It is the third liaison they’ve had since the onset of summer. Like the times preceding, they’ve met at a nondescript inn of Nie Huaisang's choosing, in a medium-sized town: places not so big that they’re likely to cross paths with people they know, but not so small they’ll draw too much undue attention to themselves. At Jiang Cheng’s insistence, this time Nie Huaisang chose somewhere far from Yunmeng. Somehow, a rumour has started floating around the sect that Jiang-zongzhu is finally courting someone again, and he has no intention of spurring it on.

Jiang Cheng was provided with a room number in advance, and as expected, Nie Huaisang is already there. This is the Nie Huaisang that Jiang Cheng would wager few people outside of Qinghe Nie have ever seen: sitting at a writing desk, brush in hand and looking little different from any other overtaxed sect leader. Nie Huaisang doesn’t get up, and neither of them makes each other the appropriate obeisances, though Nie Huaisang sometimes enjoys doing that, as some kind of jest. What Nie Huaisang does is pause writing and give Jiang Cheng an obvious once-over. Jiang Cheng resists the urge to shift his weight from side to side.

“Hard at work?” It sounds more caustic than he means it to, though he isn’t trying to kiss ass, either.

“Oh, hard enough. What kept you?” The tone is casual, familiar; that register of easy flirtation Jiang Cheng couldn’t replicate if he tried. His throat prickles, suddenly tight and dry.

“Work. What else?”

Back at Lotus Pier, they’re still trying to repair the damage caused by the flooding the spring’s heavy rains caused. Two recent recruits to the sect turned out to have come from families with several generations of enmity between them, and a long-standing, very reliable senior disciple died in a night hunting accident earlier in the winter, leaving Jiang Cheng responsible for keeping his son in room and board until he can track down some grandparents. They may not even exist; the disciple was born close enough to Yunmeng that it’s plausible any elder family members were killed defending it.

He’s used to being overtaxed. Still, it feels like every year there’s less of him to go around.

For many years, what Nie Huaisang represented to Jiang Cheng was reassurance that he wasn’t the least experienced or most pathetic sect leader at the conference table. Letting their adolescent friendship go to seed required little effort, and Jiang Cheng took that as confirmation of its inevitability. After all, Nie Huaisang would never have been more than a distant acquaintance if it weren’t for Wei Wuxian. Without him, there was little holding the two of them together, and Jiang Cheng didn’t need to be reminded, any more than he already reminded himself, of his days of youthful foolishness. He should’ve been more prepared for the storm ahead. He should’ve seen the way the wind was blowing. To someone like Nie Huaisang, such thoughts would never even occur—or so Jiang Cheng thought. Like the fool he has always been, try as he might to change.

He sits at a perpendicular side of the desk, places his palms on his knees, and waits for—something. A sign. That’s how this usually goes. He doesn’t know for how long he waits, but no sign is forthcoming, and Nie Huaisang seems content to continue assessing him like he’s an antique urn at auction, or whatever else it is that Nie Huaisang pays this much undivided attention. It makes Jiang Cheng’s skin feel too snug for his body.

Nie Huaisang sets the brush down and begins to shake out a cramp, but Jiang Cheng catches the thin wrist, begins rubbing firm circles into the stiff muscle. He’s acting like an idiot, but his hands itch to be put to use, and though Jiang Cheng is still unsure about the breadth of the rules that govern this—whatever it is, he’s figured out that Nie Huaisang is often receptive to more than Jiang Cheng is ever actually asked of. Sure enough, Nie Huaisang’s eyebrows rise, but Jiang Cheng’s grip isn’t shaken off.

“Gathering intelligence on Qinghe Nie’s affairs? And here I thought you were trustworthy. Letting you into my private rooms unchaperoned, and all.”

“I’m not looking at the paper.”

Nie Huaisang’s mouth purses in a strange way; he can’t tell if it’s disapproval. In either case, it’s quickly gone, and Nie Huaisang gives no protestation about the liberties Jiang Cheng has taken. Nie Huaisang’s hair is fixed the way Jiang Cheng has seen it before bed—without a guan, just put up in a simple twist with a few braids falling free. The heavy robes meant for Qinghe winters are gone; in the loose but light clothes Nie Huaisang wears now, some things are more obvious if you know what to look for, and so Jiang Cheng really is being forced to keep his eyes above the neck.

