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When they touch, San Lang always starts out just a little bit cold.
Long, pale fingers and calloused palms chilly like marble, the sharp curve of his jawline cold to the press of Xie Lian’s lips. A cold palm placed on his lower back to steady him after an almost-fall. The soothing yet chilled weight of an arm draped over the dip of Xie Lian’s waist as they settle into bed.
When he presses his face to San Lang’s neck after a long day of scavenging in the bright sunlight, it’s refreshing. The smooth, soft skin cool from the inside out, sensitive to Xie Lian’s sweat damp face and exertion-warmed breath.
San Lang is only ever made warm by Xie Lian’s own body heat. His ghost king, cool to the touch but never, ever cold to him.
When they hold hands, the chill of San Lang’s palms warms up quickly. When Xie Lian presses against him—chest to chest on his tiptoes to easier reach his mouth, the unnecessary seesawing of San Lang’s breath a gentle and persistent comfort—he warms up even quicker.
When in their bed—or beds plural, Xie lian supposes, taking into account Puqi Shrine and their bedroom in Paradise Manor both—San Lang grows warm quickest of all. Absorbing Xie Lian’s body heat like a reptile in the desert under the hot glare of the sun, curling around him wherever possible and soaking up the warmth.
Just as San Lang enjoys getting a rise out of him in order to watch the blush race over his cheeks and down his collarbone and chest, Xie Lian has made a quiet but nonetheless enjoyable game of seeing how fast he can make San Lang warm.
Even after their long, tearful reunion post San Lang’s year of absence, even after the many months they’ve spent together since, after every kiss they’ve shared, every press of lips against each other’s skin, every touch, San Lang still turns pink whenever Xie Lian moves toward him first.
It’s a delightful thing to watch, even if the sheer surprise and quiet hesitancy the first few times made Xie Lian’s heart ache so sharply he wanted to cry.
He’s never had any trouble touching Xie Lian himself but that reciprocity—the kind touch he so dearly deserves—was so unexpected initially that it set him off balance.
But they’ve gotten blessedly comfortable with it, touching each other. Approaching and receding, dancing around each other with palms pressed to skin, mouths brushing. Their closeness has been hard won, but in the aftermath, there has been nothing easier.
Now, San Lang welcomes the approach with an openness that takes his breath away. Lifting his arm for Xie Lian to duck under and press close, tipping his head down so Xie Lian can fix his braid or adjust his eyepatch. Bending at the knees so Xie Lian can drop a tiny kiss onto the tip of his nose. Reeling an arm around Xie Lian’s waist to heft him up so their mouths can meet when they reunite after mere days apart. Curling around him in their bed, when Xie Lian licks his own palm slick, presses his mouth to the slope of San Lang’s throat, and makes him come.
The warmth between them grows and grows and grows, Xie Lian so willing to give it. To share anything, everything. Always.
It’s easiest like this though, Xie Lian peeled almost completely out of his robes, the silky drape of them lost in their bedsheets, his knees tucked tightly against San Lang’s pink-tinted hipbones and his palms spread against his chest for balance.
San Lang’s so warm like this, under Xie Lian, mouth kissed swollen and wild hair a mess beneath him. His tinkly jewelry attentively removed by Xie Lian’s own careful fingers, his red robes unknotted, his hair unbraided save only the pearl at the end of its tiny braid, standing out stark in the dark fall of it against their sheets.
San Lang had offhandedly mentioned how much easier it would be if he simply snapped all of his accouterments away whenever the time came for it until Xie Lian had meekly told him he’d enjoyed the process, enjoyed being close and taking care in such a way. Since then there has been no complaining, only San Lang quiet and willing, face turned toward the affection like a flower toward the sun.
But yes, getting San Lang warm, perhaps even hot, one could say, is easiest like this. Xie Lian balancing on his hip bones, the warmth from them grinding on one another trapped between his thighs.
San Lang’s eye is blown, almost all pupil, the reflection of the wraith butterflies that cover their ceiling reflecting in it like twinkling stars. His cheeks are flushed, a full body blush creeping down his throat and chest. It’s so nice to look at, to see him warmed and wanting.
Xie Lian loves him so much that he overflows with it, ducking down to press their lips together and shivering when the cold touch of San Lang’s fingers sweep up his spine.
It’s quiet save for the rustling of their half-on clothing and their breathing, Xie Lian’s uneven and choppy, San Lang’s hushed and gasping even though Xie Lian knows he could save face and stop breathing all together.
They rock together, slow and slower still. Mostly, San Lang is the one to take the lead between them in this way, to guide them to where they need to go, quick and frantic and messy but still so enjoyable that it regularly makes Xie Lian’s vision white out. But when Xie Lian initiates, when he carefully picks and chooses his way across this newly discovered field of pleasure, when San Lang lets him come to him, they go slow.
There’s some shifting necessary to continue on the path they’re heading down—Xie Lian kicking out of his pants that are barely on, a cork popping, gentle ice cold fingers slipping inside of him in a way that satisfies an ache he only recently has been able to name. A desire to be full.
San Lang’s fingers warm inside of him quickly, with friction and time both, and Xie Lian leans his head back and sighs, the sound quiet in volume but loud in the hush of their bedroom. It makes his husband rumble a pleased sound beneath him, one that has a different kind of heat lapping low in his stomach.
