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It was on the sixth morning of their shared new life -- or maybe the seventh, he had honestly already lost track -- when Zhou Zishu woke up with his dick uncomfortably hard.

He could have been dramatic and thought that he barely recognized the sensation after so long, but why? When it came to being dramatic, he wasn't the expert around here, even inside his own head. And besides, it wasn't true. It was a pretty unmistakable sensation. It was his dick, and he'd had it all his life, and he'd been sometimes waking up with it hard in the morning and having to either jerk off or let piss out of it before it'd go soft again, just like anybody else, for about as much of his life as not by now. Three years or so where it seemed to have given up getting hard at all, under any circumstances, weren't enough to wipe out his entire memory of the thing. Honestly, all this time, he mostly just hadn't thought about it much. He'd been busy. 

When had he last properly had a hard-on, anyway? Even once after he'd put the first nail in, or would it have been before that? He honestly couldn't remember. It was hardly ever possible to know, the last time something happened, that it would be the last time. And why bother to wonder at all? What could it matter? 

For a while, he just lay still, being awake, blinking owlishly at the wood slats of the bedframe, where they stood close enough to his face to be blurry in his vision. He scraped his tongue around the slightly scungy-feeling inside of his mouth, and winced. His dick continued to be hard. And uncomfortable.

All right. Well.

At least he had the very minor saving grace that, by now, Wen Kexing was strongly accustomed to sleeping curled around his back, and they'd fallen naturally into that position again over the course of the night. (Assuming that what had preceded had, in fact, been night, and that it was morning now. Deep inside of the mountain, they were still taking such matters mostly on faith.) It was something to be thankful for, at least, that he hadn't woken up with said hard dick poking directly into the belly of the one person in the world most likely to become fixated on that state of affairs the second it made itself known, as though he were discovering some ultimately famous lost sword of legend. Zhou Zishu at least had time to try to adjust to this development himself, before necessarily making it anyone else's problem. 

But, because he only ever had one stroke of luck at a time at most, where Wen Kexing was curled up around his back was on the open side of the bed, and where he himself was lying was on the closed one. Of course.

Zhou Zishu sighed, closed his eyes for a second or two, and then started the arduous process of getting out of the bed. He rolled himself over on his back even as he picked Wen Kexing's arm up and off from around his middle, with great care, and set it back down just as deliberately on the bed between them. Then he could sit up fully -- though not without making a silent, compressed face to himself, when the movements shifted his erection around inside his inner clothing.

When he looked down, though, he found Wen Kexing still lying in the same exact spot, in the same exact position, with his eyes closed and his mouth very slightly parted. The startling new whiteness of his hair pooled over his cheek and shoulder and back, a long and loose snowfall on the mountain range that was his reclining body. The steady heaviness of his breath and slight movements under his eyelids even showed that he really was asleep. Zhou Zishu was relieved for the length of one heartbeat, and then in the next he was frowning a little. In peak condition, he could never have done all that without waking Wen Kexing. It suited his purposes right now, of course, but it was one last unpleasant little sign of the sheer catastrophe Wen Kexing's body and everything inside it had been through, that first day.

With his cheek pressed to the bolster and his hand tumbled loose on the bed, his features lax with deep sleep, Wen Kexing looked... vulnerable. It wasn't true, of course. Not even a little. He'd be sure to find even the idea of it uproariously funny himself, if he were awake. But even so, right now, there was just a little too much to remind a person of how he had looked sitting up, in the seconds when that shocking change in him had first registered and then his silence had registered and then everything had become clear and Zhou Zishu's heart had been bursting in his chest, and he'd been sprawling forward, pawing at the stack between them for the Yin Yang Manual with wildly shaking hands, hissing out loud Shit, other book, other book--

But no.

Put that aside. There was no need for it now.

Zhou Zishu took a deep measured breath and exhaled it long and slow. Then he pushed himself up to where he could, even halfway gracefully, get over Wen Kexing's body and off the bed, without disturbing him. His satisfaction at actually doing so was undercut a little, though, by how once he was on his feet, walking with any semblance of dignity was immediately impossible. Even in spite of how that last run of his thoughts had gone.

The chamber they were in, here in the innermost section of the World's Armory, appeared to be a barracks: no doubt for an army regiment that might have marched up the mountain to check on its precious contents, and then wouldn't have wanted to march back down again right away. Most of the space was taken up with narrow, bare planks for soldiers to bed down on, but at the rear of the expansive room was a nook with a significantly larger, if plain, arhat bed, likely for an officer or for infirmary purposes. That was where they'd settled when they'd dropped from exhaustion the first night, after barely dragging through the motions of finding the precariously ancient mat and beating the worst of the dust out of it, and where they'd been sleeping since. The barracks felt very large and very empty, crossing it to the (mercifully well-dug and still unobstructed) toilet facilities, but then so did the entire armory. Footsteps echoed, and sometimes the knowledge of all the still and untouched chambers around them was impossible to ignore, and a little oppressive. It felt like they were ghosts, haunting someone else's house.

Once in private, with a too-large room between him and the only other living being within a full day's travel, Zhou Zishu could lean up against the wall furthest away from the pit itself and finally, finally loose his cock out from the pants of his innermost layer. He voiced an extremely deep sigh of relief at having it unconfined, and then shivered in spite of himself, pathetically enough, just at the feeling of his own warm hand wrapped around its base. It was barely a touch and it felt desperately good, the beat of his blood coming up immediately in a hot, prickling wave like the onset of fever.

He looked down at himself, at the mild novelty of actually seeing his own dick hard in his hand, and swallowed restlessly. It was actually startling how obscene it looked, showing out of the loose curl of his fist: not just a little stiffened up but fully, urgently hard, heavy and flushed dark and leaking trickles of wetness copiously over his knuckles from its tip. It was honestly almost hard to look at, embarrassing even when he was by himself. It didn't look like he'd just woken up hard from the vagaries of his sleeping body; it looked like someone (someone with curiously lovely long white hair and an insouciant little smile, for example) had been spending luxurious, torturous hours teasing him, trying to draw it out as long as possible. Lounging languid across his thighs to pin them down on the bed, and holding his hands still with larger and longer and more elegant ones on top of them, and leaning in close to trace a tongue-tip mercilessly feather-light over the slick at his tip, whispering in a by now very familiar tone, If you want me to, A-Xu--

It was over before he fully knew it was happening. All at the same time his fist was very tight, not loose, the fever was breaking, he was making a sound back behind his teeth he'd deny to his grave, and he had managed what might optimistically have been two and a half actual strokes before he was coming, and coming so stunningly hard his entire body jolted and bounced against the wall as though thrown against it. Shocked gasps of breath rattled his whole chest, one right on the last one's heels, and it went on long enough he had time to thrash and spasm, his free hand clawing up handfuls of his clothing in desperation. It was so intense, so huge in him it almost crossed the line to where it didn't even feel good -- just too much, pushing at all his outer boundaries as though it would blow him wide open.

Then finally, it couldn't have been long really but it felt like finally, it ebbed and then gradually faded out of him, leaving him collapsed and gasping with his back against the wall. His legs, overtaxed, hung on another few seconds and then seemed to go entirely liquid, and he let himself slide carefully down the wall to plop into a sitting position on the floor. And he just sat there a while, a shiver or two rippling all through him, little flares of pleasure still going off in his cock and balls and inner thighs. Each one made him twitch and his breath stutter every time.

After some time of that, Zhou Zishu took a deeper, steadier trembling breath, and scrubbed his clean hand hard over his face as if he could push it back into order. With his dirtied hand, meanwhile, he let go of his softening cock and then flexed its fingers, with a slight grimace. That was... an honestly alarming amount of come, that had just come out of him. He'd swear he had to be about two taels lighter now than before.

He let out a long exhale, and let himself droop forward, his head sink down toward the mess he'd made of his lap. He breathed steadily, in the early morning silence, in the frigid cold of a snowed-in mountain vault that no longer felt cold to his body at all.

"All right," Zhou Zishu finally said out loud, in a slightly rusty voice: to the largely useless appendage now hanging soft and free from his rucked-down pants, and also to the largely useless appendage that it belonged to in the first place. "I guess you're not dead after all."

---

It took him a little while to wash himself up, pull himself back together, and make the mildly shamefaced journey back to the bed in the barracks. By the time he got there, Wen Kexing was starting to stir; as Zhou Zishu approached, he shifted restlessly onto his back on the bed with the looseness of his features contracting into a little frown, one that said he was near waking. Zhou Zishu sat down on the edge of the bed beside him, letting a warm and fond smile sit on his own face, as long as it could still go unseen.

Even if it was suddenly a bit harder to look directly at Wen Kexing than normal.

Finally, the long lean lines of Wen Kexing's body stiffened with a lengthy stretch, and then he half-opened his eyes and blinked upward. "A-Xu," he murmured, and fumbled out to paw his hand vaguely at Zhou Zishu's back before letting it drop again, eyes already mostly closed again. "Mm. Have you been awake long?"

"No, I just woke up myself," Zhou Zishu lied, without a second's remorse. If nothing else, he didn't want them to dwell on how much rest Wen Kexing still needed. He reached over and brushed an errant strand of white hair from where it lay across Wen Kexing's face, and smiled again when Wen Kexing responded by butting his head up against that hand's touch like a cat. "If you want to keep sleeping a while more, you can. This place has been waiting this long for a bit of tidying; it can stand a little longer."

Wen Kexing cracked his eyes open and smiled broadly up at Zhou Zishu, and then pulled himself up on his elbows and rolled over. Before Zhou Zishu had quite realized what he meant to do, he had flopped himself down again on his belly fully across Zhou Zishu's lap, slinging a proprietary arm over Zhou Zishu's far thigh and pillowing his head on it with every evidence of huge contentment. He'd even shut his eyes again -- which was good, because Zhou Zishu did not want him seeing the slightest glimpse of whatever expression he couldn't keep off his own face, in that first second. The position was just far too reminiscent of certain stray thoughts that might have crossed his mind, not long ago at all.

He took the reprieve to just swallow as silently as he could, and try by sheer stubborn force of will to stop his face from being so suddenly absurdly warm -- and also say a silent fervent prayer of thanks that he had literally just come not a few moments ago. ...Although honestly, even so, his traitor dick was still trying to twitch with interest. Great.

Shit, actually, he'd made a bit of a mess of himself before; was it possible Wen Kexing could smell semen on him from there? That was a chilling thought, and kind of disgusting, and definitely was not also going straight to his dick and trying to feebly rouse it, and he would swear to that fact with his last breath. Surely it was impossible, though... although honestly, if anyone would be able to, it probably would be Wen Kexing.

Wen Kexing, though, gave no sign of having noticed anything one way or another, for one more meager blessing of the morning. "How generous and indulgent my husband is," he only announced to no one in particular, beaming with his eyes still closed, melting over Zhou Zishu's legs like he didn't have one bone in his body. "My dowry was truly worth every penny."

Crisis averted for now, Zhou Zishu snorted laughter in spite of himself. He poked Wen Kexing in the ear, rudely if not unkindly. "I don't remember a dowry," he said, as Wen Kexing squirmed away and laughed sleepily himself. "Unless you count--" --an army of bloodthirsty ghosts, he was on the verge of saying, and then immediately thought better of it and redirected away so smoothly he hardly missed a beat-- "--enough trouble to last us the rest of our lives."

"Mm, I don't think so," Wen Kexing said, smirking; "we've run out now, haven't we?" It was a decent point, and Zhou Zishu allowed a little hum of amused agreement. Wen Kexing opened his eyes and twisted a bit to look up at him... and after a moment the smirk eased away again, replaced by a tiny bit of a frown in his brow. Zhou Zishu had just enough time to worry that even straying onto the subject of dowries had been a bad turn, when Wen Kexing rolled onto his back and reached up, touching his fingertips to the side of Zhou Zishu's cheek and looking at him more fully. "Is something the matter, A-Xu?"

Zhou Zishu hesitated a moment, and then smiled with a bit more determination, leaning his head slightly toward Wen Kexing's hand. "No, not at all," he said. "Why?"

Wen Kexing just looked up at him a moment longer -- fully exercising the truly unfair ability those large, wide eyes had to look sweet and innocent and trusting and concerned -- and then he smiled himself, although more slightly, and shook his head. "No reason, I suppose," he admitted, and brushed Zhou Zishu's cheek one more time before letting his hand fall. "You just seem -- a little off your balance. But maybe it's just the gloom in here." Zhou Zishu smiled agreement, hiding his relief, and Wen Kexing lay still a moment. Then he yawned hugely into the back of his hand, and stretched again (with a wince that, no matter how slight, Zhou Zishu didn't miss) before starting to struggle his way up to sit. "No, I think I'll get up after all. I'm feeling a bit stiff from lying down for so long."