Even when Jiang Cheng moves his fingers up from Nie Huaisang’s wrist to the base of Nie Huaisang’s neck, Nie Huaisang doesn’t make a sound. Jiang Cheng presses his thumbs in deep, penetrating to the inner muscle, like he would if he was showing a disciple how to deal with the consequences of overexertion. At one point, there’s an almost imperceptible flutter of Nie Huaisang’s eyelashes. It hurts at first. That’s how you know it’s working.

✥

Nie Huaisang sprawls on the sheets in what Jiang Cheng knows is only affected disarray. The image is close to a dream he had, some months ago, when he’d dreamt of entering his rooms at Lotus Pier to the sight of Nie Huaisang waiting for him on Jiang Cheng’s bed, clad only in one of Jiang Cheng’s own robes. It was barely fastened and slipping down a shoulder.

They end up laying on their sides, kissing long and slow. It’s late afternoon in the very late summer, and their room is on an upper floor; even the air is languid and sticky. Nie Huaisang’s sweat smells warm and human, but there’s a sweetness to it that can’t just be attributed to perfumes. They’re pressed together close, and Jiang Cheng can feel the inviting give of Nie Huaisang’s sedentary flesh even through clothes.

Their hands roam over one another with absolutely no elegance. Nie Huaisang hasn’t done anything more lewd than idly grope Jiang Cheng’s ass before moving on to other places, but Jiang Cheng feels almost possessed by the urge to paw at what he can touch through Nie Huaisang’s robes. He moans against Nie Huaisang’s mouth, and burns over how obvious and immature his lust must appear. When, at some indeterminate point, Nie Huaisang’s toes drag up his calf, Jiang Cheng groans under his breath again, and Nie Huaisang pulls away, blinking quickly, as if to restore blurred vision.

“Alright, alright, that’s enough. You should take your clothes off for the next part.” As quickly as that, Jiang Cheng’s heart begins to palpitate in earnest.

Jiang Cheng strips, willing his limbs to remain steady, while Nie Huaisang leans back and watches, pink-cheeked and dishevelled from Jiang Cheng’s clumsy attentions. He’s not so ignorant that he can’t pick up on the fact that Nie Huaisang wants him. Whatever they could be said to have between them, the desire is too consistent to be insincere. Understanding of what Nie Huaisang finds desirable in him, however, still evades him. Jiang Cheng’s body is strong and quick and durable—he’s taken pains to maintain it so—but those aren’t the kind of things Nie Huaisang cares about. Not least when the things Nie Huaisang likes to direct Jiang Cheng’s body into doing tend to involve prodding at the weakest parts of him.

He fights not to fumble with his clothes. His cock has realized what’s coming next, and is bobbing, appallingly brazen, with his every movement even as the pit of his stomach twists. When Jiang Cheng, now nude, lays down at Nie Huaisang’s direction, Nie Huaisang straddles his left thigh. Jiang Cheng has to spread his legs to accommodate Nie Huaisang’s knee, and just that is enough to dry his mouth.

A significant glance. “I’m glad to see you enjoying yourself already.”

Of course Nie Huaisang can’t resist drawing attention to his debauchery. Lying naked on his back in a rented room within a parochial inn, waiting on another sect leader’s pleasure, and Jiang Cheng’s body is responding like… he doesn’t know what. Something wanton. The hot press of shame on the back of his neck only amplifies the feeling.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t reply. Nie Huaisang’s fingertips skim, almost ticklish, over Jiang Cheng’s biceps. “And you’re sure you still want to?”

He hates this. He knows Nie Huaisang knows he hates this part. He’s already done more asking than he ever would’ve wished to, except that Nie Huaisang always wants to know details, and there’s no one else Jiang Cheng can ask, and now that—now that asking is a possibility, he’s been forced to learn that there’s only so long he can hold out before he rationalizes writing rash letters in the feverish state spent awake between sordid dreams.

At Lotus Pier, he doesn’t even have the excuse that Nie Huaisang’s presence has caught him off-guard and led him down paths Jiang Cheng would not otherwise have tread. He has to live with the knowledge of what he’s admitted to wanting, and he couldn’t say whether the inevitable arrival of Nie Huaisang’s garrulous reply makes it better or worse.

“I made up my mind.”

