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Nowhere on the Luofu was safe from the past. Dan Heng found himself exploring delves based on where he thought Dan Feng would not have gone, but the sky and the sigh of the wind were inescapable, stalking Dan Heng with the threat of another’s nostalgia.
He had taken to walking through Cloudford when he couldn’t sleep. Now he knew of Dan Feng’s Foxian comrade, and wondered if Dan Feng hadn’t come here after all, to see his friend off, or greet her on return. Still, it was quiet at night, and the solitude soothed Dan Heng’s spirit.
This night, it was not quiet. Another walked these paths. Dan Heng chose a corridor with an easy exit behind him, then spoke into the shadows.
“Show yourself.”
That man. Ren. He strode into the space, a stain on the moonlit ground. Den Heng shuddered. Jagged memories roused in his mind. They flooded Dan Heng with unfamiliar feelings, pulsing dark and red hot, like the nightmares that chased Dan Heng away from his bed.
His hand shook as it grasped for Cloudpiercer: It always did the first few moments, as if resisting Dan Feng’s pull on his flesh. Dan Feng’s spear, Dan Feng’s skill. Dan Heng could never forget it.
“What are you doing here?” Dan Heng asked, voice pitched for the too-short distance between them.
“I’m not here for you.”
Ren stopped just outside of Cloudpiercer’s reach. He looked Dan Heng over, sedate. The mara did not have Ren’s mind right now, but the lack of Ren’s typical, instantaneous hostility disturbed Dan Heng. Elio still has plans for you, Ren had said. How many more times would they meet?
“Why should I believe you?” The question was rote. If Dan Heng ever had to flatter Ren, he’d call him straightforward and reliable. But such faith felt foolish, when Dan Heng did not know the whereabouts of the other Stellaron Hunters.
“Do, or don’t.”
Ren walked closer. Unsteadiness in his gait caught Dan Heng’s eye, far from the sleek, stalking wolf that had hunted Dan Heng across the stars. Before Dan Heng could determine more, Ren was too close; Dan Heng shoved him back on instinct.
Wetness seeped into his glove. He twitched his hand back, expecting red stains and the smell of iron—but this close, he could see Ren’s bandages were white, and in the air he sensed… sweetness? Dan Heng sniffed his glove.
“What…”
Dan Heng reached out to touch the wet bandages again. Ren said nothing and did nothing, distant from himself without the mara to bind him. The sweetness teased Dan Heng’s mind, beckoning like a soft dream.
He jerked open Ren’s coat.
A bead of fluid dripped down Ren’s torso, milky in color. No—milk, leaking from a nipple through the soaked, sagging bandages.
A black, boiling tide swept through Dan Heng’s body, evaporating his breath. “You’re pregnant?” He asked, urgently. He pressed his palm against Ren’s flat stomach, and could find no softness there. He could tell no more without Dan Feng’s healing gift, a thought that whipped up the dark waters churning within him.
Ren barked a short laugh. “No. This body reconstructs itself as it pleases after it is destroyed. It results in… quirks.”
Ren looked away from Dan Heng as he spoke. Ashamed, perhaps. Dan Feng did this to him—to Yingxing—trapped him in a flesh ruled by his greatest enemy, the Abundance. Ren had ample cause to hate Dan Heng long before Jingliu shattered him with her grudge.
Yet now, with all grudges aired, Ren indulged Dan Heng’s prying, even baring the body that he abhorred. Things had shifted between them since their meeting at Scalegorge, but the new shape of them remained unclear, a gestalt shift suspended between old perspective and new. A new domain of inquiry opened before Dan Heng: what would Ren let him do?
Dan Heng could not stop himself from confirming the phenomenon once more. He pressed down on the plump curve of Ren’s pectoral, and watched milk dribble down his scar-strewn torso.
Ren grunted, pained.
“Do you need someone to…” Dan Heng’s face went hot. What could he do that Ren couldn’t do himself?
“Have you become so magnanimous with your time?” A smirk stalked the edges of his mouth. “Do not hide behind false intentions. Take what you want.”
The milk glistening in streaks down Ren’s torso did nothing to temper his arrogance. Take what you want. Like Dan Feng would. Ren’s eyes burned under his lashes, alive in himself again, showing his belly as if daring Dan Heng to rip into him. Every time his nerves regrew, he left more of his former self behind. But Dan Heng only ever seemed to draw closer to Dan Feng.
If Dan Heng could not escape the past, could not escape this man, he wanted memories that belonged to him.
New flesh, new feeling.
Dan Heng sealed his mouth around a nipple and sucked, drenching his tongue in warm milk tinged with the salt of Ren’s skin. Ren groaned, thrumming under Dan Heng’s teeth. Every sweet swallow eased the pounding in Dan Heng’s head, whetting his appetite until it devoured all uncertainty.
He filled his mouth a dozen times without pause. Ren’s hips stabbed into his palms, straining against him, seeking friction. With a surge of satisfaction, Dan Heng denied him, pinning Ren flush against the container, giving him nothing but the pleasure of being emptied by Dan Heng’s greedy mouth.
