Chapter Text
Keqing sighs, and lies back on her bed. She’s broke. Severely so. How bad of an idea can this be, realistically?
Okay, she might have tempted the fates with that one.
Keqing’s life is a nightmare on so, so many levels, but one of those levels is totally Hu Tao’s fault. Also, student loans. Definitely those. She regrets going to college every single day of her life. Trying to find a side job is practically an impossibility in this economy, and that is if she had the mental capacity to balance her 4.0 GPA as an architecture major and said job. Which she doesn’t. Not at all.
She used to be able to make do, with her partial scholarship, her student job at her university’s library, and some financial help from her parents. However, after she called her mother a bitch last Christmas and got kicked out of the family home, her parents weren’t too keen on her throwing their money around.
She’s been steadily depleting her savings, what with rent, her tuition, and groceries, so she desperately needed some way to break even.
She stares at her phone screen, her mind running at a thousand miles an hour. A sugar daddy. That’s fucking ridiculous. Having a rich, stupid man at her beck and call, sending her obscene amounts of money in exchange for nudes and some sexting?
… Well, crap. That sounds more appealing than she initially thought.
She grabs her laptop, types in the website Hu Tao gave her, and gets to work making an account. Her friend doesn’t need to know that Keqing stooped so low. The idea of being found out drives a shiver of second-hand embarrassment up her spine, quickly dispelled by the promise of easy, easy money.
An hour later, Keqing sits back and admires her handiwork. Her profile is appealing enough, she supposes, with some of her best pictures on display— mainly ones she took at the gym, showing off her abs and toned arms. Shakily, she moves the mouse over the “publish” button, apprehensive and hesitating.
Is this really a good idea?
A quick look at the pile of bills on her nightstand tells her that no, it might not be a good idea at all, but what else can she do?
So, with a deep breath, she uploads her profile, and waits.
—
It is definitely not as easy as Keqing thought it would be. It actually fucking sucks.
As soon as her profile went online, she was swarmed by messages. Naive as she was, she thought it was a good sign. How wrong she was. Between bots, creeps, and people accusing her of being too ‘buff’, she’s been mostly deleting messages rather than answering them.
She’s answered a few she didn’t find as suspicious or offensive as the rest, and she quickly realized that these men don’t want to spend money. They just want a stupid, gullible girl who’ll send them nudes or entertain their fantasies, and as soon as it’s time to pay up, they’ll disappear into the ether, never to be seen or heard from again.
She’s been on the website for five hours now, rooting through her messages and friending people who seem legit. The promise of easy money is quickly fading, leaving her feeling dirty and used, wondering how these creeps can affect her so much through a laptop screen.
She decides to give up her search for the night, opting to work on an assignment due next week. As she goes through math sheet after math sheet, she resolves to delete her account tomorrow. She doesn’t need that kinda crap in her life. She’s not even into men, to begin with. Why she thought this would work is beyond her.
As she’s solving geometry and preparing herself mentally for trigonometry work, the website pings in the background. She sighs, her pencil skidding to a halt, her honey chicken cooling, forgotten on her desk next to an impressive amount of Chinese takeout boxes.
She briefly wonders if she should learn how to cook, to at least cut the takeout expenses, but scraps the idea. Groceries are expensive as fuck. Chinese takeout is dirt cheap.
She clicks open the notification she received, and scans through the messages.
Keqing’s brows crease. No “hey sexy”? No “wanna see my cock”? That’s a first.
Her fingers hover over her keyboard, and hesitate. Finally, she types.
Keqing rolls her eyes. Here it comes.
She waits. And waits. No new messages from Tianquan. She raises an eyebrow in confusion.
Keqing frowns. She clicks on Tianquan’s profile, trying to decide if the person is at all trustworthy. She finds it entirely bare, not a single personal fact in sight. They don’t even have a profile picture.
Keqing is a second away from closing the conversation and blocking them, when her eyes catch something very, very important. Something that could potentially change everything.
In the gender category, the word ‘woman’ glares at Keqing.
Oh.
Somehow, it didn’t even occur to her, a lesbian, that women could be sugar daddies too.
Excitement slowly seeps into her belly, making it twist on itself, as she reopens the conversation with Tianquan.
Keqing’s fingers shake as she types out her next message. She needs to be bold. She needs to know that this woman is genuine.
Keqing types out her PayPal, and the next few minutes are the longest of her life. This is the farthest she’s gotten with someone on this website.
Against all odds, a blue notification pops up on her phone.
‘You have received a payment of 1000.0 Mora from Tianquan N.’
Holy fucking shit.
As soon as she sends the message, she gets another notification from PayPal: ‘You have received a payment of 1000.0 Mora from Tianquan N.’
Keqing can’t type the next words fast enough.
—
Her conversations with Tianquan are light, and fun. The woman is not demanding— she lets Keqing dictate the pace and content of their exchanges, never straying off topic and into more unsavory waters. She doesn’t even want Keqing to call her mommy; in fact, she’s heavily against it, stating in distaste that ‘I’m not your mother, Keqing. What’s wrong with you?’
Keqing thinks Tianquan doesn’t entirely understand the concept of a sugar baby.
