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The room is clean and white. Glowing lamps provide plentiful light. An incense burner has been placed to one side. It has stopped smoking, burned out.
There is one window in the room. Gauzy white curtains obscure the view of the room it connects to. The figure on the other side is still visible, but indistinct. It's more a shadow than a person. They are always there. They are always watching.
They are not screaming right now.
It is quiet in the room.
The quiet in the room is wrong.
It is not always quiet in the room.
There should be a sound—some sound. There is supposed to be—
Xie Lian's body remembers to breathe with a snap of sinew into place, lungs stitching into one piece again. The silence breaks around his gasp, and the form on the other side of the gauzy curtains jerks alive in response. A rattle of chain sounds with the motion, dragging over white floors.
"San"—Xie Lian's voice catches—"Lang"—drags—"San Lang."
Always, his tongue reaches for him first. Always, he calls to him. How many times is this? How many times has he choked back screams until at last the option is stolen from him? How many times has San Lang…
The chain gives a jingling lurch, then goes silent, snapped taut. Xie Lian knows it is straining towards him. Knows it will not break.
"San Lang," he calls again, blinking in the soft golden light as awareness returns to him piece by piece. "Won't you—"
Empty, his lungs strain to fill. His fingers twitch. He is on his back, splayed on the ground. The floor beneath him is clean. He is clean. There is not a spot of blood left on him. He is dressed. His hair has been combed clean and neat, splayed around him artfully as if he had simply settled down to sleep.
Those hands have touched his hair before. More than once, that monster has embraced him. First was on a mountainside, and hadn't he leaned into that embrace then? Was there anyone else left to hold him?
He has not leaned in since. Not yet. He can't. He won't.
He wants—
Something dark stains the gauzy curtains, pushing through them. It might once have been a hand. Xie Lian tries to gather himself, watching those fingers flex and reach—splayed wide, seeking him helplessly.
His limbs are still his own, somehow. They still answer him when he tries to rise. It feels that any moment they will belong to someone else—that any day he will be rebuilt the way that creature wants.
(He knows what the creature wants. Knew even before it peeled him open, plucked sinew from bone, strung him like a puppet from the ceiling, danced his living body around the room. The dancing was… Strange. Awkward. Awful, yes. Not as bad as what followed. As his hands, puppeted to stroke down Bai Wuxiang's hair. His arms, forced to wrap around a man he'd once admired and loved. Hua Cheng, watching and screaming from the other room, while Xie Lian embraced the emperor who'd torn him apart again.
Worse still is how grateful he'd felt, down to his core. How nice it was, to be held. How well he remembered that relief, from lifetimes ago when those same arms had wrapped around him in terrible gentility.)
"Won't you speak to me?" Xie Lian blurts, desperate to escape his thoughts. "San Lang, I'm alright now, so won't you—"
"Dian…xia," rasps the voice beyond the curtain. The hand strains—fingers wide, nails torn away, blood dripping on the clean white floor. "Dian…xia."
"I'm here," Xie Lian replies, staggering a single step forward before the chain on his own ankle snaps tight. The cursed shackle has always been heavy, but never before has he been truly chained by it. The chain is long, but its anchor is far from the center of the room, offset. He can pace a dozen steps in every direction save the one he wants to go in.
He cannot come closer to San Lang than this. He pulls with all his might—strains and reaches.
Their fingertips brush—stained disaster against scrubbed-pink skin.
Power blossoms—so bright and wild it's painful, streaking like lightning down Xie Lian's arm.
He jerks his hand away, and is answered by a roar from the other room—furious and wild. The chain rattles, and there is a pounding sound. Maybe a fist against the wall, maybe a body against the floor. The hand vanishes, then reappears, thrust more forcefully towards him. It is a demand.
Xie Lian cannot answer it.
Hua Cheng was always calm and collected. Hua Cheng always had a plan. Hua Cheng could be trusted completely.
Hua Cheng had rolled snake eyes.
Hua Cheng was Wu Ming all along.
