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Taxian-jun hadn’t spoken a word since he had returned to the palace, carrying a deathly cold corpse in his arms, gently, like he could somehow hurt him worse in death than he had in life.
Hua Binan paced, giving into the temptation to gnaw his lip bloody. He was all alone, with only the lonely howl of the wind to keep him company, so he threaded his fingers together, cracking his knuckles. He couldn’t think, because the wind kept whispering Chu Wanning is dead, you killed him, how many more innocent people will die for the sake of-
For the sake of what?
Hua Binan would always remain very clear-eyed when it came to the choices he had made.
Never mind that Chu Wanning was dead. This - this was preventable, but perhaps inevitable. Chu Wanning had always been stubborn and unyielding, odiously protective of Mo Ran. Perhaps he thought that Mo Ran was not beyond saving, and had tried to reach into the darkness to offer him salvation - if so, then Chu Wanning’s death was no one’s fault but his own. It was little different from suicide. Mo Ran was gone. His soul was now nothing more than an overgrown pale black flower, his heart pierced through with thousands of poisoned thorns. He was nothing more than a possessed puppet, a vessel of hate and bloodlust and purpose. Even Hua Binan, with all of his talents, could not bring that boy back, even if he wanted to.
Hua Binan had - well, he had been fond of Chu Wanning. Chu Wanning had been kind to him. Chu Wanning took him in, when no one else was willing. He’d never mocked nor scorned him, never tried to chase him away, and he’d never looked at Hua Binan as if he were a monster, less than human.
Maybe that was part of the problem. Chu Wanning had never even looked at him.
It was always Mo Ran. Mo Ran, Taxian-jun…..whoever he was, it was always that boy who always held Chu Wanning’s eyes.
Hua Binan could have loved him, once. Perhaps Chu Wanning could have loved him, too.
Perhaps, in some world out there, you weren’t left behind in the snow.
But Chu Wanning is dead, and Hua Binan will not mourn a ghost. If he started, he’d never stop. He is - collateral. Hua Binan wished to save him, wished to take Chu Wanning to live with him in the demon realm forever, the lone survivor of the end of the world - but, like pruning a flower, Hua Binan dismantles the fantasy, lets it fall dead to the ground.
It’s Taxian-jun who has ruined everything, really. Taxian-jun, who threatens to give Chu Wanning’s death no meaning. Then it would not be death, but murder. Then both their hands will share the stain of their shizun’s blood. What good does it do, to mourn? It will not bring him back. It changes nothing. They are both too far gone to mourn.
Hua Binan grinds his teeth. Mo Ran has always vexed him. Ironically, Mo Ran is one of the biggest thorns in Hua Binan’s side. He is supposed to be Hua Binan’s dog, yet instead, sitting slumped and still next to the lotus pond made indescribably eerie, he seems to be Chu Wanning’s.
It is impossible for a puppet to feel grief. Hua Binan is sure of this. This is no more than a tantrum Taxian-jun is throwing because he lost his favorite toy.
But this tantrum threatens Hua Binan’s plans. What if Taxian-jun never gets up? What if he wants to jump in and drown beside Chu Wanning? Taxian-jun has always been unpredictable. Hua Binan has never truly understood his creation. But despite all the carnage Taxian-jun has wrought, despite the seventy-two cities of Rufeng he burned and the Xues whom he destroyed, Hua Binan always understood Mo Ran was always acting according to his bastardized heart. A heart full of nothing but hate is somewhat easy to predict. As it turns out, there is no shortage of people in this world Mo Ran hates. Not that Hua Binan feels camaraderie with this puppet, but he does understand that, loathing this rotten world and all who inhabit it.
So yes, there have been deviations in his plan. Hua Binan never planned to bathe the world in blood, but does it really matter? Who among Taxian-jun’s victims would not slay a Butterfly-Boned Beauty Feast, if given the chance? Is there truly anyone innocent in this world? Can anyone survive this hell and emerge unscathed, untainted?
If Hua Binan can bring his people home, then everything else under the sun can rot. He could not care less. He cannot afford it.
But his plans will die here in the water alongside Chu Wanning if that hateful heart cannibalizes itself in grief.
What would happen, if Mo Ran decided he hated no one more than himself?
What could Hua Binan do with a puppet whose strings have been severed? How can he wield a weapon that has gone soft?
He needs a new whetstone. Another song for his puppet to dance to. If Taxian-junis a mutt, then Hua Binan just needs another bone. But what? Taxian-jun cares for no one else. He killed everyone in Rufeng sect, everyone from his Sisheng except Xue Meng, who despises him now. Truly, what else does Taxian-jun have to live for but Hua Binan’s will?
Who can Taxian-jun live for other than Hua Binan himself?
When Hua Binan realizes what must be done, he puts his head in his hands, for only a second, and then steels his resolve. Fine. He played that part once, and even though it plucked at every last nerve, straining against the very seams of the faux person suit he crafted, he can do it again. Sacrifices must be made, and no one is willing to sacrifice more for this cause than Hua Binan.
He’ll just - just what? Pretend as if Taxian-jun’s long lost shixiong Shi Mei has somehow risen from the dead? But most likely, Taxian-jun was too far gone to question it. It was a miracle he still remembered his name. There was no one left alive - besides Xue Meng - who even remembered Shi Mei’s existence.
He could tell Mo Ran it was only a dream.
He could whisper his design into Mo Ran’s ear as he slept on his shoulder, even with his eyes wide-open. Perhaps this wasn’t a dead end, but an unexpected blessing.
A haunting. Yes, this would work out perfectly. Now that Chu Wanning was gone Shi Mei, who Mo Ran had always believed was his true beloved, could come back to him, a ghost, only to plead for Mo Ran to learn the Rebirth technique, to bring him back - except Shi Mei wasn’t dead, because he had never existed. But, Hua Binan’s heart thumped in his chest like it only ever had once or twice in his life, only ever for this man, he could use Mo Ran to bring Chu Wanning back.
“Don’t worry, Shizun,” Hua Binan sighed, removing his veil. He slipped his fingers under the scars he’d hidden his face behind, slowly peeling the mask of marred, but fake skin away. “I’ll bring you home.”
As long as Hua Binan tells himself this, and believes it, it will be so. He will hammer it like nails into his skull. Just so long as no one pulls them out, lest the whispers leak through, and he began to hemorrhage rivers of blood.
This was still salvageable. Hua Binan tucked the fake skin into a drawer, fingers crawling over a scrap of Chu Wanning’s hair ribbon. Mo Ran had always been fond of taking his concubine in quite - public settings, so no one could blame Hua Binan, really, if he happened to catch an eyeful. Nor could they blame the hand that happened to catch the stray hair ribbon fluttering in the wind.
Hua Binan’s lips twitched into a snarl.
Mo Ran was disgusting, vile, a true monster. And that was exactly what it would take to bring the Butterfly-Boned Beauty Feasts home.
-
It was twilight by the time Hua Binan left his quarters, the sky the color of a bruise meant to kill.
Hua Binan had managed to stay close because Taxian-jun didn’t know Hua Binan - no one did. All he knew was that he was a healer, his talents unparalleled, and Mo Ran had found him inoffensive enough - coincidentally, nothing to do with the little blossom in his heart - that he allowed him to live. It wasn’t strange. Some of the more cowardly cultivators, if they possessed some unique talent, were allowed to live if they prostrated themselves before Mo Ran and begged for mercy.