In all honesty, Keqing is more than ready to strip down and become this woman’s whore. She’s funny, dry in a way that makes Keqing think she’s at least forty years old. She’s rich, disgustingly so, and is not afraid to show it. In the two weeks Keqing and her have been texting, she’s sent her enough for all the bills that have been piling up, as well as enough extra money to pay her tuition for this semester.
All in all, it’s a terrifying amount of cash.
However, she never once asked Keqing for a nude picture, or started out any kind of sexual exchange. She seems content just talking with her, as if she’s lonely and in need of friendly company.
A nagging feeling at the back of Keqing’s mind, heavy and dark, whispers that she’s stealing this woman’s hard-earned money, that she’s manipulating her into spending it all meaninglessly. The guilt rears its ugly head only at night, when Keqing has trouble sleeping, and every time it does, it leaves her reeling, and almost unable to answer Tianquan’s texts. She ultimately decides she’ll pay her back, one day. She’ll become a great architect, and give her back everything, down to the last cent.
If there was some kind of exchange, Keqing’s body and dignity for cash, she wouldn’t be feeling so horrible about it, she realizes. It leaves a sour taste in her mouth, because since when does she prefer to sell her body?
One Saturday afternoon, after she finished studying for the day, she sprawls on her couch, takes out her phone, and pulls up her conversation with Tianquan, as has become her routine these past couple of weeks.
Keqing, the absolute fucking idiot, giggles like a schoolgirl.
Keqing stares at the bubble, waiting for it to turn into a message, to no avail. Minutes pass by as Tianquan is radio-silent, and Keqing starts to worry.
Clearly, Keqing thinks, as she smiles at the successive messages, relief pooling in her chest. Tianquan’s texting antics are a bit… old-school, she has to admit, with her punctuation, pristine grammar, and disregard for the number of texts she sends. Keqing wonders if she even knows about double-texting, and how people think it’s a sign of desperation. Probably not, seeing as she’s been doing it since the very beginning.
The blush that spreads on her cheeks is almost humiliating. Keqing is giddy as she answers.
Keqing’s heart flutters in her chest, and before she can stop herself, she replies.
Oh, archons. How is Keqing swooning over a stranger’s text messages? How is this person, anonymous, faceless, and behind a screen, doing this to her?
The pleasant warmth is slowly replaced by a creeping paranoia, however, planting unpleasant, unwelcome thoughts in her head, leaving her with a bitter taste in her mouth and sweaty palms. What if Tianquan is a catfish?
The rational part of her disagrees. What would a catfish want with her? Tianquan hasn’t asked for a single nude, or sext, since they started talking weeks ago. She’s been sending her obscene amounts of money. For all intents and purposes, she seems like the real deal.
Still, Keqing is distrustful, and anxious.
Another torturous, agonizing wait has Keqing sweating and hoping she didn’t scare off her sole source of income, before another message appears on her screen.
Keqing’s mind goes blank. No way.
No fucking way.
She’s finally going to see the person she’s steadily gotten attached to over the past few weeks. The person who’s been making her laugh, who’s been encouraging her to study, who’s essentially been her anchor since they started talking.
Her heartbeat picks up, slamming against her ribs and almost escaping in anticipation.
A few minutes pass, before Tianquan texts again, and this time, breath is knocked straight out of Keqing’s lungs.
She’s a woman alright, a stunning one at that. The picture itself is a mirror selfie, taken from a pristine bed, outfitted with the whitest of sheets. Tianquan is sitting on its edge, her chin resting in her palm, her legs crossed, peaking through the slit of the fluffy white robe she’s wearing. Her hair is the fairest Keqing’s ever seen, silver white and silky smooth, falling in cascades around her, moonlight surrounding divinity. Her bangs are covering her eyes, and her phone hides half her face, preventing Keqing from figuring out her identity.
She’s hot. She’s so fucking hot, Keqing finds herself thinking, heating up as she stares at the unmarred, immaculate skin of her seemingly infinite legs. She wants to lick up their length, bite and kiss her way to—
She erases her next message as soon as she types it. ‘I wanna bury my face between your legs.’
Another excruciating wait. Keqing is starting to think that Tianquan is not busy at all— she’s just the type of person who crafts their texts to perfection. When she doesn’t know what to say, she doesn’t stall by sending inane emojis or some kind of keyboard smash. She just… disappears, until she has the perfect answer prepared.
Keqing wonders why this topic in particular has her scrambling for a reply. A woman like her cannot have self-esteem issues.
That’s what she decides to go with? Fine, Keqing will let it slide.
Keqing rolls her eyes as she attaches a video of her doing pull-ups at the gym. It’s the most recent video she has of herself, and she’s extremely proud of it. Her arms are flexed, her abs contracting and on full display under the sports bra she’s wearing. She pulls herself up a total of six times before the video cuts. She managed a total of sixteen pull-ups that day, and bragged to Tianquan about it immediately after she got home. She remembers the warm ‘I’m very proud of you, darling’ she got for her trouble, and how it sent tingles down her spine and into her belly.
Fucking hell, and that was before she knew what Tianquan looks like. Receiving gentle praise from her is going to be hell from now on.
Keqing feels another blush spread across her cheeks, her lips pulling into a grin.
Keqing cringes as soon as she hits the send button, but the message is read immediately. There’s no deleting it now.
She is left on read, and this time, it doesn’t spark anxiety inside her. Instead, she’s filled with a warm feeling of self-satisfaction.
She flustered her.