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Shang De felt empty. It was, perhaps, a return to form for him, after twenty-some years.
That boy who once his was dead.
There was a point before Shang Chao, and there was after. Even with the subsequent births, it was always that point he came back to. What parent expects there to be an after that after? Especially for a child like Shang Chao, so bright, so clever, so very—
So very like his father, in that respect.
While Shang Chao had cultivated a talent similar to Shang De's in the sciences and invention, it was in his skill in using people to his own ends, more than the sleek brown of his hair, that he most closely resembled his father.
He hadn't wanted Shang Chao to know about him. To know him at all, for fear that he, too, might find more of himself reflected in the man who had once acted as Shang De's closest friend. A snake he had held to his chest in winter, in the end, and now MG no longer belonged to the Shang family. His son, ever dutiful, had responded by interning everywhere but the company his own grandfather had founded.
He had thought it for the best that Shang Chao not know him, and considering how perfect he had turned out — far more so than the other attempts, with other fathers… perhaps he had been correct in whatever choices he had made. But for that poor choice of hero to support, everything would have—
In the days after Shang Chao's death, he'd been unable to sleep, instead re-watching the surveillance footage for the period leading up to the shooting from the warehouse he'd provided. His son had always been a radiant, charismatic force, but it was something else to watch in action. It was not something Shang De had passed onto him.
No, it was that man who joined them occasionally, in that ridiculous disguise, who had given that to him. Yan Mo, wearing a ponytail that didn't suit him and a smile that suited him even less, clapping an absurdly friendly hand on his son's shoulder. Where was the man who wore bespoke suits to HAC meetings hiding in that…that teashop personality?
Shang De had known the man his entire life. He could not blame Shang Chao for not recognizing him when he himself had nearly failed due to the absurdity of it all. But he could put the pieces further. Whatever the reasoning for it, the CEO of MG was recruiting the successor to E-Soul in this absurd, forced-underdog way. He had chosen a zero-trust student to grow in that direction, not understanding that nurture was far less important than the nature and purpose someone was created for. He had, more than likely, killed Shang Chao simply to keep the new E-Soul from switching agencies. Even his son's little hero had gotten onto the news just that afternoon to blame MG for Shang Chao's death.
Shang De had not told Yan Mo their last encounter had resulted in a son. Would it have saved him, if Shang De had swallowed his pride to tell him so? Would Yan Mo have paused, even a second?
He hummed as the final pin set with a click, and tapped the door open with a gloved hand. He slipped the pick rake and tension wrench back into his blazer's inner pocket and relocked it behind him.
Somewhat listlessly as the days of unrest and self-administered treatments caught up with him, he waited in the dark for Yan Mo to re-enter the tea shop. As the time passed, he sat in one of the comfortable chairs by the window, but did not move to check his phone. Yan Mo would come soon, and he would make his proposal.
His son had been the perfect blend of Shang De and Yan Mo's strengths, while avoiding both of their weaknesses. It was only right that Yan Mo give him another, though it could not make up for what he had taken.
Movement outside, and then, Yan Mo was in the shop, turning on the lights. Even like this, he was in character; this dressed-down local businessman type. Despite himself, Shang De noted his shoulders had only grown broader since their youth, even as Shang De had found himself growing yet more slender with age.
Still, despite Shang De's silence, Yan Mo clearly sensed another's presence in the room. He turned, and for the second before his genuine surprise concealed itself, the mask had dropped, and Shang De could see the ruthless strategist who had never lurked more than a breath from the surface.
"It's a new look for you," Shang De said blandly. Any lingering doubts over Yan Mo's role in Shang Chao's death had evaporated, seeing that face. "You've had my family's company less than two years, and you already need to moonlight to stay afloat?"
"Still bitter about that, are we?" Yan Mo said, letting his hair fall from his ponytail, and somehow he was the CEO again, even with the apron. Shang De hated him for that, too; that even in his own bespoke suit, he always felt underdressed in Yan Mo's eyes. Underqualified; underprepared. "My condolences, by the way. I heard about your son."