Nie Huaisang’s hands linger over his arms, his shoulders, and then slide briskly down his chest. The touch makes him want to fidget, but not as much so as the heavy-lidded gaze pouring over him, observing all of his flaws. He’s aware of the muffled sounds of footsteps and voices in the hall, just as he’s aware of the silken texture of Nie Huaisang’s robes against his skin. Not for the first time, Jiang Cheng wonders how he measures up to the men who came before him to Nie Huaisang’s bed. There are other questions that come on that one’s heels—how many? Who were they? Were they in over their heads as well, or is it only a result of Jiang Cheng’s own lack of knowledge?—but the pressure of Nie Huaisang’s thumbs and fingertips charting the terrain of his belly and waist makes such thoughts hard to cling to.

Eventually, his shaft is embraced in a loose grip, lazily pumping up and down. Conversationally, Nie Huaisang adds, “We can do something else if you aren’t in that mood.”

What is he supposed to say to that? He’s nearly always ‘in that mood,’ ever since Nie Huaisang put the idea into his head, but he’d rather die than say it. It’s bad enough that Nie Huaisang is making him practically grovel for it as a single-occasion event.

Through gritted teeth, he mutters, “That won’t be necessary.”

Nie Huaisang’s right hand hovers in the air beside Jiang Cheng’s dick. An answering flutter rolls through his abdomen. Jiang Cheng glances at the hand for a heavy moment before bringing his gaze back to Nie Huaisang’s mild, sanguine face.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” Nie Huaisang confesses. If Jiang Cheng didn’t know better, he’d believe that Nie Huaisang really feels bashful.

“Then what’s the hold-up?”

Nie Huaisang’s mouth curls into a delicate bow of amusement, and then Nie Huaisang’s arm pulls back just the hair’s breadth necessary to backhand Jiang Cheng’s cock. A scolding tap, too slow to really hurt, but Jiang Cheng’s mouth parts in shock, as if Nie Huaisang had slapped him in earnest.

Nie Huaisang rubs a thumb over the slight redness on his shaft, already fading. “Was that good? Do you want it for real, now?”

It would be a lie to say Jiang Cheng isn’t afraid. He has a high tolerance for pain, but animal instincts remain. The swoop of fear in his gut is accompanied by a spike of nervy hunger; he can’t tell which of the two has caused his mouth to flood with saliva. He swallows, and gives Nie Huaisang a jerky nod.

Nie Huaisang’s other hand closes around the base of Jiang Cheng’s dick—to prevent him from flinching away, he realizes, with a shudder he can’t suppress. Some hair falls over Nie Huaisang’s shoulder with the movement. “Really? You’re sure?”

He ought to be ashamed of the things he came here to have done to him. He still can’t tell why he isn’t choking on his own sense of disgrace.

“Are you going to make me beg?”

Nie Huaisang’s hand turns around and winds back properly. Jiang Cheng’s abdominal muscles tense up, and his eyes are met by a cool gaze. He’s come to realize that Nie Huaisang has always been pretty, but it’s rarely been so obvious. “You can beg if you want to. I’m not going to make you do anything.”

The head of his dick meets the blunt ridge of a palm, and a whining grunt forces its way through Jiang Cheng’s nose despite all his efforts to contain it. He manages to hold his body in check everywhere except for his right thigh, which jerks up violently, and Nie Huaisang slaps it quite hard.

The greater part of the struggle, as he imagined it would be, is to master his instinctive fear response and try not to squirm away. As a succession of quick strikes fall on the side of his cock without enough of an interval for him to catch his breath, he can feel them landing both on his skin and below it. His skin stings, but the muscle below it pounds with a slower kind of pain, like an echo of the preceding blow.

Jiang Cheng pulls from deep in his chest to stay still, but his right thigh keeps bucking up reflexively, and Nie Huaisang keeps smacking it into place. The indignity of it sends goosebumps prickling across his arms. Shouldn’t he be able to manage that, at the very least? To keep it together while weathering something he’s asked for?

The strikes come unpredictably, so Jiang Cheng can’t even properly brace himself. Every time there’s a pause in the action, he’s expecting Nie Huaisang to yawn and complain about having gotten too tired, but Nie Huaisang will just move on to hurting him some other way. Quick, lighter blows will veer into slow ones that feel like they have Nie Huaisang’s whole weight put into them. At times it’s almost like a massage, only too much; other moments, Nie Huaisang will pinch and pull at tender places, like Jiang Cheng’s foreskin or the joining of his thigh and groin. Nie Huaisang always comes back to Jiang Cheng's cock, which is flushed, smarting, and as hard as it’s ever been. The raw, buzzing fire is no longer confined to his crotch but spreads throughout his body. Nie Huaisang slaps his dick with particular force, and droplets of precome splatter onto Jiang Cheng's bare stomach. This prompts a laugh. Jiang Cheng wants to be swallowed by the earth.