And Wu Ming…Wu Ming died. Died for Xie Lian, killed himself for Xie Lian, had…Had tried to do it again. Tried, before Jun Wu caught them. Had poured so much power into him that he nearly dispersed before Jun Wu ( no, the creature, the creature, don't think—) tore them apart.
"I'm sorry," Xie Lian whispers now, faced with that rage and desperation. "I'm sorry. Don't be angry, San Lang. I can't…"
Yin Yu, bloodless on the floor. Mu Qing, shackled and thrown off the mountainside. Feng Xin, fallen and bristling with arrows. Guoshi, spitting blood as he crumbled. Shi Qingxuan, abandoned in the human array—no telling what had happened to the mortal realm since then.
No telling how long had passed at all.
"Dianxia, dianxia, dianxia," Hua Cheng calls, then begs, then screams .
Xie Lian huddles where he stands, arms around his middle, watching that hand reach for him but too afraid to reach back.
"Did you know," says the creature the next time, idly, meticulously wiping the blood from beneath Xie Lian's fingernails from where he'd clawed at himself in the end, "I sealed his mouth the first day I brought you both here."
"Dianxia, dianxia—" San Lang is screaming in the other room, the jolting rattling sound of a chain pulling against the wall.
"He keeps growing more," the creature notes idly, curling and uncurling Xie Lian's little finger, inspecting the bends in his joints for more traces of crusted blood.
The hand from the other room has clawed through the curtain, turning the white silk to sodden, dripping rags, tangled around monstrous fingers. It does not look like a person's hand anymore.
"Dianxia," rasps a voice that is apparently not coming from that mouth Xie Lian once saw smiling every day.
He closes his eyes, and tries not to feel it as the creature starts cleaning his second hand, satisfied at last with the state of the first.
The tender touch is agony. Perhaps if he tries hard enough, he can pretend it is those claws instead.
"Please, please, please," Hua Cheng's new mouth has learned to say.
His fingers have grown longer, Xie Lian notes, sitting in the center of his cell and watching that hand reach desperately for him.
He is falling back into old habits. The world feels farther and farther away with each day. If he was offered a black sword and a curse, would he take them, just for a break from the sorrow?
His claws are deadly, but broken and jagged. His hands, always broad and strong, now seem skeletal and too long. He is tearing himself apart to reach Xie Lian, and Xie Lian is sitting on the floor, not reaching back.
"San Lang," he says, soft and sad—sadder than he's let himself ever sound before in the man's presence, but he is so, so tired now. "Won't you call for me properly?"
There is silence for a moment, the hand drawing back, curling knobby joints inwards, uncertain. There's a shifting sound. A "Mnn," of effort, then slowly, staggeringly:
"G..ge?"
"Yes," Xie Lian whispers.
"Gege," Hua Cheng calls, the voice still broken and wrong, but better.
"San Lang," he calls in return, and feels that shadow of a black sword fall away. "San Lang, if you don't—if you don't give me power, I can touch you. Can you not give me power?"
"Hnn," It sounded like even that sound was a struggle. Xie Lian let himself believe. Let himself hope. It was so easy to hope with San Lang there.
He stood on legs that trembled like a faun's, and reached both hands forward.
Hua Cheng's arm and fingers were truly longer. Xie Lian could tangle their fingers together, careful of his claws. He could almost touch palm-to-palm—almost, almost, almost.
Trembling with restraint, with tenderness, Hua Cheng's hand stretched and clung. Jagged claws caught at Xie Lian's skin, but never quite cut. When they got close, Hua Cheng's hand would flinch away, and Xie Lian would have to hold him tighter in return.
The blood dripping from his hand striped down Xie Lian's fingers, traced low over his palms, raced down his forearms to drip from his elbows, staining the fabric of his robes.
He didn't even feel the shackle cutting into his ankle as he pressed as close as he could, desperately wishing he could press his face into that long-fingered hand.
"That's right," he said, his voice thick with tears. "Just this, San Lang. This is what I need."
