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Lu Guang stared at the bubbling broth like it had personally offended him. He wasn’t sure when the table had turned into a trap.
Maybe it was when Vein had leaned forward, mouth curved like he hid the tastiest of secrets behind this wicked sneer of his.
Maybe it was earlier, when Cheng Xiaoshi had said, “Just go. Talk to him. See what he knows.”
Or maybe it was the moment he’d let Vein pick the restaurant—bright lights, narrow booths, and a bathroom tucked in the far corner like an afterthought.
“Still haven’t touched your plate.” Vein’s voice curled across the table, low and smug. “You think I poisoned the lotus root or something? Or should I feed you with a spoon?”
Lu’s chopsticks moved automatically, lifting a mushroom from the broth. He didn’t meet Vein’s gaze. You don’t look a lion in the eye. Although Vein resembled a sleek panther more—elegant, effortlessly graceful and greedy to the last bit.
“I’m not here for the food.”
“That’s a shame.” Vein slurped at his drink suggestively, and Lu tried his best to pretend to be oblivious. “It’s very good. And I like a man with an appetite.”
Lu’s hand paused mid-air. He blinked slowly, calculating, choosing not to rise to the bait. “I’m here to talk.”
“Talk,” Vein echoed, propping his chin on one hand. “You sure Cheng didn’t just want to give you an excuse?”
Lu finally looked up.
That smile—wolfish and unbothered—was the same as before. Smooth and secretly sharp like a blade. And Lu hated that it made his pulse jump.
“He said you’ve been...poking around,” Lu said. “We want to know why.”
“Poking? Is that what we’re calling it?” Vein’s eyes dragged across Lu’s face, slow and deliberate. “I was hoping this was a date.”
Lu didn’t flinch, but it cost him. He set his chopsticks down too carefully. “You’re deflecting.”
“And you’re lying to yourself.”
The tension was the kind that settled between bones—not quite pain, not quite desire. The hot pot steamed between them, casting fog on the glossy table. Lu could barely hear the clatter of dishes from other diners, not over the hum Vein’s words left in his ears.
“You’re curious,” Vein went on, voice lower now. “Or else you would’ve walked out fifteen minutes ago.”
He wasn’t wrong. And Lu hated that too.
He shifted his weight, gaze flicking to the exit. His chopsticks rested untouched on the edge of the hot pot, steam coiling between them like a live thing. “I stayed because I wanted information.”
Vein gave a slow blink, leaning forward on one elbow, the tilt of his mouth far too self-satisfied. “So formal. Still pretending this is a mission? What are you hoping to find, Lu Guang? Evidence? Secrets? Or just something to make it easier to hate me?”
Lu’s jaw tightened. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I don’t need to.” Vein reached out and nudged Lu’s bowl, casual and intimate, like they were on a real date. “You flinch every time I lean in, but you haven’t moved. That’s not disinterest. That’s restraint.”
Lu’s fingers curled into a fist in his lap.
“You have a theory about me,” Vein continued, voice almost gentle now, like he was explaining something to a slow learner. “And you want to be right. But that means staying close. Watching. Seeing what happens when the script breaks.”
“I don’t need a theory,” Lu muttered. “I’ve seen what you do.”
“Have you?” Vein’s eyes glittered. “Because I think what bothers you most is that I’m not what you expected. You thought I’d be easier to label. Monster. Killer. But I talk too much, laugh too loud, and flirt like I want your skin under my teeth.”
Lu pushed his chair back, scraping against the tile—not standing, just shifting, like he needed a little more air.
“There’s nothing about you that could be of interest to me,” he said. “Not personally, at least, as you seem to imply.”
Vein smiled, slow and deliberate. “You’re lying again.”
Lu hated how heat crawled up his neck. He hated how easy it was for Vein to see him—not as a whole, but in jagged pieces he didn’t even understand himself.
“If you’re trying to provoke me,” he said, voice low, “you should try harder.”
“Oh, I plan to.” Vein leaned in a fraction more. “But not here. Not yet.”
Something electric passed between them—not quite touch, not quite threat. Just a shift in air pressure. A warning. One that you don’t heed, deliberately, just to see what happens next.
Lu stared at him for a long second, then stood, finally.
“I’m going to the bathroom.”
Vein didn’t stop him. Just tilted his head and said, without looking away:
“Try not to imagine me behind you while you’re in there.”
Lu’s hand twitched at his side.
And that—that was the worst part.
Because he already had. As a precaution, of course—it’s only wise to imagine all possible outcomes and stay wary of all sorts of danger. To stay away from them—not to be lured straight into the snares. Maybe Lu wasn’t as smart as everyone thought, though.
The bathroom was mercifully empty.