The shift of the mattress with their movement. The trickle of sweat down his brow. Jiang Cheng clings to these grounding details so he doesn’t get completely swept away by the force of pain and pleasure, slurred together as to become near indistinguishable. The amount of sensation caused by Nie Huaisang’s ministrations is so disproportionate to the amount of effort put in to achieve it that the part of Jiang Cheng’s brain not fully fixed in his skin wonders whether Nie Huaisang is bored. He opens his watering eyes, blinking them clear. Above him, Nie Huaisang is breathing heavily through parted lips, and Jiang Cheng realizes, with a skitter that runs down his spine to his cock, that Nie Huaisang’s hips are rocking against Jiang Cheng’s thigh. It seems unconscious, a slight back and forth motion from someone preoccupied with other things.

Even at a time like this, when his thoughts keep being scattered by shooting pain and mild terror, Jiang Cheng’s attention snags on Nie Huaisang’s edges. Nie Huaisang is his fellow sect leader, yes, but also his embarrassing teenage friend, a public joke, a liar, and a villain. His skin crawls when he remembers a-Ling’s small, pale face at the temple, and it’s enough some days for him to consider calling this all off, but something always keeps him from following through. Behind closed doors, Nie Huaisang is callous and tender, mercurial as a winter wind. Glassy eyes give way to an even gaze that conceals sweetness, which itself shrouds other, darker things that Jiang Cheng still doesn’t fully comprehend but glimpses from time to time.

Jiang Cheng isn’t capable of the kind of remove Nie Huaisang shows while making him hurt. He’s caused enough intentional pain to know—though never in this way, not intended to give anyone something they want—that he doesn’t take to it calmly. Interrogation has rarely gotten him what he wants, so he’s prone to getting furious with everyone in the wretched room, himself first among them. It never satisfies, only leaving him feeling dirty and jumping at shadows.

This kind of pain fades without a mark. It’s not connected to anything he’s done, or failed to do. They are setting out together to find out how much his body can take. Jiang Cheng himself hardly matters at all.

When Nie Huaisang lets go of Jiang Cheng's cock, Jiang Cheng’s mouth falls open. He becomes aware, in the moments of stillness that follow, that his fingers are white-knuckled in the sheets; he releases them and slowly flexes his hands, trying to encourage feeling to return, or at least normal mobility. Nie Huaisang kneads cheerfully at Jiang Cheng’s abdomen and waist, and the motion is relaxing enough in a primal way that some of his environmental awareness returns, though not enough to do away with the languor that overtakes him more and more with every heartbeat that passes without fresh pain.

It’s not to last. Nie Huaisang’s hands begin to move back to Jiang Cheng’s groin, and he braces himself for the next round, but Nie Huaisang bypasses his cock, this time. Nie Huaisang fondles his balls with an easy, rolling grip—like one Jiang Cheng’s seen used by cooks shaping dough—and then twists.

Both of Jiang Cheng’s legs jerk so hard Nie Huaisang is almost unseated.

This isn’t an expensive inn. The walls are surely thin. He should clap a hand over his own mouth, or else they’re going to be heard by the other people on the floor, but he just—he can’t. Nie Huaisang breathes, “Oh, wow. You really didn’t like that. Or you did.”

He’s shaking everywhere, from his spine to his palms. He might faint—surely he won’t, that’s ridiculous, but it feels like a real possibility. It’s like his body has twisted itself inside out, so his heartbeat runs along the length of his skin, throbbing in time with the clutch and release of his vital organs, his cock, his balls. All of him surging, struggling to keep him together.

Nie Huaisang begins to hew to a more regular rhythm. Jiang Cheng gets jerked off with one hand while the other pets at his balls almost affectionately, until Nie Huaisang tires of this and begins to hurt him again. Nie Huaisang's hand, it turns out, is just big enough to circle around the base of his sac in order to squeeze it into a taut surface that makes a crisp sound upon being slapped. It's a different form of pain, more thudding; his teeth ought to rattle.