"All right," Zhou Zishu said, and was as mild and unobtrusive as he could be about bracing Wen Kexing's back and arm here and there to help him finish sitting up. "Where should we start for today?"

---

Although they'd indulged in a fair share of well-deserved indolence since being trapped in here, neither of them seemed to feel quite at ease being completely idle, especially not so abruptly. With nothing else for it, so far they'd been occupying themselves with making their strange roost livable, one slow bit at a time. Even if they no longer needed much to survive, if they'd be stuck here until spring thawed the mountain enough that they might see some sign of Zhou Zishu's useless disciple and anyone else left who cared, they might as well get comfortable. Though admittedly, cleaning up an abandoned ruin was a more daunting job without an overeager teenager to order around.

Without discussion, Zhou Zishu left Wen Kexing the lighter task of sweeping up dust and ages-old grain gone to powder, and instead took up the shoulder-yoke and buckets he'd retrieved from amid all the antique farming equipment, and threaded his way back to the entrance courtyard. There were cisterns in a side storage room next door to the barracks that he'd been gradually filling from there, hauling back one back-breaking load of ice and snow from the armory door after another and then leaving it all to melt inside the clay, to have for washing or to boil for drinking as they needed. Not to mention that was all they apparently needed in the way of food, now, too. If he didn't think too hard about that, though, it was rustic, elemental, oddly satisfying work, putting him in mind of training exercises from his boyhood in Four Seasons Manor in a way that couldn't help but improve his spirits, as strange as it seemed. Just bucket after bucket, and a good ache of hard work in his back.

And that was the only ache -- which he was still trying to get used to. Even now, it never stopped being strange. He still caught himself trying automatically to bend and lift only in careful ways, ones that would avoid compressing or twisting his chest and abdomen, in spite of the fact that for some time now there'd been nothing in either but his own flesh and blood and bone and qi. He still caught himself automatically trying to calculate the time in the evenings so he could go to sleep early enough, to be ready to wake at midnight to sweat through an eternity of agony before dawn. But he slept through the night, and the pain didn't come, not then or during the day either. The shapes of each room of the armory and Wen Kexing's face were clear and defined and focused in his vision, he heard even the tiniest sounds and could smell the dust and faint rotted grains and burning of lanterns in the air, and no matter how he moved, there was no pain, not even a whisper. To be honest, it was more uncanny and disquieting than relieving, and made him jumpier than it made him content. Even though he knew better, after so much time and so much dwindling of his other senses, in the back of his mind it didn't feel like being well; it felt like being numb, like the pain must still be there but he just couldn't feel it, and might be blithely doing himself harm while none the wiser. He had the uncomfortable sensation that he'd been filled with batting or silk at his joints and along his meridians, cushioning him, protecting him from the warnings of his own body. The idea was nonsense, of course, but it was proving remarkably and stubbornly difficult to shake.

But in his more sensible mind, he knew his reshaped body just felt healthy and strong and whole -- more so than ever before, even. He might as well put it to work on the hard parts, and silently leave Wen Kexing the easier matters to see to. No need to draw attention to that, either.

Today, though, hauling the snow seemed duller and more repetitive than it had in past days, and Zhou Zishu found himself restless, his mind wandering while he made his way down through the rooms with the empty buckets and then back up with them full. He felt like he had more unsettled energy rolling through him than the slow hauling could use up, and he was edgy and agitated and avid in some way he couldn't quite define, just a faint needling under his skin. It only started to make sense when he realized that his thoughts kept trying to return to first thing this morning: sneaking back like guilty thieves to how hard he'd come, how good it had felt to touch himself and think about something arousing, after so long without that simple pleasure. How he could just do it again, anytime, if he decided to.

He let out a heavy, exasperated breath when he realized what was bothering him, and then laughed to himself in the empty chamber he was alone in at the moment, slowing down mid-step to shake his head. Well, this was ridiculous. Had he inadvertently let himself in for a second adolescence, set off by the slightest thing and thoughts about getting off never fully leaving the back of his mind, asleep or awake? Were stained bedding and a cracking voice going to be next? Once had been plenty, as far as he was concerned.

It was a ghastly enough thought without the knowledge that if he did come in his pants in the night, he'd be doing it in a bed where he slept right next to Wen Kexing. He'd absolutely rather die, thanks.

Although what if Wen Kexing just drowsily pressed a soft mouth into the nape of his neck as he squirmed, and reached around the side of his waist--

Zhou Zishu abruptly stopped where he stood again, shouldered out of the yoke and dropped the buckets on the floor, and heaved a deep sigh. That was also ridiculous, and no little humiliating besides, and he'd already had more than enough. He could do something about it or not do something about it, but he couldn't keep fantasizing about Wen Kexing, like a kid with a crush or some sweaty pervert, and then having to face him after. For the sake of his own sanity, this had to stop.

...Right after he just slipped into one of the library side chambers where it was dark and quiet and jerked himself off furiously one more time, and if he thought about whatever he thought about it wasn't his fault, it didn't count.

Though none of it had to count, really, did it? He didn't need to think anything more of it or consider anything else about it, not yet. He'd just get this out of his system for now, and worry about it later. It had just been a long time, and things were bound to be a little out of balance now, and he just needed to... pay himself a little more attention than he normally might have, and it would all sort itself out.

It was just going to be really annoying in the meantime.

Fuck.

---

Wen Kexing shot him what might have been a puzzled frown at how long that particular load of snow had taken, when he returned, but Zhou Zishu ignored it with all available dignity, so that was all right. It didn't hurt that his own mood was substantially improved, after giving in to temptation one more time. He chose to ignore that too, though.

As it happened, they didn't wind up getting much more done that day anyway. By mutual unspoken agreement, as had often been the case so far, the afternoon and evening was spent more on playing around in the treasure-rooms and libraries in the armory's outer layer than on tidying up their immediate surroundings, just poking around and exploring all the mysterious contents that had been sealed in here with them. Zhou Zishu wandered through the room of texts they settled in, poring over shelves upon shelves of manuals to various sects' secret techniques (all of which were essentially useless without skill and real training, in his opinion, but that had always been his opinion), while Wen Kexing sprawled carelessly over a large, dusty trunk like it was an ornate couch in some brothel's sitting-room, working at a leisurely pace through a stack of books at his elbow. From Zhou Zishu's one glance, they appeared to be healing and medicinal manuals that Wen Kexing was reading with such great interest, which he tried not to be too obviously charmed by.

"There are quite a few things here it's absurd to keep hidden away," Wen Kexing remarked after they'd been at it for a while, making Zhou Zishu look over at him with eyebrows raised. "They'd be of more value in the hands of ordinary people than hidden away in some hoard, like earthworms in a mole's burrow." He glanced up at Zhou Zishu, and smirked on catching his eye. "But then, the same could be said for any rich man's heap of wealth."

"Most likely," Zhou Zishu agreed, and came over to peer over Wen Kexing's shoulder finally, now that he felt a bit more invited. "What's this one about?"

"Pregnancy and childbirthing," Wen Kexing said, absently, and Zhou Zishu choked slightly on nothing. Wen Kexing glanced up at him again, frowning in amused curiosity. "What?"

"I just didn't think that was a subject that'd ever be of much interest to you," Zhou Zishu said, in as much of a deadpan as he could manage after recovering himself. Wen Kexing smirked more even than before, and pushed himself up from his lounge on his elbows, a little pert challenge in his posture.

"I don't have to want to cut off my leg to study treating amputations," he pointed out, making Zhou Zishu laugh in spite of himself again. "Oh, no, or are you disappointed that your wife won't be bearing you sons?'

Zhou Zishu rolled his eyes, although he was openly grinning at the same time. "Not in the slightest. You're this much of a terror now, I don't dare imagine what you'd be like six months along." Wen Kexing huffed dramatically, although more than half of that was laughter too. "Not to mention what disasters any children of ours would be."

"Well, it never hurts to try," Wen Kexing said, and his smirk broke all at once into a broader, sly, obscene smile. He rolled fully onto his back and turned himself all in one show of languid grace, so that his feet landed stretched out on either side of Zhou Zishu's where he stood, and reached up to tug at the front of Zhou Zishu's robes perilously high on his thigh, as though to pull him down and in. "What do you think, A-Xu? Could you plant your seed deep enough in me to take?"

And.

Well. 

Filthy though that had been, by any objective measure, it wasn't really any more so than some dozens of other things that Wen Kexing had said to him before, and to which he'd just made a face or snorted or rolled his eyes, at the time. This was when he was supposed to laugh, or act exasperated, or maybe retaliate with a tease of his own that would distract Wen Kexing into letting him get his way. It was when he normally would have done exactly that, and had before.

Which did nothing to prevent him from, right now, freezing wide-eyed right where he was, for just a little too tellingly long. Thrown completely out of the comfortable groove of the stupid old game by all the heat that suddenly, unexpectedly, damningly burst into his face and into his cock.

It was definitely too late, and he couldn't miss that Wen Kexing had already begun to frown at him in bafflement and maybe even actual concern, which was absolutely intolerable -- but Zhou Zishu finally forced out a fake, unconcerned laugh, before taking a hurried step back out of reach. "This is exactly the sort of thing that keeps you from being a good mother," he said, and managed to sound almost normal. He hesitated just barely, and then said as casually as he could: "I think I'll look through the next few rooms again, I noticed some scrolls on sword techniques in there before."

He did hear Wen Kexing, sounding bewildered, ask "A-Xu?" even as he was leaving the room as fast as he could while pretending not to be in a rush. But it was easy enough to act like he didn't.

He barely even made it one whole room away before he had found a corner to lean his arm and forehead on and gasp for breath while he brought himself off in his pumping fist, feverishly deep in desperate imaginings of those long legs locked high and tight around him, pulling him in hard and not letting him escape the point where he drove deepest, deepest, deepest inside until he drenched the tight heat around him there with come, that same voice that had just been calling A-Xu at him calling it in a very different tone, broken and all breath, and oh, he had really not grasped the scope of the problem at all, and he was absolutely, completely doomed.

---

It was to his great resigned disappointment that Zhou Zishu realized, after he'd finished and done his best to clean himself up, that he was eventually going to have to go back in the room where Wen Kexing was.

When he finally did, he mustered every last bit of nonchalance that he could, trying with all his might to seem as though he really had just wandered off to look at some other books for a while. As soon as he came through the doorway, though, he found Wen Kexing sitting up straight now on the chest he'd been using as a seat, holding the manual he'd been examining between his hands but not reading it, clearly just waiting for him with a frown drawn deeply into his clear and lovely brow. The sight of that was almost enough to make Zhou Zishu turn right around and walk back out again, but then he'd really have no excuse he could make for himself.

And anyway, when Wen Kexing saw him, the frown only lingered briefly before Wen Kexing's expression cleared, and his mouth curled at the corners with a more familiar twist. That was better, even if the smile didn't quite seem to reach his eyes enough to clear the stormclouds out of them entirely.

"Ah, good," Wen Kexing said, putting a bit of a superior sniff to it. "For a little while I feared you'd been frightened out of your wits by the prospect of being tied down, and run off to risk the mountain instead."

Zhou Zishu smiled, although even though this felt like firmer ground, the smile was maybe still a little cautious. He might have left more space between them as he approached than necessary, too. "No such luck. It'll take more than that."

"Is that so?" There was an odd note in Wen Kexing's voice, though: less playful than might be expected, more earnest. Zhou Zishu hesitated, caught off-guard, and when he glanced at Wen Kexing's face he found the expression there dismayingly softened and more serious, too. "A-Xu, if I..."

He trailed off there, strangely delicately. But it was enough for Zhou Zishu to realize, all at once, what he meant to say -- and immediately, he burst out laughing.

He shouldn't. He really shouldn't. With all they'd told each other, and hadn't told each other, about their respective histories, it was perfectly reasonable that Wen Kexing might think that there was some untold incident in his past about a woman bearing a child, one that he wouldn't want to be reminded of. It wasn't even more than a few doors away from some things that really would have cut deeply; honestly, by now, there were few things that couldn't be connected back somehow to some terrible thing he'd done. But he couldn't help himself. In this one instance, in this moment, Wen Kexing's guess was just so incredibly far away from what the actual problem was that it couldn't keep from being funny.

"No," Zhou Zishu managed as quickly as he was able, wiping at his eyes; "no, nothing like that at all." When he risked a look at Wen Kexing's face, though, the sheer affrontery of the expression there nearly set him off again, and he had to choke it down by force. "Sorry. I really am, I shouldn't laugh. But no, you didn't blunder into anything, Lao Wen. I promise."

"Then what in the hell is the matter with you?" Wen Kexing demanded. There was genuine indignance in his voice, too, understandably aggrieved from his sincerity's being laughed at, but that still wasn't what made everything so much less funny suddenly, so much as what he said. "All day, you've been either acting strangely, or disappearing off by yourself, or both. You weren't doing it before, so what's changed?" Zhou Zishu opened his mouth -- more by reflex, as frozen with being completely caught out as he was, than anything else -- but Wen Kexing cut him off immediately, glaring. "And don't try to tell me it's nothing, or I'm imagining it. If you do I'm going to have to fight you, and I'm still not feeling well enough for that."