Pitiful. But humans were just like that. Tall and proud and unwilling to bend, until you put a blade against their throats.
Taxian-jun did not react to Hua Binan’s approach, even though Hua Binan did not attempt to hide his footsteps. That was concerning. Was Taxian-jun so out of it he wouldn’t notice an assassin inches from sliding a knife in his back? Did he just not care? Or was he so assured in his power that even a fearsome primordial beast would possess no threat to him, when he could snap his fingers and flay them head to toe?
Hua Binan knelt down beside him. He searched for the character ‘Shi Mei’ in the repository of his mind. He had played the loving, sweet, gentle shixiong before, for years. His heart may be harder now, and he may bear more scars, but he can remember his lines. He would have to relearn tenderness, something he’d never wanted to know in the first place, but if this was to be a dream, Hua Binan supposed he could be anything.
Hua Binan reached out to lay a hand on Taxian-jun’s shoulder. He was surprised by how warm Mo Ran felt.
Taxian-jun flinched under the touch - suggesting he was not aware of Hua Binan’s presence - head whipping around, dark eyes gleaming with a savagery Hua Binan had put there himself. He didn’t dare flinch away from it.
“Do not touch this venerable one,” Taxian-jun hissed, shrugging his hand off. Hua Binan let his own snarl slip out, before he lowered the veil. It had been years, he wondered if Mo Ran would still recognize him. How deep did counterfeit devotion run? He closed his eyes, trying to channel his desires through their connection, forcing Mo Ran’s eyes to perceive him as-
“Shi Mei?”
Hua Binan forced himself to smile. “A-Ran,” he murmured, voice lilting up. “Have you missed me?”
Taxian-jun blinked dumbly up at him. He was frozen, a statue, warm stone. His pallid expression went impossibly more ghastly.
The haitang blossom he was holding slipped from his hand into the crystalline water. Hua Binan would not acknowledge reality by so much as glancing at what lay in those waters.
“Wha….” Taxian-jun stuttered, whispered, the word a mere breath. Was he even aware he was speaking? “B-But you’re dead. You’re supposed to be dead.”
And now he was growing hysterical. His eyes had gone wide, the light in them shattered like glass. He tried to scramble away like a beaten dog, but his panic made him clumsy. Hua Binan reached out quickly to grab his hands, which he found were still covered in blood. He bit his tongue to keep from screaming something vile and unforgivable.
“Yes,” Hua Binan whispered, but where Taxian-jun’s voice was almost a hiss, a hole punctured in his throat, Hua Binan’s was soothing, a lullaby. It stilled Taxian-jun like a stab wound. “But I came back for you Mo Ran. I could never stay away.”
He lifted up a hand and pressed it to Mo Ran’s cheek, damp with what he couldn’t imagine were tears.
How could a puppet cry for a man he no longer knew how to love?
“I fought my way through the underworld to return to your side.”
Hua Binan leaned forward, pressing his lips against that cheek. It was a fleeting thing, a dragonfly’s wings against water, but the salt of tears was perhaps more disquieting than the corpse beside them.
When he pulled away, Mo Ran’s eyes had gone glassy.
“I don’t understand,” Taxian-jun murmured, his expression agonized. He shuddered, eyes squeezing shut. “My head hurts….”
Despite everything in him screaming against it, Hua Binan pulled Mo Ran against his chest. Mo Ran went with no resistance, which soothed some of his worries. Hua Binan laid his head on his shoulder, allowing him to hide in the crook of his neck.
Mo Ran is heavy against him. Deadweight. A ball and chain.
“Shhh,” Hua Binan pets through his hair, which smelt of smoke and blood and death. Perhaps something a little sweet, a little floral. “You’re alright. Don’t think anymore. I’m here. I’ll take care of you now.”
-
Taxian-jun let Hua Binan lead him into Chu Wanning’s room. The silence is suffocating but neither of them speak. A hush falls over Hua Binan's mind as well, the kind of hush that takes up weight and suffocates at a wake. The very air is quiet, mourning the one who used to breathe it. Hua Binan couldn’t stand it, Mo Ran’s hand in his, his dazed, confused eyes, the fact that it was a beast he was lying down on this bed, and not his beloved. It felt like trespassing on holy ground, desecrating it.
But Hua Binan couldn’t let himself be seen by the servants, nor did he have a story prepared for why others could see him. Perhaps there was an invisibility spell he could find, that would allow only for Mo Ran to perceive him. But he would worry about that later. For now he just had to get Mo Ran into bed, get him asleep.
If only he could take that pillow, or his hands, and wring every last drop of wretched breath from his lungs - but no, Hua Binan had to take in a deep breath himself. This was for the plan. This was necessary. Without Taxian-jun, Hua Binan had no weapon. Without Taxian-jun, only an abyss to fall into remained.
When Hua Binan went to pull away, he found himself trapped. Taxian-jun’s fingers were curled into his sleeves, holding onto him like he was a petulant child refusing to let his mother go. Hua Binan glared, because Mo Ran wasn’t looking at him, eyes still squeezed shut in pain.
“Don’t go,” Taxian-jun murmurs, forcing his eyes open, forcing Hua Binan to soften his expression.
“I won’t,” Hua Binan says, trying to extract the fingers gripping his sleeves and failing. Even in this state, weakened and weary, Taxian-jun is dangerously strong. “You should sleep. I’ll visit you again soon.”
Taxian-jun shook his head, eyes glazing with wildness, with despair. “You can’t. When is soon - I need you here.” Quieter, Taxian-jun confessed into the dead of night. “You can’t leave me, Shi Mei. I - I love you.”
Hua Binan swallowed his revulsion, which tastes like bile, like blood, like hatred plucked straight from the flower rotting inside Mo Ran’s chest.
Dark lashes flutter, hiding the tyrant’s mad eyes. “I never told you, because I…I didn’t think you felt the same. But it doesn’t matter if you do, because I’ll still love you anyway. I just want you to stay. I’ll - I’ll do anything.”
Of course you don’t care, Hua Binan thought drolly, though his ears did prick at that delicious promise. You’re not capable of that.
Hua Binan loathes it, loathes when there is a problem he cannot solve, loathes the uncertainty and the irrevocability and the feeling that he is losing something that is already lost, but he can't stop losing it; he doesn’t even know what it is, really, that is slipping through his fingers, edging closer to the ledge of the cliff, he doesn’t know what it is but he is losing it and he knows with a bone-deep certainty that he will never have it again.
As long as it isn't his dream, his eyes should remain dry. Right? They must remain clear, he must always see his dream.
“Is that so?” Hua Binan made his voice lighter, airy, teasing as he sat on the edge of the bed, patting the fingers curled in his sleeve. “You’ll do whatever I ask of you?”
“Anything,” Mo Ran swore, selling his soul to the devil yet again. And Chu Wanning really thought a man determined to burn could be saved.
“I’ll think about it then,” Hua Binan said with a smile his mother might have worn. “Tomorrow I’ll have an answer for you, okay?”
Taxian-jun shook his head, strands of inky hair smearing onto the pillow. “Don’t want tomorrow,” he said, voice beginning to slur.
Hua Binan threaded his fingers through his hair. “Tomorrow will come whether you want it to or not.”
