Work Text:
“Do you like the new box?”
It was shorter, forced Jin Guangyao onto his back with his ass supported by its side, his knees and head tucked into his chest, his arm chained beneath them, so that the bottom of his robe fell open, exposing his bare legs.
Huaisang reached in to run his hand over the back of one beautiful thigh, and Jin Guangyao thrashed uselessly. “Hush now.” Huaisang continued to touch him, and Jin Guangyao tensed wherever his hand moved but did stop fighting, surely realizing the futility. Until Huaisang’s hand slipped between his tightly bound legs. “Oh, relax,” said Huaisang. “It’s just your thighs. I’m not going to have you raped to death like you did your father.” He moved his hand higher, just shy of the genitals. Jin Guangyao’s thighs were hot and, clenched around him, tight. He thought of the minor leaders who had asked, Can we touch him? He was sure they would leap at the opportunity to fuck these thighs. But Nie Huaisang wasn’t interested in that; he just wanted Jin Guangyao to know that he owned him.
***
He lifted his hand to feel over Lan Xichen’s arms around him, and when Xichen released his tight grip, lifted it to feel Xichen’s face.
“I’m sorry,” said Xichen into Jin Guangyao’s hair as the latter traced his cheek and jaw. “This—what Huaisang has done—it’s too much.”
Jin Guangyao turned his face to press it against Lan Xichen’s throat.
“But you know there have to be consequences.”
Jin Guangyao froze. Then he scrambled out of Xichen’s arms to the corner of the bed where he pressed himself against the walls.
“A-Yao,” Xichen entreated. He moved toward Jin Guangyao cautiously, placed a hand on his knee that Jin Guangyao tried in vain to shake off. “A-Yao, I’m not going to hurt you. I—admit I was angry to learn what you’d done. I admit I’m still angry. But Huaisang has sentenced you to punishment enough. For tonight, he’s entrusted you to my care, and as long as I’m here, you will not be harmed. You will not be bound. Do you understand me?”
For a moment, Jin Guangyao remained in the corner, tucked into himself like a feral animal Lan Xichen was attempting to lure with scraps. Then, he was lured. He crawled into Xichen’s arms, threw his arm around his neck, and heaved great sobs, diminished by his sewn mouth. His face reddened easily and beautifully these days because he could never get in enough air when distressed, especially when his nose clogged up and he had to pull in ragged breaths from a tiny slit between his lips. Xichen hugged him tightly and stroked his hair, murmuring, “A-Yao, A-Yao, A-Yao.” He held him until Jin Guangyao calmed, and he continued to hold him and whisper into his hair.
Huaisang thought they might stay that way for the rest of the night and was about to move away from the peephole in boredom when Jin Guangyao’s hand slid from Lan Xichen’s shoulders down to his belt. Lan Xichen had removed his outermost layers but still had enough not to be construed as too intimate, too presumptuous.
Xichen pulled away a little to look Jin Guangyao in the eye—or at least examine his face. “A-Yao, are you sure?” Jin Guangyao nodded, and Xichen helped open both their robes.
Lan Xichen was half hard. Jin Guangyao was not.
Jin Guangyao gave Xichen’s cock a couple of awkward tugs, and then Xichen had him on his back, and their history as lovers showed itself. Xichen moved his lips over Jin Guangyao’s torso, ghosted his breath over his now wakening cock, and nipped kisses into his thighs with a familiarity that belied years of playing that body like an instrument. He applied his mouth to Jin Guangyao’s hole, and Jin Guangyao arched and moaned through closed lips. Nie Huaisang provided all his guests with a jar of oil, and when Xichen dipped his fingers into it, Huaisang had to grip his own cock tight. He’d been fisting it since they’d opened their robes, but now, he imagined himself in the room with them, that he was the oil, that it was his slick easing the way for Xichen’s fingers into his property.
