( for a few long moments, xie lian says nothing, simply continuing to reassure hua cheng, his qi caressing his magic as hands would interlace or mouths would touch. each fluctuation of pain or suppressed pleasure ripples through xie lian too. but he does not feel himself trembling, thoughtful about the option of a bath which somewhat solves the closeness issue but not the immense heat radiating off of hua cheng, which indeed only seems to be increasing. the worry frantic like a caged bird in xie lian's chest is not foreign to him, but it has been a long time since he permitted himself to fully experience any kind of true fear much less discomfort. hua cheng says he isn't sure, says he does not know, and xie lian cannot blame him; he also doesn't know, after all.
being close to you echoes in xie lian's head and his heart the same.
gently, he removes the cloth, murmuring an apology, but that cloth is soon replaced with xie lian's hands, which may feel abnormally cold. slowing his heart, which serves almost as a meditation, calming, even keeled, xie lian's body temperature drops slow, steady, and significant. he doesn't think too much about it, following the instinctive red string that ties them as he slips onto the bed, the size of which like the first night forces them close together, but this is his intent. his hands slip down the sides of hua cheng's face, down the sides of his neck, gentle gentle gentle and quite cold, permeating the heat there as best he can. when he moves his hands so that his arms can slip under and around hua cheng's back, and over his middle, he rests his face against the juncture of his neck and shoulder. even xie lian's breaths are cold now and everything about him seems deeply slow and quiet.
once, many many years ago, he taught himself to do this through delirium. he was not as adept at it then as he is now.
even without magic, xie lian's qi coalesces into a formidable presence under his control, sometimes to defend, other times to protect, and in this case both, with a slightly less expert attempt too to heal. yet he isn't completely clear on what ails hua cheng even if he feels, rather badly, like it is his fault. he has upset his familiar in some way or many and will take responsibility for it as best as he can. he hopes hua cheng can forgive him, a master without magic being far from what hua cheng deserves. that he had not answered him verbally before was not too conscious, rather, necessity overtaking anything else. yes, he feels hua cheng's urgency and his fear, his pain and his tiny moments of relief or even pleasure, his adoration and his lust. in a way, the adoration is just as overwhelming.
it would have been enough to not be hated and ridiculed.
to be loved tiptoes the border of a flood xie lian will have to learn to tread, and so, accept.
with time.
he doesn't think of it now though, not like that. xie lian makes himself into a place for all of hua cheng's heat and aught else to come into.
you're safe. i accept all of you. it's okay.
hardly a spell of a near mythical enchanter.
closer to the lullaby of a mortal who loved flowers as much as magic.
the way xie lian's face presses against hua cheng's bare skin, it will feel like a kiss, and though it isn't warm, it is soft.
i have you. i promise. i have you.
because of how they are intertwined, hua cheng's heat has already begun to overtake xie lian's consciously efforted cold, and with that overturning of scales, xie lian's entire body shivers, seeming to fit that much closer to him, like these are the shapes they were always meant to make: perfectly fitted together, and almost too difficult to tell apart. )
[ Hua Cheng feels like he's shattered into many pieces, each of them pulling him into a different direction. There's that unbearable heat, resembling a clingy sickness he caught when he was still human and little, like there's a flame burning his insides; there's Xie Lian's worry, for which he feels utterly worthless and concerned at once, he only wants to reassure him; and there's Xie Lian's qi, that keeps stroking his magic, making it difficult for him to focus on anything else. Unbeknowst to Xie Lian those caresses aren't unpleasant to Hua Cheng, but they aren't soothing: they resemble physical contact too much, going a step further, and they feed that wildfire that doesn't want to stop. They feed that beast that has wanted to devour Xie Lian ever since setting eyes on him, and against which Hua Cheng is growing weaker and weaker.
Hua Cheng gasps sharply when he feels the touch of his master's hands, mumbling unintelligible words when he climbs into bed: it's so small, they're forced to be close. He knows he's asked for it, for the two of them to be closer, yet now he recognizes it as a mistake. It may soothe his temperature, but it puts Xie Lian closer to danger. Hua Cheng has no idea what to do; his energy is all put into fighting against his inner demons, to the point that his body can only rest there, allowing Xie Lian to grow closer.
He makes soft noises the more he's touched, the older inching closer and closer. It's pleasure and anxiety at once.
Gege... I'm dangerous... to you., he warns him softly, an echo of his words in the other's mind, but his master hugs him and Hua Cheng keens like a needy animal. He finds those perfect features tucked into his neck and he nearly feels like crying, throat tightening around the wave of feelings. It's the first time Xie Lian initiates such closeness, and he's doing it naturally, without embarrassment, like they're meant to be together, like he enjoys Hua Cheng's presence too.
Hua Cheng is so warm it takes little to warm Xie Lian up back again. But the problem is that Hua Cheng is growing hotter, instead of balancing it out. They both must've underestimated the size of his lust, especially when his feelings are ruffled.
Hua Cheng breathes him in from so close and that daze from before starts to crawl back. ] Don't leave me, dianxia... don't leave me. [ He begs, now out loud, long fingers reaching between and tugging harshly at the sash of Xie Lian's robes. The older is pulled towards him effectively and yet the fabric rips as well. Feverish hands slip under layers, commanded by mere instinct, and with a shivering sigh, Hua Cheng explores the smooth expanse of his stomach, follows the lines of his muscles, the softness of flesh and the hardness of his sternum.
The familiar tilts his head and catches Xie Lian's lips with his own, kissing him deep and hot, while fingers rub into his sides, learn each bump of his spine. He licks at his tongue and feeds him his boiling, unbalanced power like spoonfuls of hot honey tea. Have it, it's yours, I gathered it for you, he pours it, but unlike the first time during that eclipse, it's not mindless. He transforms it so it's the same nature as his master's qi, so it can refine the silk of it, so that it's smoother and brighter and his shackles don't activate. He will need less to do the same work. His master will be the most powerful once again, that's how it'll be. ]
( despite hua cheng's words, xie lian cannot completely realize them; because to xie lian, hua cheng from the moment their true connection became apparent, has meant only safeness and something akin to home. so hua cheng tries to warn him but it is not his fault that xie lian gently chooses to stay close, gently chooses to take in all of hua cheng's desperate sounds and his reaching hands, gently chooses to answer breathlessly, )
I won't leave...I won't leave. Ah —
( his gasp is a feathered, dizzy thing, warm and inviting every aspect of hua cheng in. xie lian's qi intertwines with that energy and magic that hua cheng pours into him until they are impossible to tell apart, unintentionally enacting a deeply intimate act. long ago it was reserved only for the honored wedding nights of royalty. and while tradition has, like many things over centuries, become all but a fairytale, there is truth in its seeds and roots: how hua cheng takes care to shape his power to not exacerbate xie lian's shackles, xie lian shapes his qi in answer to perfectly provide that vessel, as if asking hua cheng with uncharacteristic greed of his own, to be filled.
it takes xie lian an undetermined amount of time to recognize the other desperate, wanton breaths and whines are his own, the first kiss having given way to a second and a third with no clear pause. his head spins but it isn't unpleasant, and the cursed shackle around his throat and ankle do not tighten. rather, it feels like he's being lit up from the inside, out. everywhere hua cheng's palm and fingers touch makes him mewl softly into the kiss or against hua cheng's jaw between breaths.
distantly he considers that he should stop him. he doesn't want hua cheng to regret it later, to feel guilty. but the flood of his magic is as undoing for xie lian as xie lian's closeness is undoing for hua cheng. his body and his heart had not fully forgotten love, because the truth is xie lian feels love still on quiet, ordinary levels for others. his own mistakes, his own near unforgivable cruelties, and the cruelties imparted onto him alike, have created a path that is as perilous as it is precious, where he still decides every morning, every day, every night, every in-between, that there is a reason to do good, to make room for love, and to be kind. not to say this is a thing true across every aspect of life. there should, also, be things one will not stand for, and xie lian has these too.
but this isn't one of them.
this feels like a gift he doesn't deserve teeming with the kind of fear only found inside of a heart that is afraid because it wants so very badly.
don't be afraid, he tries to tell him. i won't leave, he repeats with a long, warm stroke of qi, as if fingertips have run the length of hua cheng's spine, as if they have caressed where a heart should beat, as if the kiss xie lian presses to his mouth is also an oath. because hua cheng might have gathered and want to give everything to him, but xie lian won't let him if he can help it; or, he'll give back as much as he can, not magic, which he has had to do without save for ruoye for a long time, but with everything else. with his legs spread it's that much easier for hua cheng to press in close, and xie lian's hands curl on his shoulders tightly, the fingertips the same blush red as his throat and his cheeks, the tips of his ears, the bloom of color in his chest and even the sharps of his knees. and no one has ever seen him like this, but once xie lian's beauty was so renowned it almost superseded his reputation with magic, people forgetting over time, first one, and then the other. most paintings and statues have been desecrated and then utterly destroyed. omens of misfortune. no one would remember him then anyway, or so he would reply if asked by anyone. but right now he is the very image of taizi dianxia. the flower crowned enchanter beloved and then reviled.
for reasons xie lian himself has suppressed for so long, his eyes sting, so he closes them tight against whatever that feeling is, focusing instead on reaching hua cheng through their bond.
i'm yours too. xie lian's heart beats so fast it hurts. it's okay.
