Chapter Text
He arrives at their meeting point much later than usual, colorful, bright underground venues engulfing him as he steps into the Zhuming’s underbelly. Maybe it was the heat and humidity, but the night seemed especially loud and heavy. With a cigarette between his teeth, Dan Feng looked up at the starless sky. It’s all made of coppery pipes spreading like a spider's web under the thick flooring of Zhuming’s upper deck. His skin, which had been warm and dry in the air of the capital, begins to feel sticky. Mixed in with the exhaust fumes and the odor of deep-fried food from the stalls, Dan Feng can smell floral traces coming from the street performers doubling as prostitutes.
The moment this disappointing ambience hits him, he thinks, "I want to go back."
He wants to be back in the room they’ve shoved him in, away from this mess, where he can finally crawl under the blankets and sweat himself dry. Throughout this visit, he has been a guest of Ardens Regia in name only. In reality, he is a bug trapped under a magnifying glass, getting scorched under her burning gaze and the silent judgment of her priestesses. Suspicion follows him like a foul scent, and the women look at him like he’s a stain on their immaculate tiles.
It’s a tempting retreat, but the phantom of a voice stops him. "Won't you stay with me a little while longer? I was told that I'm good company… unless you've got someone more charming lined up."
Most nights, he had agreed to comply with the boy's whims, following him into the bowels of the ship and humoring him for a few hours with the promise of spending the rest of the night at some love hotel or fucking hard and fast in a dingy, hidden alleyway. Although lately they've been talking more than fucking, he doesn't find this arrangement less pleasant. It is the reason he finds himself descending yet again, under the deck of this enormous ship.
Their encounters are odd. For the first time in his long life, he’s behaving no better than a dog on a short chain, answering a whistle he should be above hearing. Being led by his dick anywhere Yingxing tugs him sounds humiliating for a man in his position, but Yingxing doesn’t know who he truly is, and he’s just as gone for him. That shared desperation makes the predicament easier to swallow.
The boy turns out to be a willing wreck who wasn't paid enough attention as a child, and now he lets Dan Feng do just about anything to him as long as he’s the one being looked at. He used to be picky and mercurial before, but now he's smiling wide open whenever he sees a glimpse of blue scales. He's taking Dan Feng’s weight and his moods without a single complaint, and they're stuck in some sort of mutual degradation that feels better than any of the immaculate company back at the courts.
The time spent here made Dan Feng understand that the underside of the Zhuming refers to the lower internal strata of the ship, spanning beneath the main decks where everyday life and the government courts are located. Not hidden or forbidden, the underside is rarely shown to visiting dignitaries or tourists; locals treat it like any other district.
While it's not lawless, crime sure is flourishing. Gambling houses that cater to middle and working-class customers still scam you through more or less veiled dirty tricks, just like the high-stakes parlors above, and artisans sell you talking weapons that stab you in the back.
He passed a smithy where a row of blades hissed insults at the passersby. To the locals, it was an awfully funny and overused joke, but to Dan Feng, it got old fast. It made the memory of Yingxing’s human voice feel like the only honest sound left in this dump. As mortal, arrogant, and blissfully non-magical as it was.
Dan Feng recognized the cluttered layout from his previous visits, with love hotels, bathhouses, eateries, and fortune halls crowded together in vertical stacks, squeezing between them little temples and shrines for courage, wealth, fertility, or good sleep. He'd learned enough to spot the difference between the small shrines locals actually used and the ones positioned to catch tourist money.
On the fourth cigarette, Dan Feng eyes him through a smoky, large window.
He finds him rather quickly; it’s hard not to when he’s still wearing the standardized work uniform of the Artisanship Commission newbies. Apprentices are a rare sight here. People who work with their hands usually have the sense to sleep when the sun goes down, rather than squandering their time in places like this. Yingxing has always been the exception, always lacking the sense of self-preservation and chasing stupid thrills. He sits half sprawled on a long bar table, laughing and talking animatedly to a well-dressed guy, with at least six tiny ceramic cups and an empty bottle between them.
The place Yingxing picked is relatively small and well populated, tucked between a corner drugstore and another bar. Dimly lit, with wooden tables scarred and sticky from years of spilled drinks and dying lanterns casting shadows over the patrons’ faces, making them look older and more worn than they probably were. The crowd was far too loud for anyone’s good. Not that it mattered. The bar was cheap, the people weren’t impressive, and he didn’t plan on being here for too long.
Their fingers meet briefly before he snatched the cup from him. It’s unbelievable how warm Yingxing is. Always in the same red uniform, either because he just got off work or because he has no other clothes to wear.
"I think you've had enough." Dan Feng tips the little cup back in a smooth motion. It’s some cheap rice spirit, mass-produced and unremarkable, though he catches a faint ghost trace of cinnamon beneath the rotgut burn.[2]
"You came!" Yingxing’s voice has an airy lilt, sounding a little too bright for their current location. He spins in his seat and knocks his knees against the table. The boy is careless, and he makes more noise than necessary to greet him, squirming and delighted at Dan Feng's heavy hand on his shoulder. "Thought you got lost in the slums and forgot about me." As he speaks, Yingxing leans back, his warm shoulder seeming to soak up the relative coolness of blue scales. He seems relieved, eying Dan Feng with raw and honest affection. "Or did you just spend an hour deciding what to wear tonight?" He beams, and his smile shows off the healthy enamel on his teeth. They’re perfect and white.
Dan Feng lets out a huff of air that might have been a laugh if he were a more expressive man. The joke is ridiculous, yet he finds himself almost charmed by the implication that he’d put in any effort. Yingxing has never seen him in anything other than the same rotation of practical, sleeveless shirts. They’re as black as his hair, and he launders them by hand so the color doesn’t bleed into his other clothes. It is a largely pointless ritual, considering all his clothes are just as dark, but he finds he can't bring himself to be careless with the things he owns.
The guy on Yingxing’s left bristles. "Piss off and find your own catch. I didn't spend the last two hours buying him drinks just for you to walk up and take over. Back off the line."
Two hours is not a long time, Dan Feng thinks. They were supposed to meet a while ago, but Dan Feng was caught up in some other business. Yingxing had arrived much earlier, and he was clearly content to pass the time swindling this idiot out of a top-shelf tab. It was a good thing the "first-come, first-served" rule didn’t apply to him.
There is a hint of nervousness in the stranger’s beady eyes, but he doesn’t give in. Clearly a foreigner, identifiable by the generic cut of his clothes and an accent that butchered the local tongue, and not skilled enough to manufacture a connection with another soul without getting them drunk first, in Dan Feng’s humble opinion.
"Do you know this person?"
Yingxing gives him a sly smile, swaying from side to side with the illicit pleasure he finds in inciting this scene. He doesn't look away from Dan Feng, even as he drags the tip of a tooth over the well-manicured nail of his thumb. His nails have a nice shape. A series of perfect, dark arcs, oval and meticulously proportioned, their black polish catching the dim light of the bar like fresh, wet lacquer.
"Not really. Just kept… pouring and talking. Kinda boring, honestly." The loose hair framing his face in dark strands, slightly damp from sweat, and the glassy, bloodshot look in those eyes make him look like a washed-out siren.
"He said he liked how I talked, but now that you’re here, I’d rather sit on the fort and watch the horses fight." Yingxing is referencing an old proverb, but the foreigner can’t possibly understand. The idiot likely forewent using a translator earpiece in a vain attempt to impress the boy. It’s a tactical error Yingxing is currently exploiting for his own amusement. He talks fast, too. The Zhuming dialect has a musical tone to it that makes the man glance at him, fascinated. [1]
They could just leave the guy and go on their own way, but Yingxing makes a show of stretching and leaning into Dan Feng’s side like a pleased cat. Perhaps they only get along so well now because they’ve finally found the collective pleasure of bullying everyone else.
"I am above that. Come, get up. You’re a mess." Dan Feng’s hand finds the back of Yingxing’s neck and motions him to get moving, smooth skin prickling under his claws as they hook into the meat. "You’ve wasted enough of this man’s coin. He clearly can’t afford any more of your boredom."
The rest of the body follows immediately, happy to get to his side.
As soon as Yingxing gets on his feet, he half-heartedly tries to steal his cigarette from his free hand. He’s too slow and snorts, amused when he’s swatted away. The red uniform feels nice under the scaled palm when Dan Feng pats down his spine, freshly laundered and ironed, with the subtle scent of fabric softener sticking to it.
'He said he liked how I talked.' Dan Feng presses his tongue against the back of his teeth and swallows his displeasure. Talking to Yingxing is like rolling a dice. You never know what face you’re going to land on. Mostly snappish. Outright rude, though he can be selectively sweet to men when the mood strikes and a consistent sweetheart to women and children, although always carrying a specific jumpiness.
He wonders what face of the dice this stranger has rolled to eye his date like a full-course meal. Dan Feng has lived long enough to learn to categorize individuals by demographics on a whim, based on their interests and appearance. He has a clear idea of what kinds of people might get hooked on a tongue that sharp and why they might find that kind of attitude appealing. It’s either a certain breed of masochists that mistake friction for passion or the entitled sort who get off on the idea of possessing a life and breaking someone in like a skittish colt.
Or, perhaps, it’s just equally deranged individuals who are pathologically attracted to snappy, temperamental bitches with a stick up their ass.
The pathetic thud of one of those little white glasses hitting the wood is the only thing that halts Dan Feng’s stride. He doesn't turn, but he feels Yingxing grin and tilt his head back in anticipation.
"Yeah, I said that," the man barks behind them, bruised ego overriding his better judgment. "He told me about you. At least I didn’t show up late and act like I own him."
Dan Feng finally turns his head and gives the man a nasty glare. He can handle the strategic disobedience of his own people or the foul mouths of the elites, but he has a remarkably low threshold for being talked back to by unexceptional imbeciles.
The man’s gaze flicks at Dan Feng’s hand on Yingxing’s back, and he looks like he might get up from his seat. "You’re not much, are you? Walking in here like you're some... what, his bodyguard? His daddy?"
Patience has finally worn thin, frayed by a long day and the persistent, uninvited heat of the bar. Some violent impulse buried in his hypothalamus from generations ago tells him he could strike the guy in the face and see how easily foreigners' bones cave in. It’s a relic from a carnivorous ancestry that predated civility or perhaps just his delirium beginning to claw at the edges of his mind. He’d intentionally skip his medication if he planned on fucking Yingxing.
He feels a genuine, pulse-quickening temptation to test the theory, but striking the idiot would ruin his night and the foreseeable two weeks if the Cloud Knights were to get involved. A blessing for this grubby man and his brittle skull, it seemed. It was unlikely the Knights were even patrolling this deep underground, but such a crude display of brutality would likely sour the mood. He is well aware that while Yingxing enjoys an acerbic scrap, his threshold for violence ends well before reaching the kind of trauma that incapacitates a man for life.
With a jerk of his wrist, the glowing tip of his cigarette hissed out in the man’s cup, the ash of it crumbling into the drink and making it murky and gross.
"Find another charity case."
Yingxing seems delighted enough at this minor power trip.
"Nice place you picked here." Dan Feng remarks dryly.
Despite the obvious judgment, Yingxing insisted they stay a little longer at this greasy joint ("Just five more minutes, don't be boring!"), whining and bitching a little too loudly, attracting the eyes of onlookers.