Xichen fucked Jin Guangyao with his fingers and sucked his cock until Jin Guangyao, shaking and breathing hard through his nose, pulled him off by the hair. He hooked his ankles under Xichen’s ass, urging him up. Xichen followed his lead, kissing his way up Jin Guangyao’s torso to his sealed mouth. Xichen entered him slowly, and he fucked him slowly, sweetly, so nauseatingly romantically that Huaisang would have lost his hard-on if not for the anguish on Lan Xichen's face as he lay kisses to Jin Guangyao’s shoulders and neck, if not for the threads lacing Jin Guangyao’s ecstatic expression shut.
Huaisang came when Jin Guangyao did, the latter curling his lithe body into his Er-ge. In the hazy aftermath, Huaisang heard Xichen ask, “Do you want me to stop?” and Jin Guangyao must have shaken his head because he continued to fuck him until he came inside.
They stayed like that for a moment, Jin Guangyao petting Xichen’s hair, Lan Xichen inside him. Then Xichen pulled out, fetched a cloth to clean their bodies, fed Jin Guangyao some water through a reed, and arranged their bodies into a cuddle.
Huaisang let the tapestry fall back into place.
Nie Huaisang was far from celibate; he had his favorite cultivators he called on for a good time. But the last person who had held him, really held him—the last person he had let hold him—was his Da-ge.
It wasn’t enough. Nie Huaisang could keep Jin Guangyao sewn up and shut in a box for five hundred years, and it would never be enough.
***
“What was it that he said to you? ‘It’s too much’? You’ll notice he didn’t say, ‘I tried to stop it,’ or ‘I’ll set you free.’ No, he’s sat back and let this happen, just like everybody else. Honestly, I think this is his ideal situation: you shut away where you can’t hurt anybody else, but available for his pleasure.” Huaisang laughed then. “You really let him fuck you and come inside you. A-Yao, he hates you.”
***
Huaisang often wondered what Meng Yao dreamt about that made him twist and cry out so. He imagined Meng Yao strapped to a table, screaming, as Baxia split him in half. It would be slow, starting from his crotch and cutting up through his pelvis. He wondered if it would be Baxia alone, possessed by Da-ge’s resentful energy, or if Da-ge’s reassembled corpse would draw Baxia through him like a butcher to a slab of meat.
He hoped Lan Xichen would start appearing in the nightmares. Perhaps Meng Yao would cry, “Er-ge! Save me! It hurts. Please save me!” and Lan Xichen would fly to his side, grip his hand, and say, “But you know there have to be consequences.” And he would seal Meng Yao’s lips with a silencing spell so they would be still for his needle and thread.
In Huaisang’s nightmares, fears were fleeting. He would barely learn to fear one thing before his dream shuffled him off to the next. So though he might be barraged by many fears and wake up sweating, each was but a quick visitation.
Huaisang hoped the nightmare talisman did not make it quick. He hoped it drew the nightmares out, made Meng Yao feel every inch of Baxia tearing through his stomach and his chest. He hoped Meng Yao had to lie there as Xichen poked the needle in and out of his lips, dragged the thread through the bleeding holes, and, eventually, went to work on his eyes.
***
It was years before Huaisang took Jin Guangyao out of the box again.
***
It occurred to him that Lan Xichen had never taken another lover, at least as far as he knew (and he knew everything). So here he was, pathetic, asking a broken toy to love him.
***
One morning, Huaisang awoke without Meng Yao snuggled against him. Instead, Meng Yao was a few feet away, breathing hard through his nose, his arm jerking rhythmically beneath the covers.
He froze when Huaisang reached out to him. Huaisang’s fingers landed at his elbow, followed the length of his forearm down to where his hand was grasped around his cock.
“It’s okay,” said Huaisang gently, in a voice for soothing a crying child. “Keep going.”
Meng Yao did.
“What are you thinking about? Are you thinking about Zewu-Jun?” Meng Yao shook his head. “Are you thinking about me?” Meng Yao nodded, and couldn’t see the twisting of Huaisang’s face as he suppressed peals of laughter.
Meng Yao jerked off until he began to make little moaning noises with each tug. He shuffled back to Huaisang’s side and pressed his face against Huaisang’s throat as if trying to kiss him there. He crossed a bare thigh over Huaisang’s clothed one, sliding a knee toward his crotch.
Huaisang rested a hand at the small of Meng Yao’s back. “I’m not going to fuck you.”