“No, this venerable one will…will….” Taxian-jun rasps, eyes whirling whirlpools that spin faster and faster, swallowing more and more of the light in his eyes, until all of a sudden, they go startlingly still. “No, I can’t do anything, can I? Shi Mei? Do you hate me, for shizun’s death?”
Hua Binan is too practiced in deceit to show shock openly on his face, but he can’t help the reflexive tightening of his fingers in Taxian-jun’s hair, the tremors that run through his fingertips.
“Why would I hate you?” Hua Binan asked carefully, confused. Confused because why would Taxian-jun think that, how could Mo Ran know, he shouldn’t be able to know.
Mo Ran leaned up to whisper, dead-eyed, yet now they were impossibly clear.
“Because I think I hate myself.”
Ice flooded Hua Binan’s veins. It was a familiar feeling; when he was young, and had been running, and running, and running, he’d fallen into a river, and it wasn’t cold enough to give him hypothermia, but it was cold enough that he could remember how it felt like being stabbed a thousand times, being flayed, skin stitched back on, then flayed again, even twenty years later. He remembered the breathless panic, the weightless sickness of not being able to find your footing, the helplessness of being thrown this way and that by a force you could never dream of overpowering. He didn’t have to imagine; it was like meeting the gods.
Any minute, Hua Binan almost expected Taxian-jun to open his maw wide, revealing rows and rows of gleaming white fangs, and set about feasting upon him, devouring Hua Binan in bloody bits and pieces.
No. Hua Binan took a deep breath, willing his heart, fluttering like a frantic bird trapped inside a cage, to be still. Taxian-jun was his. Taxian-jun was wholly under his control.
He was a weapon held in Hua Binan’s hand, facing towards his enemies, never his own soft-underbelly, wasn’t he?
Hua Binan fixed him with a tender look, and it made him sick to his stomach.
“Please don’t say that, A-Ran,” Hua Binan whispered as he leant down, pressing their foreheads together. “You’re very special to me.”
Taxian-jun shook his head, “No.” Trying to shy away, but Hua Binan followed him.
“I need you. I need you very much,” Hua Binan’s voice began to tear with terror, shaking minutely with anger, but he hoped it sounded like love. “If you die, you’ll be all alone. You don’t want that, do you?”
“No,” Taxian-jun whispered again, and this time, the agony in his voice was palpable. He was so desperate for comfort, for affection. Hua Binan was reminded of long ago, of how hard Mo Ran had clung to Chu Wanning’s robes, knuckles going white, nails cutting into palms. He’d clung to consciousness for as long as he could, screams deafened by thunder, yet Hua Binan had heard them and for some reason couldn’t forget. Once, Mo Ran had wanted Chu Wanning to be the one to kill him.
They were foolish feelings of a little boy, nothing more and nothing less. He had been scared. It must have hurt. He couldn’t have possibly meant it. Mo Ran had not been Chu Wanning’s disciple for even a year at that point, how could he sacrifice his blood and flesh, his very soul, and his own life for someone he hadn’t even known, really? Hua Binan had never understood this. It was a shame he would never be able to ask Mo Ran now.
But - hadn’t Chu Wanning done the same? He didn’t know Mo Ran. Taxian-jun. If he did, and he still believed that monster deserved salvation -
Then where was Hua Binan’s?
Then Hua Binan was right, every last human who roamed this desolate plane was a despicable, selfish, heartless hypocrite, and all of them deserved death. Maybe even Chu Wanning.
Or maybe, no one knew anyone, and only fell in love with the dreams they could impose on a living thing able to be held. At least, dreams couldn’t hurt. They devoured you, but toothlessly.
Hua Binan studied him, the affliction in his eyes, the pallor of his cheeks, a scar sliced just above his eyebrow that had never healed quite right, that his bangs hid most of the time, and you could only really see it if you drew too close. There were a lot of those little scars actually, littered across his face and neck like constellations. There was probably more beneath his robes.
Did Taxian-jun remember the origin of them all?
Was there even the smallest part of him that knew they had all been for Hua Binan?
Or if not Hua Binan - perhaps, what he mistook as his soul? God?
How deeply, how irrevocably had Hua Binan infested Taxian-jun? He’d never really thought about it, how tightly they had entwined, in which chamber of Taxian-jun’s heart Hua Binan’s fragmented soul lay.
Taxian-jun’s lips were bitten raw and bloody. The sight threatened violence inside of Hua Binan, a memory pressing up against his skull, the seams of his skin, typing to break away as if it had become a live entity inside of him, and was hungrier even than he for vengeance.
Hua Binan did something that could have, should have damned him, if he were not already damned. He closed his eyes, because it was the only way he could lean forward and press his lips against Taxian-jun’s. He felt it taint him, ruin him down to the marrow of his bones. Taxian-jun melted beneath his hands, candle wax the fire had finally reached, deliquesced down onto the sheets. His mark would be left in the bed forever.
“Stay with me,” Hua Binan said, dispassion finally leaking into his voice, as Taxian-jun stared unseeingly past the gauze canopy. “I have you. I won’t leave.”
Hua Binan squeezed his puppet’s hand tight, tight, tight, fingers leaving brand-hot marks.
There was something about telling Taxian-jun truths he could never know the full truth of that loosened Hua Binan’s lips. It was - not satisfying, that would be as pathetic as a cat amusing itself with playing with a rat’s corpse - but it was the queer thrill of strings wrapping tighter around his fingers. It was a firming of his grasp. A reminder of the control he held, absolute and unwavering. Of devotion too blind to see in the dark.
-
Taxian-jun laid on his lap like a domesticated pet, and Hua Binan quickly grew sick of it, but he had been sick his entire life, so it wasn’t anything new.
Hua Binan didn’t sleep. He barely slept when he was alone. It was always restless, and he always kept one eye open. He watches the laboured rise and fall of Taxian-jun’s chest and wonders if the roots had yet grown into his lungs.
He wondered if he placed his hand over Taxian-jun’s heart, if it would feel like any other, or if it would feel like a trapped scream, withered petals, the heat of a poisoned wound.
He watches the world grow darker and darker before the sky gradually begins to lighten to a shade of blue that reminds Hua Binan of otherworldly places, places he’s only ever dreamt of before. The hour just before dawn is a dark velvet blue, a blue like a pond of mercy deep in the throes of winter, a blue like the robes his mother favored. Soft and soothing yet incomparably hollow.
He wonders what the demon realm would look like, as he often does in the dead of night, the time when dreams are able to be caressed and held close and believed in with a child-like innocence. A pitiful few texts were written on his home.
But like this, when all is still during the blue hour, it feels like a liminal space, a sliver closer to salvation.
His soul was nothing but desire, desire for home, for freedom, to build the martyrs path by any means, to master the three most forbidden techniques, and leave the ruin of the world in his wake, boots crunching over ashes and broken bones as he left.
Hua Binan fed all of his desires to the sleeping Taxian-jun, drugging him with dreams. He stares intently, unflinchingly into the deep black dark, until he can see them even while awake.
-
When Taxian-jun woke, it wasn’t so much that he consciously returned. His eyes fluttered awake but they were glassy, the blank reflection of an unloved mirror that hadn’t been gazed into for eons. He got up and went through the motions, just like any puppet would when their strings were pulled.