[ Xie Lian is so soft, pliant, willing. He invites his familiar's lips to claim his own with his desperate noises, over and over, holds onto him like he'd loath to put distance as thin as a needle between them. For the first time in his life, Hua Cheng dares believing he's needed and maybe that's the fever eating him up, but he doesn't mind.
Hua Cheng pulls back to let the other breathe and, if his heart had still be beating, it would've happily stopped now, at such a sight. Xie Lian is so beautiful, beyond a human, beyond a sorcerer. Not even gods compare to him. He's the moon hanging in the sky and the winter sun, he's placid sea water lapping at his soul in smooth waves. Xie Lian is his world and he's everything that's worth living for --that is why Hua Cheng has dedicated his life to him, after all. Xie Lian is the only thing that matters in the wide universe. It's as if his familiar was holding a star in his hands, so brilliant and perfect that it's a wonder if fits between such unworthy palms.
He doesn't realize it, but his fever is decreasing, leaving space to just his feelings, large enough to fill the space that was overtaken before by uncomfortable heat. Much like that eclipse night, Hua Cheng wants to worship him; not to show off how devouted he is, but to remind Xie Lian that he deserves the world and the world doesn't deserve him. Especially after the horrible sight from tonight, that kneeling statue. Just the thought of it makes anger spike in the back of his mind, traveling like thorns along their connection.
Hua Cheng licks at the other's lips like cat would do to another to show affection, before his crimson lips pepper kisses to his heated cheek, tender. He pulls back just to shift between those legs, not to move away, but simply to reach. Long fingers, still warm enough to feel comfortable, grab his foot and lift it, having the other's leg bend slightly. He bows his head, leaning his forehead against the top of it, before he presses an adoring kiss right below the shackle to his ankle.
His pecks are light and chaste, a devotee's, as they trace down the arch to his toes, sighing after each one. The sole act fills him with both sides of his adoration, pious and lustful. On his mind, easy to spot if Xie Lian were to peek, there's the image of the feet of that kneeling statue entwining with memories: Hua Cheng has kissed the feet of each statue of Xie Lian he's met. Even those kneeling ones received the devotion of his lips on soles and bitter, heartbroken apologies, before they were shattered. ]
Taizi dianxia... flowers pave the path you walk on, bloom content from the leftover light behind you, sprout from the afterimage of your feet. [ He's nearly praying, voice deep and sticky with affection, nearly sultry, in that constant dichotomy he's stuck into.
His lips graze against his toes while long eyelashes flutter close and he exhales a long, shaky breath. He never thought the day would come for him to be able to touch these feet, show them the depth of his reverence. When his eyelids lift again, he starts laying small, tender pecks to each toe, eyes wandering from Xie Lian's, nearly seductive, to the whole picture of him laying back on that narrow bed, layers undone because of him. His scattered blush is the only detail that gives away he's human, because he's so gorgeous, that'd be difficult to tell.
He sighs deep, still hot, once his mouth reaches his sole and he's careful and lays only one kiss to the middle of it, not wanting to tickle him. His long fingers still rest around his heel, gentle and elegant and Hua Cheng suddenly brings his free hand to his own robes, undoing them roughly until the halves part and show his pale chest. He leads the other's foot to his pectoral, presses it right above where his heart should be. Xie Lian can do anything he wants with him, step on him, use him as a stepping stone, crush him. It is a wordless promise of obedience.
Yet he knows his master would never allow anything like that and so he just smiles, his magic now slipping from that point of contact along the other's leg, as if he was making sinews and nerves tingle, as if his touch was everywhere. He bows his head and laps at the shackle to his graceful ankle, clearly meaning to worship every inch. ]
( in all of xie lian's life, he has never experienced anything like this. the amount of sensation is overwhelming and wholly unlike the other times in which he has felt a great deal but none of it pleasant. neither a repeated curse shaped like a blade nor the crushing gravity of two kingdoms' feud, hua cheng's worship opens him up in a different way entirely. the desire to tell him not to is quickly and over and over, quelled, xie lian's would be protests usurped by aching sounds of need that stain him pink and red across the pale of his own skin, self conscious and yet unable to hide. should it feel this good? should it feel so much? xie lian's heart is like his breaths and his words that won't come: stumbling, babbling brook half delirious and unravelingly wild.
he brings his own hand to his mouth, teeth sinking into his fingers to keep himself from more of those desperate sounds that seem to fill the whole space, his eyes opening and closing, so dilated they seem even bigger than usual, his lashes wet long curves on the close, a dark fan on the open, the thinnest pinholes of light catching in what's left of his irises as he tries to focus on hua cheng, not entirely succeeding.
the brief spike of anger doesn't hurt, despite the thorns. there is too much worship, overriding it, the pleasant fever and hallowed heat in xie lian's core rampant inside and out, across every inch of skin from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head. hua cheng's words elicit unconscious tears but xie lian's eyes shut on them, hiding them. don't think too well of me, san lang. a thought he does not realize he conveys through their bond, because his upper coherence is too overwrought with the way hua cheng touches him.
he applies no pressure when his foot is placed like prayer against hua cheng's chest; he would never. rather, the feeling of hua cheng's magic funneling into him there at the same time as he licks at his ankle makes xie lian's stifled voice cry out this time, teeth slipping from his own finger enough to draw blood, and his already swollen red mouth is even redder with it, parted on the twist of his voice. he doesn't recognize it as his own; an obscene, wanton noise. hua cheng is devout and deliberate and unhurried and it all makes xie lian, who for so long has not felt anything like this, even more desperate.
guilty of over thinking, prone to denying himself even what he could have, xie lian is at a loss when faced with the one who has both made himself and chosen to be the very embodiment of proving to taizi dianxia of the flower path: you deserve to feel good.
incomprehensible, nearly. was it almost too late, when xiao hua came into his life?
xie lian's hands end up white knuckled, fisted in the thin sheet under him. his body trembles, head to foot, and though his magic has been shackled as his fortune has been dispelled, his qi writhes under and with hua cheng's magic, an incorporeal echo of what their bodies could do; what xie lian's body asks for with a clean arch of his back and another gasped moan he tries to bury by turning his face to the bed. embarrassing. shameful. not that hua cheng makes him feel those things wit his worship, but rather xie lian can't still quite understand and so cannot quite fully accept that hua cheng feels he deserves even now to be worshipped. even as his familiar. yet he wants him, a truer more literal meaning of body and soul.
so long ago, yet xie lian would never forget the way those flowers and their spell tried to pull apart his magic — the cultivation of its core a kind of purity and abstinence he could not risk losing especially then, choosing to physically ground himself even if injury was the only way.
it's the only time he's ever felt anything remotely like this, except that this is much better. strangely, he wonders why even hua cheng feels familiar in this way, which seems impossible. that which he experiences now is also so different, it muddles that memory and instinct, and even if hua cheng's temperature is regulating, xie lian burns hotter and bright as the star hua cheng reveres him as. he's so dizzy, and as much as hua cheng's magic fills him, it also makes him that much needier, a shameful kind of want that's as good as greed born of being loved for the first time in so long.
not entirely fair, he thinks distantly, because others have been good to him in their own ways, especially jun wu.
but this is not that. )
San Lang.... San Lang... I —
( he doesn't know what to say, feels like he should apologize for the state he is in and his own lack of control. something has gotten into hua cheng, and he's known it from the start, an opening of something or an unlocking, since the cavern. again worry comes: that hua cheng will regret, that he will feel guilt over it all even though he is not doing anything xie lian doesn't want. but it's hard for xie lian to form words right now, even through their bond all he can manage, even his thoughts gasping needy and too warm too warm too warm:
san lang, ah...nn...san lang...doesn't have to...ah—
he wants to tell him: this one cares for san lang, even if he never worshipped or worships again. san lang is san lang. no need to do all of this. but xie lian's head spins. he can't get his words out either way, hua cheng's unhurried adoration excruciating, xie lian's qi trying to compensate by inviting more of hua cheng's magic in, begging to be filled in a way xie lian can't even make sense of, only able to recognize it as a response to the way hua cheng seems to seek to give him more than he deserves. )
[ Hua Cheng observes him with the curiousity of a predator, ready to pounce and devour, and yet there's dripping fondness in his mismatched eyes. He can feel the way the other's qi makes way for his magic, like those legs parting open, the way it writhes like that frame on the sheets, the way it beckons him closer like those sweet sweet noises spilling from Xie Lian's mouth. He never thought his master could sound so beautiful in his desperate want, as much as he never thought he could crave him so much.