A grating, rough sound answered him. It was strained, and wounded, and seemed to come from a hundred voices all at once. A sound like agony—like mourning. In response, spiritual power swelled, and Xie Lian yanked his hands away as if it had burned him.
"No!" he barked, then jerked away himself, slapping a blood-smeared hand over his mouth.
The long-fingered hand vanished, curled back away through the curtained window. On the other side, Xie Lian could just make out a figure, trapped and mired in shadow, curling in on himself. There was a wet, ugly sound, like a wound, and Xie Lian covered his ears, sinking to his knees on the floor.
On the other side of the wall, Hua Cheng has been panting all day. Panting, and rattling his chains, and occasionally making strange little muttering sounds—never quite words, but almost reminiscent of the distant sound of prayers rising from a temple.
Xie Lian, in return, has been pacing all day.
"San Lang," he calls, but the muttering noises only rise like a tide, then fall away again, accompanied by rough grunting noises, and the thud of a body against stone, as if Hua Cheng was throwing himself against the walls. It's an awful, wet sound.
"Is it upsetting, Xianle?" a cold voice asks, so close—right by his ear—he can never hear him coming.
Xie Lian instinctively jerks away, only to hit the end of his chains and fall, one leg extended where he's bound to the floor, the other curled beneath him, ready to push off—to fight back, no matter how useless, no matter how—
The creature stares down at him from behind that cry-smiling mask, and croons sweetly, as if he hadn't done it on purpose—as if Xie Lian were some pitiable thing he regretted startling, rather than the prisoner he tormented without stop.
"Fuck you," Xie Lian barks.
With his chain stretched as far as it is, if he stood he'd be within the creature's arms, and he knows Bai Wuxiang would hug him. Would wrap his arms around him. Would hold him, warm and safe, for just a moment, the pressure of his touch chasing away the desperate absence, if only for a moment.
Xie Lian tries to kick his ankles instead, and only rises when the creature has had to leap away or risk falling.
"Poor Xianle," the creature croons. "If only you would learn. I'm here to help, you know."
The grunting and panting from the other room is louder. Pitching high only to cut off in a snarl. He is always agitated when the creature arrives, but it seems worse today. Everything seems worse, and Xie Lian cannot reach him, cannot rub his shoulders, cannot coax 'San Lang, San Lang, what's wrong?'
"I thought your companion might be feeling unwell," the creature notes, striding across the room, past where Xie Lian can walk, trailing a fingertip over the curtains only to pull away with a laugh when a red-soaked arm bursts through claws-first to attack him. "You see, I heard rumors of what happened the last time Mount Tonglu opened. What he tried to do to you. How far you let it go."
Burning touches in a temple, a worshipful mouth atop his own, pouring devotion between his lips like sharing wine, strong hands cupping and squeezing and stroking where he had never permitted touch before—none of that was for the creature to know. Rage hazes Xie Lian's vision red, and he lunges too, driving Bai Wuxiang away from both their clawed hands.
"I had hoped we could start from here," the creature says, head tilting behind that hateful nightmare of a mask. "But it seems you need to be reminded of how far you have to fall. The common people have betrayed you, yet you won't learn. Your vassals have betrayed you, yet you won't learn. Fine then."
There comes the sound of metal scraping and falling, heavy clattering clunks from the other side of the curtain, followed by a sharp, rasping inhale. The red, dripping arm thrust into Xie Lian's cage twitches and curls.
"When your last believer rapes the roots of cultivation out of you, perhaps then you will see," the creature hisses, then fades away as if he was never there.
Xie Lian stands frozen in place, boiling with hatred and shivering with his own impotence. Slowly, the words sink through his terror. Mount Tonglu has been opened again. Has he been here that long? Have they been trapped for such a long time as that? Or has the creature simply twisted the odds? Forced the opening of that cursed place in order to… to….
Metal drags against a stone floor. The hand that had curled away pushes through the curtains again, clawing them, staining them, parting them. This time he doesn't just reach for Xie Lian—he grabs ahold of the windowsill.