Under scrutiny, the establishment was even more disgusting than Dan Feng had initially thought. This sardine can of a bar forced them into an even tinier booth with old, uncomfortable cushions. A tacky, invisible film covers everything and stinks it up with stale alcohol and a smell far fouler than the exhaust outside.
The patrons didn’t look like they had high standards, either. He glances around at the crowd, noting their slack movements, greedy eyes, and the way they laughed too loudly at anything. Dan Feng supposed it made sense; places like that tended to attract sleazy habits. Simple people, he thought again, and by the end of the night, most would end up buried in someone’s arms or worse, in a cheap whore’s bed. He sighs faintly at the thought, not entirely without guilt. Perhaps he wasn’t so different from them; he had his own indulgences after all. But at least Yingxing wasn’t like that. Yingxing could carry on a conversation and actually think about things other than lust or trivial gossip, unlike this crowd, whose words never strayed far from base desires.
Ironically, the brat thrusts his arm skyward, waving his empty hand with unnecessary fervor. The gesture is too broad, catching the attention of the surrounding tables before it finally snags the eye of a harried waiter weaving through people while trying to reach them.
Yingxing leans conspiratorially towards him. "I need something to wash the taste of that creep out." Then he unclasps the first two buttons of his uniform in response to the occasional wheeze of a fan struggling against the heat, endless even underground.
It's what's supposed to be a semblance of winter. The Zhuming only has two seasons. Both are extremely similar in their scorching temperatures; one is dry enough to crack your scales until they bleed, and the other is exhaustingly humid despite the absence of clouds. Dan Feng does not understand how the native Vidyadhara thrive under such conditions.
The sight of Yingxing's pale, naked neck is endearing, but a sudden and dull, pervasive hum resonates beneath his chest. Barely perceptible, yet still unpleasant it invades all of his senses and keeps him away from appreciating the sight before him. The sound of laughter and clinking of chipped cups scratch at his brain in all the wrong places. They irritate his sensible ears, but his greatest comfort is Yingxing’s forced proximity and the pale hand on his crotch, stroking him shyly through his pants, under the table.
He is reaching for the wallet.
The hand on his now half-hard dicks was a distraction. He felt the minute shift in Yingxing’s palm when the practiced slip of fingers moved past the curve of his inner thigh, and the skin of his hip pocket registered a fleeting pressure too precise to be accidental. A moment later, the weight of his wallet was gone.
Dan Feng sighs faintly. The sound lost in the bar's clamor, and he lets the transaction go unacknowledged; he's finding a perverse comfort in the boy's audacity. The drinks from before made Yingxing playful, taking what he wanted in the most needlessly complicated, theatrical way possible. He knew the money would be paid back, eventually. Yingxing hated having debts, and by picking this cheap place, he maximized the perceived generosity of his benefactor without actually bleeding himself dry.
Ignoring the waiter's closing the last few feet, he reached into his pocket, the one now conspicuously lightened, to confirm that his cigarette case hadn't been stolen as well. It's platinum and smooth like a mirror, and it reflects a face that's his but also not his own, with dark blue eyes and cracked lips. He ignores them as well.
A great majority of the smoking population favored the acquisition of mass-produced, brand-standard cigarettes. They are practical and offer a controlled range of quality and cost, but Dan Feng thinks his hand-rolled ones are effectively indistinguishable from any high-quality commercial product. He doesn't need external validation of a fancy brand, and satisfaction comes from the flawless execution of his own labor.
Eight white ones because drawing unnecessary attention to yourself or your possessions is a risk and two red ones for the end of their night since good things always come in pairs. And mostly because the case is a ten-slotter and won’t fit more.
Dark blue eyes still trace him as he lights his cigarette. Whispy smoke permeates his lungs, and chemicals dip into his blood. He's still hard and going feral over a single drop of sweat tracing the bone of Yingxing’s temple. Still as a statue, Dan Feng briefly thinks about how bad he wants to shove his two fingers with trimmed claws in Yingxing’s cunt and watch him squirm. His breath hitches almost imperceptibly around the cigarette filter, and the waiter doesn't notice him shift in his seat. The man is eyeing the premium strales card Yingxing holds up to pay, eyes locked on the embossed celestial insignia. He’s probably never seen one outside of a highly filtered screen of bank ads, and Yingxing’s fingers look oddly good around it, too.
For an apprentice, Yingxing has soft hands. He removes the calluses from work when they get painful. He is sweet too, when he's in a good mood. Begging to be kissed, he smiles into Dan Feng’s mouth when he strokes both of his cocks, marveling at their size and ridged feeling.
Dan Feng thinks about his cunt again and how well he can take him to the hilt and how pretty he sings when he finishes with Dan Feng inside him. Yingxing is alive and warm, and he smells a little like sweat and floral soap.
They've met for 6 months and fucked for just as long. They would be off to a better hotel tonight, Dan Feng decides, before the recurrent guilt of having sex with a twenty-one-year-old starts gnawing at him again. Yingxing is still so young compared to him, and they already share a significant number of bad habits.
"What did you order?" He's trying to stay civil while squeezing Yingxing’s thigh under the table. In return, Yingxing puts his own hand over the scaled one and intertwines their fingers.
The visual discrepancy was huge: deep ocean green against the anemic white of human flesh. Yingxing's hands are broader by a bit, but Dan Feng’s fingers are longer, and they look terrifying with the claws. Only the index and middle ones on his right hand were trimmed back enough to pass for nails.
"Mercury Kiss. One for you and one for me." Indigo eyes fix on the cigarette. "Give me a smoke."
"Take it." Dan Feng murmurs, barely audible over the bar noise.
Yingxing closes the final distance between them, lips brushing Dan Feng's thumb as he takes a drag from the filter between the long fingers. The blend is harder than expected, and Yingxing’s eyes water a little. There is an impulse, gritty and hot as the burn of the cigarette, to lean in and suggest they shotgun the smoke like they did many times before, sharing the final exhale breath-to-breath. But the heat of his arousal is instantly chilled by the sight of a woman in the doorway, laughing as a client pawed at her and stole a kiss. It effectively kills his boner when the woman turns her head and looks him in the eye with the deadest expression a person can manage.
The prostitutes have let themselves in. The same floral trace he'd noticed outside now permeated the room, clinging to the small clusters of women and men, moving with professional, languid slowness. Street performers by day, here for an evening shift of customer acquisition, leaning in close to their marks, laughing too loud at dirty jokes, and letting hands linger. They probably hide more bruises under their makeup than love bites.
Dan Feng had always been repelled by the sex workers, especially the women with their swaying skirts and rehearsed nurturing. Their presence felt like a smear, stirring up unpleasant memories and instantly degrading the intimacies he allowed himself with Yingxing.
When the drinks arrive, he is already sick, feeling at least a few dozen pairs of eyes on him. Yingxing is half in his lap, fiddling with his lighter and idly flicking the wheel, causing a brilliant blue tear of flame to flicker into existence and immediately wink out. The constant, unstable motion of the light only intensified Dan Feng's rising nausea and the wobbly edges of his peripheral vision.
Mercury Kiss is a disaster of a double-shot, high-grade alcohol in a chipped highball glass. They used the imported star-fruit liqueur, yes, but it got ruined by an aggressive cut of cheap local soda and too much synthetic grenadine. It looks and tastes like sugary piss. Yingxing, amused by the vulgarity of it, seizes his drink as soon as he can from the waiter’s hands.
"Don’t you feel well?" Yingxing asks, already sucking down the syrupy liquid. Dan Feng eyes the glass with cool disdain.
"I'm fine." No. He is not fine. His hands feel heavy all of a sudden, and Yingxing is slipping away from his lap. To secure him, the scaled arm snakes around his waist. It earns Dan Feng a pleased sigh. The room is swaying around him, and the weight of another person on top of him feels incredibly grounding.
Yingxing throws his arms around Dan Feng’s neck and smothers him in kisses all over his face. From his mouth to his sweaty forehead, the bridge of his nose, and even down his neck. Unlike Dan Feng, he is uninhibited by the people around them.
"You look like a wet dog," Yingxing says, carding a hand through Dan Feng's hair, unsticking his sweaty bangs from his forehead. The pure black strands were so dark they seemed to absorb the dim bar light.
"You scarcely look any better yourself, my dear." He tries to save face, but he's not sure it's working.
"Wrong. I've got people buying me drinks while you left me here to wait for you," Yingxing punctuates with a kiss to his temple and then, deciding it was entirely appropriate, a slow lick to the curve of Dan Feng’s cheekbone. "You should be grateful I decided I like you."
Dan Feng exhales a shaky breath, but his pointy ears twitch in involuntary delight at the gesture.
"Your ego has no limits." Endearing, Dan Feng thought, but juvenile. The scaled arm around Yingxing’s waist tightens with the sudden need to crush the boy in his lap. If only this poor, self-assured soul knew how much blood his benefactor truly had on his hands or the sheer danger that courted him simply by existing in Dan Feng’s sphere.
Guilt from generations ago weighs heavily on his shoulders, and he swears he saw those dark blue eyes again, this time somewhere in the crowd, vengeful and jealous. He looks for them, his neck craning stiffly behind Yingxing’s shoulder, who became drunk enough not to notice the slight fear on Dan Feng’s face, but needy enough to want the attention on himself.
"When I first met you, I thought you were the most pretentious asshole to ever exist. You wouldn't even look at me!" Yingxing's soft, broad palms snatch Dan Feng's face and grip his cheeks. They force him to stop searching the darkness and stare only at it. "You’re not even looking at me now."
"That's not true." Dan Feng lies, words dry and brittle on his tongue. I've always looked at you. The roof of his mouth tastes bitter.
Yingxing doesn’t argue and instead gets a dopey, almost sad look on his face. The hands on Dan Feng's face become tender and cradle his jaw. Whatever defiant glint he held in his eyes vanished, replaced by a drunken and resigned compassion. They kiss again, this time on the mouth, and their noses clash awkwardly. Desperate tobacco meets grenadine on dry lips, and Yingxing sighs into the kiss when something soft and forked licks into his mouth and behind his teeth.
"Your tongue is so weird!" The boy giggles between their mixed breaths, and Dan Feng is happy that out of all things, his tongue fixed Yingxing’s spirits. His cunt is tight enough that Dan Feng wants to eat him up with all his mood swings. The kiss is wet and sloppy, and they both have drool dripping down their chins. He'd go straight back at shoving his tongue down Yingxing’s throat if his own wouldn't squeeze around the sudden wave of nausea.
The urge to vomit is absolute and terrifying, and Dan Feng has no context for this bodily feeling. It's true that he hasn't felt truly himself for quite a while, but never to the point of puking in Yingxing’s face as they're making out. If he did that, they'd probably never see each other again. His eyes water a little at the lump in his throat, and he tries hard not to gag on it.
Panic peaks and then profound relief washes over him when Yingxing pulls away from the kiss with a wet smack of lips, now more interested in kissing up the line of his nose. The bridge was long and straight, giving him a generous length to explore. It also gives Dan Feng a fraction of a second to gain his bearings, but the proximity still fills him with cold dread. Clawed fingers grip Yingxing’s side, tugging and almost tearing down the red work uniform at its seams. He is forcing his body into an unnatural stillness to avoid triggering the gag reflex. This makeshift embrace does not look loving by any means, but the boy has a warped sense of affection, and in turn, he merely hums and hugs him back much more sweetly.
"I suppose you're really not that bad," the boy mouths, his lips skimming the tip of Dan Feng’s nose one last time. "I don't regret letting you sleep with me."