What shakes him out of his reverie is that drop of blood that Xie Lian accidentally draws out while forcefully trying to hold himself back. Hua Cheng gently grips his ankle and lets his leg rest against his side again, so he can lean forward, worry and overflowing tenderness on his face. He takes the hand the other was biting on and presses kisses to his palm and the inner side of his fingers, letting go only as he bends towards him. Red tongue snakes out and licks at his teeth and his lips, his magic treating the wound while he tastes the sacred bead of blood on his tongue. ]
I do not think well or badly of you, gege. Good or bad do not matter. Only your existence does. You fill my head, my heart and every part of me. You deserve my love and my worship just because you are.
[ Can he have his master understand that? That after a lifetime where his every action was weighed, analyzed, approved or scorned, the only thing that matters to Hua Cheng is Xie Lian existing? Whatever choice he may take or has taken, whatever mistake, the only important part of it is that Xie Lian has been existing to do it all. Nothing else matters to Hua Cheng.
He takes those hands clutching at the sheets and covers them in kisses, like a reminder that he needs to be gentler with himself. ] Gege, why are you fighting it? Do you dislike it? [ He wonders, voice soft and sultry, poured into his ear tempting. He knows the answer to his questions because they linger in the other's qi, in their bond. Xie Lian likes it but feels like he can't take it, he can't accept what's good to him, too used to punishment, to self-denial. But Hua Cheng will give him everything he deserves, drop after drop, until Xie Lian is filled only with pleasure and can't fight it anymore.
Like he's overheard that question that Xie Lian posed, the two of them so close and entangled with each other in all manners that his magic bleeds into him as much as Xie Lian's qi into Hua Cheng, the familiar accidentally follows another train of thought and danger flashes in his eyes. His red eye glows, his pupil looking like a dark magic array, while he licks his lips.
Others have been good to him before, especially Jun Wu --his master muses, and Hua Cheng's magic suddenly tips the scales the way it's done in the cave. Forcefully it crashes into the other's qi, holding it still while it wraps tightly around it, like a snake entangling their prey. Hua Cheng's possessiveness spikes through and he fills the distance between them, kissing Xie Lian suddenly like he wants to eat him up, sucking at his tongue, biting at his lips. ]
If gege is thinking of others it means I'm not worshipping him well enough. [ He growls huskily on his mouth, with a wicked, dangerous smile that he's never shown before. A beat and he buries his mouth right under his jaw, kissing all along the sharpness of it and then licking at the outline of his throat, along that damned shackle left by another to punish him. How could Jun Wu have been good to him when he's sealed him like that? When he's desecrated his taizi dianxia with the appearance of those shackles on holy pale skin? And yet his master still thinks of him?
Rage and jealousy mingle in a volatile mix and teeth sink in the tender flesh of his neck, in a red, obvious mark drawn above that shackle like two parties fighting for dominance over the same person. Hua Cheng licks at the outline like a wild animal, before he straightens up. He tugs his robes off, torso bare and he brings the other's hands to his mouth, kissing on his fingers and taking the first digit of his forefinger in his mouth, before he has him drape his arms around his neck and he dives in for another kiss, this time slow and deep. ]
( hua cheng feels like nothing xie lian has ever known before, nothing and no one. and likely he would be considered ungrateful and even blasphemous in his own name for daring to say the worship of hundreds or thousands in the world of ascended sorcery — prestigious, lauded, and nigh unattainable for most —, pales, flickers, and disappears in contrast to that which he experiences now. it isn't that xie lian does not believe in their sincerity, those who once claimed to love him and then, feeling betrayed, sought to desecrate any and all aspects of him in the wake of his failures. rather, it is that hua cheng worships with the purity of a devotee whose life is bound up with xie lian's. the nature of a familiar, yes, but xie lian cannot help but glimpse that repeating intuition: i do know you from before, i do.
at present, that sentiment is overwhelmed by others though, a vague and also sharp sense that contradicts itself, when he feels hua cheng respond to his thoughts, indeed get so tangled up in them that sometimes xie lian is flying across lighted nerves of hua cheng's mind and then falling back into his own. his kisses leave him gasping for air, his vision spotted black and yet he loves it. there is no mistaking, and even when hua cheng asks, he can tell that he knows and something in that makes xie lian whine high in his throat, aching. but this gets swallowed up too, and such is hua cheng's ardor that xie lian does not manage to realize the next wave of heat is because his thoughts had shifted to jun wu in due respect, until he hears his familiar's words. )
S —
( he manages even less than before, "san lang" shapeshifting into a trembling moan that lances through xie lian from the arches of his feet up every part of him, wound up and urgent as the frantic wings of a bird his heart emulates. even to explain his thoughts does not occur to him right now, though it will later, how jun wu only did as xie lian asked, because xie lian felt it was what he deserved and penance could only be penance if the punishment was true. that there is a bigger, darker set of plays at hand, does not occur to xie lian who yet trusts jun wu implicitly, even if he does not quite understand why he continues to favor him so, or check the purity of his would-be magic, had he any left. but such thoughts have been driven far away for now, regardless, all of xie lian's body and heart flooded anew with hua cheng.
when he feels his teeth press in, xie lian's face flushes with new redness, self conscious even as he arches underneath him, continuing to bare his neck like an offering even as hua cheng kisses him again instead. xie lian's legs have made easy room for him to rest close, and he even pulls his knees in at either side of hua cheng as if to encourage, or to ask, clumsy with it even as he cannot deny or hide it either. before, it was hua cheng who felt like he would burn alive if xie lian did not do something and fast, but now it is xie lian alight in a way some would call holy and others perilous. both would be correct.
xie lian's qi strokes along hua cheng's magic's core, curls like tapered fingers or a hot mouth, reacting on a carnal instinct that xie lian did not even know he had and later will feel some guilt over. again: is he taking advantage? even with hua cheng telling him it is okay, he would wonder. but he trusts him; he does.
his voice falls from swollen lips between kisses, gasping for a breath he cannot fully catch. )
Mmn..San Lang...ah...please...please...
( he doesn't know what he needs, doesn't know how to ask — a last edge of self-refusal, of excuses to not admit or beg even though he wants to — distressed by how hard he is even though he can feel something like satisfaction from hua cheng, because his worship is finally reaching him in a way that is tangible, undeniable. one of xie lian's hands slides blindly between them, fingertips grazing hua cheng's throat, his collarbone, his chest, resting low on his stomach. )
[ Hua Cheng is so used to giving (kisses, touches, even love bites), that when he receives that touch from Xie Lian, he feels the same type of heat that's taking over the older and he gets surprised by it. His master can set his muscles on fire with just the brush of his fingers, tingles under his skin, as it yearns to have more. His stomach tightens where that hand rests, but Hua Cheng completely seals his desire: he doesn't deserve to be touched by the other, doesn't deserve to receive pleasure himself. For this has never been about him and it shouldn't be.
Spurred by the other's noises, becoming more desperate every second, Hua Cheng's lips move from his mouth to his chin and then lower, kissing across his throat and then down his sternum. That's where he stopped last time, but he doesn't now. He peppers kisses over muscular pectorals, sweeps his tongue around pink nipples, suckling on them with wet, obscene noises until they bloom red. Long fingers slide along lean sides and one of them halts around his waist, while the other crawls further down, slips into the older's underpants.
Pads trace the sharp lines of a hip bone as he looks up at Xie Lian, quietly asking permission to touch more. The softness of the fabric gives away how his body has already started reacting and the knowledge that was all Hua Cheng's doing fills him with a sort of satisfaction, so thick it's wicked. He shouldn't rejoice so much about the effect of his worship, and yet he can't help it. Being able to influence in any way his master is a source of happiness and that's particularly true when it comes to pleasure. He yearns to be the only one who Xie Lian associates with feeling good, with deserving to feel good. Reward and not punishment. ]
Gege... you'll think only of me, won't you? [ He wonders husky against his chest in a puff of hot breath, his eyes flashing a cheeky expression when they glance up at the other. His magic slithers between the threads of Xie Lian's qi, fills it, entangles it, while long fingers touch along his hard length and Hua Cheng muffles a hoarse, searing hot moan against the other's fair skin. To feel pleasure through Xie Lian is even better than feeling it himself.