Jiang Cheng used to have dreams—not sexual in any obvious way, but heavy with an aching heat—about being laid out on a table before Wen Qing’s cool gaze and sure hands. He would wake up hard, and quaking, and appalled at himself for thinking that way of a dead woman who declined what he had to give and who, like nearly everyone else he has loved, he failed to save. For years, long after the dreams themselves ceased, he took them as evidence of how ill-suited he was for sex. Now, when he thinks of them, he wonders whether they were glimpses of memories his mind could only recall in sleep. Though he knows better than to believe they weren’t, also, what he took them for all along.

Nie Huaisang pauses for a moment to shift around: instead of resting in between Jiang Cheng’s legs, Nie Huaisang’s knee splays over to Jiang Cheng’s right thigh, digging in to keep it still. The position is precarious; it’s not often it looks as though Nie Huaisang is putting physical effort into anything. In his delirious state, Jiang Cheng allows himself to feel touched that he’s an exception.

The next time Nie Huaisang squeezes his balls, Jiang Cheng can hear his own blood rush in his ears. The pain flares like a wave of needles under his skin. His lip trembles. Nie Huaisang makes a studious kind of sound, and then laughs. “You feel that? You’re swelling up too much for me to get my hand around it.”

He doesn’t look at himself. He can’t. He feels as though his whole body must be flushed an angry scarlet. When he blinks his eyes open, the best he can do is to look up at Nie Huaisang’s face; what he sees written there is open fascination. Nie Huaisang, aware of being watched, meets Jiang Cheng’s eyes with a glance that seems warm, though Nie Huaisang’s mouth is set neutrally. It’s something in the eyes. A moment later, and the expression is gone; Nie Huaisang looks back down at the place where Jiang Cheng is coming undone.

The most vulnerable part of him rests in Nie Huaisang’s hands, and somehow he doesn’t want to get away. He wants to give Nie Huaisang custody of himself, for a time, even though it’s foolish bordering on insanity. Nie Huaisang cannot be trusted; he knows this. And yet Jiang Cheng keeps trusting. It always surprises him, Nie Huaisang’s capacity to be kind, when it suits. Even when that kindness comes in the form of cruelty.

When he begins to come, it tears into him. He’s completely unprepared; Nie Huaisang is rubbing the head of his cock with one hand and pulling at his balls with the other, and it begins to well up in him—Jiang Cheng makes a raw sound, his toes curling—and then—

He doesn’t. In the barest sliver of time before he can come, Nie Huaisang does something to him. Jiang Cheng’s breathing is hitching and wet. He thinks he felt a hand squeezing around the base of his cock while more fingers pressed hard on his taint, and it just… stopped. It didn’t hurt, exactly, though at the moment distinguishing pain from other sensations seems like a pointless intellectual exercise.

“Spread your legs,” Nie Huaisang says, glib and demanding. He tries, but Nie Huaisang must do the work for him, crawling between Jiang Cheng’s knees and pulling him open for inspection.

The way Nie Huaisang touches him could be mistaken as soothing, if Jiang Cheng’s skin wasn’t so sensitive that even the gentlest strokes of fingertips make him wince. Nie Huaisang caresses his smarting cock and murmurs, “That’s nice, that’s good,” and other condescending nonsense. It staggers him with abject relief. He knows he isn’t, but right now he’ll let Nie Huaisang tell him he is. Nie Huaisang isn’t good either.

“Do you want more?”

A low sound of protest pushes out of Jiang Cheng’s chest before he can stuff it back. He wants to want to continue. It feels important to prove what he can take. That there’s a point to this body, to everything that’s been done to it.

Something must be written on his face anyway, because Nie Huaisang’s eyebrows rise. “Too much?” Jiang Cheng doesn’t say anything, but the corner of Nie Huaisang’s pert mouth turns up. “Just rest a bit, Jiang Cheng. I’ll be so nice to you.”

Nie Huaisang doesn’t pull away from him, which is good; otherwise, Jiang Cheng would have to beg. Soft palms run over his inner thighs and down his calves, and Nie Huaisang stops along the way every so often to leave sedate kisses on seemingly arbitrary places, like his knees. Jiang Cheng doubts anyone but Nie Huaisang has ever even imagined doing something like that to him. It’s not as though Jiang Cheng has particularly noteworthy knees.