Hua Binan followed silently in the shadows. In some vain attempt to avoid perfectly pale proof of his nightmare lying in the lotus pond, Hua Binan watched Taxian-jun squeeze his eyes tightly shut when he left the Red Lotus Pavilion as he made his lonesome way back to Wushan Palace. As if anything would change if he simply shut his eyes. As if by closing his eyes, blinding himself, he could hide the most devastating truth he already knew. It would have been hilarious were it not so pitiful.
After the flower had been planted into his heart, Mo Ran had held on for the longest time. It had taken nearly an incense time for his eyes to finally fall shut.
At night, when everyone else dreamed, Taxian-jun slept dreamlessly. Conditionally. Only when Hua Binan sat by his side would this tyrant emperor close his eyes, assured nothing would come to him but blackness and silence.
Funny. Hua Binan knew all of these potions, tonics and elixirs, how to refine pills that rivaled the heavens, spell upon spell upon fate-defying spell, but he did not know how to cure the sickness of the heart. Taxian-jun had forgotten everyone else he loved easily enough - those he thought he loved, anyway. His own monstrous approximation of it. Why was Chu Wanning so different?
Was it because Hua Binan had loved him, too?
Was it because, in a world of demons, Chu Wanning had been the only angel?
So then, must the demons be condemned to their lonely hell, to lay entwined together, forever? What a terrible fate.
Hua Binan has always sought to defy fate. Make no mistake, that is exactly why he slings a leg over Taxian-jun's hip, watching his confused eyes go wide as he settles heavily atop him. Hua Binan grits his teeth. His fingers curl into the lapels of his robes. He sees the wound Xue Meng dealt him, barely covered by bandages, barely concealing infection. The bandages have gone so black they look more like necrosis than cotton. A curse, rather than anything meant to heal. When did this happen?
It makes Hua Binan so unfathomably angry. It makes him want to destroy Taxian-jun, his last lifeline, the key to the door, simply because he can. He will resurrect, piece by piece, if Hua Binan commands him. Hua Binan can do anything he wants.
So what does it really matter?
All of this is Mo Ran's fault. If he hadn't been there, if he hadn't been so stupid, so ready to sacrifice his own flesh and blood, Hua Binan would have the perfect vessel, the perfect lover, the perfect path home. Instead, he is tangled up in thorns, reaching down to willingly prick himself. Not to free himself - but only to ensnare them further. Nothing else matters but the bloodied footprints they leave on the path home.
He's just pulling Taxian-jun further under the spell. It won't even hurt. A shame, really. That's how Hua Binan knows it means nothing.
"Shi Mei!" Taxian-jun exclaims, and Hua Binan barely refrains from rolling his eyes. How can such a beast sound so scandalized? "You - you have to get off, you don't know.....I can't touch you like-"
"But what if I asked for A-Ran's touch?" Hua Binan susurrates, his voice sickly-sweet poison, honeyed psychosis. He feels nearly as mad as Taxian-jun.
Wordlessly, clammy, trembling hands settle atop his hips. Mo Ran obeys, just like Hua Binan knew he would.
It still isn't enough.
“You feel so real.” Taxian-jun ran his hands down Hua Binan’s flanks. Even though Hua Binan sat astride him, he still felt crushed.
“I’m as real as you need me to be,” Hua Binan bit his lip. He couldn't even close his eyes. He would not be taken blind.
“You will stay, will you?” Taxian-jun tried to pull Hua Binan close to his chest. Perhaps to bury him in the poisoned garden, the hollow cavern where his heart once lay.
“I can’t,” Hua Binan said, holding him back. Placing a hand on his cheek and trying not to dream while awake what it would feel like to claw those eyes filled with manufactured devotion out. “Not until you bring me back.”
“I could….” Taxian-jun murmurs, those dark, lightless eyes glazing over. He takes on the look of a lost child. “I could bring you home?”
“Yes. Only you can, Mo Ran.”
It was a strange feeling, shaking something loose in his chest, to finally tell Mo Ran something like the truth.
What else could seal a promise like that, other than the kiss of death?
-
When Hua Binan kisses Taxian-jun, it’s not planned. It should have never happened. Hua Binan does close his eyes then, and he thinks of Chu Wanning.
Chu Wanning had to suffer this. For love. It makes sense Hua Binan must suffer the same fate. This is his penance. This is the altar upon which he will slit his throat. This is the last time Hua Binan will bleed.
Love. What a curse. He should have ripped his heart out long ago - along with his bastard father's. If only he'd been stronger.
He presses his lips to his puppet’s, hoping to leave a bruise. It’s a horrible violence. He licks into his mouth, against his teeth. It is a devouring. He kisses him breathless, steals all the air from his lungs. Feels his decomposing heart go soft beneath his palm, wilting like an abandoned rose. It’s anger that doesn’t know where else to go. But Taxian-jun’s body can take it. He can hold it, it’s all that he was made for, after all. Taxian-jun is Hua Binan’s wrath, his hurt, his sorrow. His heart.
Hua Binan can wrap his hands around his heart and squeeze. He can bite. Consume. He is the master. He is the one in control. Mo Ran's heart belongs to him, every last dead piece.
He can pin this butterfly to the wall and pull its wings off however slowly he likes. He can rip out this heart again and again, just to see if the thousandth time is what finally heals his incurable wound. He can open up wounds and tongue them, teeth at them, no matter if it worsens them, no matter if he is trying to soothe them. Now, it all feels the same. There is no salvation for the damned.
If he closes his eyes, if he kisses the same lips Chu Wanning did, he can almost pretend it’s him. Chu Wanning, he is cursed to know, wouldn't kiss back with hunger, with desperation, with misremembered love. Not like Mo Ran. Mo Ran kisses like he is trying to both win a war and run away. He kisses like a beast that was never taught tenderness. This is the closest thing Hua Binan will ever feel of love.
Chu Wanning never kissed Mo Ran back, he just lay corpse-like beneath him, breathing shallowly into his mouth, eyes somewhere else. He possessed no heat, no light, until he imploded. Mo Ran never even got to kiss his snarl.
Perhaps Chu Wanning died long before he passed the last remnant of his soul - the last bit of love he had to give - into a heart that was ruined long before it fell into Hua Binan's hands.
Hua Binan lies on top of Mo Ran, and imagines them buried together, forty-eight ribs, four hands, two mouths, one brutalized heart, dying in the same grave.
Truly, Hua Binan meant it only to soothe Taxian-jun. Truly, when he bites Taxian-jun's lips, drawing blood, he tells himself he is only avenging his beloved.
But this is more. So much more, because Hua Binan has always wanted so much - only because it was all stolen from him before he took his first wailing breath.
He sometimes feels too hollow for even vengeance, and that unnameable hunger that still festers, claws, breaths and screams inside of him is perhaps his only sin that is unforgivable.
Hua Binan disrobes them both. He doesn't care that he tears the emperor's fine robes, that a young starveling Hua Binan would have done any manner of horrors to have, to sell for a meal, to live another day, no matter that running is not a life. Hua Binan bares his teeth as he strokes Mo Ran to hardness. He wants this to hurt them both. Until death do they part.
Chu Wanning's soul is not the only one that inhabits Mo Ran's chest, after all.
Hua Binan sinks down, and it feels like self-harm, like suicide, a death a wretch like him deserves.