Dessicated muscles wet with gore tense and pull. Xie Lian's breath seizes in his lungs. The sharp jut of an elbow, the harsh curve of a shoulder blade, the lowered weight of a head, black hair wet with blood.
"San Lang," Xie Lian calls, straining forward against the pull of the ankle chain.
What he tried to do to you, Bai Wuxiang had said.
The curtains soak through with dark liquid. A second arm pushes through, then a third. A fourth. On every wrist is a shackle—on every too-long arm bloodless slits, each stitched closed. The body that crawls through is all spine and ribs, the heavy head not lifting, black hair limp and wet with blood.
Xie Lian aches at the sight of him, and strains forward, arms open. San Lang—no longer human, torn apart and rebuilt over what must have been years of suffering, tumbles the last inch through the window, long legs collapsing beneath him as finally, finally, that half-barrier between them is breached.
"San Lang!" Xie Lian calls again, louder and wilder, his ankle giving an alarming pop as he pulls too hard against the restraint.
At last, Hua Cheng lifts his head—a sharp jerk of motion, displaying a molten red eye where there should have been a deep, dark sea of stars.
It doesn't matter. The blood soaking every inch of him, the skeletal arms he's grown himself, the bloodless gashes covering his chest and arms, the fangs where soft lips should be, the boiling fury of his eye… None of it matters.
The way he looks at Xie Lian—the way his clawed hands twitch forward at the sight of his twisted ankle—the wheezing sound of distress he makes—it's all Xie Lian needs to know.
"Please!" Xie Lian calls, reaching out as hard as he can, as far as he can.
The huddle of bones and limbs and blood launches forward at his plea, crashing into Xie Lian's arms.
The blood is hot in his arms. San Lang's body gives and sags around the scaffolding of his protruding bones, wet and soft.
All of his arms wrap around Xie Lian, cushioning and cradling him as they crumble together.
His whole body feels like he's boiling. The fever that took him in Ghost City in the wake of Tonglu pales in comparison. His hot breaths puff past lipless teeth against Xie Lian's neck, washes of blood pouring out of him with every tortured little sound.
Against Xie Lian's hip, there is a hard, burning piece of flesh, wet and soaking as all of Hua Cheng is. He can feel the thick blood drenching him.
"Does it hurt?" he realizes he's babbling, his arms wrapped tight around Hua Cheng, squeezing so hard surely a mortal would have wheezed out their last breath. "San Lang, San Lang, does it hurt? Cry out if it hurts!"
"Haah," Hua Cheng's lipless mouth opens against his throat again, and under Xie Lian's hands he feels his back twist under a line of those strange stitches.
"I sealed his mouth," the creature had said. "He keeps growing more."
Xie Lian strangles a sound in his throat, digging his fingers into the threads, only hesitating because he feels the blood well deeper there. He pulls back, gripping Hua Cheng's shoulders, bearing the moan that follows, and those four arms digging claws into his ruined robes.
All over his body, stitched lines covering little wounds. All over his body, lines of golden stitching sealing them. They're on his chest—his shoulders—his arms—his throat .
Xie Lian leans in, wild with desperation and horror and anger . He bites at the thread, fighting the divinity that sealed it. Feels it crack under his teeth, though they threaten to crack in return. Hua Cheng's hands tighten on him, then loosen again—tighten, and squeeze, then loosen. Stroke, then almost pull away, then grab on too tight again.
He bites harder, and the spell the creature wove breaks under his bite, the backlash welling blood in his own mouth to match the taste of Hua Cheng's filling his senses.
Below his mouth, the wound opens, and—
"DIANXIA!" screams the mouth in Hua Cheng's neck, and his whole body spasms, tightening and clinging to Xie Lian with all he is. "DIANXIA, DIANXIA, DIANXIA!"
"I'm here, I'm here!" Xie Lian sobs in return, pressing fevered kisses to that screaming mouth, to the surrounding skinless body—to the side of Hua Cheng's jaw.
He has torn himself apart. It breaks Xie Lian's heart to know it. He can feel the shackles digging into his back where Hua Cheng holds him. He can feel the countless mouths twitch and spasm with every call of his title.