He wraps his hand around him and starts stroking him, entirely slow, feeling inch by inch the rub of tight flesh against his palm and his curled fingers, while red lips part onto his nipple again. He exhales against it and licks it eagerly, pupils blown so wide both his eyes look dark, thoroughly enjoying the beauty laid out for him. This is his gift to his dianxia, centuries in the making, and yet he feels like the blessed one, for being allowed to do this at all. ]
( it goes without saying that no one has ever touched him like this. perhaps more importantly, even including that treacherous garden, blood soaked and heart racing, xie lian hasn't even imagined it. the only time it might be brought to his attention was when jun wu would check the cultivation of his magic, and even then, xie lian did not think much of it, feeling it as a matter of course and not much else.
hua cheng's mouth is devastating.
xie lian's vision whites out completely at the first brush of hua cheng's tongue across a nipple, burns when he gives the same attention to the other. his body arches with borderline violence underneath him, as if trying to press himself more into that mouth, abruptly insatiable and aching and needy for more of what he would be embarrassed by if he had more coherency. any faintest graze of teeth, the purse of his lips, the heavy heat of his tongue, dizzies together and makes xie lian's mouth so dry when he cries out his voice sounds wrecked.
the faint puffs of breath that come with hua cheng's words make him jerk, and it takes xie lian so long to process what he says, by then he cannot even reply because hua cheng's long fingers short any thoughts out beyond base, physical need. it cannot be helped; it comes tangled with shame. so many years of abstinence and objective separation will not be undone in one moment. but it helps that xie lian too receives the feedback of hua cheng's pleasure wrapped in his own; like a reverberation of sound trapped in an infinite loop. )
Ha...ahh....nn...San... San Lang —
( he doesn't even know what he is trying to say. or if it's anything. the wet heat of his familiar's tongue, the strong curl of his fingers, it's too much and not enough. the way hua cheng floods him with magic perfectly shaped to fit into his qi, the shackles not triggered at all, has xie lian gasping wet desperate sounds, a line of saliva trickling from his swollen mouth, tears pricking at his eyes. it's not pain. ironically, if it was pain, xie lian might not react at all. but the inundation of pleasure is almost maddening. neither his mind nor his body quite know what to do with it. instinct to give in to hua cheng is crossed with instinct to deny himself this even at the last second. but years of trying to be strong do not necessarily mean one is strong. or is it not a question of strength? of greed? magic? human?
xie lian cannot think but later he'll flush red and think it was like being on fire and wanting to be consumed.
something in hua cheng seems to know him better than he himself does, intimate in a way that makes xie lian keen from the back of his throat, his parted legs bending just to bring his knees in to hold hua cheng between them, not that he seems to be going anywhere. one of his hands slips down clumsily to tangle in hua cheng's hair, cradling at the back of his head to keep him there. his nipples are so swollen and hard they ache but it just makes him want more, and later, over sensitive, he'll turn pink as a haitang blossom when his white rob brushes against them, making him stumble. another thing to adjust to, since hua cheng will undoubtedly feel it too.
his mind feels almost separate from his body. he doesn't understand how he can possibly want or demand more of hua cheng. again, a wave of shame for his own greed, no matter how hua cheng wants to adore and worship and reward.
all things with time though.
xie lian's fingers tighten in hua cheng's hair. it says enough, maybe, that though he lets himself arch his back again, begging, seeking for the feeling of hua cheng's mouth fully on his chest again, he presses his own hips back into the bed save for tiny jerks of motion he cannot help. the way he's bitten through his own lower lip makes him even more of a match for the red of his familiar. )
[ He's glad that Xie Lian is overwhelmed, mind only full of sensations and the entwining of their qi and magic, because were the older to think, he would instantly reject this. He can feel them, like shadows creeping at the outline of a ring of light, shame and self-denial and even reproach, trying to force Xie Lian to reject pleasure. It can't be helped, it's centuries of purest self-control and chastity, centuries of lack of desire, in whichever form and shape.
I'm here, gege, his familiar whispers in his veins, it's the two of us together, it's not taking advantage of anyone, it's not being selfish. It's simply a gift Hua Cheng wants to give him.
And yet it feels much like he's the one who's receiving it, because all these beautiful noises Xie Lian makes ring in his ears like music. Not to mention the sight of him, unraveled, undone, ruined, mouth wet and eyes full of dew. He's more stunning than anything Hua Cheng has ever seen and his mind can't help associating this image to another, Taizi Dianxia, dressed in brocade and silk, for his holy parade when he came of age. Two sides of the same coin; two sides of his devotion.
Xie Lian's body is so eager, asking for all the things his voice and mind cannot. And so Hua Cheng doesn't waste any more time. He moans hoarsely at the tug of fingers in his hair, pleasure shooting straight between his legs, as effective as a physical touch, and it dives back into Xie Lian through their connection. Gege... you feel so good..., he muses, words he wouldn't dare saying out loud for now.
With how much the older likes it, he resumes licking at his nipples, languid and slow, blows his breath on them just to see the other shiver, suckles until they become even redder and oversensitive. Xie Lian is going to be reminded of him for quite some time, with how merciless his robes are going to be, brushing against his rosebuds. His fingers smear precum over the other's length, but he doesn't free him from his pants, nor looks down, not wanting to accidentally make him uncomfortable or ashamed. He blindly touches, stroking him like he knows what he likes from a lifetime before, tight and unrelenting.
The way Xie Lian reacts is making pleasure build up in Hua Cheng as well, paired with what he feels through their bond, and he pants and softly hums against his chest, getting lazy and unfocused with the attention to his nipples. His pupils are wide and his mouth is red and swollen when he pulls back just to desperately search for the other's mouth. Bite me instead... don't hurt yourself., he pleads softly while lapping at his red lips and the drip of saliva, before he kisses him with a soft whine in the back of his throat, like he was risking to drift astray without the touch and taste of his mouth.
Their connection is a soft, sweet echo of gege and dianxia, while Hua Cheng tastes him and strokes him with urgency. He can feel the peak, so close. ]
Give it to me, gege... give it all to me. Let me feel it. [ He begs hoarsely on his swollen lips before kissing him again, a little too wet and broken, climax so close that he feels his magic melting into the other's qi, their lights superimposing as they're so close to becoming just one. ]
( that hua cheng thinks of xie lian biting himself as hurting himself is perhaps one of the sweetest and most stark differences between them. to xie lian it is second nature even if it is the barest bones of self repression. that he accepts everything nearly else that hua cheng does is, as hua cheng intuits, largely the result of being driven out of his mind.
it feels like freedom, if xie lian could remember it, could recognize the life he leads now yet a stray god but still under what he perceives as the generous thumb of jun wu, versus the life he could lead ('should', his believer might say), if.
but they aren't there yet; he's not there yet.
maybe this is enough.
it takes hua cheng phrasing it as if he is receiving for xie lian to finally let go. even moments before that: vibrating with a palpable heat, shameful whimpers bleeding out into their kisses, though xie lian neither bit himself nor hua cheng, the hand not in hua cheng's hair ended up with his own fingernails digging red crescents into the palm as if to cut himself off somehow in the midst of everything. but hua cheng's asking is as present in his wrecked voice as it is his magic, even more so, entering xie lian's qi in a way that's impossibly intimate in two ways: something carnal and foreign that makes the cry that rips out of xie lian's throat as devastated as it is wanton, as much a cry of pleasure as it is a desperation for more — like a person who has been starved for so long they forgot what it is to feel hunger but once whetted, cannot cure their need; and: something just as heartbreakingly...kind, the single trusted embrace at the end of a long, long day.
if he wasn't so dizzy and on the verge of passing out, overwrought and overwhelmed, xie lian really would be embarrassed as his body arches so violently even his feet come up off the bed, turning his head to press his face against the sheets damp with his sweat, tears, and saliva, speckles of blood on the white from his mouth. it bares the side of his neck to hua cheng like an offering, though not an obligation. his familiar or not, his believer or not, he would never want to corner him into anything, especially after so self indulgently accepting so much. he comes down slow, vaguely aware of how sticky his stomach and thighs are, the thick heaviness of hua cheng's scent and his own drowning the room in a way that makes it hard for xie lian to breathe and yet he likes it, floating in a blurred haze of afterglow which is only sullied by xie lian's own guilt and foreignness to it all. tendrils at the edges of his thoughts are in quiet panic and then he reminds himself he has no magic to pollute, no cultivation to damage.
somehow, he still feels guilty, but it's far enough beneath the waves of pleasure and the love he feels for hua cheng that it's not too present in their bond.
more obvious: are you alright? san lang? can i do anything for...for you?
xie lian speaks anxiously and adoringly all at once through their bond, unable to find his physical voice. blindly, the hand in hua cheng's hair finally slips from where it is tangled to softly caress his face, sort of petting, sort of just clearly wanting to touch. xie lian's body shivers from head to toe, still so stimulated even after release, wired in a way he cannot quite mitigate, his qi experiencing repeated ripples from hua cheng's flood of magic like it's trying to hold him inside instead of letting it all balance out again between them. )
[ What a miracle it is, to be able to see this for himself, the wonder of Xie Lian overcome by good, by pleasure, by the freedom of accepting what he wants to without any restrictions. Hua Cheng knows it'll be short-lived, he can feel the hold of panic getting closer and closer. It's his own fault, he's the one who pushed Xie Lian so far, he would gladly take any punishment for it onto himself only, but he knows his torture will be quietly observing as his master hurts himself with guilt and shame. And that always makes Hua Cheng's heart bleed more than any sort of pain he could endure.