He must expunge every last trace of Chu Wanning from Taxian-jun; his mind, his heart, these are Hua Binan's, carefully cultivated, cruelly formed into the blade he will use to sunder this entire damned earth. And if he cannot tear Chu Wanning out of Mo Ran's soul? He'll make Mo Ran tear out his own soul himself, with his two own hands. They're so accustomed to violence, he won't even flinch. He'll do it, if Shi Mei wishes it.
What does Taxian-jun need a soul for, anyway? He sold it long ago.
They're all in hell, and no one needs a soul here.
“That’s it,” Taxian-jun breathes, his voice breaking, threatening to release something terrible kept carefully held inside. "Oh, beloved." It's what Hua Binan calls Chu Wanning. "Baobei." That's what he called Chu Wanning, when he was trying to humiliate him. Or maybe, he was just calling him- “You’re good, you’re fine, just a little more.”
Hua Binan’s heart has never beat faster before.
He’s clenching - spasming, really - around Taxian-jun’s cock, his body trying to force out the sudden intrusion in vain. Trying to fight against ruination Hua Binan has already decided he'll allow, just this once. Taxian-jun's just keeps pushing in agonizingly slowly, whispering sweet nothings and licking the salt of tears from his cheeks.
Oh, it does feel like salt in a tender wound.
“Am I hurting you?”
Yes. No. Hua Binan doesn’t know. "What do you think?" He bites out, which Shi Mei wouldn't say, but he is not Shi Mei in this moment. Nor is he Hua Binan. Who's role is he playing now? Another concubine? His mother?
The words are caught in his throat like gristle and he can’t get them out. He swallows repeatedly, letting out shuddering, wet breaths as Taxian-jun’s cock burns inside of him.
He can feel every inch in devastating, intricate detail. Hua Binan feels it in his stomach. It feels like sharpened claws rasping against his belly, a precursor of savage mutilation.
For a moment, he feels sinew stuck in his teeth, flesh hot and twisting on his tongue, broken bits of human bone caught in his throat.
“I know it isn’t you.”
Hua Binan goes still, like a mouse caught in a fox’s drooling maw. He would not dare to squirm, lest those sharp teeth sink in.
“This is just a dream, right?” Taxian-jun murmurs, wonderstruck. He still hugs Hua Binan closer to his body. Hua Binan stifles a gasp, not only from the pain of penetration, but the portrayal of tenderness as bone-pale fingers tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. He's in love with his own murderer. They both are. “You aren’t really here.”
Sometimes, Hua Binan wishes he wasn’t.
He wishes, in the darkest, most secretive, rotted depths of himself, that he had been the one caught in his father's maw instead. Maybe it's only karma that in consuming Taxian-jun, he himself has been consumed as well.
"I'm here," Hua Binan murmurs, hips wiggling, impaling himself further. "Can't you feel me?" How did Chu Wanning bear this? It's a depraved pressure beneath his navel, a gutting, mutilation. Or maybe it's something more. There's something that burns within him. Something that urges him to take. Something awakens inside Hua Binan, an almost sick satisfaction that comes only from conquering. Mo Ran lies beneath him and lets Hua Binan set his own pace. He knows better than to move. Or maybe he just hasn't the strength. The desire.
Everyone Mo Ran has ever touched ends up buried beneath those same hands. Maybe Hua Binan should have thought this through.
Or not - are Mo Ran's hands not his?
Then who killed Chu Wanning?
It's not enough.
Hua Binan bows his head - this is all he can give Chu Wanning now.
All the light is gone. All the angels are dead. Hua Binan and Mo Ran only have each other.
"Go rougher," Hua Binan commands, but in a whisper, it sounds so fragile. "I can take it."
He just wants to be close to Chu Wanning, as close as he can be. Hua Binan wants to disappear inside of him. Open him up and crawl into his ribs and be kept there, held and safe, because Chu Wanning was the only one who could have saved him. The only one who would have wanted to, once. But now Chu Wanning's body has been overtaken by rigor mortis, frozen, as fragile as a porcelain doll's, and his skin is paper-wet, barely clinging to his bones, he's a last breath suspended, and Hua Binan can't touch him, so the corpse beneath him, the one with hellfire in his veins and no stars left in his eyes, will have to suffice.
"Not rough," Mo Ran shakes his head, whispering back. He leans up towards Hua Binan, their noses bumping. "Stop me if I'm hurting you."
"You could never." As if Hua Binan understands what hurt feels like anymore. As if either of them do.
"Shi Mei," Taxian-jun murmurs then, in such a different tone, like the coaxing of a fox into its lair. He flips Hua Binan onto his back, grabs ahold of Hua Binan’s thigh, dragging him further down the bed. He does it so effortlessly. Hua Binan's stomach erupts with hateful butterflies, but he must remind himself, all this strength is mine. “You’re a virgin, aren’t you? This’ll be your first time?”
These words, from Taxian-jun’s lips, curl off of his tongue rich and indulgent, something to gorge oneself on. Hua Binan feels paralyzed listening to it. He never imagined - Taxian-jun's hand squeezes his waist. It feels like watching a detonation in slow-motion, simply waiting and bracing yourself for the inevitable.
Hua Binan swallows, the sound deafeningly loud, resounding endlessly throughout his hollow chest.
“…..Yes.”
Taxian-jun’s eyes shine in the dark, like a cat’s, or something else inhuman. “Are you gonna let me take you? Be your first?”
Hua Binan’s nodding even before the words catch up to him, before he can decide if he truly wants this, if he’s willing to make that promise, tie them into an even more twisted knot - but what is more intimate than exploring the devastation you've made of another person? It's a sick curiosity perhaps, but Hua Binan wants many things, and he does want taxian-jun to be as close to him as he can be, in this moment, skin sewn together, flesh-fused, marrows mixing.
Taxian-jun grins a grin that would frighten anyone else but Hua Binan. “Oh fuck, sweetheart. You won’t regret it, becoming mine.”
You're already mine, Hua Binan thinks, feeling a bead of sweat trickle down the side of his neck.
Hua Binan realizes too late that his eyes are squeezed shut, achingly tight. He is caught in a dizzying litany that repeats itself senselessly - this isn’t happening, I can’t do this, I need more, I need all of him, is this happening, is this a dream? - and quick enough to give him whiplash, his eyes tentatively slit open to watch as Taxian-jun works his fingers inside of him. Hua Binan's surprised Taxian-jun didn't have anything to say about what lay between his legs - he knows others would - perhaps it is because Hua Binan has taken Taxian-jun's tongue.
Fingers clasp around Taxian-jun's wrist like a shackle. Taxian-jun blinks dark eyes up at him. They're the same dark as a blood bruise.
"Who am I, to you?" Hua Binan asks. Those eyes unwaveringly staring at him seem to bleed hunger.
All at once, Taxian-jun looks like a scared, small boy once more. Like he had just seen his mother eaten alive? Hua Binan shakes his head. No, what he sees is a stranger he doesn't even really know, who wears the skin Hua Binan has made him wear.
But no matter how he tries, Hua Binan cannot unsee the dazed, lost look in his eyes. He cannot unfeel the echo that pulses through him, an animal, a memory trying to claw free.
"Mine," Taxian-jun murmurs, because that's what he's supposed to say. His fingers thrust in deeper. Hua Binan is being excavated.