Shang De carefully planned script washed fully out of his mind in his sudden fury.
"Our son," he corrected, snapped.
Whatever satisfaction he'd expected to gain, looking at the shock break that too-smug countenance, must have been too cold to be felt beneath the rage that filled him. He had thought himself empty, but perhaps there was something, after all; an endless well.
"Was he truly?" Yan Mo said, lowly. "Why did you not tell me this, Shang De? I would have kept him from entering such dangerous ventures, had I known."
"Would you have?" Shang De laughed, and laughed, his rage frothing into his father's madness, a cycle he could never truly stop. "Would you truly, Yan Mo? No, if he got in the way of your plans, I suspect we would have ended up exactly in this place."
"It's not very wise to inform me that you, without a crumb of evidence beyond your own grudge, blame me for his death. Now I know to prepare for whatever misguided revenge you're planning," Yan Mo sighed, mockingly. He tutted. "You were never very good at this sort of thinking, old friend."
"I'm not here for that," Shang De said, feeling close to spitting. "I seek your penitence and atonement."
"Penitence? For a crime I've not committed?" Yan Mo sounded amused. He had taken off the apron now, and was, in his staggering broadness, sitting across from Shang De at the table. "Well then, how do you ask me to atone?"
"Shang Chao was the best of both of us," he said, his tiredness and grief suddenly combining to crush him under their weight. He began to idly trace a pattern on the table with his finger, but stopped to look Yan Mo directly in the eye. "Give me another."
"What." And this was the second time tonight, and perhaps ever, that he had ever seen Yan Mo off-balance.
"I could have had your little wannabe god-killer and your little teenaged godling killed, if I wanted. They're still weak, aren't they? It would be easy enough to take your whole little conspiracy out," Shang De said.
"You think threatening to kill my employees will go over well with the Commission? How do you plan to get out of their punishment, Shang-ge?" he mused, apparently slipping back to that old nickname in his shock. Though it was always impossible to tell for sure, with Yan Mo, what mistakes were intentionally crafted to mislead.
"What care do I have for my life, my legacy, when you have taken both from me?!" Despite his raised voice, Shang De was gentle as he traced the stomach that had once been round with the only true heir he'd accept. Though Shang Chao had taken nearly a year to speak, he picked up words, skills, and concepts quickly. The next one, by that failed X, resembled him too, and despite Shand's efforts otherwise, had proven a failure. Due to some trust in his own genetics, he was investing heavily in his career, but he would not be surprised to see him lose to a child and their pet, nor if he had to one day fish his remains out of the wreckage of some aerial crash, either.
Then, for the third… after Ah Sheng had retired, he'd had none on his payroll to assure brilliance and utmost health in utero. When the boy resulted in, as many third sons of legend, a bit of a common fool, he'd left him for the system to raise by the second year, and in his ire, had approved the hit requested on Ah Sheng. The father had been the associate of that old rival, and had seemed smart enough, but clearly, it had not transferred.
No, it was only him and Yan Mo combined who could create perfection. This day, along with his own treatments in anticipation, would guarantee another chance. It would have to. He would bear his own loathing until there was no need for any further, and he had assured his own legacy would be inherited by someone worthy.
"You're insane," Yan Mo was saying, eyes dark as he watched him. "I had forgotten how insane you were."
"You knew my father," Shang De answered.
"Do you truly think it is just … genetics, fate, that makes each human what they are? Not our lives; not our connections to others? Not each individual's interest? How do you possibly expect to control all the variables of biology? It is so much easier to control their environment." This was, Shang De realized, the closest he'd seen Yan Mo to honesty since before they were nine, when Yan Mo's father had lost his standing and Yan Mo had lost his…well.
"The others were failures. It was only him," Shang De said, and realized he was crying. Well, he was wasting energy doing that.