Zhou Zishu closed his mouth again, after a moment, and just looked at Wen Kexing staring back at him. The two thoughts that hit him hard in quick succession, like a volley of arrows, were: first, that Wen Kexing really could tell, was the only person he'd known all his adult life who could see through him so immediately to something he'd meant to hide, even something so small; and second, that Wen Kexing was so agitated because he was truly worried. And of course he was, thinking about it from his point of view. Up until just a meager few days ago, they'd both known Zhou Zishu was right at the edge of death, and what had taken him away from it was only a near-impossible and unstable technique that had all but destroyed some of the most famous names of the age. Why wouldn't Wen Kexing worry, if he suddenly started acting oddly? It must be only through an incredible self-restraint Zhou Zishu never would have suspected of him that Wen Kexing had only probed at him lightly, allowing him space, instead of pouncing on him demanding to feel his pulse at the first sign of anything unusual.

Suddenly he felt very guilty, and very stupid.

"No, you're right," Zhou Zishu said, in a tone so much more humble and apologetic that Wen Kexing looked startled all over again. Zhou Zishu sat down all at once on the floor in front of the chest, and looked up into Wen Kexing's eyes with a little smile and a lot more sincerity. "But trust me, it absolutely isn't anything to worry about, either." Wen Kexing's lips thinned a bit, though, that severe crease digging back between his brows, and Zhou Zishu sighed, although he lost none of his contrition. "I only haven't said anything because it's nothing serious at all. I just have a very small, very, very stupid problem, and I thought it was too stupid to even mention."

Wen Kexing did look slightly mollified by now, enough that the corners of his mouth were beginning to pull promisingly, but he held them down and crossed his arms all the same. "Well, if it's so stupid, I definitely want to hear about it."

Zhou Zishu looked up at Wen Kexing for a long moment... and then let out a long, gusty breath, and resigned himself. He should have known there'd be no getting out of this from the beginning.

"There's no reason you would have known this," he said, as matter-of-factly and resolutely as he could, "but since I put the nails in my body, on top of losing my senses and half my martial arts, my dick has also done nothing but lie down like it was dead, no matter what happened. But when I woke up this morning, for the first time, I found it had suddenly come back to life. And all day it's proceeded to actually be much too lively, to the point that it's been very distracting and a nuisance. So you can see how I've been a little preoccupied."

As dreadful as the long, thunderous silence that followed was, Zhou Zishu couldn't help but take a little bit of perverse satisfaction in it, too.

"That may be stupid," Wen Kexing said finally, in an oddly airless, choked voice, "but it is absolutely not a problem, and you definitely should have mentioned it!"

Having submitted to this much humiliation as penance, Zhou Zishu felt justified again in rolling his eyes. "You were asleep, at first. And then what would I have said? 'Hey, Lao Wen, my dick's hard, do you want to do something about it or not?'"

There was at least a slight genuine glassiness to Wen Kexing's eyes and quickness to his breath by now, and that was satisfying enough to be a comfort. "Why not?" Wen Kexing demanded, all the same, and there was a bit of wild amusement in it this time. "Do you think I'd be anything but delighted beyond belief to hear that from you? Or that it'd be the first time I've heard something like it, even?"

It was Zhou Zishu's turn to frown deeply and honestly this time, distracted out of his teasing to straighten up with indignance. "If you'd heard it in front of me, whoever'd said it wouldn't have walked away on his own legs," he said, with more real severity than he might even have meant. "You shouldn't be sleeping with anyone so disrespectful to you in the first place."

He caught himself up short a second too late, and found that Wen Kexing was staring at him as though he'd grown a second head. That look was wavering almost at once, though, seeming caught between either bursting out laughing right back or being genuinely moved in spite of himself, and Zhou Zishu abruptly decided both were equally intolerable and looked away entirely.

"Anyway," it was easier to smirk and say when he was looking elsewhere, "it's not like I wasn't made with two good hands of my own."

"You started without me?" Wen Kexing said, in tones of exaggerated outrage so towering he was nearly shrill, after another stunned pause. Zhou Zishu made much of sighing in response, though he was on the verge of laughing again himself.

"To be honest, I think I'm starting to chafe," he said in undertone, if only because there seemed to be no point in not saying it by now. Wen Kexing stared at him in plain disbelief -- and then finally gave in to laughing, so hard he looked like he'd fall over. Zhou Zishu bore it with all the good grace and patience he could (which wasn't much).

"My poor A-Xu," Wen Kexing said when he could manage to, wiping at his eyes and still all hilarity from ear to ear -- at least until he could school his expression into a truly obscene leer. "We could go back to our bed, you know, and I could show you a few methods of dealing with the matter less directly, if you're suffering so. It would be the least that duty calls me to, as a son of the Healer Valley."

Zhou Zishu snorted rudely: both falling back into more familiar steps, and trying to cover up the heat already starting to sneak into his face again. "Yeah, completely out of the goodness of your heart, Philanthropist Wen, I'm sure."

Wen Kexing clapped a hand over said heart, widening his eyes hugely in a show of shock. "A-Xu! Do you dare to suggest that I would ever be selfish with my husband? I'm deeply wounded!"

Zhou Zishu rolled his eyes again, but before he could say a word, Wen Kexing let the joke fall away from his features with startling suddenness. He just looked at Zhou Zishu with a newly undisguised, molten heat -- and with a devastating drop mingled in of something like uncertainty, even pleading. He leaned forward, his hands braced on the chest he sat on, looking at Zhou Zishu just that nakedly, and all at once Zhou Zishu was utterly frozen in place, unable to think or move. Everything like laughter dried up suddenly in his throat, making him need to swallow.

"All that I want for myself," Wen Kexing said, softly, still silky and honeyed with flirtation but somehow now unbearably sincere at the same time, "is the honor of giving you everything you need."

Zhou Zishu stared back at him, unable for a time to do anything else. His tongue was too heavy in his mouth to speak; his blood seemed to burn him. The scant few minutes it had been since he'd gotten himself off might as well have been months, years, for all the good they suddenly did him.

He shut his eyes and swallowed, which he was sure was visible, but couldn't help it. "All right," he said, and found his voice dusty, and the slight laugh he tried to force into it much weaker than it should have been. "All right. Show me then."

---

Wen Kexing did go to the trouble of dragging him all the way back and through the armory to the bed, to Zhou Zishu's mild surprise and equally mild complaints. All Wen Kexing said in return, though, sniffing and decisive in a way that almost hid the slight tremble in his hand around Zhou Zishu's, was "I've waited for you this long, A-Xu; you're not going to get your first proper pleasure in years rolling around on a dusty library floor, for the sake of not waiting a few more minutes."

Zhou Zishu was not, he was resolute, going to find that just as sweet as Wen Kexing had seemed to find Zhou Zishu's defense of his honor earlier. That would be ridiculous, and it was out of the question.

Coming back into the abandoned barracks, and the sight of the bed they'd been returning to every night already, carried a new weight now, but Wen Kexing didn't give him time to dwell on it. He dragged Zhou Zishu straight to the bed and whirled to face him once they were there, taking up quick greedy fistfuls of the front of Zhou Zishu's outer robe. He hovered close enough to feel his breath, and while the excitement plain in his eyes was still playful, it also clearly wasn't only play.

"Allow me, A-Xu," he said in a warm, taut voice, and one of his hands reached up and back to unwind and let down Zhou Zishu's hair, while the other stole to his belt. Even that much was enough to have Zhou Zishu's cock rising and stiffening with interest, just at the brush of Wen Kexing's elegant fingers at his waist. He let out a whisper of breath, his eyes slipping shut for a second, before looking back at Wen Kexing's face.

"Wait," he murmured, in spite of what his body might think about the matter, and offered a slight smile with parted lips when Wen Kexing looked at him. "Just for a moment."

And Wen Kexing might have been about to say or ask him something at that, but Zhou Zishu kissed him before he could.

Kissing had been gradually becoming a part of their life here, just like settling and exploring had: a mutual indulgence that was different from the times Wen Kexing had tried to needle or comfort him out on the road, and even different from the time Zhou Zishu had tried to say everything that couldn't be said, when they had woken up here together after everything was done. With time, it was becoming something to be shared just because it could be, in the morning on waking sometimes or before going to sleep at night, or when one of them either exasperated the other beyond reason or made him laugh especially hard, or both at once. They had been patiently and unhurriedly testing out the waters of kissing each other, Zhou Zishu thought, luxuriating in how much time they had laid out in front of them now and just how little they needed to rush. But that was all the more reason he wanted to try something different now: an impatient, urgent sort of kiss, that opened quickly into something wet and sloppily filthy, in a way from which all the ones before had so far refrained. Wen Kexing's breath was pleasingly hot and unsteady, and his tongue skated against Zhou Zishu's as their mouths moved. His teeth tugged at Zhou Zishu's lip a second later, and knowing for a fact they might be no idle threat just made breath huff out of Zhou Zishu's chest in what turned out to be almost a groan, in the present state he was in. He curled a firm, possessive hand around the back of Wen Kexing's neck, sinking it into the silken white fall of his hair, and when he pulled their bodies in flush to each other by its grip Wen Kexing gasped into his mouth -- helplessly raw and startled in a way that made Zhou Zishu's blood surge in him.

When Zhou Zishu let them ease apart, Wen Kexing stared at him wide-eyed, looking breathless and mussed and flushed in a way that was as unlike how Zhou Zishu had ever seen him as it was beautiful. Even while Zhou Zishu looked, Wen Kexing's lips -- obscenely pinkened by now -- spread in an absurdly sweet smile, and whatever Zhou Zishu meant to do, nothing could have kept him from answering it. There was probably nothing in the world that he would ever refuse to do for the sake of that exact smile, though he knew too well how unwise it would be to let Wen Kexing find that out.

"My A-Xu," Wen Kexing breathed again, and then all at once his hands were back at work where they had been before, tugging Zhou Zishu's belt apart with a slight eager shake to them. "Please, I can't wait any longer -- please let me see you."

That was also far more affecting than Zhou Zishu might have expected, tightening his stomach in a way that then immediately sank down to grip around his cock. His only answer was to move wordlessly to let Wen Kexing finish untying and unwrapping his belt, and help shrug out of his outer robe and then his inner robe when Wen Kexing went to push them away. They worked together to get him out of his undershirt, splitting the work of the ties, and then Zhou Zishu was bare to the waist standing by the bed, with his pants really doing nothing to hide the same problem he'd already given in and told Wen Kexing about. Wen Kexing reeled back to look at him with an open, avid hunger that was discomfiting and arousing and secretly pleasing all at the same time.

"I don't know why you're always wanting me to show you such unsightly things," Zhou Zishu said anyway, though the heavy breath in his voice undercut his grousing tone quite a bit. The marks from where the nails had been, and had been so forcefully removed, were still dark and vivid and puckered, and it was hard not to be a little self-conscious on glancing down at himself at how they marred the skin of his chest, with Wen Kexing looking at him like that.

"I don't know why you're always insisting such beautiful things are unsightly," Wen Kexing said by way of counterpoint, though, and at least it was laced only with pure shameless heat. When Zhou Zishu glanced back up at him, he showed no sign at all of being bothered by the sight, either, or of intending to look anywhere else anytime soon for that matter. Zhou Zishu cleared his throat a little, trying and failing not to let any of it fluster him.

"Are you going to just stare at me?" he demanded, to cover for it, although there was a smile around the edges. Wen Kexing looked up at him just long enough to give his familiar cat's grin.

"For eternity, if I'm able," he said, smooth and smug. "But I can do quite a few other things at the same time, if you're so impatient."

Zhou Zishu opened his mouth, truly meaning to fire back at that, but then Wen Kexing was crowding him back against the bed and then guiding him down on it, pausing in clambering on top of him only to take his hair down and to seize his mouth now and again in more quick plundering kisses, and it was all quickly too overwhelming and distracting to remember what he would have said. He found himself arching up to chase Wen Kexing's mouth, when he sat up and back to remove Zhou Zishu's boots and strip his feet, and the smile curling Wen Kexing's lips in answer was obnoxiously self-satisfied.

Zhou Zishu's cock wasn't quite to the desperate state it had been in first thing this morning, when Wen Kexing began to slide away the rest of his clothing to bare it, but it did twitch harder at the hungry, breathless little moan Wen Kexing let slip at the sight of it. "So lovely," he said, in a murmur that was nearly reverent, when he had Zhou Zishu naked before him. "I'll take such good care of you, A-Xu. I'll treat you so well." Zhou Zishu was too busy trying not to shiver to respond, and Wen Kexing took the advantage to prowl back up overtop of him still dressed in every layer, to stare down intently into Zhou Zishu's eyes. "How many times did you come by yourself already? Tell me."