“Do you like it?” Taxian-jun whispers, coaxing, fingers finding a spot Hua Binan detests him for, which aches almost as much as his panicked racing pulse. “Tell me you want it. ”
Hua Binan can’t. Like that matters to Taxian-jun, who likes all of his kills bloody.
“Wanted to kiss you for so long,” Taxian-jun continues, sotto voce. “Wanted to set my teeth in this lip and bite.” Of course. Always the biting. Monsters cannot be defanged. Hua Binan braces himself. The hand not caught by Hua Binan's fist comes to curl around his jaw, thumb pressing into his bottom lip. “Wanted to feel you moan into my mouth. I bet you’d sound so sweet.”
Hua Binan arches his back, hand fisting into the sheets, the other in Taxian-jun’s hair. He can see, even in the dark, that Taxian-jun’s mouth is red, and slick. He's gasping, moaning. He looks transfixed, spellbound. It feels like a secret that must be taken to the grave and beyond; to see Taxian-jun like this, just from touching him. Undone. Bare. Vulnerable.
Would Mo Ran have ever looked at Hua Binan like this of his own volition?
Does that matter, either?
And then there are lips set against his neck, which is such a surprise Hua Binan forgets to flinch. All he registers is the sound of his own blood rushing throughout his veins as the aftershocks fade and sensation hurries to take its place.
Taxian-jun’s lips are warm. Of course, Taxian-jun has always run warm, unnaturally so. Hua Binan supposes he has forgotten, lately. He always looks so cold.
His kisses are as warm as the rest of him, a fever, madness, sinking into Hua Binan's skin like fire burns through paper. Taxian-jun kisses and kisses him inexorably. It's as if Taxian-jun is carving a place deep inside of Hua Binan for himself, always for himself, always more of him. Infecting Hua Binan’s bloodstream, staining the very fabric of his soul, marring him with the same hideousness that Hua Binan has marred him.
It doesn’t feel like a choice but all the same, it’s one he makes, willingly, a little desperately, as he turns his head to slot his lips against Taxian-jun’s. Hua Binan feels dazed in the moments during, against Taxian-jun’s lips, that slide against his, warm and purposeful and slick. For a moment, Hua Binan struggles to keep up, his inexperience excruciatingly clear, but Taxian-jun doesn’t seem to mind. It seems to invigorate him.
Taxian-jun hooks his teeth into Hua Binan’s bottom lip, tugging just enough to elicit a flare of something that isn’t quite pain and isn’t quite pleasure. His hand finds the back of Hua Binan’s skull and he manipulates him like a ragdoll, tugging him downwards, to the left and the right, exactly where he wants him. Hua Binan dimly registers that Taxian-jun’s free hand has curled around the slight curve of his waist, squeezing and kneading, sliding down to rest against the small of his stomach, looking a bit fascinated with how his palm mold against the sharp juts of his hipbones.
It’s all wet heat and sharp breaths and a laving, greedy tongue that tames his own into submission. Taxian-jun licks over Hua Binan’s sharp incisors, risking a wound, pressing their lips together hard enough to bruise. He wants them. he likes them. He is the bruise. By the time Taxian-jun pulls back his face is flushed like a foreboding sunset, mouth swollen and slack, panting slightly. His eyes burn with heat, dark and starved. Hua Binan feels lightheaded, like he’s suffocating on the smoke of Eren’s fire.
Holding Taxian-jun’s eyes, Hua Binan tries something. He has to see. He raises a shaking hand, deliberately and deftly uncurling his trembling fingers, and makes Taxian-jun take two into his mouth, the index and middle. Taxian-jun does without fight, without complaint. His eyes flutter shut as if he is in heaven. Hua Binan’s gut kicks like he’s swallowed something alive, or as if something alive has come inside him. Taxian-jun hollows his cheeks, lips moving, sucking Ha Binan’s fingers as if he’s sucking something else, something that makes Hua Binan’s cheeks heat with equal parts shame and a strange desire. Hua Binan’s fingers drift in that slick, velvet heat, the warmth of Eren’s mouth traveling to pool molten all the way to the bottom of his gut.
Hua Binan watches Taxian-jun watch him, transfixed even though some instinct with claws sunk deep into his hindbrain urges him to turn away. He can’t. He can’t help but drown in the abyss of his creation’s eyes.
Taxian-jun pulls him in for another kiss, this one open-mouthed, wet and messy and deep. In an instant he cannot take back, Hua Binan's lips part easily, needily under Taxian-jun’s, eyes rolling back into his skull as Taxian-jun moans into his mouth, quiet and abhorrently lovely. Hua Binan gasps into his mouth in turn. The wet smacking noises of their lips catching and parting fills the room unceasingly, almost deafeningly loud. Hua Binan finds himself arching against Taxian-jun, feeling his hard cock against his cunt. He refuses to flinch away. he cannot, his wounded soul aches with longing for something he will never have.
“C'mere,” Taxian-jun slurs the word, sounding almost drunk, his voice the rough rasp of silk against unsanded wood, his eyes unfocused and hazy.
Hua Binan spreads his legs impossible further, splayed and useless, trembling. Mo Ran folds his legs over his shoulders, curling over his body, possessive, hiding him away from the darkness, and begins to drive into him as if salvation lies within his body.
Hua Binan's bones stiffen while his muscles liquefy.
It burns. It’s too much.
Hua Binan grips Taxian-jun's shoulders tightly, even as his hips seek more of his touch.
It is all-consuming. Hua Binan cannot curb his breathy, wanton cries, much to his horror. Is this what it feels like, to be eaten alive? He tries to seal a hand over his mouth but Taxian-jun is nothing if not cruel, and so he pries his hand away, gasping for breath as if he’s the one being torn apart, and growling. “No, love, I wanna hear you.”
Hua Binan glares, but he fears the effect is diminished by the tears clumping in his lashes.
He has never felt as close to Chu Wanning as he does in this moment. In this moment, he is his shizun, his first love, the first human he didn't want to ruin, and the first one he lost.
This way, Hua Binan can keep him alive, forever.
Mo Ran's arms wrap around him, pulling him close, out of shyness or instinct or both, his fingers and hands slaves to Hua Binan’s commands.
It would be too easy to forget - or rather, lock up tight in a closet with all of the other rotting skeletons - in the face of intimacy, its pretense soft and loving and gentle, luminescent hued in golden tones, slow and languid and peaceful, utterly, freely the ways in which they mean to express their affection without words. Through the soft gasps and feverish moans, burning with desire, and the slick sound of fingers thrusting wantonly, it is so easy to lose track of time, to feel weightless, immaterial. Hua Binan hardly feels as if he’s occupying his body.
That's why Hua Binan needs it to hurt. He needs to be reminded why all of this has been necessary.
If he bleeds along with all of the other innocents, the unfortunate collateral damage, maybe he will no longer walk with a spine that feels so broken, a heart that feels so heavy, so dead, like-
When Mo Ran curls over him, mouthing artlessly along the column of his throat - teeth lingering by his carotid for just a second longer than they should - Hua Binan cannot help but cling to him tighter. It's only a reflex. Only because he wants to sink his fingernails in and make him bleed.
Or, so he tells himself.
You make me sick. But you're all I have left.
But, no. Hua Binan didn’t allow the feeling to touch him.
Yet, that didn't mean it didn't.
Their bodies feel indistinguishable, sewn together with crimson thread, unable to be parted without threat of death. Hua Binan is their bleeding heart, Taxian-jun the rotting mind, Hua Binan the bones, Mo Ran the black marrow, Hua Binan the black blood.