Jiang Cheng is slowly winning the battle to even out his breath, but losing the war to get his tears to subside. The pain, though, already feels cooled by a silvery glow expanding in his chest; it hasn’t faded away—he thinks that will take quite some time—but it’s becoming more tolerable, making him feel less like he’s bursting out of his skin.

Certain sensations begin to wax in him as others wane. The juddering pain that had him squirming away from its source fades; in its place is a heightened awareness of the world outside of his body. The whisper of Nie Huaisang’s clothing against Jiang Cheng’s skin is no longer smooth, but chafing against Jiang Cheng’s burning nerves. His mind begins to foment thoughts again, of a kind. Instead of scattered, frantic thoughts that flee at the sight of the next one, there’s a slow churning within him. A kind of deep tissue bruising within his spirit, only now beginning to be felt: it will be very hard for him to give this up.

It was easier when he thought that other people’s touch didn’t matter to him. At least, not like it seemed to matter for most. The way others talk about it—fucking—you’d think that it’s an urge that comes on strong and is easily satisfied, like having to take a piss. The impulse hasn’t been absent from his life entirely, but there are times he thinks he’d retch at another person’s hands on him, and even during those rare instances when he does want it badly enough that it feels like a need, it’s never been so persistent he can’t leave himself wanting until the moment has passed. He thought, in a way, this was a sign of his responsibility in an area where many go astray. Jiang Cheng always believed that powerful men should be able to control themselves enough not to waste their money and time on lovers who can bring them nothing but fleeting pleasure, and that the urge to do so comes from a weak spirit, but what did he know? He held fast in his stubborn, jealous conviction, ignorant of how, when the time came, being wanted would burn him clean as a cauterized wound. There’s a lurch in his chest that has less to do with arousal than imprudent infatuation. It hasn’t been so long that he can’t recognize its pull.

He’s spent decades putting off marriage to a vague someday. For a long time, his excuse was that raising a-Ling demanded too much of his time, but Nie Huaisang is right; there’s no good reason any longer for Jiang Cheng not to get it over with. If he did put effort into looking for candidates, he can’t imagine anyone angling their daughters at him for any reason besides his name and position. Not with his reputation. He’s not compelled by the prospect of being politely—or impolitely—tolerated under his own fucking roof. He remembers his parents. How difficult it is to share a life.

Even if there was someone nominally willing, he dreads the thought of taking some woman twenty years his junior to bed after the wedding and then humiliating them both with his lack of experience. The only things he’s done are things you can’t ask of a well-bred young bride.

Nie Huaisang makes it seem so simple. Maybe it is, if you’re shameless enough to just say things out loud, but even if he did put himself and this bloodless daydream of a future wife through the particular misery of explaining that of the only two people he’s ever wanted to make love to, one cut him open with a scalpel and the other won’t stop writing thinly veiled letters about how much Jiang Cheng enjoys getting fucked in the ass, he can’t imagine anything would come of it but that hypothetical woman suppressing her shock and revulsion and thinking poorly of him for the rest of their mutual lives.

And even if she tried: could he even enjoy it, if the person using him didn't like it? It’s not as though Jiang Cheng reacts like this to all pain. It’s not as though he doesn’t know what it’s like to be hurt in the ways that count.

His vision has misted over again; it takes him some time to notice, because the tears aren’t accompanied by any pang in his lungs. They film over his eyes but don’t fall, until he blinks, and they coat his lashes. Through the blur, he doesn’t notice Nie Huaisang coming up to face level until Nie Huaisang lays alongside him, their bodies pressed together at leg and shoulder. Nie Huaisang reaches for him, clucking at him, but Jiang Cheng covers his face with an arm and turns away.

This isn’t what Nie Huaisang left Qinghe for, which was to get inside Jiang Cheng’s robes and maybe play-act domesticity for a few hours. The other things Jiang Cheng does when they’re in bed together are disgraceful enough, but he can stomach it when he can tell that Nie Huaisang is getting off on his debasement. He doesn’t want Nie Huaisang’s pity, least of all over Jiang Cheng asking for—what he asked for—and then not even being able to take what he’d been given without coming apart.

The more time goes by, the tighter his throat constricts, and his eyes hurt. He feels like a wrung out rag. There’s a fundamental lack in him, of brightness and ease. People have always been able to sense it. It has nothing to do with the grafted golden core. Wen Qing’s work was flawless. The defect is his own.