"So you truly… carried, him and the others?" Yan Mo was staring at Shang De's hands, where they cradled his stomach. "This wasn't in one of your laboratories?"
"Do you remember the Hero Sheng?" Without waiting for him to answer, he continued. "A hero capable of feats of medicine that have not been repeated since. I really should have bothered with him instead of that hero partner of his for the second one, but he was always too loyal to that wife of his…"
He scowled at the remembered insult.
"So you truly…have a womb?" Yan Mo asked, lowly. "Where does it possibly fit, in that skinny frame of yours?"
"It sounds like you want to find out," Shang De answered, wishing desperately for a glass of whiskey to wet his lips. "So you agree, then."
"I haven't said that."
Shang De rolled his eyes, and began to undo his tie and unbutton his shirt. Yan Mo watched, eyes tracking the movements. Shang De had never been able to ignore the heat of that expression when it landed on him, despite his own hatred.
"Kiss me," he said, and Yan Mo stood, and pulled him from the chair. On instinct, Shang De wrapped his legs around him and brought their mouths together. Stumbling, Yan Mo placed him on the counter at the front of the store.
In kissing, Yan Mo was as controlling as he was in anything. His hand wrapped fiercely around the back of Shang De's head, and his tongue entwined with before flattened his own. Another large hand twisted in and peeled Shang De's dress shirt from his shoulders, and Shang De let his own hands force their way beneath that hideous yellow shirt, nestling into thick chest hair that covered thicker muscle.
"I hate you," he gasped between kisses, the brush of Yan Mo's facial hair itching against his own clean-shaven face. "Now fuck me already."
"This is your problem: you're far too impatient, even as we get older." Yan Mo hummed, pressing a large thumb between his lips, pressing flatly down on Shang De's tongue. "You never savor the chase, only the results."
He withdrew, and Shang De, mouth free, spat, "My problem is that I no longer have my son because of you. I have come to at least offer you the chance to fix that, not so you could bother me with these frivolities."
"Frivolities?" Yan Mo smiled, and dragged his wet thumb down to Shang De's nipple and circled it. Shang De bit back a whimper, but he couldn't hide the sudden arch in his back, as he strained against his pants. "But look how well you respond to them."
"It's just — hah — a physical response. It's not necessary to— to—," his words cut off with a loud moan as Yan Mo, ignoring him, licked a broad stripe up the side of his neck and blew.
"There you are," Yan Mo said, darkly amused, and dragged his mouth down Shang De's chest until he once again reached his nipple, nursing at it.
"It's been sixteen years since the last one. No milk left," Shang De mocked, though the effect was lost in the stuttering gasps between his words.
"You can nurse them, as well? What unnatural powers that man had," Yan Mo said, before latching his mouth onto the other one, sucking and pulling at it as though trying to prove him wrong. Shang De gasped as the stimulation of it. With the brush of his facial hair against his skin, every place Yan Mo touched him was red and itching, aching for that flat tongue to soothe it.
"Fuck you," Shang De said, unbuttoning Yan Mo's cheap slacks and pressing his hand below the waistline, groping for him. "Fuck you, just fuck me already, you absolute useless fucker!"
He squeezed around the thick base of him, and tried to shove Yan Mo's slacks down, but a thick hand stopped him.
"It's been a while, Shang-ge. Last time was so dark and rushed, I didn't see just how easily you blush for me. You expect me to just skip over this gift now? When I know, in our next meeting, that you will act as though I know nothing of what it looks like to see you like this, beneath me?" the hand placed his own back on the counter, and then Yan Mo was gripping him by the waist and shoving Shang De's pants down. "You tell me you've added a womb in the years since we were boys together, and you don't expect me to look for it between this lovely legs of yours?"
"Just fuck me and figure it out, you absolute—" Shang De's words were cut off by tongue, a mouth covering his own, and he lost his train of thought entirely as a probing finger dragged a nail along his inner thigh before shoving inside of him. He clenched around it and moaned into the kiss.