Hua Cheng's body rolls against, that unbearable heat and hardness grinding into his hip before Hua Cheng sucked in a breath, his hands spasming, trying to pull away.
"No," Xie Lian says, clinging on tighter. "San Lang, No."
Rape, the creature had said of this. What he did to you, the creature had said. What you allowed.
The creature knows what happened in the temple. He doesn't know what happened in the caves. It doesn't know that Xie Lian has seen Hua Cheng's desires written out across the walls of his former prison, and accepted every one of them in his heart when he embraced the man there. When he wrapped him in his arms, he'd wrapped all of him up. The child he'd been, the ghost he'd become, the heavy wanting that lived at his core and had been slowly awakening the answering hunger that Xie Lian had starved for so, so long.
"Does it hurt?" Xie Lian asks again, lower this time, the words pressed into the whimpering mouth he'd set free.
One hand he slides up into Hua Cheng's dripping hair, finding those strands he'd once inspected stuck together by the dripping gore of him. His other hand slides down his flank, over every rib—over the shoulder joint of a second, impossible set of arms. Over the concave of his torso, and the jut of his hip bones, barely cushioned in the form he's wearing.
"Ugly," wheezes the mouth.
In answer, Xie Lian kisses him there. It's soft, and warm, and wet, and wrong in a thousand ways. But Hua Cheng sags against him, tucking his head into Xie Lian's hair. Sticky hot blood soaks through his brown locks, and he squeezes tighter, refusing to let go.
"Your true form," Xie Lian murmurs, hiding the words in Hua Cheng's flesh, cradling him close, "That's my favorite, San Lang."
I'm here, he means. I'm here.
Another wave of heat scorches through San Lang. Xie Lian feels it rock him top to bottom, feels the way the mouth below his spasms, trying to call out to him again, only muffled by Xie Lian's lips against him. Hua Cheng's whole body moans, wordless, past a hundred sealed mouths.
"Let me help," Xie Lian wraps his arms tighter—tries to wiggle closer, only for Hua Cheng's arms to clamp down around him, halting his movement. "I want to. San Lang. Just… You might have to show me how."
"Dian...xia…" Hua Cheng struggles, his teeth parting on a heavy breath against Xie Lian's scalp.
He can't pull away—not with Hua Cheng clinging so tightly, but he twists until he can cup a hand against the side of his face, thumb tracing the sharp fangs at the corner of his lipless mouth. His fingers press into his hollow cheek, then stroke upward to his brow. As he pets, the hold loosens slowly, until Hua Cheng has pulled back just enough to allow Xie Lian to lift his head from his neck—to meet his eye, as cursed now as the one he'd pulled from his skull all those years ago.
"You." Xie Lian tells him, and hopes he understands. Hopes that that's enough, with watching eyes on them. Hopes that Hua Cheng remembers. You, and not the state of you. You, and only you. You, and always you.
"Gege," breathes the mouth on Hua Cheng's neck in return, and Xie Lian smiles, the blood smeared against his face dripping with the motion.
"What you need," he whispers. "Take it. It's already yours. Hua Cheng. Hong-er. Wu Ming. San Lang. It's yours."
One hand cups the back of his head as the dripping, many-handed San Lang tackles him back against the hard ground, holding him safe and sound away from pain or injury. Xie Lian twists, trying to untangle the chain around his legs and fumbling for his belt to give San Lang an opening.
The ghost doesn't hesitate, though. As if he can't wait any longer—as if he's used up every inch of restraint he still possessed, Hua Cheng's claws descend, one hand cradling Xie Lian's head while the other three long, skeletal arms set about shredding the stained white robes into ribbons.
The only pause once, hovering over his forearm. That red eye flicks up to Xie Lian's, seeking something, and Xie Lian feels himself melt.
"Ruoye's not here," he chokes out.