For now, though, for now he can admire as pleasure wrecks his beautiful frame, he can feel the wave of it crashing against himself and his own body absorbing it, to the point that Hua Cheng reaches his own climax barely realizing it. There's a broken, husky noise spilt into the other's mouth, his body tightening and his underpants getting stained, and yet he only registers it in the back of his mind, with how busy observing the love of his life he is.
He peppers kisses all over the side of his face and onto that seductive neck bared all for him, and he laps softly like a cat at the holy beads of sweats. He kisses the outline of the bite mark he'd left, gentle enough to just make it tingle, before he looks up back at Xie Lian. His expression has never been so adoring, wholly sweet, the only one he sees in the whole world, his red lips curved into the softest smile. ]
You've done everything for me already. [ He whispers on his cheek, a little hoarse, sealing it with a peck. I'll take care of it, gege, he promises quietly, shifting even if their connection nearly cries at their bodies not being pressed together anymore. He gently tugs off the other's underpants, ever so light as he wipes him clean with the soft fabric before covering him with the sheets. He then gets off the bed for a moment to undress himself too, red and white fabric meeting on the floor. By the time Xie Lian is up again, those robes will be clean and dry again, hanging each in its own spot, as if nothing ever happened.
Hua Cheng slips into bed naked, cradling Xie Lian in his arms with the sheets in between. He caresses his hair and kisses his forehead and temples, trying to keep away those feelings of guilt that are burning at the edges. Large hands rub at his trembling frame, soothe muscles and soul as he holds him so close. Let it go, gege. Let it all go., he suggests softly, feeling the way he's trying to hold onto his magic, as well as his struggle against the onslaught of feelings. Only think of my kisses, he jokes with a smile that bleeds even into the lilt of his thoughts, while he presses soft kisses all over the other's beautiful features, the corners of his eyes, his damp eyelashes, he licks at his swollen lips that still taste of blood. If only he could make him forget about everything else.
Forget about the world today, it's just us. Gege and I., what else could one need with their love in his arms? Hua Cheng smiles bright, rubbing that cocoon in his embrace and kissing the most beautiful man in the world. He doesn't say it and yet as always, his side of the bond screams it no matter Hua Cheng trying to smother it: I love you I love you I love you.]
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being close to you echoes in xie lian's head and his heart the same.
gently, he removes the cloth, murmuring an apology, but that cloth is soon replaced with xie lian's hands, which may feel abnormally cold. slowing his heart, which serves almost as a meditation, calming, even keeled, xie lian's body temperature drops slow, steady, and significant. he doesn't think too much about it, following the instinctive red string that ties them as he slips onto the bed, the size of which like the first night forces them close together, but this is his intent. his hands slip down the sides of hua cheng's face, down the sides of his neck, gentle gentle gentle and quite cold, permeating the heat there as best he can. when he moves his hands so that his arms can slip under and around hua cheng's back, and over his middle, he rests his face against the juncture of his neck and shoulder. even xie lian's breaths are cold now and everything about him seems deeply slow and quiet.
once, many many years ago, he taught himself to do this through delirium. he was not as adept at it then as he is now.
even without magic, xie lian's qi coalesces into a formidable presence under his control, sometimes to defend, other times to protect, and in this case both, with a slightly less expert attempt too to heal. yet he isn't completely clear on what ails hua cheng even if he feels, rather badly, like it is his fault. he has upset his familiar in some way or many and will take responsibility for it as best as he can. he hopes hua cheng can forgive him, a master without magic being far from what hua cheng deserves. that he had not answered him verbally before was not too conscious, rather, necessity overtaking anything else. yes, he feels hua cheng's urgency and his fear, his pain and his tiny moments of relief or even pleasure, his adoration and his lust. in a way, the adoration is just as overwhelming.
it would have been enough to not be hated and ridiculed.
to be loved tiptoes the border of a flood xie lian will have to learn to tread, and so, accept.
with time.
he doesn't think of it now though, not like that. xie lian makes himself into a place for all of hua cheng's heat and aught else to come into.
you're safe. i accept all of you. it's okay.
hardly a spell of a near mythical enchanter.
closer to the lullaby of a mortal who loved flowers as much as magic.
the way xie lian's face presses against hua cheng's bare skin, it will feel like a kiss, and though it isn't warm, it is soft.
i have you. i promise. i have you.
because of how they are intertwined, hua cheng's heat has already begun to overtake xie lian's consciously efforted cold, and with that overturning of scales, xie lian's entire body shivers, seeming to fit that much closer to him, like these are the shapes they were always meant to make: perfectly fitted together, and almost too difficult to tell apart. )
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Hua Cheng gasps sharply when he feels the touch of his master's hands, mumbling unintelligible words when he climbs into bed: it's so small, they're forced to be close. He knows he's asked for it, for the two of them to be closer, yet now he recognizes it as a mistake. It may soothe his temperature, but it puts Xie Lian closer to danger. Hua Cheng has no idea what to do; his energy is all put into fighting against his inner demons, to the point that his body can only rest there, allowing Xie Lian to grow closer.
He makes soft noises the more he's touched, the older inching closer and closer. It's pleasure and anxiety at once.
Gege... I'm dangerous... to you., he warns him softly, an echo of his words in the other's mind, but his master hugs him and Hua Cheng keens like a needy animal. He finds those perfect features tucked into his neck and he nearly feels like crying, throat tightening around the wave of feelings. It's the first time Xie Lian initiates such closeness, and he's doing it naturally, without embarrassment, like they're meant to be together, like he enjoys Hua Cheng's presence too.
Hua Cheng is so warm it takes little to warm Xie Lian up back again. But the problem is that Hua Cheng is growing hotter, instead of balancing it out. They both must've underestimated the size of his lust, especially when his feelings are ruffled.
Hua Cheng breathes him in from so close and that daze from before starts to crawl back. ] Don't leave me, dianxia... don't leave me. [ He begs, now out loud, long fingers reaching between and tugging harshly at the sash of Xie Lian's robes. The older is pulled towards him effectively and yet the fabric rips as well. Feverish hands slip under layers, commanded by mere instinct, and with a shivering sigh, Hua Cheng explores the smooth expanse of his stomach, follows the lines of his muscles, the softness of flesh and the hardness of his sternum.
The familiar tilts his head and catches Xie Lian's lips with his own, kissing him deep and hot, while fingers rub into his sides, learn each bump of his spine. He licks at his tongue and feeds him his boiling, unbalanced power like spoonfuls of hot honey tea. Have it, it's yours, I gathered it for you, he pours it, but unlike the first time during that eclipse, it's not mindless. He transforms it so it's the same nature as his master's qi, so it can refine the silk of it, so that it's smoother and brighter and his shackles don't activate. He will need less to do the same work. His master will be the most powerful once again, that's how it'll be. ]
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I won't leave...I won't leave. Ah —
( his gasp is a feathered, dizzy thing, warm and inviting every aspect of hua cheng in. xie lian's qi intertwines with that energy and magic that hua cheng pours into him until they are impossible to tell apart, unintentionally enacting a deeply intimate act. long ago it was reserved only for the honored wedding nights of royalty. and while tradition has, like many things over centuries, become all but a fairytale, there is truth in its seeds and roots: how hua cheng takes care to shape his power to not exacerbate xie lian's shackles, xie lian shapes his qi in answer to perfectly provide that vessel, as if asking hua cheng with uncharacteristic greed of his own, to be filled.
it takes xie lian an undetermined amount of time to recognize the other desperate, wanton breaths and whines are his own, the first kiss having given way to a second and a third with no clear pause. his head spins but it isn't unpleasant, and the cursed shackle around his throat and ankle do not tighten. rather, it feels like he's being lit up from the inside, out. everywhere hua cheng's palm and fingers touch makes him mewl softly into the kiss or against hua cheng's jaw between breaths.
distantly he considers that he should stop him. he doesn't want hua cheng to regret it later, to feel guilty. but the flood of his magic is as undoing for xie lian as xie lian's closeness is undoing for hua cheng. his body and his heart had not fully forgotten love, because the truth is xie lian feels love still on quiet, ordinary levels for others. his own mistakes, his own near unforgivable cruelties, and the cruelties imparted onto him alike, have created a path that is as perilous as it is precious, where he still decides every morning, every day, every night, every in-between, that there is a reason to do good, to make room for love, and to be kind. not to say this is a thing true across every aspect of life. there should, also, be things one will not stand for, and xie lian has these too.