Ren panted, trying so hard to stifle himself a bead of blood dropped from his bitten lip to streak down the shell of Dan Heng’s ear, spicing the air with warm copper. Dan Heng sucked harder, kneading his teeth against Ren’s breast until a groan broke past his restraint. Warm milk settled in his belly, and heat sang through Dan Heng. He let go of Ren’s hips, cupping his hands around Ren’s chest, fingers tucked into the weave of his ribs. He pushed streams of milk out with his palms as Ren writhed under him, weak, gone from himself. Because of Dan Heng
He licked across Ren’s heaving chest to the other nipple, and took it between his teeth. Ren slammed his head back against the wall, impact echoing. The man’s powerful thighs locked around Dan Heng’s leg, his drooling sex staining through both their trousers as he shook. Merciful, Dan Heng pushed his gloved hand into Ren’s trousers, dragging past Ren’s organ—a cock or a clit, the glove prevented exploration of its morphological features, which Dan Heng regretted. But Ren’s heavy body arced and trembled like a drawn bow when Dan Heng touched him, a sensitivity implying the latter.
Dan Heng’s fingers slipped lower, worn gloves skimming Ren’s empty sex. Only now did he pause, releasing Ren’s nipple to look at him. Glassy-eyed, sweating, catching flashes of moonlight as he tossed his head. Blood streaked down his chin, his lip already healed up plump and shining.
Under Dan Heng’s scrutiny, Ren surfaced, met Dan Heng’s gaze, then yanked open his fly.
“Take,” Ren snarled, large hand fisting Dan Heng’s cock, dragging it into himself.
Dan Heng sank into him, hissing. Ren was soaked, frictionless, but his body clung to Dan Heng with possessive pressure. A golden haze hummed through his body. He nuzzled against Ren’s chest, against the drumming of his heart, milk slick under his cheek. His lips dragged against Ren’s nub, and Ren thrust his chest into Dan Heng’s mouth.
Dan Heng peered up at him. “You tell me not to hide my intentions…” he murmured. “Yet you hid yours behind mine.”
Ren’s flushed face turned away from him, more man than wrath, without the mara to puppet him. “... I did not come looking for you, this time,” he rasped. “Believe me or don’t.”
Maybe he had come to remember the pilot Baiheng. They both danced the steps of ghosts. The realization did not make Dan Heng feel better, or worse.
He sucked Ren’s nipple, mauling it with his lips and flicking it with his tongue. With each warm spurt of milk into his mouth, Ren’s body convulsed around him, spilling sticky heat down Dan Heng’s shaft, his testes, their thighs. Dan Heng could have come like, wrung dry by Ren’s ravenous body, but Dan Heng wanted more; he wanted to breach the soft seal of Ren’s womb and fill him until his stomach softened with the weight of Dan Heng’s seed.
Both hands gripping Ren’s ass, Dan Heng arched up on the tips of his toes and yanked the man down, stamping the head of his cock against that seal again and again, forcing it to know his shape. Irritation sizzled down Dan Heng’s spine as he rutted. It settled where his tail should be, ready to rip off Ren’s trousers, hoist his leg for a better angle, tease his little organ so his body might cling even more desperately to Dan Heng.
Ren struggled to stifle himself. He gasped grinding, broken noises of pleasure next to Dan Heng’s ear until he lunged against Dan Heng’s shoulder and sunk his teeth, blunted through Dan Heng’s shirt. Dan Heng muffled his own grunts into Ren’s chest, both of them muttering into the other’s skin. He ground his seed into Ren as he came, draught after draught soaking into Ren’s body.
They leaned against each other for long moments, gasping in each other’s breaths.
Only after his cock stopped twitching did Dan Heng return to himself enough to question the wisdom of inseminating a being of the Abundance.
“You—can you conceive?” Dan Heng grimaced. Of course, even if Ren could, Dan Heng could not. Not even Dan Feng could bend that fact to his will.
… Right?
Ren lolled against the wall, watching Dan Heng. Not sated—Dan Heng could see an ember in his eyes, smoking.
Dan Heng did not feel sated, either. Already blackness licked at his mind again, chasing his thoughts back to Ren’s warm, sweet milk.
“You can destroy this body if you want to be sure it doesn’t take,” Ren offered. The corner of his mouth twitched up again, barely. He touched a scar on his chest. One Dan Heng had left? Or Dan Feng?
Dan Heng stepped away from Ren. He watched his seed drip down the taut curve of Ren’s thigh. So fiercely his hand twitched, Dan Heng felt the urge to shove it back in until it did take. He wondered how well Ren would fight with his womb full of Dan Heng’s seed, golden spheres plugging his sex.
He stepped back again, shaking away the vivid image. Memories burst like ripe fruit in his mind, filling his mouth with the taste of salt and musk. Dark, red, hot. Run.
Milk pearled from Ren’s heaving chest, offering warmth and relief. Drink.
Dan Heng chose as he always did when his body and mind threatened to break him in two. He ran. But the wind chased him with Ren’s harsh laughter, inescapable.