Lu stepped in and let the door swing shut behind him with a soft groan of hinges. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like gnats, white and cold. He leaned over the sink, turned the faucet on too hard, and splashed his face with water that bit at his skin.
Focus.
Recenter.
Forget the way Vein’s voice clung to his ears like smoke.
He grabbed a coarse paper towel and pressed it to his cheeks, jaw clenched. The heat under his skin wasn’t from the hot pot. It wasn’t even from the damn banter. It was—
It was deeper than that. Underneath the surface. A flush that started low and slow, like shame curling up from the bones. The kind that didn’t burn out quickly—just simmered, refusing to be named.
He scrubbed harder than he needed to, like friction could erase the feeling, could rub out the memory that had already settled itself into the folds of his body like muscle memory. Like instinct.
He threw the towel into the bin and looked up at himself in the mirror. His reflection stared back: a little too flushed, a little too caught off-guard. His collar askew, lips a little parted. Someone else might’ve said he looked debauched. Like he wanted something to happen. Like he anticipated it and prepared accordingly, being the time freak that he was.
This was stupid.
He should leave.
His gaze flicked to the small, high-set window above the last stall—grimy glass, slightly cracked open to vent the steam. Technically possible. Logistically idiotic. Something that Cheng would do. Some people had “what would Jesus do?” to guide them; Lu had “what would Cheng Xiaoshi do?” to steer him away from stupid decisions, even if he sometimes itched to make them. He was human after all. But he was also more rational than most people – he thought in advance, grew accustomed to the pain of consideration. Such an escape would not only be dreadfully undignified—he’d tear his coat, maybe get stuck halfway out, and Vein would find him twisted like some second-rate noir escapee with no dignity left.
Still, the thought had its charm.
Lu took one slow breath, already stepping back toward the door when it creaked open.
Vein’s silhouette slid into view, easy and inevitable.
“You’ve been in here a while,” he said, like it was an observation and not a threat.
“Maybe I needed a minute away from your voice.”
“Harsh,” Vein said, unfazed. He didn’t close the door. He just leaned against it, one hand still on the handle. “Or maybe you were considering the window.”
Lu didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
Vein smirked. “Don’t worry, you’d never fit.”
Lu rolled his eyes. “You followed me.”
“Of course I did. You looked like you were going to bolt, and I don’t like being left with the bill. That would be going against basic date etiquette, don't you think, Lu Guang?”
“I thought this wasn’t a date.”
“It wasn’t,” Vein said in this irritatingly sing-song manner of his. Then he took a slow step forward. “Until you made it one.”
Lu backed up half a step. Just one.
“I’m not playing your games.”
Vein’s eyes were sharp in the mirror behind him, his mouth just a little too pleased. “That’s cute, coming from someone who keeps stalling in the bathroom like he’s waiting to get cornered.”
“I’m not—”
“You are,” Vein interrupted, closing the space between them. “You’ve been hovering by the door for thirty seconds. That’s stalling. You’re practically begging for it.”
Lu’s back hit the cold metal edge of the last stall.
He hadn’t meant to back up that far. Hadn’t realized he’d been moving at all.
Vein’s eyes dropped to Lu’s mouth for a second too long.
“You could still leave,” he said softly. “But you won’t. That would make you weak, wouldn’t it? You’d rather willingly submit than bolt like a chased rabbit.”
As if to prove his words, Vein caught his wrist and pressed him back against the stall’s closed door. Lu’s breath hitched, his body obeying a logic his mind refused to process.
“You don’t scare easy,” Vein murmured, too close. “But you flinch like someone who wants to be caught.”
Vein’s hand was at Lu’s collar now, cool fingers tracing just beneath the fabric.
“This isn’t—” Lu’s protest frayed halfway through. “We’re not doing this.”
“Then push me off.”
Lu's elbow shot forward, catching Vein square in the ribs—sharp, trained, with purpose. Vein grunted but didn’t back off. If anything, it made him grin wider, lips parting just enough to flash teeth.
“There he is,” Vein murmured, pressing harder against him. “The bite under the silk.”
Lu twisted his wrist, trying to break Vein’s grip as a hand slid low, far too low, fingers creeping with a predator’s patience along the waistband of his trousers.
“You will regret this,” Lu snarled.
Vein’s mouth brushed the edge of his ear, breath hot. “I rarely regret things I do, you know why? Because I simply take what I want. And right now, I want to taste the part of you that rebels while the rest of your body begs.”
Lu wrenched his arm free—half a second of separation—but Vein used it to push him harder against the stall door, shoulder to metal with a thud that echoed too loudly.
“Still think this is about wanting?” Vein said. “I’m starving.”