Hua Binan can feel Mo Ran’s heart beat with a kind of desperation, the kind only a dying heart can claim.
Taxian-jun thrusts inside of Hua Binan in one fluid motion, drawing out a breathy gasp and a contortion of his spine. Hua Binan’s heels kick weakly into the small of his back, while Taxian-jun chokes a wet noise into the crook of his neck as his body trembles, then stills, as tense and taut as a drawn bowstring. Hua Binan lies beneath him, every muscle in his body draw taut, chest heavy with held breath. He feels narcotized. He feels like he is on fire.
“That feel good?” Mo Ran rasps against Hua Binan’s skin, as he wrings more sinful sounds from his trembling lips. Hua Binan can do nothing but give a shaky nod. It's enough, Taxian-jun quickens his movements, whispering almost tenderly. “Good. So good for me.”
Hua Binan wants to be sick. He wants Taxian-jun to kiss him until there's nothing but blood in his mouth. "H-Harder."
You damn animal, you dragged us to hell.
This is your fault.
It has to be.
You must warm me.
Give me all the light you have left.
Hua Binan wants to get up, but he won’t. Hua Binan wants to look away, but he won’t. Hua Binan wants to stop this, but he won’t, he won’t, he knows himself far too well.
He’s - aroused? He’s enthralled. He's grieving, just as dead as Chu Wanning, as his mother, as Mo Ran. He’s terrified, out of his depth, feeling far outside of his own mind. Drowning but breathing underwater, and suffocating on the waste that lies at the bottom of the sea.
This is what it will take. This is how far Hua Binan is willing to go.
If his mother was watching, from wherever she was, he hoped she would close her eyes.
Taxian-jun finally begins to move in little, aborted jerks of his hips that are punctuated with the slick sound of his cock thrusting deep into the wetness of him. Hua Binan’s mouth, unbidden, drops open and hangs slack as his thighs spasm, so tightly wound against Taxian-jun’s flanks it would hurt, if he could still feel pain. Hua Binan feels like he might bite through his tongue if he could close his mouth. He can taste the hot, metallic spice of blood, but it’s all in his head. It feels like it must hurt and maybe it does, maybe Hua Binan will wake up tomorrow sore and aching and be unable to walk - walk away from this, as if he ever could - yet, despite the wretched noises coming from him that sound bruising, as if scourged from the bloody depths of a crushed larynx, when he looks into Mo Ran’s eyes, reflecting the light of stars once more, all at once Hua Binan feels the emptiness inside of him collapse in on itself, and become something near. Not sanctification, not in the slightest, something impossibly more wretched.
“Just wanna be inside you forever,” Taxian-jun mumbles, almost sounding drunk off of it, mouthing at the underside of Hua Binan’s chin, before coming up to gaze into the depths of Hua Binan’s eyes, nothing short of deliriously longing. “This means something, doesn’t it? We’re together. Together like - like we were always meant to be. You feel it too, don’t you?”
Taxian-jun looks so blissed out, lips pursed and mouth suckling at the hinge of Hua Binan’s jaw, eyes foggy like morning mist. Hua Binan thinks he didn’t mean to say it. A whisper he thought would be lost.
"A-Ran," Hua Binan says, just to say something. His name is a heartbeat Hua Binan can feel in his own chest.
All of a sudden - where does it come from? - Hua Binan remembers as he lay dying, or rather, feigning death, the sound of Mo Ran’s scream.
Mo Ran had been the one to bring him home then, too.
But only because, no matter how beaten, a dog will always protect its master. Is that love? Whatever it is - Hua Binan banishes it from his mind, burying his head in the crook of puppet's neck, a place that, somehow, feels as if it were always meant for him.
The hazy pleasure has all too quickly coalesced into a kind of faded half-awareness, a dark dissociation that Hua Binan feels dragging him under like midnight sea waves.
“Is it good?” Taxian-jun moans in between serrated, sucking breaths, like he’s drowning too. “Fuck, tell me it’s good. You’ve gotta tell me, baby, if it’s good, tell me it’s-”
“Shut up,” Hua Binan bites out. He can't help it. It is good. It's too good, and he's been defanged for too long. There is too much sensation assaulting him from every which direction and yet he can clear his head to grasp ahold of any of it. It’s a dizzying, mind-numbing pleasure. He grabs an anchor - Taxian-jun's hair - yanking his head back, forcing out a yelp taht surprises them both it seems. Their eyes are clouded with bewilderment, with ill-gotten lust. "Go faster, you fucking dog."
Breath shudders out from Taxian-jun as if it is a knife.
Inside his bastardized, changed body, Hua Binan swears can feel another heartbeat beating alongside of his own.
They are all inside of each other, both of them, in every way.
Parasites who hunger, parasites who are desperate to feed.
Until there is nothing left but fragmented bone and twitching sinew and putrid, prettied gore.
Maybe this is how it is supposed to be. Maybe this is how it starts, and how it’s meant to go.
Maybe there is no other ending for demons.
“Tell me it’s good,” Taxian-jun repeats, as if he hadn’t heard him. He doesn’t even look like he’s occupying the same dimension when Hua Binan cranes his neck to stare back at him. His eyes are glassy, overcome. A starless night sky. The silent, still sea.
"It's the worst thing I've ever felt," Hua Binan whispers, tender like a bruise. "I hate you." Taxian-jun's rhythm fragments, his hips jerk, his cock jerking inside of him.
“No, no, no - I can't-” Taxian-jun’s words are jumbled, incoherent, syllables smashing together in a startling symphony that sings through Armin’s tightly wound veins. “Fuck. I can’t, Wan-”
Hua Binan surges up to cut him off. He cannot hear it. Bury the rest of your soul inside of me. I'll keep it safer than you ever could. His stomach spasms with sickness, or with horrible pleasure. Hua Binan keens, terrified and desperate for the orgasm he feels clawing inside the cradle of his hips. He can’t, he can’t do it, but he feels the thing inside of him yowl for the release it craves.
And then - the thought pierces Hua Binan like a sword, like teeth - he doesn’t know if Taxian-jun will give him a choice. In this state, he doesn’t know if Taxian-jun even remembers his own name. His hands are tight on Hua Binan’s hips, tight enough to break him in two. That’s what finally cracks the steely barrier his desperate-to-dissociate brain erected, and panic begins to flood through, fire-hot and blinding.
Hua Binan tries to say something, but he opens his mouth and can only breathe, hot and panting. He’s clawing at Taxian-jun’s shoulders, arching against him, thrusting his hips back fervently and taking him deeper and deeper still, as if all he exists for is to consume Eren.
And then Hua Binan shudders, his muscles fluttering around Taxian-jun before seizing his cock in a vice-like grip, so sudden and shocking Hua Binan unconsciously stills, even as his body begs for Taxian-jun to fuck deeper into the shivering heat of him, even though Taxian-jun is as deep as he can go.
Hua Binan cannot tell if Taxian-jun is laughing or crying but is eyes are so bright. All glimmering light, they remind him of stars, moments before their glorious, grotesque death.
He is transfixed by this, and by the long, elegant line of Taxian-jun's’s throat, the vein throbbing beneath the skin, bare and brown and unmarked. Hua Binan wants to lay his lips against Taxian-jun’s pulse. What a resilient vessel. Before he can, though, he’s jerked up, into Taxian-jun’s lap.