Yingxing nestles his head back in the crook of Dan Feng’s neck. He can imagine how the boy's diamond-shaped pupils are dilated and shiny from affection or alcohol. He completely misread Dan Feng’s rigid tension as some plea to be held closer.
"Come home with me. You can finally see the apartment." He breathes against Dan Feng's pointy ear. The ear twitches against a softer cheek, and Yingxing starts to giggle, but the sound creaks in his throat first before bursting out into full laughter.
In a sense, he knows where Yingxing lives. A practical unit located on the edge of the industrial zone. The area looks contemptible, and its only saving quality is the old jasmine tree casting its perfumed shadow over the street.[3]
He has walked Yingxing home many times, but they’d only ever had sex in nameless places. When he heard the boy finally offer his home, Dan Feng felt a bud of aristocratic entitlement rise from his gut and grow around the overall feeling of unwellness. It’s a chilling, cold conviction that he deserved intimacy and that the human was finally fulfilling his role, as he should, inviting him into the safety of his space. This sentiment is washed away soon by a profound wave of hot, miserable yearning inspired by the shifting weight in his lap.
He was about to nod and force a few words out of his dry throat when Yingxing slid off, having apparently fondled his face enough, tipping sideways onto the bench beside him. His enamored attention had completely shifted to Dan Feng’s barely touched drink. He doesn’t bother to ask for permission before taking the straw between his teeth. An indirect kiss, Dan Feng thought. The sweetest, shyest affection of the night, and one he usually wouldn't bother to notice.
Yingxing never ceases to amaze him when he forces himself to inhale the contents of the glass in just a few moments. The alcohol goes down wrong, catching in his throat with a gagging gasp. That pretty back arches immediately, and Yingxing erupts into a wet, miserable cascade of coughs that sounds as pathetic as they could get. Dan Feng is lost in his own nausea, flinching but managing to press a stiff palm flat against Yingxing's jerking shoulder blades, offering the bare minimum of support.
"Dan Feng..." he calls him with a sincere look in his eyes. The tone was so knowing that Dan Feng thinks the boy might have figured out who he was at the core. "Do you think that you'd be sitting here, next to me, every time?" He rubs at his eyes, the rough red sleeves of his uniform turning the skin at the corners pink and raw.
"I am not sure what you mean." The knot in Dan Feng’s stomach twists. It’s an ugly thing, as it rolls around and turns in confusion and a little fear. His mind is a heavy fog, and he would like to say more, but the silence between them stretches as he fumbles to comprehend his feelings. In that gap, his perception of what is real and what is not fractures.
"I’ve been reading this book about the Quantum Sea," Yingxing speaks, and his eyes get wide and glassy. On his sclera, Dan Feng can count the tiny blood vessels forming a red web. "Every choice we make creates a new branch in the arbor of our existence, and I’ve wondered, if you could see the other ones, would you still be here? Do you ever regret the decisions that landed you in this one? Next to me?"
As the words hang in the air, the apparition on the wall seems to grow. The jagged teeth of the monster widen, and the shadow is laughing at the irony of the question. At first, Dan Feng thinks this would spiral into the same manic pattern of self-deprecation and lament, followed by the gloating the boy had shown before. He’s trying to find the impulse to comfort him, even if it’s just an awkward pat on the head.
This kidney stone of wisdom that Yingxing has spat at him grinds on his synapses as they digest and pass around information. Maybe in another life, he would have ended up dead and dismembered, to be reincarnated into a man that he would have hated as much as Yulan hates him, or he would have been too proud to entertain mortal desires and left Yingxing alone to live his short life in peace.
The Quantum Sea Yingxing mentioned is a medium that potentially holds all these bubbles of realities, but this current life of his is governed by the want to get his dicks wet and the urge to fuck that most living beings have, whether they can reproduce or not. He also knows that whatever he answers is important to Yingxing because he is now ogling him with a dilated, unblinking look, like a startled feline, and a bewitching tilt to his head.
Most people Dan Feng knows would label this as unnerving, coupled with the raging prejudice and the way his kind were exoticized, Yingxing could easily be called a zoo specimen. He relates to this on a profound level, hidden underneath poise and age. Vidyadhara is not truly native to Xianzhou either, and his hatchling days have been plagued by strangers pulling at his cartilaginous tail and pointing out how his webbed feet did not look like those of other children.
Right now, to any sane observer, the look on Yingxing’s face is the warning of a scattered mind; anxious and testing the waters to see if Dan Feng still wants him. But even if he didn’t, there are plenty more interested. Yulan’s shadow writhes. The man that it was, nor the echo of his consciousness, never pitied the frantic and short-lived. Instead, the apparition recognizes the spark of kindred volatility, and a silhouette of a clawed hand traces with appreciation the curve of Yingxing’s shadow on the wall, looking for any kind of an opening.
"Hm. Regret?" Dan Feng murmured, averting his eyes from whatever was happening on the wall. They’re all manifestations of his old mind, and there’s no need to point them out to Yingxing and cause a scene if anyone else sees them, too. "If you think too much of the branches, you forget the weight of the trunk."
"Excuse me for a moment," Dan Feng says, but the request is dead on arrival. Yingxing follows him to the bathroom, clinging to his naked bicep, and Dan Feng feels his own pulse picking up under blunt fingernails.
For such a seedy place, the bathroom doesn’t look as bad as he thought, but the sight in the nearest mirror leaves him mortified. The shadow that had been following him around for the entire night had finally grown a face. A man of inertia in an age of upheaval, closed off and emotionally unavailable in the purest sense. Yulan, his latest predecessor, had been a looming nightmare over his childhood and early life. Little Dan Feng lacks any memory of that past life, but he has read about him. Even then, his child brain could not link the passive man with the horrors that haunted his mind every time he went to sleep.
Yulan died poisoned, likely by the very preceptors he had so effectively stonewalled, and he had died alone, during meditation, his organs shutting down one by one while he remained completely still.[4]After death, he had decided to pour the emotional fire he lacked in life into tormenting his young successor. By the time he reached adulthood, the dreams of being hacked into tiny pieces by a monster with two rows of teeth had passed, but he still remembers the feeling of much bigger scaled hands gripping his soft ribcage, trying to collapse it.
Dan Feng’s mind is an awful thing to be left alone with; luckily, Yingxing does a great job at distracting him. The boy clings to him like a beloved leech, trying to get between him and the sink, blocking his or Yulan’s reflection. Dan Feng is not sure who is who anymore.
Sweaty and warm human hands grab at his chest, but there’s not much to grab onto. He is lean, but his muscles are dense, and they do not yield.
"What’s on your mind?" Yingxing mouths against his chest, barely audible over the sound of people laughing outside and a sink leaking, but Dan Feng has acute ears. He looks down at the dark blue river of Yingxing’s hair, noting the small, butterfly-shaped ribbon clinging to the tresses for dear life. Its color is almost a perfect match for the hair itself, but it isn't something Yingxing would usually wear.
Dan Feng doesn't use words, and instead, he threads his fingers deep into the hair at the nape of Yingxing’s neck and tenses his grip. The ribbon shifts under his knuckles as he cranes the boy’s neck back and away from his chest. The pin of the ribbon and his claws dig into Yingxing’s scalp when he pulls his grip, but he is careful to use the blunt strength of his hand rather than the sharp points of his nails.
Yingxing is folded into the small space between the faucet and the wall, his long legs dangling uselessly as he spreads them to invite Dan Feng even closer into his space. "Do you want to do it here?"
He offers no resistance; his heavy head falls back into the cradle of Dan Feng’s hand. Under the harsh fluorescent light, his expression is placid and a little dazed. His pretty mouth hangs slightly open, and a thin, drunken silver of spit glints on his lower lip as he smiles, struggling to bring Dan Feng’s face into focus.
Again, Dan Feng says nothing. He can feel how Yingxing becomes anxious from the way he breathes when he continues to watch his neck with an unreadable expression. When he puts one hand on Yingxing’s neck, he senses how the brat's blood thrums erratically under his thumb and he has the territorial urge to squeeze hard. Dan Feng wouldn’t do it before asking, but Yingxing fidgeting in his grip still makes his teeth ache with the need to bite the exposed side of his throat.
"Talk to me!"
If this is how prey feels, exposed down to the very pulse of a carotid, Dan Feng doesn’t want to live like that. He pulls on Yingxing’s hair one last time, forcing the vertebras to arch until the long, pale line of his throat is fully bared. The boy’s blunt and polished nails claw slightly at his forearm as he watches the skin of his throat pull tight with every shallow breath. Panic bleeds into the arousal when Yingxing hitches his ass forward on the metal sink towards him. His legs snap shut around Dan Feng’s waist to pull him in and grind on his groin.
Despite being dicks to cunt, Yingxing’s body still frets like a caged bird, either from a twisted sense of fear or excitement, and Dan Feng doesn’t want to see him upset, so he lets go.
"I did not mean to frighten you. I just wanted to touch your hair, but I think I let my feelings get in the way of my common sense." He really is thinking only with his dicks tonight when it comes to this transient, short-lived creature. Not a lot of people are capable of pulling that reaction out of him. He’d fuck him an entire month if he could.
"I am not scared of the likes of you!" Yingxing says as he throws his arms around Dan Feng’s shoulders and hugs him tight. Dan Feng hugs him back even tighter so Yingxing will stop trying to hump his dicks and leave this bathroom with a hole in the crotch of his work uniform. "Do you even remember what I said?"
"Yes." They could do it here. It wouldn’t be hard to drag him into a stall and slip it in raw. He doesn’t have a condom on him because he thought tonight they’d screw somewhere nice. Someone could also come in and hear them. He didn’t care about this in the past, but now tonight, he feels possessive and mean, and he doesn’t want to share Yingxing’s noises with anyone.
They end up making out again, and no one barges in. With how clean the bathroom is, Dan Feng doubts the patrons use it. Yingxing would bite him for judging these people he doesn’t even know so crudely, but based on their mannerisms, they probably piss outside behind a wall. That would explain a part of the nasty smell he noticed outside. Good thing he’s not like them. He only fucks hidden behind walls or in shady alleyways.
"You told me you’d show me your home." He remembers to say between kisses as Yingxing starts to unbuckle his belt. He sinks even lower when Yingxing doesn’t really listen to him, and he has to pull out his warm hand from his pants. One of them has to be more responsible.
The walk home is a struggle against his own senses. Nausea returns tenfold, and while having someone to lean on should be a relief, Yingxing is as helpful as a broken cane. Dan Feng has to focus every ounce of control into his body to not topple over and crush Yingxing’s mortal bones beneath him.
Yet as they leave the sweltering underground, the night air cools the sweat off his back and leaves his skin tacky and uncomfortable. Yingxing’s laughter echoes distorted and loud around him. He’s clinging to Dan Feng’s torso, burying his face in the crook of his neck when he’s not attempting to shove his hand down his pants. People pass them by, but here, in the shadows of the Zhuming, there are no disgusted looks or judging eyes, like back home. The two of them are just silhouettes moving through the city.
Yingxing’s hands feel invasive when they accidentally tug at his hair; no one around them would spare a second look if he were to snap or slap him away, the scene blending into the dark as just another lovers' quarrel. Dan Feng almost wants to tell him to stay the fuck put if he still wants to be screwed, but the possible look of regret on Yingxing's face makes him stay his hand. He settles for just puffing bits of air instead, forcing himself to be still and walk forward.