Answered, Hua Cheng tears away the fabric without another moment's hesitation, then bends, bows, crumples over Xie Lian's body. Every inch of him is hot and wet, thick with the blood welling from whatever he's made of himself while he struggled to speak—to fight—to save his god.
"San Lang," Xie Lian breathes. Then "San Lang" again, when it doesn't feel like enough. "San Lang, San Lang, San Lang!"
Arms snake around him. Hot breath heaves against his shoulder. Blood from between Hua Cheng's teeth, hot with an exhale, and then the thick brush of something that might have been a tongue once. It feels absent. Incomplete.
Rage quickens in Xie Lian's veins, but he barely has room for it with the strange energy welling up in his stomach. That creature, that made Hua Cheng become this. That creature, who twisted San Lang's elegant hands into brutal claws, his noble face into skeletal terror, his firm, strong body into sinew and blood.
"Gege," moans the open mouth, and a muffled sound of agreement arises from the hundred bound mouths across Hua Cheng's body. His true mouth—his first mouth—lacking lips and tongue but still soft and sweet as he presses teeth worshipfully to Xie Lian's skin, painting him in blood without causing him an ounce of pain.
His hands are gripping Xie Lian's thighs. His robes are in shreds on the floor and his pants, though still intact, are soaked through with red, clinging to his skin until they might as well be gone.
There is a creature that made this happen in this way. That broke Hua Cheng, and drove him into a frenzy that has him grinding against Xie Lian's body in search of relief. There is a creature that tried everything to break Xie Lian, and is now trying this.
Without that creature, Xie Lian is certain, he would have been below this beloved body long, long ago. Would have known how sweetly his first mouth cried out his title and nicknames, and how tightly his hands could squeeze, free of claws.
When the creature realizes this is not rape, he will never let it happen again.
"Don't let me go," Xie Lian begs, and shoves himself against Hua Cheng—desperate and inelegant. "Don't let him take you again. Stay with me, find your relief with me, anything you need, San Lang, let me be what you need again!"
"Haah," breathes out Hua Cheng's true mouth, gurgling past another mouthful of blood.
Two of his hands clawing at Xie Lian's trousers, and the other two laying him back on the shreds of his robe. The shackle on his ankle jangles against his chains, but with Hua Cheng filling his senses it almost sounds more like the silver bells on his boots.
Clawed hands pull away his shoes, and Hua Cheng pulls back, twisting his long body, hands pressing and stroking up Xie Lian's legs, painting his skin in red. His teeth and face nuzzle against Xie Lian's bare foot, soft from months and months (years? Decades?) of captivity.
"L-love," stutters the voice from Hua Cheng's neck. "Love…you…love—"
"Sweet San Lang," Xie Lian croons. "My San Lang, I know. Come here. I know."
For hundreds of years, Xie Lian felt complete detachment from his groin—from the soft presence of his uninterested penis, and the tender flesh of his balls, and the tight furl of muscle behind.
The first of Hua Cheng's many arms meets him at the join of his thigh and hip, thumb pressing into the crease and rubbing down into him, feeling out the shape of bone beneath what little softness there is to Xie Lian's body.
Yes, Xie Lian's body sings at that simple, strong touch. Yes, that, even just that, forever.
It is not just that. There is another hand, cupping his back. A third, at his other hip, sliding back to his rear and squeezing there. A fourth, cradling the curve of his calf where his leg meets his knee.
And between his legs, where he has only before felt any stirring at all in this man's presence, that long thing presses against his soft, drooping flesh, and rubs in a wet, smooth, hot motion that sends a tension and heat spiking through Xie Lian's guts so quickly—so intensely—that for a moment he thinks he desperately needs to urinate, nevermind how long it's been since he felt such urges.
But it isn't really that sensation. No, it's the sensation from that coffin, bobbing in the ocean, alone and overheated, the memory of San Lang's lips on his own. It's the feeling of the temple, with a clever hand sliding over his body, beneath his robes and trousers, tickling and touching at his most intimate pieces.
Arousal, he knows in theory. Arousal, which has always sounded like a dirty word until just now, with San Lang beside him, around him, atop him.