but this isn't one of them.
this feels like a gift he doesn't deserve teeming with the kind of fear only found inside of a heart that is afraid because it wants so very badly.
don't be afraid, he tries to tell him. i won't leave, he repeats with a long, warm stroke of qi, as if fingertips have run the length of hua cheng's spine, as if they have caressed where a heart should beat, as if the kiss xie lian presses to his mouth is also an oath. because hua cheng might have gathered and want to give everything to him, but xie lian won't let him if he can help it; or, he'll give back as much as he can, not magic, which he has had to do without save for ruoye for a long time, but with everything else. with his legs spread it's that much easier for hua cheng to press in close, and xie lian's hands curl on his shoulders tightly, the fingertips the same blush red as his throat and his cheeks, the tips of his ears, the bloom of color in his chest and even the sharps of his knees. and no one has ever seen him like this, but once xie lian's beauty was so renowned it almost superseded his reputation with magic, people forgetting over time, first one, and then the other. most paintings and statues have been desecrated and then utterly destroyed. omens of misfortune. no one would remember him then anyway, or so he would reply if asked by anyone. but right now he is the very image of taizi dianxia. the flower crowned enchanter beloved and then reviled.
for reasons xie lian himself has suppressed for so long, his eyes sting, so he closes them tight against whatever that feeling is, focusing instead on reaching hua cheng through their bond.
i'm yours too. xie lian's heart beats so fast it hurts. it's okay.
it's okay. )
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Hua Cheng pulls back to let the other breathe and, if his heart had still be beating, it would've happily stopped now, at such a sight. Xie Lian is so beautiful, beyond a human, beyond a sorcerer. Not even gods compare to him. He's the moon hanging in the sky and the winter sun, he's placid sea water lapping at his soul in smooth waves. Xie Lian is his world and he's everything that's worth living for --that is why Hua Cheng has dedicated his life to him, after all. Xie Lian is the only thing that matters in the wide universe. It's as if his familiar was holding a star in his hands, so brilliant and perfect that it's a wonder if fits between such unworthy palms.
He doesn't realize it, but his fever is decreasing, leaving space to just his feelings, large enough to fill the space that was overtaken before by uncomfortable heat. Much like that eclipse night, Hua Cheng wants to worship him; not to show off how devouted he is, but to remind Xie Lian that he deserves the world and the world doesn't deserve him. Especially after the horrible sight from tonight, that kneeling statue. Just the thought of it makes anger spike in the back of his mind, traveling like thorns along their connection.
Hua Cheng licks at the other's lips like cat would do to another to show affection, before his crimson lips pepper kisses to his heated cheek, tender. He pulls back just to shift between those legs, not to move away, but simply to reach. Long fingers, still warm enough to feel comfortable, grab his foot and lift it, having the other's leg bend slightly. He bows his head, leaning his forehead against the top of it, before he presses an adoring kiss right below the shackle to his ankle.
His pecks are light and chaste, a devotee's, as they trace down the arch to his toes, sighing after each one. The sole act fills him with both sides of his adoration, pious and lustful. On his mind, easy to spot if Xie Lian were to peek, there's the image of the feet of that kneeling statue entwining with memories: Hua Cheng has kissed the feet of each statue of Xie Lian he's met. Even those kneeling ones received the devotion of his lips on soles and bitter, heartbroken apologies, before they were shattered. ]
Taizi dianxia... flowers pave the path you walk on, bloom content from the leftover light behind you, sprout from the afterimage of your feet. [ He's nearly praying, voice deep and sticky with affection, nearly sultry, in that constant dichotomy he's stuck into.
His lips graze against his toes while long eyelashes flutter close and he exhales a long, shaky breath. He never thought the day would come for him to be able to touch these feet, show them the depth of his reverence. When his eyelids lift again, he starts laying small, tender pecks to each toe, eyes wandering from Xie Lian's, nearly seductive, to the whole picture of him laying back on that narrow bed, layers undone because of him. His scattered blush is the only detail that gives away he's human, because he's so gorgeous, that'd be difficult to tell.
He sighs deep, still hot, once his mouth reaches his sole and he's careful and lays only one kiss to the middle of it, not wanting to tickle him. His long fingers still rest around his heel, gentle and elegant and Hua Cheng suddenly brings his free hand to his own robes, undoing them roughly until the halves part and show his pale chest. He leads the other's foot to his pectoral, presses it right above where his heart should be. Xie Lian can do anything he wants with him, step on him, use him as a stepping stone, crush him. It is a wordless promise of obedience.
Yet he knows his master would never allow anything like that and so he just smiles, his magic now slipping from that point of contact along the other's leg, as if he was making sinews and nerves tingle, as if his touch was everywhere. He bows his head and laps at the shackle to his graceful ankle, clearly meaning to worship every inch. ]
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he brings his own hand to his mouth, teeth sinking into his fingers to keep himself from more of those desperate sounds that seem to fill the whole space, his eyes opening and closing, so dilated they seem even bigger than usual, his lashes wet long curves on the close, a dark fan on the open, the thinnest pinholes of light catching in what's left of his irises as he tries to focus on hua cheng, not entirely succeeding.
the brief spike of anger doesn't hurt, despite the thorns. there is too much worship, overriding it, the pleasant fever and hallowed heat in xie lian's core rampant inside and out, across every inch of skin from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head. hua cheng's words elicit unconscious tears but xie lian's eyes shut on them, hiding them. don't think too well of me, san lang. a thought he does not realize he conveys through their bond, because his upper coherence is too overwrought with the way hua cheng touches him.
he applies no pressure when his foot is placed like prayer against hua cheng's chest; he would never. rather, the feeling of hua cheng's magic funneling into him there at the same time as he licks at his ankle makes xie lian's stifled voice cry out this time, teeth slipping from his own finger enough to draw blood, and his already swollen red mouth is even redder with it, parted on the twist of his voice. he doesn't recognize it as his own; an obscene, wanton noise. hua cheng is devout and deliberate and unhurried and it all makes xie lian, who for so long has not felt anything like this, even more desperate.
guilty of over thinking, prone to denying himself even what he could have, xie lian is at a loss when faced with the one who has both made himself and chosen to be the very embodiment of proving to taizi dianxia of the flower path: you deserve to feel good.
incomprehensible, nearly. was it almost too late, when xiao hua came into his life?
xie lian's hands end up white knuckled, fisted in the thin sheet under him. his body trembles, head to foot, and though his magic has been shackled as his fortune has been dispelled, his qi writhes under and with hua cheng's magic, an incorporeal echo of what their bodies could do; what xie lian's body asks for with a clean arch of his back and another gasped moan he tries to bury by turning his face to the bed. embarrassing. shameful. not that hua cheng makes him feel those things wit his worship, but rather xie lian can't still quite understand and so cannot quite fully accept that hua cheng feels he deserves even now to be worshipped. even as his familiar. yet he wants him, a truer more literal meaning of body and soul.
so long ago, yet xie lian would never forget the way those flowers and their spell tried to pull apart his magic — the cultivation of its core a kind of purity and abstinence he could not risk losing especially then, choosing to physically ground himself even if injury was the only way.
it's the only time he's ever felt anything remotely like this, except that this is much better. strangely, he wonders why even hua cheng feels familiar in this way, which seems impossible. that which he experiences now is also so different, it muddles that memory and instinct, and even if hua cheng's temperature is regulating, xie lian burns hotter and bright as the star hua cheng reveres him as. he's so dizzy, and as much as hua cheng's magic fills him, it also makes him that much needier, a shameful kind of want that's as good as greed born of being loved for the first time in so long.
not entirely fair, he thinks distantly, because others have been good to him in their own ways, especially jun wu.
but this is not that. )
San Lang.... San Lang... I —
( he doesn't know what to say, feels like he should apologize for the state he is in and his own lack of control. something has gotten into hua cheng, and he's known it from the start, an opening of something or an unlocking, since the cavern. again worry comes: that hua cheng will regret, that he will feel guilt over it all even though he is not doing anything xie lian doesn't want. but it's hard for xie lian to form words right now, even through their bond all he can manage, even his thoughts gasping needy and too warm too warm too warm:
san lang, ah...nn...san lang...doesn't have to...ah—
he wants to tell him: this one cares for san lang, even if he never worshipped or worships again. san lang is san lang. no need to do all of this. but xie lian's head spins. he can't get his words out either way, hua cheng's unhurried adoration excruciating, xie lian's qi trying to compensate by inviting more of hua cheng's magic in, begging to be filled in a way xie lian can't even make sense of, only able to recognize it as a response to the way hua cheng seems to seek to give him more than he deserves. )
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What shakes him out of his reverie is that drop of blood that Xie Lian accidentally draws out while forcefully trying to hold himself back. Hua Cheng gently grips his ankle and lets his leg rest against his side again, so he can lean forward, worry and overflowing tenderness on his face. He takes the hand the other was biting on and presses kisses to his palm and the inner side of his fingers, letting go only as he bends towards him. Red tongue snakes out and licks at his teeth and his lips, his magic treating the wound while he tastes the sacred bead of blood on his tongue. ]
I do not think well or badly of you, gege. Good or bad do not matter. Only your existence does. You fill my head, my heart and every part of me. You deserve my love and my worship just because you are.