"Three," Zhou Zishu admitted after a slight pause, tight-jawed and unable to look straight at him. Wen Kexing's breath wavered, in another brief silence.

"I can beat that," he said at last. When Zhou Zishu risked looking again, there was a confident and slightly dangerous grin on Wen Kexing's face, and there was nothing to do but huff a laugh that was mostly breath, shutting his eyes briefly.

"Are you going to actually get out of all this or not?" he said when it felt more possible, covering any unsteadiness up with grumbling, and tugging at the front of Wen Kexing's robes. Wen Kexing took hold of his hand and tugged it away to kiss its knuckles, though, instead of making any move in that direction, making smoky eye contact all the while.

"Be patient, A-Xu," he said, lips curling again over the tops of Zhou Zishu's fingers. "For now, this is only about you. You're the one who's been deprived so long."

Zhou Zishu might have objected to parts of that, and reasonably to his mind, but then Wen Kexing was moving up and off him entirely, taking a few steps away to some cabinets along the wall. Frowning after him, Zhou Zishu pushed up on his elbows without moving from his sprawl on his back -- already more put out than he would have admitted, at losing the warm weight of Wen Kexing on top of him. "What are you doing now?"

"Fetching something," Wen Kexing said back over his shoulder without quite turning, "if I can -- ah, yes." He turned back in triumph, holding a somewhat large and very old bottle, and came back around to the bed. "Oil," he said, by way of explanation, even as he sat back beside Zhou Zishu and unstoppered the bottle, to pour some of the stuff into his palm and then spread it over his fingers. "It still seems to be in good condition, at least."

Zhou Zishu stared at him a few moments. "Why did you even know where to find that?" he demanded, though a grin was yanking unbidden at his mouth even as he did. Wen Kexing answered it, when he looked back.

"I stumbled across it among the barracks supplies when we were tidying up the other day, and set it aside," he said, and beamed at Zhou Zishu. "I am, after all, a great optimist."

Zhou Zishu couldn't help laughing a little, and Wen Kexing took that chance to move back closer and over him. He reached out to stroke up the outside of Zhou Zishu's hip with his un-oiled hand -- making Zhou Zishu's laughter quickly dry up -- and then slipped under it, to press at it gently and urge him over. Zhou Zishu went with it, until it had guided him onto his belly, his arms ending up folded to pillow his head. The position and implications suddenly made everything very real, and made Zhou Zishu swallow. All their joking and goading and teasing had hit its end; they were really doing this. His cock pulsed, trapped between his lower belly and the bed, but his stomach was a little tighter, too.

It wasn't that he was afraid it would hurt. He really wasn't. It was safe to say Wen Kexing must know what he was doing extremely well in this matter, and after everything that Zhou Zishu had been through and put himself through with the nails, both going in and coming out again, he couldn't imagine that the amount of pain involved in something people did for pleasure could make him so much as bat an eye. But naked on his belly with his thighs spread, Wen Kexing kneeling over him fully-clothed, the potential for vulnerability couldn't have been starker, or any more exaggerated. He was painfully aware of being as raw as he could be, trusting himself completely to Wen Kexing's hands.

Maybe that was good, though, Zhou Zishu thought, closing his eyes and swallowing again. Maybe control had never been a thing he should have had to begin with.

"A-Xu, I have a serious grievance," Wen Kexing's voice came then, sounding almost severe, and made Zhou Zishu open his eyes again. "How could you possibly hide something like this under robes all this time? It has to be a crime!"

Zhou Zishu started twisting his head back to try to look, bemused at once out of the shadows of those thoughts, but just at the same time Wen Kexing's dry hand touched him again -- this time to take a broad, firm handful of one cheek of his ass, and squeeze. He lifted his head a little to shoot Wen Kexing a skeptical, long-suffering look over his shoulder, although Wen Kexing's gaze seemed so focused that it was surely wasted effort. "What about it? It's just an ass."

"Wrong," Wen Kexing said decisively, moving the rude grip of his hand around greedily over Zhou Zishu's ass, and managing to hit at least one spot that made him jump and smother a startled little yelp. "It is a magnificent ass." Zhou Zishu started to roll his eyes, but ended up interrupted partway, when Wen Kexing's hand slid down the crease of the center and then scissored its fingers apart to spread it, a sensation that made Zhou Zishu jolt in a different way and his eyes widen a bit. Wen Kexing's voice, leaned in closer over him now, had dropped into a purr. "And I intend to show it all the appropriate respect."

"Are you going to just talk about it or do something," Zhou Zishu said, not quite a question, almost through his teeth with his chin pressed tight against his folded arms. Wen Kexing's only answer at first was a soft laugh.

And then his next answer was to press Zhou Zishu's one thigh upward with one hand, and with the other, to bring the soft pressure of slick, warm fingers to a spot that Zhou Zishu had never thought about being a sensitive one before.

If he had really been pressed, before he had removed the issue from his own consideration more or less entirely for a few years, Zhou Zishu might have eventually admitted that, honestly, he had always sort of found sex to be just all right. It wasn't bad, certainly, there were things to recommend it, but he'd never been sure he understood all the fuss other people seemed to make about it, even so. He greatly enjoyed the sight of a beautiful girl, and the touch of one, but the culmination of those things he'd encountered here and there, in a brothel or a discreet set of rooms, had never been much more than mildly enjoyable while it was there and forgettable when it wasn't. Admittedly, it wasn't as though he'd ever been able to fully relax on those occasions, he'd always been on duty to some degree at every waking and sleeping moment, and he certainly never could've trusted any woman to be more than a brief dalliance, even if one had come along who'd tempted him to. Maybe that was part of it, or maybe he'd just never quite been built for the whole thing, he'd never known which. In any case, if he was being honest, losing his ability to fuck hadn't really seemed like that big of a loss, especially compared to some of the nails' other effects. In some ways, it had almost been more of a relief not to have to think about it at all.

Now, though, Wen Kexing's fingertip seemed to light all the skin aflame and sensitized under it, making Zhou Zishu shut his eyes and swallow. The slowness of its slide into him, when it followed, meant the sensation had time to be first alarming, then uncomfortable, then disorienting, then embarrassing, then uncomfortable again, then all right, and then at last, abruptly and with no warning at all, so electrifyingly intense it blew all of his past ambivalence about sexual acts away like a fan would blow away smoke. Zhou Zishu's muscles all seemed to spasm tight involuntarily, his head jerked up from his arms and arched backward, and a hot breathy sound burst out of his open mouth in a voice that barely sounded like his own. He closed his lips against it right afterward, face burning, even while his eyes were wide open again and staring unseeing straight ahead of him. But then his breath only wheezed hard from his nose, and another audible noise strangled in his throat, when Wen Kexing deliberately moved and shifted that seated finger around to graze its tip again over that unsuspected, powerful little knot of pleasure deep inside him. Zhou Zishu had to shut his eyes again, and drop his forehead back onto his suddenly trembling arms, his breath coming fast and panting and hot against his own skin.

"That," he started to try to say, but then had to stop immediately, when the way his muffled voice sounded was just humiliating. He could practically hear Wen Kexing smiling. Wen Kexing's hand pressed tight, his knuckles grinding up obscenely against the oily inner crevice of Zhou Zishu's ass, and the tip of his finger pressed on that spot and then actually flicked it on its slight retreat. Zhou Zishu twitched all over again and smothered a high, cracking, absolutely shameful and unacceptably loud sound hard into the skin of his arm, and his hips jerked meaninglessly, unable to make sense of whether they wanted to grind into the not-enough of the bed under his cock or into the almost-too-much of Wen Kexing's hand. He felt like he had just nearly come already. It took every desperate ounce of his training and mastery of himself ot be able to lift his lips and try again, voice thick and rusty and shuddering. "What... the hell is that?"

His one solace was that Wen Kexing's voice, though plainly shaped by an absolutely shit-eating grin, also sounded nearly as wrecked as he felt, around the edges. Good, the vindictive heart of Zhou Zishu thought; he hoped Wen Kexing was so fucking hard he could barely sit still, and he didn't know and didn't care if he hoped it in a good or bad way. (Not that either would be all that bad.)

"A much better secret technique than any of the others," Wen Kexing said, "do you think I should write up a manual for the library?" Zhou Zishu's shoulders shook for only a second, before breaking off in a muffled groan.

"Don't make me laugh with your finger in my ass, you bastard," he managed all in one heavy breath, still trying to ease the very weird way his muscles had tensed around the intrusion inside him, still not able to get the wincing smile off his face regardless. Of course, that just made Wen Kexing really laugh.

He waited until Zhou Zishu had fully settled and relaxed, though, so that by the time he began to move his hand again Zhou Zishu's whole body was thrumming with anticipatory tension. He never really slid it back out, just pressing in and then easing, teasing against that place along each stroke with an unbearable delicacy. The sensation was so much, so strong that Zhou Zishu almost didn't think he could take it, couldn't seem to keep track and control of all of his body at once. He dug his head down against his arms to bury his mouth hard in his own skin, to muffle a near-constant stream of sharp, gasping, delirious sounds, every time another flare went up from a press of Wen Kexing's finger and coursed shivering all the way through him. His knee hauled up higher than where Wen Kexing had pushed it to, and then he found it driving into the bed and giving him the leverage to lift his hips up and off it fully to make the angle even deeper, enough to make his eyes water. His cock, where it dangled, was so hot and so hard it jutted, throbbing, a burning weight that wanted everything and yet didn't seem to need anything more.

And then it was clear that it really didn't. Zhou Zishu was gasping and shuddering all beyond control of himself, past all sense and endurance, and then he needed neither because his senses went white and his body towered with heat and he was jolting with his ass in the air and Wen Kexing's finger driving into it, and his cock was pulsing and spilling wet all over itself and to drip down onto the bed, without even having once been touched.

He seemed to come endlessly before he was done, and then he collapsed back down onto the bed, gasping, lines of fire seeming to run out through all his limbs. Wen Kexing let him lie still for a few seconds, breathing with audible heaviness though unseen above him, and then very carefully eased his finger -- his one finger, that was as far as he'd gotten and all that he'd needed, he had made Zhou Zishu come like that just using a single finger -- back out from inside. Zhou Zishu shuddered with its slide, for all its gentleness, although it was much an aftershock of pleasure as anything else.

When Zhou Zishu could actually think again, all he could think at first was how absolutely insufferable Wen Kexing was going to be after this. It probably wasn't a thought that should have made him smile breathlessly into his own sweaty arm, the way it did.

"Beautiful," Wen Kexing said softly again, after what seemed like quite a long time for him to speak again. His voice was catching and unsteady, and if it seemed to be with almost as much depth of emotion as with lust, with his eyes shut and lying face-down Zhou Zishu could pretend not to have noticed, and allow him the space to recover himself. A few more moments later, there were soft sounds of shifting fabric as Wen Kexing folded down over him, the warmth of his body covering Zhou Zishu's back. The softness of his robes and spilling hair over all Zhou Zishu's bare skin felt indecently good, a covering caress. His hand was tender where it pushed aside Zhou Zishu's own sweat-sticky hair to kiss the back of his neck, and Zhou Zishu let himself arch up with his eyes still closed to press greedily back into the touch of his lips, all along the line they then traced down to the top of his spine. In his current state, he had the excuse that all his senses were scattered to the four directions, and he was more than happy to take it.

There was also a distinct hot hardness prodding at his ass even through all the layers of Wen Kexing's robes, and Zhou Zishu took particular pleasure in grinding back and up deliberately against it. Even more, too, in the little gasp and half a whimper he got out of Wen Kexing, taking him so much by surprise. Served him right.

Too soon, though, Wen Kexing was just laughing breathily against his shoulder, and then his hands curled around and under Zhou Zishu's hip and chest, tugging upward gently. Zhou Zishu went with his suggestion agreeably enough for once, letting Wen Kexing guide him up and over again onto his back. As soon as he was there, Wen Kexing was lying over him again and kissing him hungrily, all teeth and plunging tongue and hand in his hair. Zhou Zishu answered it with a lazy, filthy thoroughness, but no sooner could he reach to do anything more about it than kiss than Wen Kexing was moving away down his body again. When Zhou Zishu was able to blink up at him, he looked disheveled and halfway to debauched in spite of his comparatively clothed state, his breath short and color high in satisfying ways, but his expression was definitely the most smug Zhou Zishu had ever seen it -- which was saying something.

