and Xie Lian whimpers and flails, throat taught, and comes jerkily in stripes all across his chest, the surface of his skin a mess of blood and spend. Mu Qing rocks into him a few more times, breathing heavily, as Xie Lian’s legs and abdomen continue to shake through the last thralls of his orgasm. Eventually, he stills.
The sound of Xie Lian’s ragged, fluid-filled breath is deafening. “You can keep going if you want,” he tells Mu Qing.
Mu Qing’s heart is still thundering, and he feels like he’s falling heavily from on high. He swallows. “No. I... no.” Seeming to come back into himself, he pulls out of Xie Lian. The insides of his trousers are sticky and unbearably hot, and he has a sudden and intense urge to be out of them and all of this as soon as possible.
He leaves Xie Lian for a moment to tidy himself up, and finds himself dreading reentering the room. He still does, of course, and has the reaction he expects– guilt and dread and dread and guilt, His Highness lying in a pool of his own blood, all but lifeless. “Xie Lian,” he says, quietly, and when that doesn’t get a response, he repeats, more sternly, “Xie Lian.” Xie Lian looks up at him. There is something in his eyes, or perhaps an absence of something, that Mu Qing has to blink away from. He puts a hand under Xie Lian’s head, feels his hair tacky with sweat. He brings a cup to his lips. “Drink.”
Once Xie Lian has finished off the tea, Mu Qing begins undoing the mess they’ve made. He pulls the sword out of Xie Lian’s stomach. Xie Lian produces a sound as he does that makes Mu Qing’s teeth clench. Once Mu Qing has maneuvered him out of that wretched room, patched him up, and deposited him in the bathtub, he asks, “Is this what you wanted?”
Xie Lian touches the wound on his chest. The medicine did most of the work, and Xie Lian’s cultivation is doing the rest, but it will still be a while before it fully heals. Mu Qing almost wishes Xie Lian had brought that pesky spiritual device with him, so it could wrap around Xie Lian’s chest and spare Mu Qing the sight.
Dazedly, Xie Lian answers, “Yes.”
“Well, you’re welcome.” Methodically, Mu Qing scrubs at Xie Lian’s skin in small circles. Most of the blood washed away simply from being lowered into the water, but Mu Qing wants to remove any trace of it that remains. There was a time in his life, not very long ago, when he would find the mere thought of this scene unbearably demeaning. In conjunction with the events that led up to it, however, he can’t dredge up from within himself even the trace of such an emotion. It’s a shame, really; anger would be preferable to this twisting nausea.
Xie Lian still seems very far away. For most of the centuries following his own ascension, Mu Qing’s understanding of what life had been like for Xie Lian and Feng Xin after he left them was informed only by rage-filled jabs from Feng Xin mid-brawl. Lots of ‘You should have seen him’s and such-and-such about suffering. They still haven’t had what one would consider a real conversation about it, but in the past year Mu Qing has been able to glean from Feng Xin a more even-toned understanding of that time spent alone by Xie Lian’s side. Mu Qing wonders if the distance that he feels from Xie Lian now is anything like the ever-expanding gulf that festered inside of him back then. He knows enough to be certain that the deed Xie Lian tasked him with tonight was not without inducement. Mu Qing will admit, as Xie Lian himself once aptly put it, that he has never been good at letting things go. Despite his outward appearance, Mu Qing thinks that Xie Lian has never been good at such things either.
Since the beginning of their arrangement, Mu Qing has done his best not to ask any questions. After all, it’s none of his business why Xie Lian wants this, as long as Mu Qing is willing to give it. Asking Xie Lian why he wants to get roughly stabbed while fucking, and why Mu Qing is the person he has delegated for this task, would require asking the same of Mu Qing. Of course, he can imagine a few reasons.
Once Xie Lian has gone, freshly dressed and almost back to his usual self, Mu Qing spends several hours shattering boulders in his garden. He is sure that the attendants he turned out are getting antsy. He certainly would be, in their shoes. When he left, Xie Lian had been almost apologetic. Nearly out the door, he finally did say, “And Mu Qing– thank you.” Mu Qing had rolled his eyes, turning away.
“Thanking me for something like that– ridiculous.” The sickness has mostly faded by now, replaced with something solid and heady and strange. He isn’t sure what to do with the room. Maybe he’ll burn it. Or maybe he’ll block it off and leave it for the next time Xie Lian comes to see him, let him clean it up himself. Would Xie Lian do it? He isn’t sure where the line lies with them, these days. It seems to move when he’s not looking. He feels like a kid again, gold foil clutched between his fingers. It’s been a long time since he’s felt such wrongfooted desire, but he’s willing to hold onto it for as long as it lasts.