[ Can he have his master understand that? That after a lifetime where his every action was weighed, analyzed, approved or scorned, the only thing that matters to Hua Cheng is Xie Lian existing? Whatever choice he may take or has taken, whatever mistake, the only important part of it is that Xie Lian has been existing to do it all. Nothing else matters to Hua Cheng.
He takes those hands clutching at the sheets and covers them in kisses, like a reminder that he needs to be gentler with himself. ] Gege, why are you fighting it? Do you dislike it? [ He wonders, voice soft and sultry, poured into his ear tempting. He knows the answer to his questions because they linger in the other's qi, in their bond. Xie Lian likes it but feels like he can't take it, he can't accept what's good to him, too used to punishment, to self-denial. But Hua Cheng will give him everything he deserves, drop after drop, until Xie Lian is filled only with pleasure and can't fight it anymore.
Like he's overheard that question that Xie Lian posed, the two of them so close and entangled with each other in all manners that his magic bleeds into him as much as Xie Lian's qi into Hua Cheng, the familiar accidentally follows another train of thought and danger flashes in his eyes. His red eye glows, his pupil looking like a dark magic array, while he licks his lips.
Others have been good to him before, especially Jun Wu --his master muses, and Hua Cheng's magic suddenly tips the scales the way it's done in the cave. Forcefully it crashes into the other's qi, holding it still while it wraps tightly around it, like a snake entangling their prey. Hua Cheng's possessiveness spikes through and he fills the distance between them, kissing Xie Lian suddenly like he wants to eat him up, sucking at his tongue, biting at his lips. ]
If gege is thinking of others it means I'm not worshipping him well enough. [ He growls huskily on his mouth, with a wicked, dangerous smile that he's never shown before. A beat and he buries his mouth right under his jaw, kissing all along the sharpness of it and then licking at the outline of his throat, along that damned shackle left by another to punish him. How could Jun Wu have been good to him when he's sealed him like that? When he's desecrated his taizi dianxia with the appearance of those shackles on holy pale skin? And yet his master still thinks of him?
Rage and jealousy mingle in a volatile mix and teeth sink in the tender flesh of his neck, in a red, obvious mark drawn above that shackle like two parties fighting for dominance over the same person. Hua Cheng licks at the outline like a wild animal, before he straightens up. He tugs his robes off, torso bare and he brings the other's hands to his mouth, kissing on his fingers and taking the first digit of his forefinger in his mouth, before he has him drape his arms around his neck and he dives in for another kiss, this time slow and deep. ]
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at present, that sentiment is overwhelmed by others though, a vague and also sharp sense that contradicts itself, when he feels hua cheng respond to his thoughts, indeed get so tangled up in them that sometimes xie lian is flying across lighted nerves of hua cheng's mind and then falling back into his own. his kisses leave him gasping for air, his vision spotted black and yet he loves it. there is no mistaking, and even when hua cheng asks, he can tell that he knows and something in that makes xie lian whine high in his throat, aching. but this gets swallowed up too, and such is hua cheng's ardor that xie lian does not manage to realize the next wave of heat is because his thoughts had shifted to jun wu in due respect, until he hears his familiar's words. )
S —
( he manages even less than before, "san lang" shapeshifting into a trembling moan that lances through xie lian from the arches of his feet up every part of him, wound up and urgent as the frantic wings of a bird his heart emulates. even to explain his thoughts does not occur to him right now, though it will later, how jun wu only did as xie lian asked, because xie lian felt it was what he deserved and penance could only be penance if the punishment was true. that there is a bigger, darker set of plays at hand, does not occur to xie lian who yet trusts jun wu implicitly, even if he does not quite understand why he continues to favor him so, or check the purity of his would-be magic, had he any left. but such thoughts have been driven far away for now, regardless, all of xie lian's body and heart flooded anew with hua cheng.
when he feels his teeth press in, xie lian's face flushes with new redness, self conscious even as he arches underneath him, continuing to bare his neck like an offering even as hua cheng kisses him again instead. xie lian's legs have made easy room for him to rest close, and he even pulls his knees in at either side of hua cheng as if to encourage, or to ask, clumsy with it even as he cannot deny or hide it either. before, it was hua cheng who felt like he would burn alive if xie lian did not do something and fast, but now it is xie lian alight in a way some would call holy and others perilous. both would be correct.
xie lian's qi strokes along hua cheng's magic's core, curls like tapered fingers or a hot mouth, reacting on a carnal instinct that xie lian did not even know he had and later will feel some guilt over. again: is he taking advantage? even with hua cheng telling him it is okay, he would wonder. but he trusts him; he does.
his voice falls from swollen lips between kisses, gasping for a breath he cannot fully catch. )
Mmn..San Lang...ah...please...please...
( he doesn't know what he needs, doesn't know how to ask — a last edge of self-refusal, of excuses to not admit or beg even though he wants to — distressed by how hard he is even though he can feel something like satisfaction from hua cheng, because his worship is finally reaching him in a way that is tangible, undeniable. one of xie lian's hands slides blindly between them, fingertips grazing hua cheng's throat, his collarbone, his chest, resting low on his stomach. )
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Spurred by the other's noises, becoming more desperate every second, Hua Cheng's lips move from his mouth to his chin and then lower, kissing across his throat and then down his sternum. That's where he stopped last time, but he doesn't now. He peppers kisses over muscular pectorals, sweeps his tongue around pink nipples, suckling on them with wet, obscene noises until they bloom red. Long fingers slide along lean sides and one of them halts around his waist, while the other crawls further down, slips into the older's underpants.
Pads trace the sharp lines of a hip bone as he looks up at Xie Lian, quietly asking permission to touch more. The softness of the fabric gives away how his body has already started reacting and the knowledge that was all Hua Cheng's doing fills him with a sort of satisfaction, so thick it's wicked. He shouldn't rejoice so much about the effect of his worship, and yet he can't help it. Being able to influence in any way his master is a source of happiness and that's particularly true when it comes to pleasure. He yearns to be the only one who Xie Lian associates with feeling good, with deserving to feel good. Reward and not punishment. ]
Gege... you'll think only of me, won't you? [ He wonders husky against his chest in a puff of hot breath, his eyes flashing a cheeky expression when they glance up at the other. His magic slithers between the threads of Xie Lian's qi, fills it, entangles it, while long fingers touch along his hard length and Hua Cheng muffles a hoarse, searing hot moan against the other's fair skin. To feel pleasure through Xie Lian is even better than feeling it himself.
He wraps his hand around him and starts stroking him, entirely slow, feeling inch by inch the rub of tight flesh against his palm and his curled fingers, while red lips part onto his nipple again. He exhales against it and licks it eagerly, pupils blown so wide both his eyes look dark, thoroughly enjoying the beauty laid out for him. This is his gift to his dianxia, centuries in the making, and yet he feels like the blessed one, for being allowed to do this at all. ]
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hua cheng's mouth is devastating.
xie lian's vision whites out completely at the first brush of hua cheng's tongue across a nipple, burns when he gives the same attention to the other. his body arches with borderline violence underneath him, as if trying to press himself more into that mouth, abruptly insatiable and aching and needy for more of what he would be embarrassed by if he had more coherency. any faintest graze of teeth, the purse of his lips, the heavy heat of his tongue, dizzies together and makes xie lian's mouth so dry when he cries out his voice sounds wrecked.
the faint puffs of breath that come with hua cheng's words make him jerk, and it takes xie lian so long to process what he says, by then he cannot even reply because hua cheng's long fingers short any thoughts out beyond base, physical need. it cannot be helped; it comes tangled with shame. so many years of abstinence and objective separation will not be undone in one moment. but it helps that xie lian too receives the feedback of hua cheng's pleasure wrapped in his own; like a reverberation of sound trapped in an infinite loop. )
Ha...ahh....nn...San... San Lang —
( he doesn't even know what he is trying to say. or if it's anything. the wet heat of his familiar's tongue, the strong curl of his fingers, it's too much and not enough. the way hua cheng floods him with magic perfectly shaped to fit into his qi, the shackles not triggered at all, has xie lian gasping wet desperate sounds, a line of saliva trickling from his swollen mouth, tears pricking at his eyes. it's not pain. ironically, if it was pain, xie lian might not react at all. but the inundation of pleasure is almost maddening. neither his mind nor his body quite know what to do with it. instinct to give in to hua cheng is crossed with instinct to deny himself this even at the last second. but years of trying to be strong do not necessarily mean one is strong. or is it not a question of strength? of greed? magic? human?