Behind his back, Nie Huaisang’s frame has gone stiff. Jiang Cheng hears a pattering, hesitant laugh, and then one of Nie Huaisang’s hands alights on his shoulder.

“Jiang Cheng, ah...” The hand taps him gingerly. Nie Huaisang’s voice is a low, embarrassed undertone. “Won’t you come back here?”

When Jiang Cheng doesn’t reply, there comes a sigh and a shuffling sound, and then Nie Huaisang’s face tucks itself against Jiang Cheng’s neck. The cold tip of a nose. Breath ghosting over Jiang Cheng’s throat. A small hand finds his own, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t resist it when their fingers interlace.

A little later, Nie Huaisang speaks, quietly, beside his ear. “Did I do too much? I thought… well, it looked like you were having fun.”

He swallows, and then mutters, “I just needed to catch my breath.”

Nie Huaisang hums disbelievingly. Their faces are so close that Jiang Cheng can feel the vibration in his own mouth.

When Jiang Cheng’s eyes dry up, he reluctantly rolls onto his back again. Nie Huaisang moves back down to rest a cool cheek on Jiang Cheng’s chest. Jiang Cheng is still quivering, but he decides not to worry about it, and then simply doesn’t. Imagine that.

Wide, gamesome eyes blink up at him, and Nie Huaisang’s voice comes to him as if through a thick fog, the kind that rolls off of the water on early winter mornings. “How do you feel?”

“I don’t know.” His erection has flagged. He thinks that getting hard again would hurt, possibly quite a bit. He also feels the antsy tremor in his muscles that tells him he still wants to come.

He’s braced for disdain or aloof curiosity, but the way Nie Huaisang looks at him now is—not either of those. There’s fondness there, he thinks. Some other things, too. “That’s okay. Do you want to stop here?”

“No,” he says, with a note of hysteria slipping into his otherwise controlled tone. He doesn’t want this to stop. That’s the problem.

His body is limp and uncoordinated, but he lifts an unsteady hand and places it under Nie Huaisang’s chin. A tilt of his own head, and then they’re kissing. Jiang Cheng is doing the kissing, to be specific; Nie Huaisang waits a few moments before reciprocating, as if waiting to make sure it is, in fact, a kiss, and not some kind of accident.

In the interim, Jiang Cheng has to carry it along. It’s a graceless effort, wet and quaky. He’s about to pull away when Nie Huaisang’s fingers curl against his cheek. A nimble little tongue parts his lips and then withdraws as quickly as it came. Something in Jiang Cheng’s chest squeezes painfully, and he holds Nie Huaisang more tightly to him by the nape of the neck.

He’s trying to communicate everything he can’t put into words. His gratitude. His anger. His admiration, and reproach, and how he’ll miss this far more than he was prepared for. By now, he thought he knew his way around what it is to miss things.

They separate, but reluctantly, as snarled thread. Softly, Nie Huaisang asks, “Can I touch you now? I promise I’ll be nice. I just want you to come. You’ve been really patient.”

It takes several cycles of breath to feel out the ebb and flow of his body’s need. To gauge its tidemarks. “Not—nothing hard.”

Nie Huaisang smiles and kisses his stomach. Kisses lower than that.

The pace is slow; Nie Huaisang keeps hands and teeth well free, instead tending to Jiang Cheng with languid suction and a gentle tongue. Ragged whines are forced from Jiang Cheng’s lungs. Every so often, Nie Huaisang makes sounds of satisfaction that Jiang Cheng can both hear and feel. They land solidly in his gut.

A few strands of previously tied-up hair have come loose and now lay against Nie Huaisang’s neck. This image is almost as obscene as the spit-slick noises. He has to clench his eyes shut or fall to pieces. Before he gets the chance to do either, Nie Huaisang’s own eyes flicker open, and Jiang Cheng’s thoughts must be written on his face, because Nie Huaisang leans back—the shine of saliva is smeared across a small mouth, red from use—and says, “You can grab my hair if you want. Not too hard, but... a bit hard.”

Because it was delayed, as well as tempered with pain, Jiang Cheng can feel his orgasm stealing up on him from a far distance, and he’s almost afraid of what it will do to him. His thighs and balls go tight. If his body could run away with itself, it would. He holds a loose handful of Nie Huaisang’s hair just for something to cling to.