He pressed in close, grinding their hips together with deliberate cruelty. His voice dropped to a low rasp. “I could eat you alive, Lu Guang. Strip you down and lick the parts no one else dares name.”
Lu’s fist shot toward his jaw—but Vein caught it mid-air, twisting his arm and shoving it above his head, pinning it against the door.
The other hand dipped into Lu’s trousers with a brutal smoothness, fingers curling over heat with obscene confidence. Lu bucked hard, breath snarling between clenched teeth, face flushing with fury—and something he didn’t want to name.
“Let—go—”
“Say it like you mean it.” Vein's lips skimmed Lu’s throat, teeth grazing with barely restrained hunger. “Or shut up and let me feed.”
Lu’s legs trembled. And when he didn’t speak, didn’t shove again, realizing with something too cold, too solid to be called dread, that any further struggle was futile, Vein laughed under his breath—dark and delighted—and took him in hand like he already owned him.
Vein’s grip was firm, unrelenting—not a question, not a tease, just a statement made through touch. Lu’s fingers curled against the stall wall, scraped against metal. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe properly. His body reacted with a traitorous ease, each shuddering breath making it worse.
He didn’t say anything.
Didn’t ask for it.
Didn’t stop it either.
The sounds were awful—sharp breaths, the rustle of clothes, the low, almost amused hum Vein made when Lu twitched in his grasp. It was humiliating how fast his body folded under the pressure. His own skin felt foreign, flushed too hot and tight, and Vein didn’t stop—didn’t slow down— just kept going like he knew the rhythm of Lu’s pulse better than Lu did himself.
When it ended, his climax nothing more than a chore, Lu sagged forward, forehead grazing the stall wall. His vision swam. His body reacted on its own, responding to stimuli in the only way it knew. He had no say in the matter.
How could anybody respect Lu Guang’s wishes if even his own body betrayed him?
Vein didn’t let him rest.
There was a shift—one hand on Lu’s hip now, the other dragging him upright by the back of his shirt like a discarded puppet. Lu barely registered it. The sounds of the restaurant beyond the bathroom door felt a thousand miles away, muffled and meaningless.
There was no preparation. No warning. Just pressure, invasion, heat.
Lu’s breath caught in his throat—sharp, shallow. His knees gave out for a second, and Vein caught him by the hips, too easily. The stall shook faintly. The cold metal pressed to his cheek as Vein moved behind him, relentless.
It should’ve been unbearable. The filth of it, the publicness of it—they were standing in the middle of the bathroom, for fuck’s sake. Vein didn’t even bother to corner Lu inside a stall, as if trying to make a statement about how shameless he was. Why would he hide his vice, if he was used to wearing it proudly on display, like a fine, stylish garment, quirky and tastefully sparkly and tailored specifically to him? Maybe Lu should be glad he wasn’t dragged out of the bathroom and put on display in the middle of the bar because Vein wanted to brag before people with his new possession, so easily, so effortlessly acquired. Because honestly, breaking Lu Guang didn’t even make him break a sweat.
It all should’ve lit Lu’s nerves with shame, with fear. But everything inside him was slipping sideways, out of reach.
His mind left the room before his body could.
Dissociation wrapped around him like a curtain. Safe, soft, silent.
He stared blankly at the scratched-up stall door in front of him, watching paint peel like it mattered more than anything happening behind him.
There would be time to feel it later.
Time to hate it.
Time to figure out why he hadn't screamed.
But for now, there was only this. Heat. Pressure. Breathing that wasn’t his, and faint sounds he didn’t want to believe came from his mouth.
And the sound of Vein’s voice, low and ragged, murmuring something close to his ear—something that sounded an awful lot like praise—lingered longer than it should have. As if Lu had earned something. As if he’d given it freely. As if Vein had won a game Lu never agreed to play.
“Shit, you’re taking it so well, Lu—like you were made for this, made for me. And yet, you tried to lie to me, say you didn’t want it. Like you didn’t need it as much—fuck, more than I do. Good luck lying to yourself after this.”
Vein bit down on the crook of Lu’s neck and kept sinking his teeth into the soft flesh until the bittersweet taste of blood flooded his tongue. Lu was a delicacy he’d been craving for way too long. And after this initial consummation, he still couldn’t have enough.
Lu’s knees threatened to fold again, but Vein’s hands steadied him—gentle now, absurdly so. Like an apology, or worse, affection.
It made Lu’s skin crawl.
He didn’t speak. Couldn’t. The words were still somewhere underwater, muffled by the blankness in his chest. His heartbeat drummed behind his ears like a warning he’d failed to hear in time. His palms were damp, pressed against the cool stall door, which felt suddenly too real—the only solid thing anchoring him in place.