xie lian cannot think but later he'll flush red and think it was like being on fire and wanting to be consumed.
something in hua cheng seems to know him better than he himself does, intimate in a way that makes xie lian keen from the back of his throat, his parted legs bending just to bring his knees in to hold hua cheng between them, not that he seems to be going anywhere. one of his hands slips down clumsily to tangle in hua cheng's hair, cradling at the back of his head to keep him there. his nipples are so swollen and hard they ache but it just makes him want more, and later, over sensitive, he'll turn pink as a haitang blossom when his white rob brushes against them, making him stumble. another thing to adjust to, since hua cheng will undoubtedly feel it too.
his mind feels almost separate from his body. he doesn't understand how he can possibly want or demand more of hua cheng. again, a wave of shame for his own greed, no matter how hua cheng wants to adore and worship and reward.
all things with time though.
xie lian's fingers tighten in hua cheng's hair. it says enough, maybe, that though he lets himself arch his back again, begging, seeking for the feeling of hua cheng's mouth fully on his chest again, he presses his own hips back into the bed save for tiny jerks of motion he cannot help. the way he's bitten through his own lower lip makes him even more of a match for the red of his familiar. )
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I'm here, gege, his familiar whispers in his veins, it's the two of us together, it's not taking advantage of anyone, it's not being selfish. It's simply a gift Hua Cheng wants to give him.
And yet it feels much like he's the one who's receiving it, because all these beautiful noises Xie Lian makes ring in his ears like music. Not to mention the sight of him, unraveled, undone, ruined, mouth wet and eyes full of dew. He's more stunning than anything Hua Cheng has ever seen and his mind can't help associating this image to another, Taizi Dianxia, dressed in brocade and silk, for his holy parade when he came of age. Two sides of the same coin; two sides of his devotion.
Xie Lian's body is so eager, asking for all the things his voice and mind cannot. And so Hua Cheng doesn't waste any more time. He moans hoarsely at the tug of fingers in his hair, pleasure shooting straight between his legs, as effective as a physical touch, and it dives back into Xie Lian through their connection. Gege... you feel so good..., he muses, words he wouldn't dare saying out loud for now.
With how much the older likes it, he resumes licking at his nipples, languid and slow, blows his breath on them just to see the other shiver, suckles until they become even redder and oversensitive. Xie Lian is going to be reminded of him for quite some time, with how merciless his robes are going to be, brushing against his rosebuds. His fingers smear precum over the other's length, but he doesn't free him from his pants, nor looks down, not wanting to accidentally make him uncomfortable or ashamed. He blindly touches, stroking him like he knows what he likes from a lifetime before, tight and unrelenting.
The way Xie Lian reacts is making pleasure build up in Hua Cheng as well, paired with what he feels through their bond, and he pants and softly hums against his chest, getting lazy and unfocused with the attention to his nipples. His pupils are wide and his mouth is red and swollen when he pulls back just to desperately search for the other's mouth. Bite me instead... don't hurt yourself., he pleads softly while lapping at his red lips and the drip of saliva, before he kisses him with a soft whine in the back of his throat, like he was risking to drift astray without the touch and taste of his mouth.
Their connection is a soft, sweet echo of gege and dianxia, while Hua Cheng tastes him and strokes him with urgency. He can feel the peak, so close. ]
Give it to me, gege... give it all to me. Let me feel it. [ He begs hoarsely on his swollen lips before kissing him again, a little too wet and broken, climax so close that he feels his magic melting into the other's qi, their lights superimposing as they're so close to becoming just one. ]
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it feels like freedom, if xie lian could remember it, could recognize the life he leads now yet a stray god but still under what he perceives as the generous thumb of jun wu, versus the life he could lead ('should', his believer might say), if.
but they aren't there yet; he's not there yet.
maybe this is enough.
it takes hua cheng phrasing it as if he is receiving for xie lian to finally let go. even moments before that: vibrating with a palpable heat, shameful whimpers bleeding out into their kisses, though xie lian neither bit himself nor hua cheng, the hand not in hua cheng's hair ended up with his own fingernails digging red crescents into the palm as if to cut himself off somehow in the midst of everything. but hua cheng's asking is as present in his wrecked voice as it is his magic, even more so, entering xie lian's qi in a way that's impossibly intimate in two ways: something carnal and foreign that makes the cry that rips out of xie lian's throat as devastated as it is wanton, as much a cry of pleasure as it is a desperation for more — like a person who has been starved for so long they forgot what it is to feel hunger but once whetted, cannot cure their need; and: something just as heartbreakingly...kind, the single trusted embrace at the end of a long, long day.
if he wasn't so dizzy and on the verge of passing out, overwrought and overwhelmed, xie lian really would be embarrassed as his body arches so violently even his feet come up off the bed, turning his head to press his face against the sheets damp with his sweat, tears, and saliva, speckles of blood on the white from his mouth. it bares the side of his neck to hua cheng like an offering, though not an obligation. his familiar or not, his believer or not, he would never want to corner him into anything, especially after so self indulgently accepting so much. he comes down slow, vaguely aware of how sticky his stomach and thighs are, the thick heaviness of hua cheng's scent and his own drowning the room in a way that makes it hard for xie lian to breathe and yet he likes it, floating in a blurred haze of afterglow which is only sullied by xie lian's own guilt and foreignness to it all. tendrils at the edges of his thoughts are in quiet panic and then he reminds himself he has no magic to pollute, no cultivation to damage.
somehow, he still feels guilty, but it's far enough beneath the waves of pleasure and the love he feels for hua cheng that it's not too present in their bond.
more obvious: are you alright? san lang? can i do anything for...for you?
xie lian speaks anxiously and adoringly all at once through their bond, unable to find his physical voice. blindly, the hand in hua cheng's hair finally slips from where it is tangled to softly caress his face, sort of petting, sort of just clearly wanting to touch. xie lian's body shivers from head to toe, still so stimulated even after release, wired in a way he cannot quite mitigate, his qi experiencing repeated ripples from hua cheng's flood of magic like it's trying to hold him inside instead of letting it all balance out again between them. )
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For now, though, for now he can admire as pleasure wrecks his beautiful frame, he can feel the wave of it crashing against himself and his own body absorbing it, to the point that Hua Cheng reaches his own climax barely realizing it. There's a broken, husky noise spilt into the other's mouth, his body tightening and his underpants getting stained, and yet he only registers it in the back of his mind, with how busy observing the love of his life he is.
He peppers kisses all over the side of his face and onto that seductive neck bared all for him, and he laps softly like a cat at the holy beads of sweats. He kisses the outline of the bite mark he'd left, gentle enough to just make it tingle, before he looks up back at Xie Lian. His expression has never been so adoring, wholly sweet, the only one he sees in the whole world, his red lips curved into the softest smile. ]
You've done everything for me already. [ He whispers on his cheek, a little hoarse, sealing it with a peck. I'll take care of it, gege, he promises quietly, shifting even if their connection nearly cries at their bodies not being pressed together anymore. He gently tugs off the other's underpants, ever so light as he wipes him clean with the soft fabric before covering him with the sheets. He then gets off the bed for a moment to undress himself too, red and white fabric meeting on the floor. By the time Xie Lian is up again, those robes will be clean and dry again, hanging each in its own spot, as if nothing ever happened.
Hua Cheng slips into bed naked, cradling Xie Lian in his arms with the sheets in between. He caresses his hair and kisses his forehead and temples, trying to keep away those feelings of guilt that are burning at the edges. Large hands rub at his trembling frame, soothe muscles and soul as he holds him so close. Let it go, gege. Let it all go., he suggests softly, feeling the way he's trying to hold onto his magic, as well as his struggle against the onslaught of feelings. Only think of my kisses, he jokes with a smile that bleeds even into the lilt of his thoughts, while he presses soft kisses all over the other's beautiful features, the corners of his eyes, his damp eyelashes, he licks at his swollen lips that still taste of blood. If only he could make him forget about everything else.
Forget about the world today, it's just us. Gege and I., what else could one need with their love in his arms? Hua Cheng smiles bright, rubbing that cocoon in his embrace and kissing the most beautiful man in the world. He doesn't say it and yet as always, his side of the bond screams it no matter Hua Cheng trying to smother it: I love you I love you I love you.]