Chapter Text
“-and you should have seen the way they bled, hyung-nim! It was so funny, I only stabbed them a little but they were crying like I decapitated them.”
Tang Bo is rambling, he knows it, Cheongmyeong knows it, but he’s in too deep to stop now. Usually, being alone with his hyung-nim, drinking by the river under soft moonlight and sharing stories of their recent slaughters travels would have him swooning gently onto the nearest soft surface (ideally, his hyung-nim’s chest but he could understand that some things were too sacred to be touched by mortal hands).
But his hyung-nim had been staring at him too intently, mouth set in a line that said he was in the middle of a deep consideration. Tang Bo should have known there was trouble the minute he sat down and wasn’t insulted, just greeted quietly and calmly. But they hadn’t seen each other in weeks and no one ever accused Tang Bo of being rational when faced with Cheongmyeong’s, well, everything.
Tang Bo can hear himself laughing a beat too long and he coughs, awkward, but continues to ramble about the mountain bandits that had thought he’d be an easy target. It’s a genuinely good story that would usually be a hit with his bloodthirsty hyung-nim who loved nothing more than a well-deserved beatdown. Tonight, however, Cheongmyeong is quiet and contemplative, his heavy gaze traveling over Tang Bo’s entire body over and over again in rounds.
Tang Bo is not turned on, by the way, he’s very normal and only someone with lethal amounts of brain damage would start getting hot under the collar with a look. (Tang Bo remembers the sustained head trauma from all his time as a warrior and by proxy of being around Cheongmyeong and reconsiders his last thought.)
“So, I have his eyeball in one hand and I’m holding his head in the other just trying to shush him and let him know I can easily reattach it but he’s crying so hard it’s difficult for him to hear me over the sound of his wailing an-.”
“Bo-yah,” Cheongmyeong interrupts, and it’s almost a relief at this point - if he had to be the only one speaking for any longer and Tang Bo would’ve jumped into the river to escape the pointed silence. “Feel free to say no.”
“Hyung-nim?” Tang Bo asks, brow furrowing at the non sequitur. “I apologize, say no to what?
“Do you want to spend my next heat together?”
Tang Bo chokes. On air, on his own saliva, on his stupidity because he’s trying to get his lungs back in working order instead of immediately getting on his hands and knees and screaming ‘yes, oh please, yes, I would murder three thousand people with my teeth alone to do so, yes yes yes please and yes’, but parsed down to be normal and debonair and not like he’s the most desperate man in the entire world.
“Your-,” he hacks and spits, unattractive, awful sounds that sound like they clawed their way from hell to spill out of his mouth. “Heat? You- your? Yours? Heat? Me? YOU?! ME with YOU? ME in -.”
Tang Bo cuts himself off there. It’s too dangerous.
“Fucking-, you know what? Nevermind.” Cheongmyeong scoffs, turning back to face the river and sipping at the cup in his hand.
“No!” and the anguish slips out unintended, the sheer force of his fear of missing this once in a lifetime - no, once in at least two lifetimes - opportunity carrying the sound echoing through the entire valley. “Honored! It would be an honor! To join you! To, to, to- to assist you in your time of need!”
“Oh heavens,” Cheongmyeong groans and Tang Bo locks that sound away in the vault of his mind that houses similarly important memories of his hyung-nim (the first time he smiled at Tang Bo, the first frown, the first time he threw his arm around his neck and dragged him in close - letting him get a sweet puff of pheromones that smelled like plum blossoms, sharp winter air, and salt). “Stop talking. Forget I asked.”
As if something like that could ever leave his mind.
A series of thoughts accidentally makes its way through his stagnating brain. Has Cheongmyeong had heat partners previously? Was his usual partner out of commission? Was Tang Bo his second choice? Third? Where exactly did he fall in the list? He doesn’t want to know the answer of any of these suddenly pressing questions but he may also die if he doesn’t know.
A final, unbidden question echoes in his head: knowing Cheongmun’s ironclad protections around his child, has he gone without this entire time?
Tang Bo throws everything in his head into the flow of the river along with any decorum he managed to hold onto in his long life. Of course he wasn’t, his hyung-nim was barely a Taoist at this point so it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to believe he’d also indulge in lust along with all of his other vices.
“But, but,” Tang Bo stutters, trying to collect anything resembling speech into his mouth. “I can, I definitely can!”
“No,” Cheongmyeong interrupts. “I shouldn’t have asked, I don’t want you to feel obligated so pretend I never said anything.”
Obligated? Obligated? Obligated. Obligated?
Tang Bo has heard many ridiculous things in his life, not counting his hyung-nim’s usual diatribes about letting his wounds fester instead of allowing a single moment of weakness, but this had to be the most baffling. Obligated was certainly a word, not the one he would use in this situation and not one that could accurately describe his feelings about what his hyung-nim had asked, but a word nonetheless.
Addled, maybe? Lustful, certainly. Desperate would fit best, but obligated? That wasn’t anywhere near the vicinity.
“Hyung-nim,” Tang Bo says, getting himself together and donning the cold shrewdness that earned him the title of Dark Saint in the first place - if only his family could see him now, scrambling and using everything in his arsenal just for a single chance to make his hyung-nim fall for him. “How could you ask me to leave this alone? You wouldn’t ask unless you thought it was important. What’s going on?”