When San Lang magicks away the red sleep pants he was wearing, Xie Lian can’t bring himself to mind.
Shifting up on his knees, they work together to get San Lang inside of him and once they succeed—once Xie Lian sits suspended in that moment of completely full when San Lang bottoms out—only then does he start a slow, steady grind.
There is no rush here, no frantic sense of completion. No trouble from the Gambler’s Den, no beckoning call from the Heavens. Just Xie Lian’s quiet personal mission to warm San Lang through and through.
They press closer together, the cool puffs of breath from San Lang’s exhales a welcome balm on the heated skin of Xie Lian’s throat and shoulders. The fingers wrapped tight around his hips are warm and it makes undistilled glee float up inside him like bubbles.
He leans forward for a better angle, the curtain of his unbound hair falling around them both, closing them off from the rest of the world. San Lang smiles, more of a smirk really, but the dazed look in his eye gives him away.
In the half-light, San Lang’s ring sparkles from where it hangs around its ever present chain on Xie Lian’s neck, and his husband reaches up with the hand not gripping tight to Xie Lian’s hips to touch the knuckle of his index finger to it. A small nudge, like an afterthought.
Xie Lian hums, reaching for San Lang’s hand and closing both of their fingers around the ring. With a particularly slow circle of his hips, he brings their joined hands to his mouth and kisses the ring curled in their palms.
San Lang sighs, something beautiful and breathy and utterly fitting of the man that is Xie Lian’s husband, but sweetly surprising from a legendary ghost king.
When Xie Lian pokes the tip of his tongue out and gives the ring a tiny lick, the sigh tapers off into a moan and the heat between them flashes bright like a physical thing.
He keeps a steady pace, his rocking interspersed with short bounces that make them both groan. Xie Lian pins the hand they touched the ring with together to the mattress beneath them and focuses on the movement of his hips, circling and grinding in a way that makes embarrassing noises pour from his own mouth.
Time warps and slows, collapsing in on itself, the pleasure so heady and warm that Xie Lian sinks into it like slipping into a long awaited bath.
He has lived for so long, experienced and remembered and forgotten so many things, but he takes special care to press the sight of San Lang below him into his memory—head tipped back, mouth open to bare his pointed teeth, flush bright across his face.
They’ve been pressed close for so long, making such a slow ascent to the cliff they’re aiming to tip over—held on that precipice by Xie Lian’s careful ministrations and iron clad patience—that it catches him off guard when San Lang makes a tiny, almost painful little sound and slips his hand between their bodies to wrap around Xie Lian.
He arches up, pressing his lips to Xie Lian’s open mouth in the bare bones gesture of a kiss, more a need to be close as they come than a need to complete the actual action, and it takes no time at all after that. The heat and the sensations and the feeling of San Lang everywhere around him is enough to push him over that edge, to send his muscles tightening and his vision blurring.
Xie Lian chokes out what he hopes his husband can tell is his name and lets those warm hands prop him up as his thoughts white out.
He comes back gradually, chest heaving and inner thighs wet and aching, San Lang’s hand still curled tightly around him between their bellies.
When he glances down after his mind slowly returns to his body, tears are silently slipping down one side of San Lang’s face. Xie Lian goes so frigidly cold that even the warmth they built up between them can’t stop it.
“Oh!” he says, voice hoarse but still audibly frightened. He sweeps the hair away from San Lang’s face with soft fingers, pushing his own over his shoulder so it doesn’t fall between them. “Oh, San Lang, are you alright?”
Different, discordant fears dart across his thoughts like a startled school of fish. Is he hurt? Did Xie Lian do something wrong?
Below him, San Lang smiles. It’s so achingly happy, even with the continued drip, drip, drip of tears onto the pillow below him that Xie Lian’s breath gets caught in his chest.
“No, gege, it’s good,” he replies, voice low and reassuring. He brings a hand up to curl around Xie Lian’s jaw. “I’m more than alright. They’re good tears.”
Xie Lian kisses them away anyway, sweeps them dry with his thumbs, San Lang’s face cradled gently in his hands. He drops a kiss onto his forehead, over his closed, scarred eye, and then his other one, which San Lang dutifully shuts to allow him to. Then both cheeks, then the tip of his nose, then San Lang’s curved, happy mouth.
He hums into Xie Lian’s kiss, a sly, pleased thing. He’s warm to the touch, everywhere. Including where he’s still hard inside of Xie Lian.
San Lang shifts, less of an unconscious settling motion and more of a purposeful tilt of his hips and Xie Lian shudders in response, pleasure licking up his spine. He goes limp, falling forward onto San Lang’s chest. A long fingered hand cards through his hair, unconcerned with the snarls and tangles and where it’s damp near his temples.
“Gege had his turn at controlling the pace,” San Lang says, prim and so polite it makes Xie Lian’s face hurt from the effort to stop his grin. “May this San Lang have a go now?”
“He may,” Xie Lian says, feigning dignity. Excitement and sheer undistilled want curl around themselves inside him until they're almost undecipherable.
When he’s flipped onto his back in a mess of hair and stickiness and warm, warm skin, all he can do is laugh so brightly and loudly he hopes it can be heard by all three realms.