Lu’s mind was too hazy to realize when Vein pulled away. Even so, the shift in heat was like being dropped into ice water. Lu didn’t turn around. He stayed still, breathing. Waiting.
There was the sound of a zipper. The rustle of fabric. Vein moving lazily, like nothing about what just happened held any weight.
“I’d say that went well,” Vein sounded casual, almost conversational. “But you’re probably not in a talking mood.”
Lu stared ahead. There were words carved into the stall door, faded by time and cleaning products. A date. A name. Someone’s forgotten graffiti, scratched in so deep it could’ve been done with a knife.
He traced it with his eyes, again and again, as footsteps moved behind him. Vein didn’t try to touch him again.
Just paused by the door and added, almost kindly:
“You’ll think about this later. That’s when it hits.”
The door creaked open. Then closed.
Lu stayed where he was.
His legs ached. His wrists hurt from the tension. His face was frozen against the stall door. There was cooling, viscous liquid coming down his thighs, making his underwear sticky.
And still—no panic. No breakdown. Not yet. That would come later. For now, he only felt hollow. Not clean. Not ruined. Just… emptied out. Like someone had opened a door inside him and stolen something he hadn’t known was being kept.
He should pull his pants up.
He should walk out, confront Vein in the bar—there were people out there, so he could—he could what, exactly?
God, there were people.
He should pull his pants up and pretend none of this had happened.
He should make sure it never happened again.
Except… he couldn’t.
He hadn’t even stopped it from happening the first time. What made him think he could stop it now? How do you resist something that’s already begun to define you—something that’s carved a space inside you before you even understood it was trespassing?
Vein had experience in crossing lines.
And Lu—
Lu had no experience in holding his ground.
So he cleaned himself up in silence. Pulled his pants back into place. Splashed cold water on his face like it could wash off the weight of what he’d just let happen—no, what had been done to him. But even the mirror wouldn’t look at him properly. The light above it flickered once, then held steady, as if it too had made a decision.
This didn’t happen.
It wouldn’t happen again.
(Oh, god, what would Cheng think if he saw him in such state?)
He’d think him pathetic, wouldn’t he?
Cheng, who always met violence with fire and humiliation with the lash of his tongue. Cheng, who once knocked out a boy’s tooth for calling Lu a slur under his breath and didn’t even blink when the headmaster demanded an apology. Cheng would never have let someone lay hands on him without retaliation. He would have stared them down until they wilted, weaponized that scorn of his, made it so that even the air around him felt too sharp to breathe. He’d never lower his eyes, never let himself be dragged like something less than human, like a piece of trash. He’d be disgusted to see Lu now—shoulders hunched, fingers trembling, mouth still red from biting.
No—not disgusted. Worse.
He’d pity him.
And that thought, more than anything, made Lu want to claw his skin off. He could endure hatred. He could take cruelty and coldness, and even indifference. But pity from Cheng—his Cheng, for whom Lu was the guide, the responsible one keeping Cheng in check—would split him open. Cheng’s pity would be laced with rage—not at Lu, never at Lu, of course, but at himself. Because Cheng would hate himself for not being there. For not dragging Lu out before it got this bad. For trusting him to survive alone.
Lu could hear him already: “I should’ve known. I should’ve never let you go back. I sent you to this psycho, I should’ve known he’d—” Cheng wouldn’t be able to let the words squeeze through his throat. Lu wouln’t either, but he didn’t feel the need to speak about it.
And Cheng did encourage Lu to meet Vein. But Lu had walked, too. A little tense, but not too much, thinking it surely wouldn’t be as bad as he expected, because he was good at not getting provoked by the likes of Vein.
Now, with the taste of blood in his mouth and the heat of bruises blooming beneath his skin, Lu knew better.
He wished Cheng had hated him. That would’ve been easier, purifying in its own right. But Cheng’s anger, when it came, would be wrapped in grief, the kind that festered in the chest and never really left. And Lu would see it, all of it, the next time he looked Cheng in the eye.
If he ever could.
Lu’s breath came too shallow. His elbow ached faintly where it had slammed into Vein’s ribs, but Vein hadn’t retaliated—not really. Just absorbed it with a grunt and a hunger that curled like smoke in his expression. A kind of visceral violence that ignited something in Lu that he would never be insane enough to name.
Cheng would say—hell, Cheng had said— “If you let him get into your head, he wins.”
And maybe Vein wasn’t in his head exactly. Maybe he was like a splinter lodged under the skin, impossible to ignore until you start picking at it.
“You’re out of your mind,” he said to himself in the mirror, voice soft but steady.
Asking himself what Cheng would think was absurd. Cheng wouldn’t think anything because nothing happened.
That was the story he’d tell.
Pretending was easy, after all.
It was the only game he knew how to play.