Cheongmyeong looks at him like he knows every dirty little thought that passed between his ears and Tang Bo hopes he isn’t putting off the air of a fool who has been in love with the same man for decades, the visage of someone who wasn’t already half hard under his innerwear at the thought of seeing his hyung-nim at his most base and instinctual, fecund and enticing.
He thinks he’s somewhat successful when Cheongmyeong, a familiar twisted moue on his mouth, mumbles something around the cup pressed against his bottom lip. Tang Bo tries to be patient for the first time in his life, not wanting to squander a fantasy he’s only indulged in the middle of his ruts.
“Sorry?” Tang Bo prods teasingly like he always does while also failing to calm his racing heart. “What was that? I can’t hear you over the childish sulking.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Cheongmyeong replies automatically, biting down on his lip when the corner of Tang Bo’s mouth curls up in a smirk. “Ugh, I really must be drunk if I’m really considering telling this brat.”
Cheongmyeong mumbles loud enough for Tang Bo to hear and he has to tell himself that he’s a calm, rational person who will not jump to conclusions so he doesn’t give into the urge to shake the truth by Cheongmyeong’s shoulders. For one, he’d probably leave bruised and battered so that was better left to his imagination.
“Yes! Tell me, tell this brat,” Tang Bo urges, curling his hands under his chin and aiming for sickeningly cute in the way he knows Cheongmyeong is actually weak against. “You can tell me anything, hyung-nim. Don’t you trust me?”
It’s a direct blow, especially for Cheongmyeong who can count the number of people he trusts on a single hand and still have fingers left over.
“Fine,” he grumbles, setting his cup down on the table to swipe the half full bottle instead - he downs the rest in two swallows that Tang Bo watches with avid eyes as his lips press against the tip and the way throat moves before he slams it back down onto the table. “Give me yours too.”
“Oh, I see how it is,” Tang Bo tuts, sliding the bottle over anyway. “You’re just trying to get free alcohol from me again. Hyung-nim, do we have to go through another lecture about the abusive way you treat your liver?”
Cheongmyeong is unamused, truly this time, and Tang Bo mimes tying his mouth shut with a smile and waits for an explanation that holds the weight of great expectations.
“My heats are usually tolerable,” Cheongmyeong starts, the words coming through grinding teeth. “It works for me, it has worked for me for years but the past few have been… Difficult. The medicinal hall recommended finding a partner before any more symptoms of solitary cycle shock set in.”
Cheongmyeong shifts in place and looks away, clearing his throat before bringing the bottle back to his lips. He waves his hand as if the motion could explain away everything he just said. Tang Bo is still convinced this may be all a dream.
“Ah,” he replies, mouth dry and a cold sweat building in the small of his back even as his face flushes completely and totally. “I, I see. By any chance, have you told your sect leader about this yet?”
“Sahyung? No, no I haven’t,” Cheongmyeong has a startled look on his face like that was the last question he expected. “You know how he is, he’ll nag and nag about how bad I am at taking care of myself. I’d rather just solve it on my own and tell him if it comes up. Besides, this isn’t something I want to talk to Cheongmun-sahyung with.”
Cheongmyeong cuts himself off to make a disgusted face.
“Of course,” Tang Bo says, faint. “The state of your heat and how you spend it isn’t something you want to talk about with the person who raised you.”
“Obviously,” Cheongmyeong scoffs, rolling his eyes. “So I thought to ask you.”
And then it makes sense. It’s a medical condition, Tang Bo is as close to medical help as Cheongmyeong allows so of course he thought to ask Tang Bo for help. He’s not asking Tang Bo for help as an alpha (why would he, when he could pick anyone else?).
“Since I’m practically your physician, right?” Tang Bo laughs, desperate to cling to a reason not to look too deeply and inevitably disappoint himself. “Well, you’ll be in good hands, hyung-nim. Most of my knowledge of solitary cycle shock is anecdotal but I can be ready to help in any case.”
Cheongmyeong leverages a familiar look at him, it’s one that says he’s an idiot.
“You’re an idiot,” Cheongmyeong says out loud, covering his eyes and pressing his fingertips against his temples. “Did I say ‘monitor me during my heat’, imbecile? I asked you to spend it with me.”
Tang Bo wonders to himself, with a chorus of singing angels in the background of his currently imploding brain, what a good apology gift for a prospective father-in-law would be. Money is the usual betrothal offering but Cheongmun was a Taoist from a fairly wealthy sect. Would it just come off as presumptuous? Arrogant even? Tea and fruits may be the way, perhaps some candles and pottery from the artisans the Tangs work closely with.
Tang Bo considers gifting a sword but he doesn’t want to give Cheongmun a weapon he can use against Tang Bo for what he’s going to do in the near future. He should be an honest man and go to Cheongmun to ask for (beg for) permission but it would take, at minimum, several years to wear him down into a position of consideration - not even approval. Tang Bo didn’t have that kind of time, he was working against the clock already. Cheongmyeong was mercurial on a good day, erratic on great ones, and he was already pushing it by letting the conversation linger.
“Okay!” The word rips out of his mouth like a shriek. “If hyung-nim allows it!”
Cheongmyeong looks at him like he regrets ever opening his mouth.