A gasp claws its way up out of him, and his body moves without thought—arching back in response. He rolls their groins together once more, emulating the motion, then does it again—again— again, as if he were grain to be milled to dust against Hua Cheng's sharp, strong desire.
But he is not grain to Hua Cheng's millstone. They are not swords clashing and blunting one another, nor are they wood and fire, one sacrificing so the other can burn brighter.
Xie Lians finger scramble for purchase against Hua Cheng's half-solid body. His hair melts through his fingers, but there is enough there of his shoulder and neck for Xie Lian to hook his arms around him and hold on for dear life.
There is a stirring outside them. Xie Lian clenches his eyes shut against the flicker of white in his periphery. He only wants his blood-coated fingers. He only wants his blood-soaked love. He doesn't know how this works, how it's supposed to go, how it would have been, if things had been different. But he knows there is one person he trusts to help him, no matter what. One person who will help him, no matter the obstacles.
"Take me," he chokes into Hua Cheng's ear, and feels the many hands on him squeeze, then stroke harder. A single questing finger breaches him, and it isn't bad, it doesn't hurt, but it's strange.
Xie Lian learned a long, long time ago that strange did not mean dangerous. He breathes deep, keeping his eyes closed. There is disquiet somewhere, but it is not in him. There is someone besides Hua Cheng making noise, but Xie Lian doesn't need to listen to them. He just needs to understand what the finger inside him is for.
His fingers, clenching on the back of Hua Cheng's shoulders, find another sealed mouth, and he digs his nails into the stitching, seeking the thread of divinity that still answers to him for now. It won't, when they're done. He will shatter his cultivation against the stone of not Hua Cheng's desire, but his own.
So many times Xie Lian has been changed against his will by this world and the cruelty within it.
A second finger sinks into him, and he sighs, tilting his hips back to welcome the touch. His fingernails catch against the stitching on the new mouth he's discovered. He feels fuller than he has in a long time. It's been so long since he ate. Hua Cheng's fingers are warm and wet, slick and odd within him. He clenches around them experimentally, and a dozen fragments of Hua Cheng's voice groan from behind binding stitches.
A third finger prods, rubs against his furled hole then sinks in as well. It's tight. It might hurt, if Xie Lian wanted it less. He wants it, though. He wants it more than he's ever wanted before. That, more than anything, is the danger here. If there were a danger. It's that now Xie Lian knows he wants it. Knows how bad he wants it. It will change him forever, even without losing his spiritual energy. He should have feared this. He will never be able to live without it now.
But he's too selfish to change his mind now. Too thrilled, too eager, too desperate. He cannot take it back, no matter how much worse it will be to lose it again.
"Hurry," he chokes out, hoping beyond hope that Hua Cheng cannot hear the tears clogging his throat.
Those hips, so warm and lovely against him, pull back and rut forward again, then pull back more directly. Hua Cheng himself does as well, their bodies no longer pressed seamlessly together.
If Xie Lian asked him, if Xie Lian begged him, would Hua Cheng let him sink into the bloody mess of his current form? Would he let him live there, unbreathing but sheltered? Would he let Xie Lian curl behind his lungs, wrapped in the wet heat of him forever?
There is the sound of someone pounding on something. Hua Cheng still has not moved. Xie Lian slowly opens his eyes.
A single eye gazes down on him, waiting. Hua Cheng's whole body is visibly shuddering, shaking himself apart with desire. Still, he waits. Waits, wanting, falling apart.
"Hurry," Xie Lian whispers again, spreading his legs.
The fingers holding him open slide out, leaving heat and wet behind them. Xie Lian clenches senselessly, wanting that heat to stay .
Hua Cheng bends above him, his eye wild and endlessly attentive. His mouth opens, the remains of his tongue, the massive curve of his teeth, and he presses it gently to the side of Xie Lian's throat, over his cursed shackle.
The tip of something burning nudges against Xie Lian's desperate, hungry entrance, and he forces his body wide in answer—in plea.