"Prop up your knees, like this," Wen Kexing said, without other preamble, drawing at Zhou Zishu's thigh with a hand looped familiarly under it. Zhou Zishu raised his eyebrows at him, but Wen Kexing just gave him an exasperated look back, and the relaxed euphoria of his pleasure's aftermath was still thrumming through his muscles, making him indulgent. He did as Wen Kexing asked, folding up his knees wide with his feet on the bed, and Wen Kexing leaning over him in their valley. Wen Kexing's smile was sweet, and then he was moving down further still, shouldering between Zhou Zishu's thighs. He pressed his cheek to the inside of the one he was still holding nearer with the cup of his hand, eyes falling mostly closed, and then turned to trail an open-mouthed kiss up it almost to where it met Zhou Zishu's body. The tickle of sensation managed to flush warmth through Zhou Zishu's softened dozing cock, and the heat of Wen Kexing's breath was close enough to barely brush it, making Zhou Zishu swallow a little restlessly. Which was, frankly, beyond absurd. Even as an actual teenager he didn't think he'd ever managed to come even four times in one day before; Wen Kexing couldn't possibly be honestly trying to go for more. There couldn't be anything left to come.

He barely had time to finish the thought, though, before Wen Kexing's oil-smeared hand had slid under his ass again. Zhou Zishu hissed and jumped in spite of himself when fingertips pressed back to his hole, finding it even more easily now with his legs spread apart like this. Wen Kexing made a soothing sort of sound against the skin of his inner thigh, but instead of pressing inside, his fingers only traced lazy, maddeningly delicate circles around the rim of where his skin puckered, teasing at him where it was still tender and sensitized. It felt good, even if his body wasn't ready to do anything about that: sensual, if not quite sexual, making him shut his eyes and breathe out unsteadily.

"Should I put it back inside?" Wen Kexing asked, the heat of it brushing Zhou Zishu's thigh again; the words were touched with teasing, but at least they were also still satisfyingly breathy. "I know it's soon, but I thought you might be eager all the same. I've never seen anyone love to be fucked with my fingers so well before -- and my experience is not narrow."

Zhou Zishu slung an arm over his face, swallowing, before he could answer that. His face and ears burned hot, in spite of himself, at the echo in his mind of Wen Kexing's voice purring love to be fucked, and he couldn't bring himself to look at anything at all. "Put it wherever you want, just shut up," he tried to growl, teeth gritting, although it lacked a bit for real threat. Wen Kexing paused a moment, and then laughed softly, tickling his skin.

"Oh my," he said, with put-on sweetness up top and what might have been just a bit of soothing apology below, "I'm not sure I've earned that level of trust you have in me, A-Xu," and then Zhou Zishu couldn't help it, he was laughing too, even with his arm still in place and his face still hot.

At least this time Wen Kexing had the courtesy to wait until his laughter had dried again, before starting to sink his finger back into the spread of Zhou Zishu's flesh. Zhou Zishu's breath hitched in a little involuntary clench in his throat, but he stayed where Wen Kexing had put him and tried to relax, and it became effortless much faster this time. To his -- relief? Disappointment? -- though, Wen Kexing didn't press it all the way to the point where it would have touched that incredible sensitivity inside him, not yet; he stopped short, and drew just as slowly back again before he could reach it. Zhou Zishu swallowed something that felt more definitely like disappointment at the easing of pressure, and fought the surprisingly strong urge to push with his hips and cant them up, to chase Wen Kexing's hand and not let it withdraw. Fuck, it did feel good to have something inside, already better than the first time and even without touching that one electric spot in him. Better than he could possibly have expected. He was startled to find he wanted more -- and then that Wen Kexing was already giving it to him, almost no sooner than he could miss it, plunging back in just as torturously slow. Sliding in and out again and then again, in what he soon began to realize was a rhythm, one that was easier to identify as Wen Kexing did it faster by the smallest of increments each time. Creating just a little friction along his inner walls, Zhou Zishu was intensely aware, and turned his face into the crook of his elbow even tighter than ever when he shivered, unable to stifle a humiliating little sound in his throat. Really fucking him, now.

Then on another stroking retreat, Wen Kexing's finger kept going and slid out altogether, again making Zhou Zishu bite down to keep from voicing a shameful little whine. "Should I give you another?" Wen Kexing's voice said in a murmur. He at least had the good grace to sound taut and wanting, though Zhou Zishu couldn't possibly have looked at him even now. It was only knowing that Wen Kexing was probably enough of a bastard to actually hold out on him, if he didn't answer, that made him jerk his head in one tense nod, probably barely visible with his face hidden. Wen Kexing's breath shuddered audibly anyway, and then he was moving, rustling over Zhou Zishu's body and a soft wet sound drifting up from his vicinity. Then Wen Kexing's hand came back, pressure sliding against and then into Zhou Zishu's hole again. It was a thicker, sturdier stretch, now enough to sting very slightly, although freshly slicker with oil than ever. Zhou Zishu breathed, his own breath rebounding to him hot off his own arm and shoulder, and let it come, and let him in.

Wen Kexing went very slowly, pausing what felt like at each knuckle, and quickly there was no ache again, nothing but smoothly sliding pressure. He sheathed his fingers to a comfortable depth and then just stayed like that, breathing quick and light and hot beside Zhou Zishu's thigh, positioned for the best view of where he had opened Zhou Zishu and now held him open. Covering his face was only barely any help to make Zhou Zishu feel any less entirely naked, in a way that had almost nothing and almost everything to do with all his bare skin and Wen Kexing hovering fully-clothed between his thighs. Past experience hadn't prepared him for this, in more ways than it felt like he could count.

For all Wen Kexing's heavy breath, the way he moved his fingers went beyond unhurried and into luxuriating. He pressed and then released the pressure, mostly, rather than employing as much friction as he had with just one finger, and rolled his fingers against each other and against the stretch of Zhou Zishu's flesh, slicking in the oil and spreading around sensation. He pressed them apart from each other a little, with time, pressing Zhou Zishu even more open than ever in a way that reached new heights of feeling obscene and mildly humiliating and more than mildly hot in the run of his blood. Happening slowly, letting him adjust to it, the stretch was... very good. It felt very good. It was a new and strange thing that seemed to startle his body with new information about itself, and make it immediately want to seek for more at the same time.

It was all a bit much to take, to be honest. Zhou Zishu let out a breath mostly through his teeth, as slow and steadying as he could make it, and deliberately let his arm fall away a little even as he turned his head further aside. "It's fine," he said, his voice sounding harsh and tight to himself. And pointed. "I'm all right, that's enough. Put it in already."

Wen Kexing paused a moment -- and then the distinct sound of a muffled laugh made Zhou Zishu's lips press tight. "What a romantic my husband always is," Wen Kexing said, fond enough to temper its annoying amusement, at least somewhat. The press of his lips again, high on Zhou Zishu's inner thigh, didn't hurt either. "I told you to be patient, A-Xu, and that I'm only concerned for your pleasure for now. I meant every word. Just relax and let me take this at my own pace."

Of course he played up his teasing, mock-innocent tone, but it was the sincerity down underneath -- as well as the implications -- that sent a squirm through Zhou Zishu's gut. His face felt helplessly warmer again, and his throat constricted in a swallow. "You don't have to--" he started, trying for a grumbling put-upon tone, but Wen Kexing cut him off.

"Of course I don't have to," he said, patiently and intensely all at once. "I want to." His voice dropped a little lower, hotter, the tickle of its breath all across Zhou Zishu's most sensitive skin maddening. "You don't have any idea how much I've looked forward to finding every possible way to make you come. You can't imagine what it does to me, just seeing you like this. The most exquisite gift that you could give me is just to relax, and let me."

Zhou Zishu opened his mouth to respond -- or maybe just to let his breath move a little more freely. Then he closed it again. There was nothing he could say, and he didn't say anything.

"Let me," Wen Kexing murmured a moment later, and there was only time to register how close the hot breath of it was, wrapping around Zhou Zishu's cock, before Wen Kexing's mouth was there instead: a hot point of a tongue laving around him, and then lips that were just as hot and slick closing all the way around the weight of the flesh, ever so softly and delicately. Honestly, as much as he would have hated to admit it, Zhou Zishu was at least half hard again by now (how? This was ridiculous), but there was still enough softness to him for Wen Kexing to completely envelop him, drowning him all at once in wet heat so intense it made a thin guttural sound punch itself involuntarily out of his chest. The skin was so tender and so over-sensitive Wen Kexing's mouth felt like an inferno, almost painful, but almost turned out not to be actually and in the end Zhou Zishu just shuddered with it, overwhelmed with sensation. His hips jolted against Wen Kexing's hand, its pressing fingers, and that only added enough to the mixture to make his eyes water and his breath feel like it was tied up in knots inside him. The air he could get didn't seem to be enough.

He let Wen Kexing choose his pace, as he'd been asked, and that pace seemed to be all but nonexistent. Once Zhou Zishu was seated inside him, and he inside Zhou Zishu, Wen Kexing hardly moved at all. He only slowly ground and rubbed his fingers together, in gentle pulsing movements like the pull of waves, and held Zhou Zishu's cock inside close, wet, slick heat, barely applying even the slightest of pressure or suction to coax him along. Zhou Zishu's cock kept stiffening in his mouth by degrees with every passing second, even so; it was hard to say whether it was more or less embarrassing that it was partly the relative stillness and waiting themselves doing it to him, rather than the little teases of sensation now and then from Wen Kexing's fingers or tongue. The longer nothing much happened, the higher the anticipation built.

It seemed torturously long before Zhou Zishu was nearly fully hard and ready again, not to mention on the edge of starting to squirm with impatience, and Wen Kexing finally began to move. He had to ease back his head somewhat and adjust his mouth, first of all, to accommodate the increasing size and solidity of the cock inside it. At least under the circumstances he couldn't smirk about it -- but when Zhou Zishu finally dared to crack his eyes open and squint down at him, breath coming through parted lips, Wen Kexing gave him a look back up along his body, pleased and goading and smoky all at once, that amounted to about the same thing. Coupled with the sight of his own cock buried in Wen Kexing's mouth it was far more than Zhou Zishu was prepared to handle, and he shut his eyes tight again and lay back trembling and tense against the bed, sure he was very red again and feeling his length twitching its way even harder.

And then Wen Kexing was dipping his head forward, sinking it down to take Zhou Zishu's cock deeper inside it again, with new deliberation and care for how much more of his mouth it filled. At the same time, he pressed and then ground and pushed in deeper with his hand, furrowing open more of Zhou Zishu with his two fingers, until they again speared in far enough that their tips pressed up gentle but sure against that one small and incredibly intense spot.

Zhou Zishu's whole body seemed to jump in its skin, and he cursed through a tight throat without really meaning to. The sound of his own voice was mortifyingly strained and wrecked already. Wen Kexing's fingertips caressed him there just lightly, ever-so-gently teasing him, and he panted through his teeth and throbbed in the wet sheath of Wen Kexing's mouth, sweat starting to tickle from his temples down into his hairline. God, it felt so fucking good: the nearly-unbearable lightness of the touch sizzled straight through him to meet with the nearly-unbearable gentleness of Wen Kexing's starting to suck at him, the light grazes of his tongue over Zhou Zishu's shaft. And then that just made him more sensitized and vulnerable, all over again, to the fingers playing with that little spot inside him that had made him come so fast before. Each touch rebounding off the other, echoing and building with their tandem. He was caught suspended between two counterpoints of terribly delicate, overwhelming pleasure, and he couldn't catch his bearings in the fever-heat of what they were doing to him from both sides.

He was only dimly aware of his thighs spreading out wider, wantonly, begging for more. Wen Kexing still had his less busy hand resting on one of them in a proprietary way, and it caressed and squeezed at the inner plane absently while he went about his work of taking Zhou Zishu completely to pieces, another warm pleasurable sensation to overpower him. There'd been a time, not that long ago, when Zhou Zishu wouldn't have believed his body could still offer this much of any sensation that wasn't pain -- let alone that it could ever be a vehicle for feeling this excessively good, to the point that he almost couldn't stand all of it. His head was arched back into the bed, loose hair in disarray and neck in a taut arc, and his hands clasped at fistfuls of air to either side of him. Again, he couldn't even keep quiet, couldn't even restrain himself to just the rapid huff of his breath: in time Wen Kexing's fingers built up to a rhythm inside him, daring to rub with more firm confidence against that devastating spot, and his mouth kept pace with it, and with every pulse of each Zhou Zishu's throat let through another embarrassing, cracking sound. In desperation he finally pressed his mouth against his upper arm, still tumbled loosely up along the side of his head, and put his own flesh in the way, to at least make him a little less loud at every movement Wen Kexing made. Almost at once, though, the heat around his cock slid back and then entirely withdrew, leaving him cold and bereft and slick with spit and burying a wordless protest this time in his own skin.

"A-Xu, don't deny me, it's too cruel," Wen Kexing gasped, still close enough that Zhou Zishu could feel it as much as hear it; his voice was all breath and sounded absolutely wrecked, but in Zhou Zishu's state that wasn't even satisfying, it was just another hungry jolt to his cock that made it ache and jump for more. "Let me hear your voice. I want everything."