The industrial district is vast, and though Yingxing lives on its edge, they don’t make it far before he pukes. Dan Feng doubles over a trash can that reeks of rot, retching until his stomach is empty and his throat burns. It’s the first time he’s felt this vulnerable and disgusting in centuries. All the annoyance he felt towards Yingxing extinguishes when the same annoying hands tenderly gather Dan Feng’s dark hair and bangs to hold them off his sweaty forehead. Now shaken from his stupor, the boy is cooing something unintelligible at him, but Dan Feng doesn’t bother to understand before he retches again.
Flickering streetlights mock them. Their weak and interrupted gaze suggests they aren't important enough to be illuminated. Dan Feng used to despise the bar crowd's gaze, but now, the crushing indifference of the city is worse. Yingxing is the only one who stares at him wide-eyed like a bug, his wet scleras reminding him of those shiny foil helium balloons he’d wanted so badly as a child but was never allowed to get. He’d watched a group of girls playing with them earlier that evening, noting with a bitter sort of envy how effortlessly the balloons drifted off into the night when the string slipped from their delicate fingers. Yingxing looks just as bright and just as likely to float away, and he has the urge to say something and comfort him.
Bar crowds perceive just what they want to. It was a shame people got so excited over the most idiotic distractions and missed the foreigner slipping things into glasses that weren't his own. Yingxing has no guardian angel and if it wasn't for him, no one would have noticed the kid almost got roofied drugged. Yingxing had a remarkable talent for finding trouble and attracting all flavors of creeps, but for once, Dan Feng’s egotistical shell had melted. He tastes the acidic relief that it was him who swallowed the spiked drink instead. His species possessed an insanely fast metabolism and resilient livers; Dan Feng could only imagine that the foreigner was interested in fucking corpses if he’d intended to use something toxic enough to make a Vidyadhara ill.
His throat tightens in anticipation of another heave, but not from the nausea this time. The only silver lining to this misery is finally having an explanation for why his body has been failing the entire night. Maybe that spiked drink has viciously amplified the bouts of sickness he was already fighting in the past few weeks, pushing his system to a breaking point where his mind is starting to fray. At least he knows he hasn’t fully lost his grip on reality, yet. Whatever toxin he ingested has just stripped away his mental and physical defenses, letting the echoes of his past lives bleed into the present.
Yulan’s shadow is circling them like a mangy dog, just as interested in licking and nipping at Yingxing’s ankles as Dan Feng secretly is. He feels like he’ll sound like a cretin if he asks whether Yingxing sees it as well, but curiosity gets the best of him.
"Do you feel like something has been following us?" Dan Feng asks, the words low and raspy as they leave his throat. He doesn’t turn around to face Yingxing. Instead, his gaze stays fixed and unblinking on the shifting shapes at the edge of the lamp light.
Yingxing’s weight shifts, his boots scuffing against the pavement as he tries to keep them both upright, even if Dan Feng is already alert by now. "Hm? No," he says, his chin dipping for a second as he squints into the empty, quiet dark. "The night makes you feel all kinds of things, but there's no one truly out there."
Then he leans in closer, with his shaky hands hovering fretfully over Dan Feng’s face before he finally touches a cold cheek. "I knew you weren't feeling well, but you never want to accept help," Yingxing continues, the tone gentle, blooming with a drunk sort of maternal focus. "You’re white as a sheet. Come on, my place is just around the corner. Once we’re inside, I’ll take care of you. I promise."
The dismissal is soft, almost light-hearted, followed by a comforting caress over Dan Feng’s naked shoulder. It occurs to Dan Feng then that the boy in front of him has remarkably weak survival instincts. He is so easily distracted by the heat of their bodies, the fog of the alcohol, and now, the misplaced urge to nurture Dan Feng back to health, that he misses all the important details. He doesn't feel the sudden drop in temperature or notice the way the light bends wrong around the shadow circling his feet. He is blissfully, dangerously oblivious, leaving Dan Feng to be the only one awake in his haunted world.
A certain sense of hyperclarity overtook Dan Feng’s mind as soon as he emptied his guts. Yingxing is sweet to him, but the night sounds make him jumpy, unable to focus on the kindness before him.
His ears ring with the heavy clank of distant machinery, rhythmic grinding of metal on metal that doesn’t halt even at night, and the skittering shrieks of rats being gutted and possessed by heliobi in some unknown corner of the city. He hadn’t noticed before, but it must be them who handle the pest control; it's a cruel fate even for the vermin to die between ghostly teeth. Logically, he knows that nothing larger than a fist could fall victim to these newly born spectral creatures, yet the placid look on Yingxing's face and his lack of reaction to the unsettling noise put him on edge. A muffled shout from a far-off alleyway sobers him up for good, and the hiss of high-pressure steam escaping a rusted pipe gets him going.
In fact, his internal compass tells him that Yingxing’s place is not "just around the corner." They still have a decent way to go, and the pavement is dragging, sticky and sluggish under Dan Feng’s unsteady steps.
As they walk hand in hand, Dan Feng thinks back to Yingxing’s talk on quantum physics earlier and the many-worlds interpretation theory the boy was referencing. He finds himself strangely glad that out of all the infinite, diverging timelines, he exists in this specific reality where he met this man. Otherwise, with that reckless, uncaring ease and that nonexistent sense of danger, the boy would likely be dead in an alleyway by now.
Still trying to play the caretaker, Yingxing is leaning into him. The clumsy, supportive weight only serves to slow him down. But adrenaline has always been the prime mover in Dan Feng’s veins, and now it’s cutting through the haze of whatever toxin he ingested in Yingxing’s stead.
Dan Feng wants to yell, and Yingxing is one of the few people who can provoke a reaction like that out of him. Maybe he wants to grab the boy by his collar and force him to look at the Yulan’s grinning shadow-teeth first, but the words die in his throat, choked by the bile and the exhaustion. He gives up, choked by a weary and bitter compromise. He still wants to get laid and for Yingxing to get home safely, getting upset wouldn't bring him closer to those goals.
Despite that, he thinks, with a flash of aristocratic disdain, that youth is a luxury wasted on the modern era. At twenty-one, Dan Feng had already worn the crown of High Elder for four years; he had purged the Abundance’s corruption and drawn blood on his first three campaigns before Yingxing’s current age. Dan Feng's grip tightens on the boy's shoulder. To be twenty-one and this careless is a dream.
Dan Feng hates the people who had raised him and what they made of him. Both his human and dragon heart loathe the Preceptors. All of them. From the young ones around his age to those three-thousand-year-old fossils who speak of sailing towards better times while their hearts rot with stagnation. He wants to be free, too, of the crown, of the Luofu, and free of the 'High Elder' title that tastes of stale blood in his mouth. And he wants to fuck Yingxing the first thing in the morning and eat a bowl of his monstrosity of tear-inducing, over-spiced curry. Then later on, he wants to go out and drink himself into a stupor, then fall asleep next to his short-lived companion, preferably without getting roofied in the process because Yingxing can’t watch his own glass.
When he surges forward with big steps, his grip tightens on Yingxing’s arm until he is practically dragging the boy along the pavement. In return, Yingxing is shaken a bit from his alcohol and affection-fueled brain fog (a short moment of clarity that Dan Feng knows won't last) and gives him a genuine surprised look.
"Slow down!" Yingxing says, clinging to him, and the words come out small and disjointed. Genuine disorientation twists his face as he stares at the sudden, violent strength in Dan Feng's hands. "I thought you were sick," he protests too, looking for the man who had been collapsing only minutes before. "You recover so easily!"
I’m still sick, Dan Feng thinks. A low, bitter snarl vibrates in the back of his throat. It’s a sound so faint that Yingxing doesn’t hear it over the noise of the night. He’s destroying his liver and stomach and melting his brain, so Yingxing doesn’t have to, and he’s violently glad for it. The foreigner hadn't cared about the dosage or if his victim woke up or simply stopped breathing. Maybe he was one of those corpse fuckers, and he could only get off to a pretty and still warm one. It’s a subhuman level of filth that Dan Feng had the misfortune to encounter in his long life on the battlefields, and he had to scrub the stain out of existence with his own two hands.
"It is usually expected of me." He says, the words forced through a jaw clamped so tight it aches. A bitter tang of bile hits the back of his tongue and has nothing to do with the poison.
"We’re... home." Yingxing pants, leaning his full weight against the doorframe as he tries to drag air back into his lungs. He fumbles blindly for the handle behind him until the deadbolt finally clicks into place. The sound is a squeaky, metallic period at the end of the night, sealing them away from the filth of the outside world.
The apartment is still when they come in, silent save for the faint and unescapable hum of machinery ringing deep underground. They don't need to turn the lights on to navigate the cramped space. The faint white glow of the street lights bleeds through the windows, casting uneven shadows over Yingxing’s weary face as he starts to undress, he seemed tired from their fast pace a few minutes ago. So much for wanting to show him his home when he starts undressing as soon as they step in.
But the assumption stalls in his throat. Yingxing doesn't turn toward him, doesn't offer a look or a touch; he leaves his space, heading for the sink. His mortal companion was just feeling too hot in the safety of his own house and not stripping for him.
Dan Feng's lips press into a thin line as he trails deeper into the apartment. The place is impossibly small compared to his own chambers back home, where every piece of furniture is meticulously placed, and the air sings with an aura of ancient luxury. Here, everything feels alive. Lived in. Imperfect in a way that makes his throat tighten. The bed is unmade, and the thin sheets are tangled and slightly crumpled. Dan Feng stands at its edge, staring down at the place where Yingxing would sleep. His fingers twitch at his sides, aching to touch, to gather the fabric in his hands as if it could offer some kind of connection to its owner.
Every piece of furniture is so close that his claws almost skim over the top of a cluttered workbench, so he keeps his hands to himself, careful not to disturb the automaton parts scattered across its surface. A tangle of wires and a half-finished schematic, tools left like their handler had been interrupted mid-project. There is an odd-shaped vase on the table; its many angles make it stand out in the overall homely atmosphere. The foreign design and overall lack of aesthetics make it impossible for Yingxing to have purchased it. Perhaps it was a gift. Slightly wilted red camellias hang limply from the vase's edge. He bought those for him a while ago. They're dried out, and their stems curve in a stiff manner under the weight of dusty, off-colored petals, as the householder didn't bother to throw them out.[5]
The room is stifling. He wants to reach out to open a window but stops halfway, his claws pausing over the latch. Teal eyes catch on a small toy sword lying forgotten on the floor near the bed. It’s barely the length of his forearm, clearly meant for a child, and he feels a lump in his throat.
His gaze shifts to the kitchen counter, where the remains of Yingxing’s last meal sit abandoned: an empty soup bowl, a pair of chopsticks resting on the rim, and a single peach, slightly overripe, left untouched. He wants to pick up the fruit and feel its skin soft and yielding under his claws. Ephemeral.[6]
The lump in his throat thickens. He is sick, but the sudden, simple affection of Yingxing bringing him a glass of water makes him melt. Water has never tasted better. Mid-swallow, he feels Yingxing crowding his own human and softer body into his, making him remember his priorities. As sick as he is, he still wants to fuck, and Yingxing clearly still wants it, too. The scent of him lingers in the air as if it has soaked into the walls, and Dan Feng inhales deeply, as though he could hold the smell of human skin and jasmine soap in his lungs for a very long time.
It makes him feel wired. Impatient. Restless. If he doesn't do this now, he feels like he'll never be able to do it again.