"So demanding," Yan Mo hummed, pushing another finger inside and thrusting it with the first. "It's almost cute. I'll have to keep an eye on your belly as it gets fuller. I wonder, will this baby survive if it has my guidance, instead of just yours?"
"Fuck you," Shang De said, no longer capable of the clever words he could use in his lesser furies. There was only the black rage, and emptiness, and with a third finger, Yan Mo was slowly curing the latter. The fingers twisted and pulled out, then shoved all back in at once, and Shang De keened into it, raking his nails against his broad back. Dug deeper, hoping it bled; anything to leave Yan Mo as red and marked by this as he was.
Yan Mo looked at him, visibly amused at his despair, and soon took himself in his hand. Shang De barely had time to look at it before it began to press inside him, forcing that artificial passage to stretch to hold him, and whatever else Shang De wanted to hiss at him was knocked out of him by a brutal thrust.
A pull back, then a shove in, again, then those large hands were gripping his hips and pulling him into each push and Shang De felt his eyes roll back at the feeling. He forced himself to focus on Yan Mo, who only looked yet more amused, and rocked into him further. "Don't look so smug."
"Why would I look smug?" The corner of Yan Mo's lips twitched upward. "Surely, there's nothing about the sight of an industry rival acting drunk off my cock and begging me to get him pregnant that might make me feel a little, ah, smug."
Shang De snarled, words failing him once more, and punched at his chest. The violence only ratcheted the force with which Yan Mo fucked him, and he felt his body clenching around him with a ravenous hunger that only grew the longer things continued. He began to stroke himself, needing some sensation that wasn't Yan Mo, to feel like he had any control in his own pleasure.
Then Yan Mo gripped both his wrists in one hand and pressed them, and him, flat against the counter. In the next motion, he somehow shoved even deeper in the adjusted position, until Shang De could see the imprint of him against his stomach at the point where he had been cradling himself earlier.
His back arched against the counter as he finished, the results pooling at his hip, as Yan Mo continued thrusting into him unceasingly.
"Fucker…stop dragging things out," he moaned, digging his nails into the meat of his palms. He opened his eyes halfway again to glare at Yan Mo, and it was then, his exhausted fury meeting that placid expression, that Yan Mo pushed in a final time and filled him.
"Are you happy now?" Yan Mo taunted, and pulled Shang De's handkerchief from his discarded suit jacket to wipe himself off. He crumpled it, and dropped it on Shang De's stomach. "Let me know when the test results are in. I don't trust you not to mess the next one up."
"Don't test my patience further on the subject," Shang De hissed.
"I think you'll let me test a lot further," Yan Mo mused, zipping himself back up and stepping back, leaving Shang De to figure out how to get himself sorted. "Your impulsivity would work out for you more often if you were smart enough to think in the moment. You're scared to strategize, because you know I'll win outright, so you need some plausible deniability to live with yourself. But now, I don't see how I lose, here, so go ahead and threaten me. I have two good prospects to enter the next tournament alongside Ghostblade. Meanwhile, you're threatening me when Treeman is…. you've just signed a firefighter, recently, do I remember that right?"
"Feel free to underestimate me," Shang De said, face hot once more. "Really, I encourage it."
"You mean that, don't you. Well, I always was the one who had to play with a handicap to make things fair for you." Yan Mo shrugged, and, having finished rebuttoning his shirt, spread his hand on Shang De's stomach. "Still, at least you've given me some reason to keep you alive. Do keep me involved in the rearing this time."
Shang De glared at him. Why Yan Mo was insisting upon the idea that he would trust another child with him after what happened to the first …. he curled his lip in disgust, and Yan Mo pat him like one would a dog.
With that, he left the bubble tea shop, and Shang De slowly, cleaned and put himself back together.
It will have been worth it, he reminded himself as he finished clipping his tie. He had tried it again, exactly as before. This time, there would be a different result.
There would have to be.