Zhou Zishu swallowed hard, his breath heaving in him; it almost made him need to fold in on himself, the way that hit right in the middle of him and tangled in his belly and his cock. For a second he could barely move at all, but then he was helpless: he gasped his mouth away from his arm, his breath shaking, his eyes squeezed shut as tight as he could. "Lao Wen," he muttered; that was all, and the sound of his own voice on even that much was almost more than he could take. "Lao Wen, please."

He wasn't the only one who crumbled immediately, at least. Wen Kexing made a sound of his own, a gasping whimpering broken thing, and folded back over him immediately, the heat of his breath wildly unsteady. Immediately he was sucking Zhou Zishu again like he meant to draw the soul straight out of him, his slick mouth hot and leaking and tight, his fingers driving inward with no mercy left at all.

Even so soon, it was more than Zhou Zishu could take. He shuddered and convulsed in the vise of Wen Kexing's mouth and fingers, and his voice punched out of him in what began as just a slightly noisy breath and then quickly grew into a shout, full-throated enough to leave Wen Kexing no restraint to complain of. Zhou Zishu was beyond caring now, though. His muscles all locked and arched his body into a bow as the pleasure hit its blistering peak on all sides, and he came roaring, the climax blasting through him as though it would tear him apart. All of him seemed to unspool into Wen Kexing's waiting mouth, dissolving to a slick heat that Wen Kexing lapped and swallowed with shaking eagerness. Assuming there was anything actually there to swallow at all; Zhou Zishu was distantly aware that he couldn't be sure.

It was almost too much, making his eyes water and his hips shift a little uncomfortably, before Wen Kexing would deign to pull his mouth away. Zhou Zishu's wet, wilting cock fell free to the air and at the same time his body untensed itself all at once, collapsing him into a trembling heap on the bed that just lay still and panted for breath. He was only sluggishly aware of anything that was happening anymore: of Wen Kexing pulling up from the spread of his thighs and collapsing sprawled over top of him, clearly very unsteadily, or that Wen Kexing's fingers had meanwhile drawn back slightly to where the sensitivity was no longer raw and uncomfortable, but had by no means pulled out of him. They just stayed, a steady warm full stretch that was, by this point, comforting and welcome. He could feel that Wen Kexing's hand was shaking minutely from inside him, which was a sensation he found startlingly intimate and that made him feel very tender.

He flexed his hips a little against that hand experimentally, and hummed in his throat with lazy pleasure and only a bit of overstimulation. A thin, wounded sound came quietly from Wen Kexing's head on his chest, and Zhou Zishu let his eyes squint open again to look up at what could be seen of him, lips still parted around his own breath. Enough of Wen Kexing was visible to see with great satisfaction that his usual immaculate elegance had been completely erased, and he looked absolutely destroyed. His pale hair was loose and wild around his face, which was deeply flushed and robbed of all composure, his mouth slick and red and well-used where it was also open to let him pant for air. Though his eyes were barely open, they were fixed upward on Zhou Zishu's face with a shiver-inducing intensity, and the glitter of a high fever.

Zhou Zishu combed a proprietary hand down the back of Wen Kexing's hair and neck, making him shudder and burrow his head forward. He shifted his hips again, too, on the passive pressure of Wen Kexing's fingers, and then more deliberately so that his thigh rubbed up against the desperate hardness he could feel pushing against it, forcing out a muffled moan into his own chest that made him half-smile drowsily. Zhou Zishu could still barely move for his own part, honestly, and was in no hurry to, but that didn't mean he wouldn't take what petty victories he could.

Too quickly, though, Wen Kexing was moving again, pushing his free elbow under himself. With none of his customary grace whatsoever he shoved himself wobblingly up to his knees, with Zhou Zishu's thighs pushed up over and around his lap, sprawling out obscenely. His fingers twisted and moved inside Zhou Zishu in the process in ways that made Zhou Zishu hiss breath and groan through his teeth, but never precisely bad ones, and he still never withdrew even for an instant -- just hunched his shoulders inward once he was seated, to improve his reach. With his other hand, at long last, he grappled away his belts and the wings of his outer and inner robes with no small amount of effort, and Zhou Zishu's few clumsy attempts to help didn't seem to much. Finally, when at least the center of Wen Kexing's upper half was bared, he shoved down his pants to where he could also free his cock, and heaved a heartfelt whimpering groan when he did. His head had tumbled forward, so that most of what Zhou Zishu could see of him was the fall of his hair and the pretty sweep of his eyelashes.

Wen Kexing's cock was long, slim, lovely for something he would never have expected to describe as lovely, and possibly in even more of a state than his own had embarrassed him with, at the distant start of this morning. Zhou Zishu reached for it, of course, but even though he might have said Wen Kexing was barely aware of what he was doing by now, his hand flashed out at once and caught Zhou Zishu's wrist, holding it repressively. He raised his head just enough to fix Zhou Zishu with an expression as much amused as reproving, even while rubbing tensely at the base of Zhou Zishu's thumb in a way that spoke clearly of what resisting was costing him.

"You can have your turn if you want it, A-Xu," he said, his voice coming out so husky and rough it was hard not to flush. "Just not yet."

Zhou Zishu met his eyes, still holding his hand inside Wen Kexing's grip without pulling it back. "What if I want to now?" he asked -- with a challenge in it, even in spite of how his own voice didn't sound much better. Wen Kexing only smiled heavy-breathed, though, and shook his head.

"I'm not done with you yet," he said, and leaned in forward as he scissored his fingers inside Zhou Zishu again, just a bit, a promise and a warning. Zhou Zishu's eyelids fluttered, a swallow working his throat in spite of himself, and then he could only burst into a laugh that was mostly just wheezing out breath.

"Are you joking? I can't. I can't possibly. You've gotten every drop out of me."

Wen Kexing grinned, though it was still undercut by the labor of his breathing, and flicked his fingers one more time for emphasis in a way that made Zhou Zishu twitch. "I don't believe that," he said, as much goading as flirting, leaning in closer than ever. "Not when you're still enjoying having me inside you so much."

Zhou Zishu couldn't help swallowing and looking away at that, although his smile still didn't quite fade. Wen Kexing made a hungry, purring noise after another moment, and when a bit of movement drew Zhou Zishu's eyes back, he found that it was Wen Kexing taking hold of his own cock in his other hand. A long, relieved shudder wracked through Wen Kexing's shoulders, his expression relaxed and unfocused and scorchingly hot, and his gaze never wavered even slightly from Zhou Zishu where he still lay prone and spread for Wen Kexing's fingers.

"I'll join you this time, I really can't bear any longer," he said, his voice smoky and even cracking a little as he started stroking himself. Zhou Zishu's lower abdomen washed feebly with warmth, at the sight of that flushed, wet length sliding through the grip of Wen Kexing's elegant and cultured hand, his disloyal body still trying to confirm all Wen Kexing's unwarranted assumptions. "But I know you'll be able to keep up enough to give me something lovely to look at, while I do."

Zhou Zishu glanced up just enough to see the greedy, hungry way Wen Kexing's gaze was sweeping down over every bit of him, lingering at his never-quite-entirely-soft cock and the plunge of Wen Kexing's fingers into his ass, and then he had to shut his eyes entirely against fresh helpless heat in his face and below his belly. "We'll have to see," he mumbled, and somehow Wen Kexing's breathless little laugh just lit him up worse than ever.

Neither could he keep his eyes closed for very long -- not with so much to see in front of him. Even after all of this, and saying he couldn't take it any longer, Wen Kexing was only stroking himself in a leisurely sort of way, like it was an afterthought. It made for a beautifully indolent, debauched picture, all together: his robes pooling messily open out around him, his pants rucked down, his hair spilling everywhere around his shoulders, Wen Kexing's own graceful and finely-boned shape emerging out of all that disarray like a smooth and beautiful serpent out of the straggles of its shed skin. His slim chest rose and fell with his eager breath, his face flushed and lips parted, eyes fixed like two burning coals on Zhou Zishu like they could devour him.

All the while, though, his attention was settling right back where it had been before: on his other hand with its fingers pressed inside Zhou Zishu. They moved against each other again once, with renewed purpose, and then he bore down and pushed a little deeper -- back to where it was most sensitive, where the spot they flicked across felt like a spark from a fire. Zhou Zishu yelped into his closed teeth, unable to help himself, the sensation so bright and stripped raw it was almost as much like pain as pleasure, and if so, too much of both. He twisted a little, to escape or to open himself more even he couldn't have said. Wen Kexing's fingers were decided, though, and merciless; they just barely grazed the spot again, the lightest sensitizing touch, which was still so much more than Zhou Zishu could take that his eyes stung and his hips jolted in useless confusion.

It wasn't even that it hurt, exactly. Pain he could take, pain he knew how to take; pain he understood. Pain was something he was more than used to bearing, in quantities that most people might never know existed. This was just too much, and outside all his ability to embrace and endure quietly. It burned through him and swept him out of himself, overcoming everything like sense in his head, making not even shame enough to keep a stream of pathetic and urgent noises inside his mouth. He arched and writhed, spread out on Wen Kexing's lap, grabbing up fistfuls of the silk of Wen Kexing's disheveled robes in his hands just for something to hold on to. And Wen Kexing gasped whimpering breaths above him at it all, and teased at the thing deep inside him that turned out to be the unexpected loose thread with which he could be unmade.

Once it found a kind of rhythm, it felt endless, the time they spent like that. Zhou Zishu was lost in stinging pleasure and in burning awareness of Wen Kexing's stare, and the heavy pink flush that was spreading further down Wen Kexing's chest the longer he worked his own cock while watching Zhou Zishu fall apart. Each gentle thrust of the fingers inside him seemed to make Zhou Zishu's thighs twitch and jolt over Wen Kexing's knees, like Wen Kexing was triggering some sort of mechanism that made the muscles there respond only to his will, and not Zhou Zishu's. The prolonged friction, even through the smooth glide of the oil, made the intrusion feel sharp and searingly hot, and every press inward sent thought crashing out of Zhou Zishu's head, leaving only panting breath. Bit by bit, he was dragged back into being worked up in spite of himself, to where what he felt was again definitively pleasure and not pain.

He was at least able to be distantly satisfied, too, when it began to be clear that the sight and the long denial were definitely taking their toll on Wen Kexing. Eventually, Wen Kexing's breathing had become desperately deep and gasping, and he was swallowing convulsively now and then, seeming to be struggling to push some of the flush in his face back down. His hand actually stilled and tightened on his cock a few times, too, although he could never seem to keep it that way for long. After only a few seconds, he'd be working himself again, arching and flexing with it, shuddering inside the sprawl of Zhou Zishu's legs.

Zhou Zishu took a long dizzy look up at his overheated face, and made the muddy-headed decision that something needed to be done -- and finally, in this state and with both hands so occupied, Wen Kexing was in no condition to keep him from doing it. Even as he was still twitching and rocking with the thrusting of Wen Kexing's hand, Zhou Zishu reached out again, first just to grip Wen Kexing's (still maddeningly clothed) thigh briefly to orient himself. Then he lifted his hand and dragged its thumb, as firmly and deliberately as he could by now, over the head of Wen Kexing's cock between strokes.

The effect was immediate, and the most satisfying thing of all. Wen Kexing made a noisy, strangling sort of sound, and all of him seemed to jump forward into his hand, bucking against it hard enough to arch his back. His eyes were suddenly wide, in that incongruously vulnerable way, and meeting Zhou Zishu's all at once. Even as disarrayed as he was himself, Zhou Zishu didn't waste that opportunity. Instead, he lifted his hand to his mouth and just as deliberately ran his tongue over the offending thumb, keeping his half-lidded eyes heatedly meeting Wen Kexing's.

He couldn't deny he'd been curious about the taste, but he found there wasn't much to it: a little salty and animal, not strong, not so different from tears or sweat and similar fluids of the body. It was the effect on Wen Kexing, of course, that was really his reward. If it was possible, Wen Kexing's eyes went even wider, to the point they seemed like most of his face, and he made a wild, shocked, wounded sound from his throat with no words in it at all. Then his eyes had squeezed shut apparently in spite of his every desire, out of pure instinct that he couldn't resist, and he had suddenly pushed up higher on his knees, almost dislodging Zhou Zishu's legs and his own fingers both as he swayed forward dangerously above Zhou Zishu. He managed not to fall, though, and instead snapped his hand forward on a few more hard strokes, his hips also pumping forward into his own grip, his mouth wide around a sound that wouldn't seem to come out.

And he came, at long last, just like that, his cock twitching and then spurting while Zhou Zishu watched. Lines of his come landed on Zhou Zishu's lower belly, splattering over the skin -- which he realized only late, hazily, had undoubtedly been the whole point of Wen Kexing's rising up on his knees, specifically to come on him. To mark and claim him with it.