Nie Huaisang’s hands are folded over his lower dantian, where Wei Wuxian’s golden core hums with life inside him. Jiang Cheng’s spine tingles. He feels like steel in the smelter: formless, burning to the touch, and waiting to be fashioned into something strong and good. His body has been melted down and augmented before. Maybe this is only another instance; the intensity threatens to make him into something new, if he lets it. Maybe this time whatever he is will be better.

He rasps—it takes two attempts, he has to clear his dry throat—that he’s not going to last much longer. Nie Huaisang glances up at him through lowered eyelashes, but doesn’t change course, as if Jiang Cheng’s opinions about what his body will do are irrelevant. Climax strikes him like a chimed bell. Pulsing, sharp, dousing his mind with a senseless, stinging clarity. Something shatters in him, and with it goes his breath. His mouth moves silently, and he couldn’t say whether he’s trying to inhale or to speak.

Nie Huaisang keeps sucking until Jiang Cheng has gone soft, and upon letting him go, gives the head of his cock a chaste kiss. When Nie Huaisang’s touch leaves him, Jiang Cheng manages to only protest quietly and unintelligibly. He hears rustling cloth and footsteps, and then what he thinks are the sounds of someone spitting into a cup and rinsing out their mouth.

Jiang Cheng has a hand over his eyes. He doesn’t remember putting it there, though it is inarguably his. He feels like something that doesn’t exist; like the idea of a man. It feels good, perhaps because, confusingly, he is also keenly aware of Nie Huaisang’s regard. If he’s the idea of a man, it’s an idea Nie Huaisang likes, and that thought alone could sustain him, he thinks, for quite a while. Jiang Cheng is content to just lie here and think it until something comes along and makes him do otherwise.

He’s still floating when the bed dips with weight. His hand falls to his side, but he doesn’t open his eyes, even when Nie Huaisang’s face presses against his chest. A warm blanket of serene exhaustion is settling over him; he feels an almost meditative sense of calm, but stickier, and brought about by proximity to another person, not distance from them. Nie Huaisang slings an arm around Jiang Cheng’s ribcage and squirms closer along his side.

Jiang Cheng can feel a unobtrusive bulge pressing against his thigh, but Nie Huaisang seems to have no plans to address it by any means besides the incidental stimulation Jiang Cheng’s leg provides. A few months ago, this would’ve prompted Jiang Cheng to wonder whether his own bedroom inadequacy had caused Nie Huaisang to lose the will to get off, but it’s an easily avoided mental pathway in this moment.

What Nie Huaisang says next takes him by surprise: “Do you want to do it the old-fashioned way sometime? I mean, like, with you inside me.”

It’s not so much the words that take him aback as the way they’re spoken. There’s only the barest teasing lilt in Nie Huaisang’s tone. Jiang Cheng cranes his neck a little to get a better look at Nie Huaisang’s face. Their eyes meet, and Nie Huaisang’s voice recovers some of the expected flippancy: “You’re pretty big, but I could take you. You might have to go slow, though.”

Of course he’d like it. He wants Nie Huaisang on top of him, under him, nestled in his arms. Showing him some of the other things he doesn’t yet know.

“Do you listen to yourself?”

“I’m only telling the truth! All this is your own fault, for having such a nice dick. It makes me want to play with it.”

“What—what does that even mean.”

“They’re all different? You’re a good size, and very… peppy. Not many people could’ve stayed hard that whole time, you know. ”

Jiang Cheng scoffs, but his mind turns in circles back around thoughts he had earlier, about the men who made it to Nie Huaisang’s bed before he did. There will be some after, too, no doubt. He doesn’t doubt that Nie Huaisang will be able to find other gentleman callers, after setting him aside. Nie Huaisang can carry a conversation, and has a nice enough face, and is depraved enough in bed for anyone, surely.

The last time they met up like this, the two of them didn’t even get their clothes off. They got trashed on some very well-aged liquor—Jiang Cheng had been saving it for years with no better use presenting itself—until either of them getting it up was out of the question and all they could do was talk, until Nie Huaisang fell asleep sprawled across Jiang Cheng’s lap. Thinking of it now makes his throat prickle and the corners of his eyes sting.

He thinks about a comb wrapped in cloth, stowed away in a compartment where it's rarely seen but still thought of with some regularity. He was bolder when he was young.