Taxian-jun moves him like he’s a bird, a butterfly, something weightless, unsubstantial.
But his hands do not hurt. He does not unhinge his jaw and swallow Hua Binan whole, even though he could.
Even though he should.
Hua Binan watches through half-lidded, near-delirious eyes as his cunt tightens around Mo Ran's cock, as his stomach caves in from the force of his orgasm. He can't even cry out. It lives and dies inside him, just like everything else.
"Yeah, yeah baobei, just like that.” Mo Ran sounds smug, violently coaxing Hua Binan’s orgasm from the roaring, writhing depths of him. He watches with muted awe, dull horror, as he spills messily all over their bellies.
He’s marked Mo Ran in such an obscene, visceral way, yet bereft of violence, this time.
This thought will haunt, but not in a wholly unpleasant way.
It is a regret that will never be fully formed.
A broken bone never meant to quite heal, but neither meant to stay irrevocably broken.
It will ache, another war wound.
Another scar.
Hua Binan throws his head back against Taxian-jun’s shoulder and whispers hoarse into his hair, because Taxian-jun is still moving inside of him. “Hurts.” Hua Binan’s voice is reedy, and pathetic, and he hates it. Of course, Taxian-jun’s breathing grows more ragged at the sound of it.
“I know,” Taxian-jun says and it almost, almost sounds sympathetic, but he won’t let up. He presses a burning kiss against Hua Binan’s cheek.
Taxian-jun never did ask for permission, nor forgiveness.
He only ever begged like a dog.
“Feels so good,” Taxian-jun mumbles, snapping his hips against Hua Binan’s ass sharper, harder. “Can’t believe you’re letting me-”
It sounds halfway between anguished avowal and regret.
It feels like sex as a suicide pact.
(Until death shall they part.)
“I love you,” Taxian-jun whispers, sounding as tender and raw as an exposed nerve. He kisses down Hua Binan’s throat and bites, leaving a mark that Hua Binan can already feel waning into something naught more than intangibility. The blood vessels disturbed by teeth are already knitting themselves together anew, as if it never even happened. Hua Binan slaps him too late.
His body is resilient in ways Hua Binan doesn’t know how to be.
There are tears pricking at his eyes, wrenched out of him as his oversensitivity becomes a singular point of searing, excruciating pain.
“I - I can’t take-”
“Don’t.” Taxian-jun breathes sharply, his heart erratic in his chest, pounding bruisingly against Hua Binan’s back. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please, let me - let me do this. I need it."
"Need you."
And why is it that after Hua Binan hears this, his struggles cease?
Taxian-jun tangles them together until their bodies are indistinguishable.
Mo Ran does indeed consume Hua Binan whole.
Taxian-jun comes, deep, deep inside of him, so deep Hua Binan can taste the aftertaste in the back of his throat, bitter yet satiating. As Taxian-jun comes, he bites him, again, but Hua Binan is too tired to feel any pain and he has always known of Taxian-jun’s hunger, anyway. Hua Binan feels him gently lap at the tender skin. It’s more endless warmth, endless desire, endless-
(It’s dread he feels, and he doesn’t know why, he wishes he knew why.
But he knows he doesn’t want to, really.)
Years could've passed in the time they spent breathing against one another, Hua Binan would have been none the wiser. There is something tangibly fragile between them, a spiderweb made of crystal, a ribcage sewn from silk, and one wrong word or breath will rupture the grotesque, beautiful design. Taxian-jun only moves to drag Hua Binan down against him. Hua Binan allows it, because he's already allowed too much. He's exhausted. He just wants to sleep for one night. He wants to remember his dream.
Taxian-jun lies his head on his chest like a bullied child, a sad child, the mourning child he never really grew out of. They tangle their legs together. Hua Binan kisses Mo Ran softly just behind his ear, and it feels like an apology, even though Hua Binan has never apologized for anything, he has no reason, and it's too late to say the words now, even if he had them.
The sick feeling does not abate, but exhaustion swallows it down.
Just like how sea waves consume rotting, floating corpses, dragging those wasted bodies down to dark depths.
Hua Binan doesn't mean to, but it could be argued he didn't mean for any of this. He falls asleep with Taxian-jun’s arms around him, encaging him. Taxian-jun's hand in his.
Is the only way to keep the one I love to allow his tormented bury himself beneath my skin?
How much more of his soul can Hua Binan give away?
Sometimes, there was a bit of light to be found in Mo Ran’s eyes. A remnant. A fracture. It stirs a disquiet in Hua Binan he cannot soothe or ignore. Is there even the smallest sliver of Mo Ran’s soul left? He’s never been sure.
Perhaps, Taxian-jun was more awake than anyone ever knew.
Taxian-jun gazed into his eyes unblinkingly, so ardently, so desperately. What did he see? Hua Binan held his breath, and he didn't know why.
Hua Binan closes his eyes and tries to imagine what it might be like, to be trapped inside one’s own body. Conscious but not in control, seeing but unfeeling, a stranger in your own skin. You could do nothing but scream helplessly down a void, only for your own ears to hear, beat against the bars of a cage you could not escape, for it would mean ripping yourself apart.
The night shines black, eerie and silent outside of his window.
In the dark, Taxian-jun's tears look like spilled blood down his cheeks. Like Chu Wanning's.
Hua Binan doesn't have to imagine it. His flesh was meant to be devoured. His soul was meant to be destroyed by heaven, and hell.
The only person Hua Binan has left is a beast whose heart beats for a love that never existed, it should never have.
Hua Binan wonders when Taxian-jun looks in the mirror, if he recognizes himself.
Hua Binan wonders, even without a flower inside of his chest, when he will no longer recognize his own reflection.
When he wakes up in the dead of night to any empty space next to him, he tells himself Taxian-jun’s just gone for a walk, just to clear his head, maybe he had a bad dream because Hua Binan wasn't awake to chase them away, but he’ll be back, he'll always come back. Hua Binan falls back asleep before he can discover if this is just another lie he tells to himself. To keep warm, he pulls Chu Wanning’s pillow closer, which still smells like him, snuggling in deep enough to suffocate, as if his soul all the way down in the underworld might feel it, too.
-
Everyone he loves, has ever loved, is dead, but this is what it will take to be free.
-
Hua Binan is dead.
Hua Binan died with his mother, yes. But Hua Binan is a survivor. He will rise from the ashes
For now, Hanlin the Sage bides his time, veiled, caged. He kneels on a cushion next to the throne, hidden by gauzy curtains that billow in the breeze like ghosts. He watches through slitted eyes as an endless stream of people come to beg for mercy; mercy they would just as soon deny him. He keeps his hand firmly shackled around Taxian-jun's wrist. It soothes them both.
Sometimes, mercy is a blade through the chest, a slash across the throat, the abandonment of a soul, the ruins of a bed. Hua Binan watches them cry, kowtow, squirm around like worms. He relearns how to smile.
He tells himself he delights in Taxian-jun's decay.
He tells himself maybe it is love.
He keeps a close eye on the monster trapped in hell with him. When it comes time to build the Martyr's path, a trail made from flesh and bone and screams, it will require so many bodies. All the lambs will be sacrificed. Even the wolf who lies beside him; he will be the last stepping stone that leads to home.