"Take your pants off." Dan Feng mutters, the sound a touch raspy. He winces at the drag of the words against his throat and how they hit his teeth. His esophagus feels raw, as if he'd been shouting for hours. "Give me a second. Where’s the bathroom?"
He feels strange and swipes his tongue across his teeth, making sure they’re still there. Dan Feng can’t bring himself to touch Yingxing with unwashed hands; his claws feel like they have the grime under them. Worse is the taste in his mouth, the acidic, stinging ghost of the vomit he'd just choked up on the street. He can’t kiss him like this either. Not until he rinses the aftertaste away. He needs a shard of awareness for himself: to piss, to wash, and to make sure his bones aren't actually turning to liquid before he gets back to Yingxing’s bed.
The sense of impending doom is a medical symptom characterized by an intense feeling that something life-altering or tragic is about to occur, despite no apparent danger.
Dan Feng is jittery. He feels the advanced biological machinery of self-preservation, which had kept his species alive for eons on their homeworld, kick into high gear, sensing a catastrophe that hadn’t arrived yet. While his lizard brain demanded he flee the coming shadow, his spirit stayed behind, anchored to Yingxing’s bathroom by a stubborn, ill-advised courage.
The place is immaculate, but the size makes Dan Feng claustrophobic, and he tries his best to avoid the dark blue eyes in the mirror that don’t even let him piss in peace. The slight discomfort in his left flank has gotten worse, and the world shrinks to the few inches of space directly in front of his face. With one hand splayed flat against the wall, he tries to steady himself and keep the room from spinning by sheer force of grip.
It works, somehow. The porcelain tile feels unnaturally cold against his scaled palm as he stays there, braced and shuddering slightly, with his weight thrown heavily onto his locked arm because his legs begin to feel like jelly. The hand on himself doesn’t feel like his own, and relief never comes. Despite that, what worries him the most is the color of his own piss.
"That can’t be good." Haematuria[7], but it’s clouded blue and a waste of his copper-based noble blood.[8] It has never happened before, and Dan Feng has no idea why his self-healing hasn’t kicked in already.
He flushes away the evidence, watching it swirl into nothingness. It’s not his time yet, and there’s no time to waste. As per their unspoken agreement, Yingxing has brought him here for a reason, and he has to perform. Pushing off the wall feels like peeling a scab. He ignores Yulan’s echo, who’s been giving him a disgusted look and syphoning every last ounce of privacy, but his dark blue eyes still follow the movement of his hands as he scrubs them. They meet his own in the mirror when he’s rinsing his mouth: a cold, judgmental stare that doesn't flicker even as he spits the water into the sink. The ghost's appalled expression gives him a bitter spark of resolve.
Dan Feng moves through the door on autopilot, his hand trailing against the doorframe, then the dresser, then the bedpost, navigating the room like a dazed man. Yingxing is a balm for his hardened scales. The boy has no idea how he’s feeling and instead waits patiently for dick on the side of the bed, swinging his legs lightly.
It’s a good thing that he ditched that eyesore of a work uniform that the unionized society of the Xianzhou forces imposed upon its workers, because in the dim moonlight that seeps through the curtains, he is the most beautiful creature Dan Feng has ever seen. Unlike most of Zhuming’s population, he's terribly pale, almost cadaverous, if it weren't for the bloody tint of bitten and peeled lips and the slight movements of his chest with each breath.
He doesn't have the same green-blue pallor that Dan Feng's kind has, nor does he carry the golden undertone of the natives. His skin is alabaster, nearly opalescent, kissed with a faint purple hue where the blood runs shallow under the surface, at the wrists, on the side of his chest where veins stretch under the skin like a fan (and behind the knees, too! Dan Feng knows it). It is not the flushed beige of a normal human laborer either, and it disturbs Dan Feng as much as it fascinates him, because in this moment, Yingxing is more alien than any foreigner he's seen. When he’s naked, he is beautiful in a way that seems unsustainable with a body too fine-grained and too high-contrast for the world around it. If touched too harshly, he might vanish like a dream.
Now there’s a single pearl earring dangling from his left ear, drop-shaped, gleaming, unmistakably feminine, and too diaphanous to match Zhuming's jewelry fashion. A gift, that much is clear.[9]It catches the light like a tear, soft and out of place against the angles of his jaw. His hair is free of the usual hair stick, falling in twin cascades over his shoulders and down his back, waist-length and dark as seawater. It frames his face with deceptive softness, blurring the lines of his cheeks and neck.
Yingxing is uncoordinated with his hands, but he is eager to drag him down the bed and wrestle him out of his clothes. The pain in Dan Feng’s flank worsens with motion, and he knows his limits. As much as he'd like to throw the brat around and pull at his hair, if he jostles too much what he suspects are his kidneys, he might make a fool of himself and pass out mid fuck from the mounting pain.
"Easy now. Move too fast, and you might hurt yourself." He tones, but the words are more for himself than for the boy.
Yingxing probably doesn't give two shits about what he's saying, not with the way he’s smiling. There aren't many thoughts behind those eyes right now. His hands drag through Dan Feng's hair, caressing behind his ears before sliding down to his waist. When they reach his left side, Dan Feng catches Yingxing’s wrist, forcing his palm to press hard against the ache. He keeps it there, his own hand over the back of Yingxing’s. It dulls the pain enough to make him groan in relief.
It's the worst he has felt in days, and it makes him really acknowledge his situation. His scales have lost some of their luster, but he doesn't bear the ugly and oozing wounds he's seen on Ardens Regia and her priestesses, so it certainly must be something else. It proves their point. It wasn’t contagious, and Dan Feng would have loved to consult with them more about their symptoms, just to be sure, but he doesn’t have the guts to ask fire-wielding women if they’re pissing blood, too.
Fortunately, his hormones work harder than the pain, and he's able to get it up. If he moves slowly, the discomfort is manageable. Can't say the same about Yingxing because he's dying to get his fingers and dicks inside him, but he's so dry it would hurt even to try, and it’s obvious he’s forcing himself to look eager through clenched teeth and wide eyes. Damn the alcohol.
Yingxing shuffles and hooks his legs around his waist. He snorts, and it sounds pathetic, then gives Dan Feng a placid, resigned smile and says, "Don't worry, I like it when it hurts a little."
Dan Feng looks up into eyes that reflect the light like purple sapphires. Their appearance has shifted from the cheap, hollow roundness of helium balloons into something far more precious. He's pretty sure he's hallucinating the lack of the usual rhombus-shaped pupil, but he’d pinned the gem right; amethyst or lavender jade were either too cheap or too dull to compare to the uncommon hue that stared back at him.
It probably hurts more than a little when he pushes in, and Dan Feng isn't sure if Yingxing is testing his restraint or if the masochistic streak runs that deep.[10]The friction reminds him that they’re rushing this; it turns his stomach to feel the way Yingxing’s skin hitches against his own. He’s in no mood to play games of endurance when his partner is in pain, and his dick is starting to chafe.
The uncanny and alien gaze softens a little, and the tension bleeds out of his expression when Dan Feng pulls away. Yingxing’s shoulders drop an inch, and he lets out a heavy exhale of thanks that he doesn't have to endure the abrasion anymore.
"Come here," Dan Feng mutters, his voice a low, gravelly scrape against the silence. He nudges Yingxing’s hips, guiding him upward. "Sit on my face."
They swap places, and Dan Feng truly gets acquainted with the bed. It’s small, and the mattress is of poor quality. It's too soft to support his bones, and the bedding itself is coarse cotton, worn thin with use, and it feels cool on his skin. Yingxing climbs over him, knees on either side of his ribs, mindful not to snag the dark spill of Dan Feng’s hair. When he braces his hands on the headboard for balance, the wood gives a shrill squeak that grates on Dan Feng’s brain like chalk on a board.
His patience is beginning to fray when Yingxing pauses to pet the top of his head. The gesture is soft and careful, as if to soothe a scared animal. It makes Dan Feng want to tell him to hurry up, to quit acting like a virgin and get on with it. Yet, the heat of him is endearing. It’s a familiar, heavy warmth that Dan Feng has grown to enjoy and even crave.
They’ve done this enough times that the routine should be settled, but Yingxing still yelps when Dan Feng’s hands lock onto his hips to guide him down. Normally, he would recoil from this kind of proximity, but Yingxing made it enjoyable. He was nice, didn't smother him, and lacked any insults to name him with.
The ache in his flank pulses every time he takes a breath, and the edges of his vision blur from whatever poison is crawling through his veins. The room and the body above him tilt when he blinks, but at least Yingxing lets out a relaxed sigh when he finally lowers himself the last few inches. His clit brushes the bridge of Dan Feng’s nose on the way down, and that very first contact drags a heavy shudder out of both of them.
His stupidly long and forked tongue finally finds a better use than lying and spitting demands. The first lick is a slow, broad stripe from the entrance to the clit that lacks any finesse. It tastes organic and a bit metallic. He knows human anatomy inside and out, but mastering a diagram is not the same as knowing a living person.
Yingxing is the first person he’s ever done this to, and they haven’t had enough time to practice. So he’s clumsy in a way that feels almost painful to him: too broad with the flat of his tongue one moment and too hesitant the next, sucking at the clit too hard and then easing off abruptly when Yingxing gasps. The flicks are uneven. Quick little darts followed by long, dragging strokes that don’t quite harmonize.
Despite that, Yingxing seems pleased and makes a small satisfied sound. His thighs clamp around Dan Feng’s ears, then loosen so as not to crush him. Dan Feng doesn’t mind. He’d happily suffocate here if it meant his head would stop hurting. The fever seeding itself in his bones is climbing, and his dicks throb and leak clear beads of liquid. The ache between his legs is almost as bad as the one in his side, and he could let go of Yingxing’s thigh and reach down to stroke himself, but he doesn’t. Precum smears in sticky streaks across his lower belly. One hand would be enough; he could just wrap it around the base and stroke once, maybe twice, to match the rhythm of his tongue.
But his limbs feel heavy, and Yingxing is twitching and ready to topple over and kiss the wall if he stops holding him down. He’s finally dripping, and it’s running down Dan Feng’s chin. Every time he shifts, his clit bumps the bridge of Dan Feng’s nose again, then slides wetly across his upper lip, leaving a glossy trail. Dan Feng's horny lizard brain tells him to chase it with his tongue, and then he moves on to sucking the swollen bud between his lips for a minute before letting go, only to drag the forked tips along the inner folds again.
It is much appreciated when Dan Feng finally shoves his tongue in. Forked tips curl and probe inside, trying to find that spot he’s only ever felt with fingers. He’s not sure he’s found it, but Yingxing reacts like he has with how his fingers knot in Dan Feng’s hair and yank hard on it like black reins.
On his tongue, Yingxing’s insides feel smoother. Dan Feng hears him keen, and he himself grunts in pain when Yingxing drops his full weight down, grinding against his face. His nose takes the worst of it, and everything narrows down to the sensation of cartilage being crushed against warm and wet skin, but the pain of it does wonders for his dicks.
He can’t breathe. It hurts, and he prays it won’t break like this, but he doesn’t pull back. Yingxing’s thighs shake around his ears, and his hips jerk in uneven little rocks every time Dan Feng presses deeper or flicks the tips of his tongue against the spot he found. When he grunts, it’s low and rough, muffled into Yingxing’s cunt. It hurts like hell, and the animal part of him waits for the crack. It’s not the first time his nose has broken, and he waits for blood to come and for the whole bridge to give out.