Wen Kexing hung over him for a moment panting, even after his hand had stilled, his head down and shoulders wracked and heaving. Unfortunately, his other hand had also fallen off from thrusting into Zhou Zishu in his extremity, and after a moment Zhou Zishu wriggled his hips against it discontentedly, tangled up as he was in the fresh wild heat he didn't want to admit had flushed through him at Wen Kexing's come cooling on his stomach. Wen Kexing finally stirred enough to let out an infuriating little breathless laugh at that, and after he collapsed trembling back into his slumped kneeling posture, he opened his eyes to spear Zhou Zishu with his gaze and began to press and rub his fingers again. Their vigor was so much renewed, in fact, that it made Zhou Zishu jump all over, hissing and clenching his fist tight on Wen Kexing's robes.

Genuine disbelief was all he could muster when he realized he was very close to the edge of coming again. He wasn't quite there, he couldn't imagine how he could actually get there, but the edge was close and his body was straining shakily toward it, only to keep stumbling back from sheer exhaustion and unreadiness. His hips ground into Wen Kexing's hand seemingly of their own accord, a thin sound caught in his teeth, and Wen Kexing took the unintentional hint and flexed his fingers straighter, lengthening his strokes out and punishingly back in so that the friction and contact were that much greater. With his other hand free now, he also brought that down to run its fingertips teasingly over the still-semi-soft weight of Zhou Zishu's cock -- and then, when Zhou Zishu twisted and hissed again and couldn't quite bear that sensation, down to cup his balls instead. The shock of that touch, Zhou Zishu was dimly startled to find in between his loud gasps of breath, was far more pleasant, far more welcome, and Wen Kexing pounced on it greedily at once. He slid his warm, come-slicked palm and fingers luxuriously over all that tender, delicate skin, rolled the whole sac gently in his hand, tickled down the seam and then back further, behind them. His fingers pressed next with a firm, careful reverence against a spot that Zhou Zishu could barely manage the sense to realize was the same spot he was working from inside, from the outside: pinning and rubbing that wildly sensitive place between his fingers and making Zhou Zishu immediately lose all coherence and control of himself. He was crying out so loudly it was very nearly a scream, his body arching itself almost completely up off the bed with his knees drawing up and feet planted, his head thrashing, all of him strained beyond endurance and cracking apart--

He came again almost painfully, so overwhelmed and torn apart by the sensation that he could only spasm and buck and sob his breath with it. His consciousness was completely blotted out, nothing entering his awareness for a moment, until he could gradually come back down into overstimulation and then aching pleasure and then dropping in total exhaustion. As he lay and panted his way back to himself, he was vaguely aware that he'd come almost dry, and without ever even entirely getting hard again; he wasn't even sure how he'd done that, physically. Nothing attached to him would move or seem to make sense. He was a trembling, sweat-soaked, insensate mess of oil and come and little sparks still flying up behind his eyes.

Zhou Zishu swallowed, and closed them. That way he didn't have to see it when his own hand fumbled out, shaky and needy, until Wen Kexing's closed around it, and held it.

They stayed like that for a time he couldn't keep track of, adrift in the dark behind his eyelids. Finally, though, his awareness was uncomfortably jolted back by Wen Kexing's fingers shifting inside him -- possibly just to change position and get more comfortable, or to goad him, or both, but he immediately made a small offended grunt and twitched reflexively away. That flex of his inner muscles really only made the situation worse, though. In any case, he heard Wen Kexing huff a little breathless laugh at his reaction, and he swallowed and met it with one of his own, helplessly.

"No," he said in the next breath all the same, and firmly, though he was smiling when he squinted his eyes open and up toward Wen Kexing, and shook his head. "No. Absolutely not. We're done. Out."

"But A-Xu," Wen Kexing said with a show of pouting indignance, though at the exact same time he was also immediately easing his fingers very gently back out from inside Zhou Zishu; even so, Zhou Zishu hissed and winced a bit, earning a soothing stroke of his thigh. "We're still only tied! How can you expect me to be satisfied with that?"

Zhou Zishu just stared at him for a second, while his brain fumbled around stupidly to find its memories again, and then snorted. "Can you not be like this just once? This is not a competition."

Wen Kexing grinned at him, dangerously, leaning in over him from sitting above so that his hair dangled around them both. "On the contrary: it is a competition, and I want to win."

There was no help for it: Zhou Zishu just relaxed back into the bed and laughed, with more feeling in it this time. "You can win in the morning," he said, sounding more grudging than he really felt, and yawned into the side of his arm as though for punctuation. "Or whenever I wake up. That'll be morning as far as I'm concerned."

Wen Kexing watched him, smiling. "Don't fall asleep before cleaning up," he chided after a moment, and Zhou Zishu shot him a baleful look.

"You made the mess. You clean it up."

"I believe it was a mutual effort," Wen Kexing said loftily, but Zhou Zishu had already firmly shut his eyes again. There was a pause, and then a noisy sigh. "Lazy and incorrigible. I can see where your disciple gets it from. All right, wait here, I'll be back in a moment."

Zhou Zishu did open his eyes at the sound of his footsteps moving away, if only for the pleasure of watching his figure receding from the back, with its hair and state of half-dress still in an amusingly wild disarray. Then he shut them again, grinning to himself, and settled in again on the bed. On the part without the damp, oily patch Wen Kexing's ministrations had left, leaving that the only open area, of course, on principle.

He was still only half-drowsing by the time Wen Kexing came back with warmed water and some dusty spare cloths, but when Wen Kexing made an amused little sound to himself and just began cleaning him up, Zhou Zishu ended up keeping his eyes closed and staying mostly still. It was a strangely and staggeringly vulnerable, intimate thing, in ways he hadn't expected, for Wen Kexing to do this for him: gently swiping clean his belly, his thighs, and ever so tenderly the sensitive areas of his soft cock and thoroughly overworked ass. Just moving him and taking care of him, both reverent and proprietary at once, the attitude of a man caring for the most treasured of things that belonged to him. It made something rise up unwelcomely in Zhou Zishu's chest that he had to swallow against, a tight hard knot woven out of threads he didn't want to face either in part or in whole, not right now. It was easier just to pretend to be asleep, and breathe through it, and let him.

By the time Wen Kexing was done, anyway, the pretense was mostly no longer necessary; he really was almost asleep. He vaguely heard all the rustlings and shufflings of Wen Kexing finally doing away with his own clothing and setting it all aside neatly somewhere, the soft perambulations of him putting out lanterns, and vaguely felt his weight settling onto the bed too, when that was done. But then Wen Kexing's warmth was curled around his back, where it belonged, and every lingering bit of tension could relax all at once. Before Zhou Zishu could know anything else, he was entirely asleep.

---

When he woke up on the seventh or maybe the eighth morning, Zhou Zishu's dick was sensibly soft and quiescent, presumably in deference to the sheer excesses it had been through the previous day. His head, however, felt thick and heavy with too-long sleep, and he was sore and overstretched in a rich, fascinating variety of ways that were mostly entirely new to him. Before he'd even opened his eyes, he let his awareness travel down his body, probing it for even one single part that didn't ache satisfyingly, and couldn't find one.

Well, no hurry. It was warm and comfortable in spite of that, curled into doubled body heat and semi-darkness. He rolled onto his back only by very slow, gradual degrees. Then when he stretched, though, in a testing sort of way, he almost immediately made a small outraged sound to himself. All kinds of things twinged and shifted slickly inside his body when he moved, in ways he would have said before they should never be doing either.

There was a poorly stifled snicker from beside him, and he opened his eyes and cast a glower sidelong to find Wen Kexing already propped up on his hand and elbow on the bed, watching him in the dim light of the few lit lanterns. Zhou Zishu hated to even think how late he must have overslept, for Wen Kexing to be awake before him, and not even have woken him in the process. He was slightly mollified, though -- as well as a mix of amused and faintly scandalized, in spite of himself -- at the way Wen Kexing looked, which was not even slightly less demolished than he felt. Wen Kexing's hair was still a loose, disarranged mess, his expression both drowsy and indecent, and most importantly he was finally naked as well: his graceful curves and lines of chest and shoulder emerging from under the cover, shell-pale and absurdly pretty, made for more of a distraction than Zhou Zishu would have liked to admit. As soon as he had looked over, too, Wen Kexing moved the arm that had been around Zhou Zishu's waist to run its fingers up over his arm and chest, slowly and deliberately exploring. They steered wide of the largest nail-scar in the center without hesitation, but also without either of them failing to notice.

"Good morning, husband," Wen Kexing said, in a self-indulgent purr, his expression also very much like one that would be on a cat's face that was covered in ill-gotten milk. "It seemed like you slept well. Should I prepare you a big breakfast, to help you recover from all the energy you expended consummating our union last night?"

Zhou Zishu rolled his eyes, though of course he was already grinning through the lingering threads of sleep. "Sure," he said. "Are you more in the mood for ice, or for snow?"

It was Wen Kexing's turn to roll his eyes -- and then just as quickly, he'd rolled himself on top of of Zhou Zishu's body, instead. All of the warm, naked flesh of his lower body slid indecently along all of the warm, naked flesh of Zhou Zishu's, and almost immediately, to his mild resigned horror, Zhou Zishu's cock was not quite so quiescent anymore. Honestly, he had no idea how long it could even survive, at this rate.

"I'm in the mood," Wen Kexing said very deliberately from just a little ways above his face, with an even more smug cat grin that showed that he hadn't missed a single stirring against his thighs, "for neither."

"Is that so," Zhou Zishu breathed back up at him, for lack of anything better to say. Sliding his hand behind Wen Kexing's head and drawing them together into a kiss, with voluptuous and deliberate slowness, was more important than anything he could've said, anyway.

They kissed like that for a much longer and more aimless time than they'd been able to manage the day before, as much of a rush as they'd both been in. As the kinds of kissing they were discovering between them went, this was somewhere in the middle of what it had been like the previous night, and what it had been like the times before: hot but leisurely, slow but with purpose, tongues and lips and teeth sliding together through configurations that were first intriguing and then inflaming. Zhou Zishu cupped the back of Wen Kexing's neck and lifted his head entirely off the bolster to lick deep into his mouth, chasing the slight sleep-sourness and the lingering traces of what might have been himself and the hungry little sounds Wen Kexing was beginning to make, all without any hesitation or preference. Everything was good, everything was wanted. There was nowhere else to be and nothing else to think of, finally, and he could finally admit at least to himself just how long he'd been thinking of exactly this.

Both their hips had started to rub together a little by the time they parted, cocks sliding against each other and the warm skin of the other's thighs, growing a little firmer and more eager each time. The separation of their mouths made an obscene, wet sound. Wen Kexing stared down at him, pinkened, breathing quickly, softness and hunger mingling in his eyes. Zhou Zishu lay back to look at him more directly, in turn, stroking the back of his neck and with a smile growing around the edges of his mouth. Say what you would, and he frequently did, about Wen Kexing, there was no denying that his performance yesterday really had earned a reward. The sheer sluggishness with which Zhou Zishu was getting hard right now, after all the aggravation of the previous morning, would stand as testament to that.

"All right," he said, smiling up at the way Wen Kexing ducked his head in shameless pursuit of Zhou Zishu's stroking hand. "I admit it: you proved me wrong. You absolutely made your point."

The look of initial startlement Wen Kexing gave him at that was covered over quickly with supreme triumph, of course, but Zhou Zishu didn't give it time to even fully take root. Before Wen Kexing could open his mouth, Zhou Zishu locked their eyes again, still slightly smiling, and held them deliberately as he spoke.

"So, Lao Wen," he said, slowly, enunciating, "now, will you please give me your cock?"

The effect was more than satisfying enough to be absolutely worth it. Wen Kexing's eyes widened, his mouth parted on an indrawn breath, and then he shuddered through his entire body hard enough for Zhou Zishu to feel it from under him. His head fell forward as he struggled to catch his breath, and although the first sound he made again like that when he did was a laugh, it was tiny and entirely breathless. His skin felt searingly hot against all Zhou Zishu's.

"Yes, but first... I might have to hear you say it again," he said, sounding half-choked, without even quite managing to look up yet. Zhou Zishu let his smile spread a little, fondness warming his whole expression, even while there was more than a bit of a smirk in it too.

"Lao Wen," he repeated, sliding his arms around Wen Kexing's neck to draw them nearer, and say it closer to his ear. He drew his knees up a bit, too, letting Wen Kexing settle more deeply between them. "Please fuck me."

It got him another quiver and gasp even on the second time, to his delight. Wen Kexing just pressed his mouth against the side of Zhou Zishu's head for a moment, breath hot and heavy against his hair, and then drew back enough to look at Zhou Zishu. The little smile on his lips was a vast mix of parts that added up to an affecting whole: absurdly and sweetly happy, fierce with affection, intensely aroused, mischievous. "One more time?" he coaxed, and this time Zhou Zishu rolled his eyes, although he never quite stopped smiling.