Meng Yao whined and pressed himself closer.
“Why would I fuck you? You killed my brother. Did I say stop? Keep going. I want you to imagine it’s him. Can you get off imagining his cock splitting you open? Do you remember him fucking you? Does he fuck you in your nightmares? Does he fuck you with his saber, draw the blade in and out of your useless body?”
Meng Yao came with a sob onto Huaisang’s thigh.
“Whore,” Huaisang spat.
***
He never forgot that Jin Guangyao was smart, that he too, could play a very long game. He was not the one whom Nie Huaisang underestimated.
On the night Nie Huaisang died, he woke with the dagger already in his chest. He opened his eyes and felt he was in a dream because he could not move his limbs. He could only watch beneath heavy lids as Jin Guangyao, straddling his torso, extracted the narrow blade and brought it down into his chest again. Fire erupted in his chest. Breathing became painful. He could not move to yell.
Again and again Jin Guangyao stabbed him, until he finally settled back on his haunches, satisfied. His body was thin, malnourished, but he raised his chin with the kind of haughty regality Huaisang hadn’t seen in him since Guanyin. He held the bloodied knife out to his right, and a hand reached into Huaisang’s field of vision and took it. Jin Guangyao touched his own lips, and Nie Huaisang watched as a man in dark robes moved onto the bed and began carefully cutting the stitches open. His hair was pulled back in a high ponytail. Though he wore his sword at his hip, his headband was absent. He did not come as a Lan.
What Huaisang had not seen those years ago was Lan Xichen tracing characters into the skin of Jin Guangyao’s hip, hidden by his body and the blankets. He wrote:
He’s watching us.
He took Jin Guangyao’s hand and positioned his own palm underneath the palm of his index finger. It took Jin Guangyao a long moment to decide to reply: Yes.
Tell me what to do.
What are you willing to do?
Anything.
Would you kill him?
Yes.
Would you start a war?
If I have to.
Why?
Why indeed. It was the question Lan Xichen had asked himself over and over.
***
And he’d thought, would it not have been better if his father and mother had run away? If his father had turned his back on the Lan Clan and become a vagabond? If he and Wangji had been raised not to follow rules but to follow their hearts instead? If they had lived apart, in the wilderness, with no name but with an abundance of love? Would that not have been better than keeping his love caged, no matter what it was she’d done?
Lan Xichen had loved Da-ge, and Jin Guangyao had used him to commit his murder.
***
Learn paper man tricks from Wei Wuxian.
...
Wait for Huaisang to think you’ve abandoned me. Wait for him to leave you an opening.
At least two years.
Longer, if you have to.
A-Yao, he wrote, don’t forget.
When you are back in that box,
when you are bound and caged and plagued with nightmares,
don’t forget:
I love you,
and I will come for you.
It had been much longer than two years.
***
When Jin Guangyao’s lips were freed, he held Xichen’s hand against them, kissed each of the knuckles, licked the palm, tasting the skin and Huaisang’s blood, biting gently at Xichen’s thumb and closing his mouth around it. His brow was furrowed in something like agony, something like ecstasy.
He let the thumb leave his mouth to caress his cheek, and his lips moved soundlessly, hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure they would still do his bidding. Then he said, “Er-ge.”
Xichen smashed their lips together. Their hands tangled in each other’s hair, their tongues licked into each other’s mouths, and still Huaisang could not move.
Jin Guangyao’s eyes were next, and when they blinked open, Xichen’s were the first thing he saw.
***
“Take me from here,” he said.
“What about him?” Xichen asked.
Jin Guangyao held out a hand for the dagger, and Lan Xichen gave it to him. The last thing Nie Huaisang saw was Jin Guangyao stabbing the dagger into his eye.
***
Xichen gathered Jin Guangyao in his arms and carried him out of Nie Huaisang’s chambers, out past the fallen Nie cultivators scattered across the Unclean Realm. Most were merely asleep, lulled in the midst of their duties by the tranquil notes of a guqin. Those with the spiritual power to resist fell to a blade instead. Zewu-Jun tried so often to do no harm that it was easy to forget how much harm he could inflict.