The expected violence never comes. It all ends abruptly when Yingxing makes a scrunched-up face and a sharp, strangled noise, almost like he’s in pain. The keening rises, cracks, and turns into a ragged panting that fills the small, airless room. Then, sudden, heavy peace.
His nose no longer hurts, and Yingxing sits on his chest, wiping the wetness from his face with his palm in slow movements. For a moment, his flank no longer hurts, and he almost feels better.
He’s staring up at the ceiling, tracking the flickering shadows of a dying street light outside, when Yingxing speaks, still perched on his chest. He’s slick with sweat, and his skin is catching the pale light from outside in a way that makes the lines of his chest look especially good from his angle.
"I bet you live in a swamp!" Yingxing blurts, grinning. It’s a completely random, nonsensical string of words in the quiet room. He’s breathless, his chest still hitching with the aftershocks of what Dan Feng just did to him.
Dan Feng doesn't move. He doesn't even lift his head from the coarse pillow, but his gaze shifts upward, looking at Yingxing through black lashes. It’s a heavy, hooded look, skeptical of the boy's sudden interest in Luofu geography, but Yingxing preens under it anyway.
It’s this jarring, nonsensical talk in the middle of something unrelated that does it for him. Yingxing’s randomness makes him feel ridiculously, dangerously young. He should be lecturing him on the sacred waters of the Scalegorge, but he isn't the stiff-necked old hag his mentor was. That woman has a professional talent for sucking the whimsy out of a room; Dan Feng would gladly push her down a flight of stairs if he could get away with the paperwork. He loves that Yingxing is the exact opposite of that sterile, joyless world.
"A swamp," Dan Feng repeats. His voice is a low, scratchy vibration that Yingxing can likely feel through his cunt. But he’s not exactly upset with the comparison. He looks at the boy through his eyelashes with the expression of a man observing a particularly strange specimen of wildlife. "Is that what you think my home is? A bog?"
Yingxing is right to some extent. Luofu is wet and cold most of the time. But the springs are lovely, and the summers are bearable compared to the Zhuming ones.
One of his hands, on Yingxing’s hip, twitches as if he’s considering pushing him off, but he remains still. He just keeps watching him through that dark curtain of his bangs, waiting to see just how deep into this 'swamp' theory the boy is willing to wade.
"If the Luofu is a swamp, then what is the Zhuming?" Dan Feng’s gaze drifts bit by bit over the entirety of Yingxing’s sweaty, heaving chest, then back up to those cheeky eyes. "A giant, over-lit foundry where people forget the color of the sky because they’re too busy staring at scraps of metal? It’s a miracle your lungs aren't as blackened and soot-choked as the bilge of this ship." He probably looks habitually and subconsciously condescending as he talks, but Yingxing doesn't seem to mind. He’s looking down at Dan Feng with a devout, languid focus, his thumb tracing the bruised-looking and tender curve of Dan Feng's cheekbone, just beneath the lower lash line.
"Hm. I think you’ll miss this "foundry" when you leave." Yingxing drawls, smug and now preoccupied with the shape of Dan Feng’s jaw.
He’ll definitely miss more than that. Yingxing climbs off his chest, his skin peeling away from Dan Feng’s with a faint, sticky sound. He’s crawling to the edge of the bed, reaching towards the nightstand; his weight is making the mattress dip and the old springs groan. The boy seems to be fumbling with a plastic packet and stuffing what seems to be candy into his cheek like a hoarding animal. Dan Feng’s claws graze his ribs, and it makes Yingxing shuffle right back at his side.
"Maybe." He says, giving Yingxing’s ass a firm squeeze, and digs his fingers even harder into the flesh when Yingxing flinches. After this short reprise, his kidneys start to hurt again, perhaps even worse than before. It doesn’t go away when Yingxing starts kissing him again. He's so close that Dan Feng can smell the ginger candy on his breath and hear it clattering against his teeth.
Ginger candy. Dan Feng tries to imagine the shape and taste. Maybe size too. It must be a crystalline yellow or orange now that is wet with Yingxing’s saliva. Round and not bigger than the tip of his claw, with tiny bubbles of air frozen and floating in the sugar. Dan Feng conjures the mental image of it sliding down Yingxing’s throat and finds it weirdly aesthetic.
The boy drags him out of his odd fantasies when he suddenly grabs his jaw, prying it open with a rough, insistent kiss. He’s shoving the candy into Dan Feng’s mouth with his tongue.
It’s not unpleasant; Dan Feng has grown fond of swapping drool with him, though a warning would have been nice. First, the candy is spicy enough to sting his tongue, then it becomes sweet and fragrant. When their mouths separate, the lingering taste feels like a bittersweet parting.
Yingxing is giggling, breathless, and proud of himself. The look in his eyes is so honest and so painfully soft that Dan Feng feels a dangerous tug at his heartstrings. It comes with a sudden urge to ask Yingxing to come back to the Luofu with him when he leaves. He could show him the cold beaches he grew up with, or toxic red maple gardens, and the way the light filters through leaves so sharp they could draw blood. He’d tell him how he’d tried to eat those same leaves as a child, thinking the color meant they were sweet, only to spend the night sick and dizzy under the Alchemy Commission's master stern watch.
It’s an absurd impulse to think about this. Reckless, irrational thoughts. The departure is maybe months away, and yet he is already trying to pack this poor mortal into his luggage.
"I think I’ll miss you too," Yingxing whispers. His index finger traces the line of scales that starts at Dan Feng’s navel and points downward into a shimmering blue path. He steals one last kiss before lying back and looking up at him with half-lidded confidence. "Come on, you want to get your fill too, right? Get inside me."
It’s easier said than done. When he drags his body on top of Yingxing’s, his side starts hurting even worse. Every breath is a chore, and the edges of his vision smudge into dark, blurry vignettes.
One. Two. Three drops of blue blood fall from his nose on Yingxing’s cheek. He hovers above Yingxing, who puts kind hands on his face and drags himself closer to lick away the blood coming from his nose, then pecks his jaw slowly. He’d usually find this hot, but he’s in so much pain he can’t even stay hard. The pain sends shivers down his spine, but the instinct to perform has been trained into his brain from a young age.
So, he does.
The first thrusts are awkward, frustrating, and unsatisfying for both of them. Yingxing is not experienced enough to know what's happening without taking a clear look between Dan Feng’s legs, so he keeps chasing any sort of feeling with his hips. At least now he's wet, and Dan Feng is no longer hurting him.
Dan Feng rocks forward again and again, and the motion feels wrong from the start. He's half hard. Still heavy, but his cocks lack their usual rigid bite.
The head presses against Yingxing’s entrance and bends a little instead of parting him cleanly. He slides inside maybe two inches, and the sight of his useless body makes Dan Feng want to pluck out his eyes and maybe eat them. Yingxing makes a confused little noise, half whimper, half whine, and shoves his hips down on him, again and harder this time, trying to pull Dan Feng deeper. His insides clench around the partial intrusion, but there’s nothing solid to grip onto; the cock bends and slides free with a wet sound, leaving him empty and aching.
The shame, anger, and pain stewing in Dan Feng's flank flared brighter with every second that ticked by. Sweat beaded on his temples, dripping onto Yingxing's collarbone. He can feel the burn of those blue eyes at the back of his head again. Yulan was a prude and never fucked anyone; it's normal that he's curious. Still, the indecency of the observation sickens him, and humiliation burns hotter than his fever.
Dan Feng watches the color drain from Yingxing’s face when the boy’s mind finally catches up with the situation. His hands drop from Dan Feng’s hair like he’s been burned, and he scoots away from under Dan Feng surprisingly fast, just to sit on his ass at an arm's length and watch him like a scared cat.
"Don't you like me anymore?" Yinxing asks so absurdly small and human that it makes Dan Feng’s chest ache. He wants to laugh or scream, but he can’t find the air. It would surely come out as a dry, hacking sound that would surely bring more blue blood with it. Yingxing is the only person he’s been attracted to in a long while.
"Shut it." He sounds angrier than he intended, and he regrets it in an instant when Yingxing flinches away from him, unblinking. "Give me your hand. You are not the issue here." As a truce, Dan Feng extends his clawed hand towards him. It takes a few moments till Yingxing's pale, well-manicured one accepts his, but the bridge between them has been built.
Dan Feng crowds him again, steering the boy's hand until it covers the ache in his side. He's not sure if Yingxing feels the same pulsating sensation or understands what's going on, considering how confused he looks, glancing between his palm on Dan Feng’s body and Dan Feng’s face.
"It hurts," he hisses between breaths. There's something in my side. Every breath feels like someone’s twisting a knife between my ribs."[11]Dan Feng puts his hand over Yingxing’s so it sits firmer against the hot spot on his flank, pressing the boy’s palm flat so he can, maybe, feel the unnatural heat radiating through his reinforced muscles and the faint tremor that runs under his skin. "That’s why it’s not working. Not because of you."
Yingxing’s fingers flex slightly against the ache, and his eyes keep flicking down to where his hand is pressed, then back up to Dan Feng’s face. The confusion in his expression slowly cracks open into something softer and far more stricken.
"So…you're hurting?" Yingxing acknowledges him with a question, and his hands slide down fast, resting on Dan Feng’s hips, in an attempt to comfort him.
Dan Feng gives one short nod. "Yes. Very badly." He doesn't need to elaborate. His breath hitches when he talks, and his shoulders stay stiff even as he leans into the touch. Letting his weight slump forward, his forehead is coming to rest against Yingxing’s sweaty shoulder.
"I thought you were feeling better," Yingxing mutters, worry evident in his voice, and Dan Feng sighs like a pleading animal into the boy’s neck, noting how human hands grip and pull at his hair with a newfound force. "Stop trying to fuck me!" He snaps at him, worried and upset. "We don't have to do it if you're hurt! Why didn't you tell me before?!" Anger ripples under the boy's unease, and it stings because it’s not the same kind as when they argue. Dan Feng is sharply reminded of the one thing Yingxing expects from him. The one and simple task of honesty that he neglects, habitually and without fail.
Still, it’s unfortunate for Dan Feng that he finds Yingxing’s riled-up face very attractive. He's still panting from the pain and the urge to fuck and loaded with obscene amounts of testosterone.
"Let me hold you! Or let me help. Please!” Yingxing sounds frantic. He doesn’t notice the fixated stare Dan Feng’s giving him or how the man traces the uneven heave of his chest. Seems that irritation mixed with whatever feelings he has for Dan Feng has given way to a desperate anxiety.
"Lie down." He only sighs, his palm flat and heavy where it pats Yingxing’s thigh.
"What?"
"I said lay down." Dan Feng doesn't wait for the boy to actually do it; he just manhandles Yingxing onto his back. He guides pale legs apart with a firm hand before settling between them, his knuckles dragging over a hip mapped with old, barely noticeable growth lines. "Trust me, I want this more than I let on," he adds. The heat of his breath ghosting over Yingxing’s skin makes him shiver, but a blunt, heavy kiss into the center of his sternum seals the deal. The boy finally settles. "Spread yourself."
"Ah." Yingxing’s breath hitches at the command, and his hand darts down between his legs without hesitation.