That burning heat presses in, in, in, in, and against his throat Hua Cheng roars.
Xie Lian is drowning. Drowning, at the feel of that thing filling him. The heat of his own penis, nudging up against Hua Cheng's gelatinous, warm body as he's thrust into overwhelms him in tandem with the unbearably good wet heat coating his insides. It's still going, still more, and he wants, he wants, he wants more, he—
When Hua Cheng seats himself fully, he roars again, in a dozen voices at once. There is the feeling of something shattering—the feeling of something coming home. Xie Lian's belly feels swollen, his body stretched to the brink to accommodate Hua Cheng's new form.
"Gege!" Hua Cheng calls out, as if he's lost.
"San Lang, San Lang," Xie Lian gasps in return, scrambling for purchase. Everywhere his hands touch there seems to be another mouth, kissing him, licking his fingers. Against his chest there are more, kissing and licking. Where their hips meet and thighs entwine he can feel more, all suddenly free and all bent on giving him pleasure. The soft flesh his cock is nudging into is suddenly far more welcoming, wet heat opening to welcome him in, and Xie Lian cries out in shock, bucking, something electric and wild and white-hot burning through him.
I'm cumming, he thinks in shock, and the thought echoes through him as his orgasm shakes him to pieces in Hua Cheng's arms. Through it all, the ghost king fucks into him, slow until he can't be—steady until he's wild. He is driving harder and harder and harder. He has always worked so hard at what he loves, and there is nothing he loves more than Xie Lian. He works him hard, fucking and kissing and squeezing—loving him in every way, in every meaning of the world, in every possible way one person could love another.
And it should feel like something breaking, to have his foundation snapped in an instant. It should feel like loss.
It feels like flying. Like being set free, even if that freedom is the start of a long, long fall.
Hua Cheng will catch him.
There is blood in his mouth, and blood against his closed eyes, and there is someone—some thing —screaming in fury and loss. None of it matters. All that matters is that as Xie Lian holds tighter, Hua Cheng squeezes tighter in return. All that matters is that as Xie Lian finds his balance his martial training lets him fall into the pace, the rhythm, the exercise of the movement until Hua Cheng is the one panting and groaning and half-helpless. They are falling apart together.
It is so, so good. It is the only good thing he can think of—the only one he wants to know, forever.
Hua Cheng's shaking redoubles. His dozen voices crack and tremble, calling out for him. Xie Lian would never let Hua Cheng fall alone. He holds him tighter, till he can't breathe for how close he is squeezing his beloved.
When Hua Cheng cums inside him, the world seems to come apart at the seams. Gold and red, bright and burning.
Xie Lian's cultivation was lost to him long, long ago. The ghost king fills him with power he has never known before, honed and hoarded over centuries of suffering, waiting, loving in patience.
He cums inside, and it's only as his power floods Xie Lian from the inside out that he realizes that this was not just sex—not just a release of excess energy from an evil mountain.
This was dual cultivation.
Something shatters, and maybe it's the shackles, or the hateful room, or Xie Lian himself. Maybe it's all of them. He's laughing, or crying, or both, and he is brimming with liquid power. He is full of Hua Cheng, and surrounded by him, and holding him. He is safe, and keeping safe. He is himself, and he is something new all at once.
They are free, he thinks with delirious joy, tangled in Hua Cheng's arms, as the calamity who loves him rejects heaven, and is rejected in return. The floor opens beneath them, and they fall.
The air whips past them, but it hardly matters. Hua Cheng is still within him, hot and safe. Hua Cheng is still around him, real though he is strange—solid though he is weakened. They will fall from heaven, and it will hurt, but even then they will be together. Even then, Xie Lian will not let Hua Cheng slip free of him. Even then, they will see the sun and moon once more.
"Gege," Hua Cheng whispers against him, shivering in little bursts like a drowning creature pulled free from the water.
"I'm here," Xie Lian tells him, eyes fixed upwards as heaven disappears above them, the crumbling fragments of his shackles and Hua Cheng's blood trailing behind them through the sky. "I'm here."