Two fingers plunge into his own cunt, smooth and easy from how wet he already is, then hook and pull outward hard. Inner lips part with a soft, wet sound, and the entrance stretches open around his knuckles, his insides clenching and fluttering as he spreads himself wide. A fresh gush of wetness leaks out, dripping down his ass toward the sheets. His clit stands out too, swollen and dark against the parted folds when Yingxing slides the hood upward in a simple, gentle motion. "Like this?" He asks, desperate to be useful. "Let me use my mouth," Yingxing pleads. His skin is flushed a darker pink from the blood flow, mostly smooth with a thin landing stripe of black-blue hair. "Or my hands. Just let me do something!"
"There's no need. And yes, like that." The image gets him twitching again. Dan Feng runs his hand down Yingxing’s inner thigh in appreciation before fisting his cocks.
Starting slow, he squeezes them both at the same time before dragging his palm flat over their length, pressing them against his lower belly to feel their pulse and whatever warmth his reptilian biology gives off.
It’s a start, but his breath comes ragged, in low grunts and hissed sounds whenever the movement stirs pressure deep in his side and the pain spikes. Pleasure exists, but it's a muted thing, slow to make way in his gut; he has to work for it, stroking faster and harder than usual to chase the edge. On the upstroke, he twists his wrist roughly, thumb pressing the underside the exact way he'd watched Yingxing do it other times.
With pinned-back ears, he manages to find a pace. Leaning back on his free hand, he leaks clear and sticky fluid all over himself. His hands are scaled, and they don't offer the best feeling in his current condition. The strokes are slower, firmer, almost milking. He squeezes from root to mid-shaft to force blood forward, trying to coax hardness back.
Yingxing is a delightful sight, but in the corner of his eye, he still sees his predecessor’s shadow always watching. Dan Feng would bet a handful of strales that if the dead fucker could, he’d crawl onto the bed with them too.
To drown out the ghost of Yulan, his addled brain pulls out from its depths the image of Yingxing gushing on his dicks in his childhood bedroom, the two of them forced onto a blanket on the floor because the old bed squeaked too loudly and his mothers were sleeping right next door. Yingxing had sneaked him in like a thief. Dan Feng never got to know the women, nor was he eager to. Part of him feared the recognition in their eyes; the rest was just displeased with the white-haired one.
He’d seen them in passing. While her partner seemed to be an aimless ditz, the woman with red eyes and white hair kept an iron grip on the household and their children. Dan Feng is not sure if she or Yingxing’s so-called little brother are directly related to him or even to each other. They look nothing alike, and Dan Feng doubts they're even mildly related to the same subset of short-lived mortals.
"You're so pretty," Yingxing says, pulling him out of his thoughts. His eyes are fixed, tracing the flex of Dan Feng’s forearms and the veins popping on his blue cocks.
"Hah. You think so?" He smiles, lopsided, then snorts. It’s a sharp sound that rattles in his chest and ends in a wince. Dan Feng drags his body closer to Yingxing, stroking himself faster and watching the clear liquid he's dripping leak all over Yingxing’s mound. Pretty. It’s not a word he's been called before. Good-looking, daunting, spiteful, but never pretty.
It wrings a swear from him in his own ancient tongue, a vulgar and caustic curse at whatever higher being put Yingxing in his path to torment his existence. It's an archaic language, impossible to pronounce by anyone who wasn't born with the intricate vocal cords of a Vidyadhara. To most people, it sounds ugly; a string of collapsed vowels and intrusive noise that sometimes even Dan Feng himself finds repulsive. Yet Yingxing is sweet enough to pay attention and ask him what he meant. Even as he's fingering himself.
"It means you're beautiful too, Yingxing." Dan Feng grunts the lie, or the truth, and it tastes like blood because he's accidentally bitten his tongue in the heat of his own panting. "Pretty like the stars in the sky." He doesn’t give the boy a chance to process the compliment. Looming over Yingxing, he kisses him hard with teeth and tongue, sealing it with spit that tastes of his blue blood. In return, Yingxing looks up at him with a terrifying, wide-eyed reverence, as if Dan Feng is the greatest thing that has ever happened to him.
"You’re hurting yourself. Let me do it," Yingxing says, his voice steadying as he reaches out. He catches Dan Feng’s wrist just as he gets impatient, stroking himself with a harder and more punishing grip. Under the heavy weight of a teal stare, Yingxing sneaks a hand between them and tries his best to wrap it around Dan Feng’s dicks. His palms are so much smoother, and they pet him gently, thumbing at the little ridges.
Vidyadhara hands are scaled, their fingers tipped with claws sharp enough to nick flesh. They’re a violent species, meat-eating predators who rip and tear and tread over corpses to ensure their own survival. Dan Feng has tried to lay with his own kind before, but the memory leaves him disgusted and empty. Their skin is too cold and their pulses too slow; pressing against another Vidyadhara felt like tangling limbs with the dead. Even jerking off by himself is painful if he’s not mindful of the scales, and there is no expression for making love in their mother tongue either. Only mating. A hollow, predatory act that leaves him feeling like he was just another carcass being picked over.
"Do you feel a bit better?" Yingxing murmurs. Braced on his knuckles, Dan Feng looms between his thighs, watching the boy eye him up lovingly. Yingxing is a godsend gift. A mercy he doesn't know how to carry, and he feels horrible for sometimes snapping at him or poking fun at his little quirks, even as a joke. Dan Feng can’t imagine what single, solitary good deed his past lives could have possibly committed to deserve a blessing this warm and alive.
"Yes." The pain is all the same. In the corner of the room, Yulan’s shadow writhes with a voyeuristic, ink-black interest, but Dan Feng can’t look away from the boy. Yingxing’s smiles and his diamond-shaped pupils have blown so wide they’ve swallowed the purple of his irises, leaving his eyes dark and fixed. It’s uncanny, even terrifying, but Dan Feng finds the raw vulnerability of it achingly cute. The hands on his dicks are so soft too.
In this airless room, the universe has shrunk until it is composed of nothing but the two of them. Dan Feng is so lost in the boy's stare that he barely hears the shift in tone.
"I'm talking about the pain, not your dicks! You weirdo. Don’t lie to me!" Yingxing huffs a tiny laugh, then he leans closer until their foreheads almost touch, his wide eyes searchingly soft for Dan Feng’s. He offers a compassionate smile, and Dan Feng thinks it’s the kind of look a creator gives a broken machine he still intends to fix.
"I'm not." Dan Feng allows himself to smile, too.
The carnivorous nature of his species has blessed them all with a smile too wide and too full of teeth to be considered friendly. Yingxing doesn’t really notice that, and he kisses his neck in acceptance.
" 'Xing,'" Dan Feng starts, trailing off as he sweeps away blue wisps of hair that stuck to Yingxing’s sweaty temples. "Where are the condoms?"
"Mmm, I don’t know." Yingxing offers a languid, half-lidded look, his eyes tracking the movement of Dan Feng’s clawed thumb. He swallows hard, and his Adam’s apple bobs when the tip of the claw drifts downward, hovering just a hair’s breadth from the delicate pink of his waterline.
"Do not be difficult," Dan Feng says, his jaw setting with a trace of disappointment as he pulls his hand away. "I am doing this for you." The sudden lack of touch seems to sober Yingxing, the skin of his cheek that had lain underneath Dan Feng's palm growing cold.
"I don’t know why you bother with this. It’s not like you can get me pregnant." That lovely, smitten lilt vanishes from his voice the moment things stop going his way. "You didn’t go around fucking anyone else, did you? You’re clean, right?" Yingxing hates sharing, and it’s never good when other people are mentioned. He gets sharp, brittle, or snappy and tries to find a way to wound Dan Feng before Dan Feng can find a way to upset him back. It’s his usual defense when he’s irritated.
Dan Feng feels the boy stiffen under his weight, but it’s a hollow fear. What Yingxing doesn’t know and what Dan Feng would never admit is that he is much more scared of intimacy and relations than he lets on. People don’t usually like his stuck-up personality either. It’s a miracle he actually found someone compatible enough to tolerate him. Yingxing is annoying and arrogant, but he’s kind where it counts, and Dan Feng simply isn't. They fall into place just right, mortal and silly quirks filling the cold gaps in Dan Feng like a jigsaw.
"Disease is not an issue. I don’t bed others." Dan Feng catches his chin, staving off the way Yingxing sways his head from side to side like a restless, irked child. He has to tighten his grip when Yingxing snaps his teeth, trying to catch a stray finger, his teeth clicking inches from Dan Feng's knuckles. "Enough of this," he growls, thumb pressing into the dip of Yingxing’s chin. "Listen to me."
"I don’t care! I like it better without one!" Yingxing snaps, and a foot goes swinging toward Dan Feng’s groin, coming far too close for comfort. It wouldn’t be the first time he tried kneeing him in the dick. Dan Feng meets it with a warning glare before letting out a heavy, defeated sigh.
Fine. He tells himself it doesn't matter; nothing will come of this union anyway, so why should he fret over shed flesh and the temporary pains of the body? He knows he’ll feel the rot of guilt later for the truths he’s keeping, but he reminds himself he’s been an egotistical asshole for centuries. Why start worrying about the details now? Perhaps hanging around Yingxing, within this sunny vessel of a ship that is the Zhuming, has planted a sliver of humanity inside him. Or, at the very least, it has unveiled the one he already had, hidden somewhere in the cold depths of his soul.
A few more moments of rutting against each other placate Yingxing. Pale hands stroke him slowly, base to tip, thumb dragging over the sensitive veins and ridges until Dan Feng’s hips jerk and a low and cracked groan rumbles out of him. "You think you can fit both?" He grunts through clenched teeth.
"Yes, please. I want it," Yingxing says, guiding the heads back down with careful fingers, nudging them against his own entrance.
It’s a good thing that he’s still slick. So wet that the pointy tip parts his folds easily, catching just enough on the skin to make him shiver. Dan Feng’s hand meets Yingxing’s on the cocks. He's trying in some way to comfort him through it; Yingxing appreciates the gesture as he lets him do the rest. His manicured hands settle on Dan Feng’s sides as he clings to him and tilts his head up to lick the corner of his mouth.
Rocking their bodies in tiny motions, they ease the head inside first. Yingxing exhales shakily, his hips raised up, and reaches further up his back and pulls Dan Feng forward, cradling the back of his neck.
They build a decent rhythm, and Dan Feng would like to be more involved, but his side is killing him. Still, Yingxing seems content enough, his moans low and steady as he takes the few lazy thrusts Dan Feng can manage. He forces his mind to fixate on the aesthetics of the mortal face before him, on the way their bodies look joined together. He doesn't want to lose the boner he worked so hard for and make a fool of himself another time that night.
Sex with Yingxing has always felt good, even back then, when the boy couldn't stand him for more than the two hours of intimacy they shared every few days. Now, Dan Feng likes to think his forced proximity to Yingxing’s workplace has landed them on better terms. The mortal’s willingness to let him in his most intimate insides further fuels their chemistry that was once just friction. Months ago, Yingxing was one word away from losing his grip on his civility, and now he’s flushed a pretty pink across his face and chest. If Dan Feng cranes his neck a tad lower, he can see that same color blooming between his legs, too.
Blunt nails massage his scalp before those same hands slide down his back, petting his skin and tracing the path of scales that go down his spine. He has to be careful; he wants so badly to melt into him, but he refuses to flop his entire weight of dense muscle onto Yingxing’s frame. His side aches with every roll of his hips, and it makes Dan Feng shift his weight carefully, pushing up onto his knees to ease the pressure off his injured side. The new angle opens everything up, stripping away the safety of the shadows between their bodies and really lets him look at the creature beneath him.
Ephemeral and smiling up at him, Yingxing’s lips are wet, and his skin is shiny, covered in a thin layer of sweat that Dan Feng wants to lick off him. He’s got the nicest tits Dan Feng has seen on someone, rising and dipping in time with his breathing.
Then there’s the faint trail of dark hair running down the center of his stomach, disappearing into the neat patch above his mound. His abs flex subtly with each slow tilt of his hips as he insists on meeting Dan Feng’s thrusts with his own. They aren’t sharp-cut like Dan Feng’s. Yingxing hasn't spent centuries mastering swordsmanship (he was never a natural with a sword; Dan Feng thinks he’s lacking the discipline for it) or bleeding on a battlefield, but they’re strong enough to show nicely when he tenses before softening back into that thin layer of body fat as he relaxes into the mattress.
Between them, where Dan Feng is buried to the hilt, Yingxing’s cunt is obscene in the best way possible. Objectively speaking, it's the prettiest pussy to ever cross his path. The lips of his cunt are swollen and parted wide around both cocks, inner folds clinging wetly to the cocks. He’s mesmerized, like an idiot, by the image of ridged blue on smooth, warm pink and how it stretches Yingxing’s rim tight. A constant excess of slick drips down between them, short strings of it connecting their bodies every time Dan Feng pulls back even slightly. One abrupt slide gets Yingxing twitchy, and his legs fall open even wider.
When scaled hands slide to Yingxing’s hips and his thumbs press into those soft divots above his pelvis, Dan Feng starts tasting blood again at the back of his tongue. It doesn’t bother him. Right now, he’s so horny that neither the blood nor the killing ache in his side matters. How could he care when he’s inside the only person who ever liked him for his atrocious personality rather than his title? Yingxing feels hot and alive around him, and Dan Feng hasn’t felt this way in a long time, trapped in that narrow, desperate space between his own pain and the warmth of another soul.
"I think you should stay longer here," Yingxing suggests, his voice nasal, almost reedy, smiling (seductively? He’s obviously trying to boost his cause, but Dan Feng thinks he looks rather silly.) "Ah-! We could do this every day." He winces. A sharp intake of breath at a particularly hard thrust, and his hands fly up to grab Dan Feng’s arms, trying to slow him down.
It’s a tempting idea. At his current and official quarters, the priestesses of Ardens Regia bare their teeth in polite, terrifying smiles every time he dares to show his face. He despises the salty, duty-bound food they prepare or the mindless songs of praise they insist on singing to their ruler every morning at dawn, and how their voices get shaky with a devotion he’ll never inspire.
"I'm not just your toy, Yingxing." Dan Feng says, though he wouldn't mind it. Yingxing’s bed is warm, and his cunt is even warmer. His voice is nice, too, and they get along quite well. Well enough that Dan Feng is starting to realize he doesn’t really want to leave.
"C’mon," Yingxing pleads, tilting his hips to meet the next thrust and clenching around him. He hooks his heels over Dan Feng’s lower back, pulling him in. "We can go out too."
"With what money?" Dan Feng snorts. He sounds more amused than cruel, though the judgment is still there. "You can barely afford to eat." He knows Yingxing is charming enough that his mothers and those priestesses likely keep him fed just for the pleasure of his company, but the thought of it grates on him. Dan Feng would rather bankroll the man himself than endure another moment with Yingxing’s family or meet any of them more thoroughly. Just the memory of his brother is enough to make his jaw tighten. He has zero interest in playing nice with a snotty nine-year-old who thinks he’s entitled to every second of Yingxing’s daylight.
"Yours." Yingxing huffs, the word breaking in the middle as his hips collide with Dan Feng’s in a heavy slap. He has the gall to flash a toothy, strained grin, and his eyes scrunch into purple, teary slits that crinkle at the corners.
Of course, it’s his money, but at least the boy offers a great deal for it. Yingxing’s middle and index fingers come together, pressing right over the hood of his clit. The small, swollen bud was already peeking out, flushed darker than the surrounding skin. He starts rubbing in tight, slow circles clockwise at first, then switching direction in small, unsteady motions, matching the lazy rhythm of Dan Feng’s hips. His fingertips are already shiny with slickness, sliding easily over the hood and occasionally dipping lower to brush the shaft of his clit itself or stroke the rest of Dan Feng’s cocks that are not stuffed in him.
"I’ll think about it." Dan Feng says, a little unsteady. He looks down where Yingxing is flicking his clit. His mouth has gone slack without him realizing, and he's staring so hard he forgets to swallow. A thin string of saliva gathers at the corner of his lip, then falls free, dripping down his chin before he even registers it’s happening. The droplet falls and lands right on Yingxing’s clit, right where his fingers are circling.
He feels fucking pathetic, but Yingxing thinks it’s the funniest thing ever and giggles. "You’re so cute!"
A rush of embarrassment tightens in his chest at the undignified level he’s stooped to, while Yingxing coos and smiles too well, his gaze heavy and fond as it licks over Dan Feng.
"Here, you do it." He takes Dan Feng’s scaled wrist into his hand and guides him gently. "It feels better when it’s your fingers." He’s still doing the bulk of the work, relishing the way Dan Feng drags his hand through a daze of embarrassment, but he savors the involvement anyway. His thumb is rubbing against the scaled skin as he helps him move his fingers. "Just like I showed you." Yingxing drawls as he finally takes his hand away. It’s Dan Feng’s time to shine.
Two fingertips pressing lightly at first, then starting slow, steady flicks right over the clit, matching the drawn-out roll of his hips. Every time he grinds forward, the ridges on his cocks drag deep while his fingers keep working the sweet spot.
If he has learned anything from sleeping with Yingxing, it’s that he should never let up once it starts feeling good. He’s been a diligent student, and the effort pays off. Yingxing’s breath hitches, and his thighs tremble around Dan Feng’s waist, stomach fluttering visibly. Speech is beyond him now; he only moans softly, and his glassy, empty gaze zeroes in on Dan Feng’s noble face.
It’s a beautiful sight. Yingxing looks in love, and the weight of that look hits Dan Feng hard; no one has ever been in love with him before. But then the boy’s leg jerks, his heel catching him hard in the flank, and whatever sweet dreams of pleasure and glee he has are washed away.
Pain flares through his side, sharp enough to rattle his ribs and leave him breathless. The urge to cough in shock is rising high in his throat, and he almost loses his balance and squashes Yingxing under him. But for the sake of love and lust, he grits his teeth against the tremor and tries to keep the pace steady, never speeding up or pulling back. It’s pointless; the blood is already receding, and whatever he was feeling between his legs falters as the pain kills the high.
His only regret is that he can’t see Yingxing’s face as his insides flutter and squeeze around both now-softening cocks. He makes a mangled sound that starts as a low, frustrated growl and thins into a whine.
It’s a tough pill to swallow: an entire nation’s High Elder, brought low by a coward. Dan Feng wants to find the bastard who managed to slip him a roofie and eviscerate him with his bare hands, but right now he’s in a tight spot (quite literally!), and he needs to figure some things out. Yingxing is so close, mouthing "please, please" into the pillow and trembling under him, and Dan Feng can barely do anything.
No one comes on flaccid dicks, so he does what has kept him at the head of the Luofu for centuries: he improvises. Deep in the depths of his mind, Yulan’s ghost howls in a jealous rage. A fatal lack of this very instinct is exactly what killed him. It would rather be flesh and bone, buried deep inside Yingxing, than a shattered, permanent haunting locked away in its successor’s skull.
He slides his hand lower. Two clawless fingers, slick with Yingxing’s own wetness, press against the already stretched rim right beside his softening cocks. He pauses for a heartbeat in warning, but he doubts Yingxing even cares what’s happening to him as long as he gets to come. When he shoves them in, the stretch is overwhelming.
Yingxing drags him down, pulling the heavy weight of Dan Feng’s body onto his own. It doesn’t help the pain in his flank, but the blunt intimacy of it makes the discomfort even a little bit more bearable. As usual, the boy isn't loud; he only gasps and whines small sounds into Dan Feng’s ear as the extra thickness forces his entrance wider. Dan Feng can feel it too, as Yingxing is clamping down around his fingers and dicks.
The boy babbles something incoherent, but Dan Feng can’t make sense of it. "I’ve got you, I’ve got you," he rasps in return, voice hoarse from pain and effort. He doesn’t thrust hard. He can’t. So he just curls his fingers deep, hooking them and pressing upward against the sensitive spots inside Yingxing’s cunt, while he maintains the slow, grinding movement of his hips.
Dan Feng gets his desired outcome because, in a moment, Yingxing’s whole body is locking up around him. As expected, the extra pressure has pushed him over the edge as his thighs clamp around Dan Feng’s waist, hips jerking in tiny, helpless spasms while his pussy pulses and milks everything inside him.
They stay joined for a long moment, chests heaving in the dark, Dan Feng’s heavy weight carefully braced on his elbows so he doesn’t crush the life out of him. He’s not even sure he came. The pain in his ribs has blurred the lines of his pleasure, but his sticky, overly wet fingers are proof enough when he finally drags them free. Yingxing doesn't let him pull away, and he insists on licking them clean with his soft, human tongue.
Under any normal circumstances, he’d find this extremely attractive. But right now, the burden of his fatigue is too much. He just wants to curl up and sleep for an entire week.
"That was so good." Yingxing mouths into his neck, cuddling up to him.
Dan Feng isn’t sure if the boy is still drunk on the alcohol from earlier that night or if he’s just so cock-drunk and satisfied by their sorry excuse for sex. Regardless, a quiet pride settles in his chest; he’s just happy he was of use in any way at all.
"Mhh." Dan Feng makes a small sound. He wants to manifest his tail so badly and let it curl around both of them, but that would shatter his cover, and Yingxing might freak out. So far, he’s been such an excellent actor that his partner hasn’t figured out that every low grunt is born of shitty, raw pain instead of pleasure.
Yingxing looks so breathlessly happy, praising his astonishing performance. "I've known you for so little, yet it feels like I've known you forever." He whispers, kissing his cheek tenderly, then the corner of his eye. The boy goes to trace the sharp edge of the scales on his chest, his fingers drifting up to where the skin begins. He’s getting fidgety and restless, trying to bury himself in Dan Feng’s arms, and Dan Feng, as stiff as he is, lets him.
"It’s the circumstance, Yingxing." Dan Feng says, his voice as low as he drags his body toward the edge of the bed. He presses himself against the wall, and the coolness of the plaster offers some fleeting calm to his hot skin. The fever hasn't broken. If it holds for more than a few days, he’ll have to swallow his pride and see a doctor for a cure.
Dopamine, oxytocin, and adrenaline, but not endorphins, for Dan Feng. The pain is back, and it’s vicious. This storm of hormones is making them act enamored with each other and their situation. Dreary nobles and insignificant apprentices finding solace together under the cover of the night must be a pretty common subject for romance novels these days.
Yingxing is dripping white, and a lot of it, when he finally gets up for the bathroom. Dan Feng stays still, watching it ooze down the inside of his thigh. He’ll have to ask him later if he’s ever read a story like that; for a nobody, the boy has a surprisingly vast collection of physical books.
Even if most of the shelves are a mix of physics, mathematics, and crude porn, they’re an irreplaceable wealth. No matter the genre, physical books are so rare these days that they’ve become more expensive than jewelry. As childish as it sounds and unfitting for a man of his standing, Dan Feng thinks his favorite kind are plain stories.