"Lao Wen," he said in a much more exasperated tone this time, trying to turn his gaze as unamused as he could, "fuck me or I'm going to go jerk off by myself--"

Wen Kexing was laughing, though, and burrowed in against him, wrapping his arms tight around Zhou Zishu and kissing at his neck in apology. "No, no, I'm finished, A-Xu, I mean it," he mumbled half into the skin, voice still lit up with both laughter and arousal, pressing a few more kisses in between words. "I still have to beat your record today, you promised."

Zhou Zishu opened his mouth to object that he'd done no such thing; but before he could, Wen Kexing was nipping at the line of his throat under his ear in a way that made him inhale sharply, surprising himself. In the end, he had to give it up as a lost cause.

Neither did he linger there long enough to make Zhou Zishu impatient again, to his credit. In the next breath Wen Kexing was pushing himself up inside the sprawl of Zhou Zishu's legs, to where he could reach over the side of the bed and find the oil wherever it had been left the night before. By the time he'd straightened back up again, Zhou Zishu had also made his own clumsy and sore way to sitting up, and he surprised Wen Kexing by taking the oil-bottle from him as he settled back in. He poured a small amount in his palm and then slicked up his hand with it, as he'd seen Wen Kexing do before, and then reached between the tumble of Wen Kexing's legs to take slick hold of Wen Kexing's hardening cock. It slid squeezing through his hand in an interesting way, so slippery there was almost no firm hold that could be kept at all. Far more interesting still, though, was the loud indecent moan that came from Wen Kexing's suddenly panting mouth, and the sheer speed with which the warm weight in Zhou Zishu's hand became hot and very hard all at once.

"A-Xu," Wen Kexing gasped, just that, his hand fumbling out and then grabbing tight on Zhou Zishu's knee. Zhou Zishu smiled at him breathily, while also trying not to look too obviously at his hand in consideration, and give away how much he was still figuring out how to do this from such a newly strange angle.

"You'll finally let me touch you here?" he said instead, low in his chest though the grumble of it didn't sound at all sincere for an instant. "You were so careful to keep me away before, I thought you were afraid I'd make some terrible mistake."

Wen Kexing barely choked out a laugh, although his eyes had at least cracked open to look at Zhou Zishu, even as the weight of pleasure slackened all of his face. "More like that I'd be spent the second you touched me," he said, dry and creaking at the edges. "It took so much even to hold back as long as I did. I've never seen anything as beautiful in all my life as you were, so turned on, with me touching you inside." He reached up to caress Zhou Zishu's cheek under his own loose fall of hair, stealing the opportunity while Zhou Zishu was hitching a breath and surely going red under his hand, and smiled at the corner of Zhou Zishu's vision. "I'm sure the only thing more beautiful is the one I'm about to see."

"I think you're talking me up too much," Zhou Zishu muttered, finding his own voice a little unsteady. When Wen Kexing laughed, though, at least he could gently squeeze his hand, and turn it into a gasp right away instead.

He was already so slick inside, and still felt so loose and opened in slightly alarming ways from all the work Wen Kexing had done the night before, that he waved away Wen Kexing's move to prepare him again in return. In spite of his skepticism, in the end Wen Kexing seemed too worked up not to give in. He wound up sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed with his back up against the rail, and reached to draw Zhou Zishu in by his hip and lower back with both hands. "Like this," he said, coaxing Zhou Zishu along until he was kneeling up between Wen Kexing's own knees, then pushed his hands under Zhou Zishu's thighs to lift them. "Fold your legs around behind me, and we can lift you up and let you down together. You can control the pace, that way. Do it all in your own time."

"I'll be fine," Zhou Zishu said, dismissive again, although he pushed up agreeably enough with his hands on Wen Kexing's shoulder and the rail of the bed behind him, to do the awkward work of clambering his legs over Wen Kexing's hips. It was something largely mechanical to focus on, at least. He caught another disapproving look from Wen Kexing as he settled, and answered it with a wry smile. "Trust me, I'm not worried. I've had worse."

Before he could reach behind himself to brace his arm, though, to let him lift his hips and position himself where he needed to, Wen Kexing caught him by his forearm -- firmly and fiercely enough to make him look up in startlement. When he met Wen Kexing's eyes, he found them staring back at him intensely, with a real heat that was almost anger. He could feel his own widen a bit just at the look in them.

"Listen to me, A-Xu," Wen Kexing said, with feeling, deliberately. "The only thing I know that I would not let you do with me is endure me. I'll give you anything you truly want, but if you plan to just grit your teeth through something unpleasant, I'll have to reject that completely." Zhou Zishu stared at him, caught unable to say anything, and Wen Kexing stared back with his hand still around Zhou Zishu's arm, the other pressed tightly and familiarly around behind Zhou Zishu's waist. "Promise me, if you let me fuck you, that you'll accept only what makes you feel good, and give me the chance to change what doesn't, rather than force it. I've had to bear seeing you in pain far too much already; if you intend to let me be the cause of even more, that's too much to ask. I can't stand that. I won't."

Zhou Zishu stared at him only an instant longer, and then abruptly couldn't look at him at all. Something shifted in his chest like an earthquake: unsteady and colliding, fundamentally huge, changing the landscape as it moved. Looking away, he only swallowed and nodded, and his voice came out soft and far more sincere, when it would come at all. "...All right. All right, I promise."

It wasn't enough, maybe, but it seemed to be enough at least for Wen Kexing to accept. Rather than say anything else back, though, Wen Kexing only released his arm to wrap both arms around his waist instead, and kiss him. The slide of his lips and tongue against Zhou Zishu's own was hot and slow, and almost too tender to bear. It wasn't too long before Zhou Zishu had to draw back out of it, and focus his attention back on lifting and repositioning his hips, just for his own self-preservation.

He put himself above the proud rise of Wen Kexing's cock, leaning back to angle himself properly, and trusting all his weight to his legs wrapped behind Wen Kexing's back and his hands' grip on Wen Kexing's shoulders. Wen Kexing bore it easily, if with a flushed face and quick, heavy breath. One of his arms stayed wrapped around behind Zhou Zishu's waist, supporting him with its grip, and his other hand gripped his own cock underneath. He guided it to where it needed to be, until its slick tip rested against Zhou Zishu's curiously sensitive outer entrance, where he'd worked so many fingers in and out of the evening before. The press of its shape there felt pleasant, alluring, exciting, far too big, impossible, alarming. Zhou Zishu let his eyes mostly shut, released his breath slowly and silently through his teeth, and sank his weight down slowly onto it.

The way it stretched him open at the head, just at the tip, hot flesh making contact with every bit of him inside and pressing it wider to make room for itself, was so shockingly good at once he made an immediate sound, his hips twitching and cock throbbing. At his reaction, Wen Kexing cut off his own gasp at once with a strained, alarmed sound of questioning, though one that managed to have no actual words in it. Zhou Zishu only shook his head hard with a little wheeze of a laugh, though, and kept letting himself slowly down. As he took more into him, and the muscles in him started to be forced wide around the full girth of it, then the discomfort did start to be enough to overwhelm that initial intense pleasure -- although the friction against his rim did still feel good, among the confusion of other sensations. He stopped where he was and held still for a moment, breathing deeply, trying to get used to it and wait for his body to relax itself into a shape that would allow this. His arms and thighs were trembling minutely, with effort and with sheer feeling, and remained so even when he focused on redirecting his qi through the meridians there, to better support the work of his muscles.

"All right?" Wen Kexing murmured, from a little below him with the way Zhou Zishu was positioned. His voice sounded breathy and tight and shaky, but when Zhou Zishu cracked his eyes open to look down at him, Wen Kexing was looking back up only at his face, with concern mingled into an expression that was mostly a kind of wonder. "Can I help?"

It was always so hard to take, and so affecting, and so strange and yet not strange at all, when out of the blue he was this sincere and sweet. Zhou Zishu just smiled at him, unable to help himself, and shook his head again. "Just need a moment," he said, in a fast rush of breath, and Wen Kexing nodded.

It wasn't much longer, anyway, before the hot stretching inside him started to feel like something his body could accept and take, and he could begin to sink himself down again. After all the work to get started, though, now that he had adjusted, the last step of the journey seemed to happen all at once. There was a single, fast slide of flesh on flesh inside him, whiting out his awareness almost completely for a heartbeat or two, leaving nothing but the sensation of eye-watering pressure. Then all at once he was resting fully in Wen Kexing's lap -- and something much larger and firmer and hotter than fingers grazed against that incredible spot of pleasure inside him, that Wen Kexing had already spent so long yesterday playing with so mercilessly.

Zhou Zishu clenched his teeth, and still made a thick, animal sound in his throat anyway, his spread thighs shivering. His body seemed to want to grab around the touch like a greedy fist, all of him hungry and wide awake the second it was brushed. There was no question Wen Kexing could feel it in him, too; he heaved a little laugh that was both breathless and almost soundless, and shifted his hips mischievously to send another shock chasing after the first, although he either couldn't or wouldn't move much with Zhou Zishu's weight pinning him down. He wrapped both his arms now around Zhou Zishu's waist, unmindful of his one oily hand, and Zhou Zishu moved with their clasp, pressing closer where Wen Kexing held him. He sat, breathing hard and not moving, on Wen Kexing's cock all the way root-deep inside him, with his legs folded up clasping Wen Kexing's back and his arms on Wen Kexing's shoulders, their chests and foreheads brushing together, his own cock resting hot and leaking against Wen Kexing's lower belly. Heat ran restlessly all up and then down the line of Zhou Zishu's body, melting him even deeper into Wen Kexing's grip and around Wen Kexing's cock.

With their foreheads still touching, Wen Kexing tilted his head upward and sideways seekingly, showing half-open eyes and a sweet, beautiful smile he was gasping his breaths through. Zhou Zishu could only kiss it, when it lifted to find him, and then keep kissing him, keep tangling his fingers in Wen Kexing's hair while being cradled in his arms like an unimaginably precious thing.

Even while they kissed, he tried pushing up on the leverage of his gripping legs and arms, his thighs flexing around Wen Kexing's hips to lift him. Pressing closer like this sharpened the bend of his body, he discovered immediately, thrusting back his hips in a way that let Wen Kexing slide just a little more easily. It also firmed up the light graze of his cock-head against the spot inside, into a devastating, constant rubbing instead. He shuddered with it as he slid up along the length of Wen Kexing's cock, rising, and then couldn't help a small gasping noise with it when he sank back down and it rubbed against him more strongly than ever. All the while, Wen Kexing helped him move, as seamlessly as they'd ever fought each other or others together, using the arms around his waist to help raise him and let him down again. Wen Kexing's cock sank even deeper than before when he bottomed out this time, but Zhou Zishu couldn't bear to hold still there a second time. Now that he'd moved, he could only keep moving: flexing and arching along his spine and thighs, up and back down, to work Wen Kexing's cock in and out of him with his weight, chasing the achingly good grind of Wen Kexing's head against the most sensitive place deep in him. Never holding still, always trying to get more.

Their kissing waxed and waned, as he ground on Wen Kexing's cock and Wen Kexing helped him, lifting with his arms and thrusting with his hips. They slid their mouths together lazily and messily for a while, and then drifted apart to let Zhou Zishu just pant his breaths for a while. His head rolled back with his eyes mostly closed, lost in steady crests of pleasure, and Wen Kexing dipped his head to mouth and tongue at the sheen of sweat collecting at the base of his throat. Then before long their mouths had somehow met again, first just brushing at each other soft and aimless with the rise and fall of Zhou Zishu's body, and then clasping and tasting each other. Zhou Zishu cupped the back of Wen Kexing's head through his curtain of hair, licking deep into his mouth as searing want and feeling built up all through the lower parts of him. Wen Kexing answered it hungrily, making soft desperate sounds into Zhou Zishu's mouth, as though he were the one being fucked with Zhou Zishu's exploring tongue.

"A-Xu," he murmured fully into Zhou Zishu's lips when they could allow any space between them at all again, his voice shaking under the weight of need and emotion. The words that followed tumbled out between kisses, between thrusts, pressed hot between their mouths. "A-Xu, A-Xu... my beautiful A-Xu, I can hardly stand it, I can hardly hold back when you're like this... but I want to. I'll do it for you. I want to give you everything -- anything you want, anything."

Even panting with his own exertion, Zhou Zishu found it in him to kiss Wen Kexing's mouth again -- to stop it. It was too much to take right now, hearing all of that from him; it squeezed around Zhou Zishu's chest like a vise, and he couldn't even answer anything he might have wanted to. The kiss had to be his answer, and he tried to put enough of his own heart into it to make it count.

Being told those things, being held like this, given all of this just because of how good it felt... of course that was the idea, but there was a part of him that flinched from it, all the same. It felt too shameless to just accept it. The way Wen Kexing spoke to him and touched him didn't feel like something that should ever belong to him; it wasn't a gift meant for someone who knew how it felt when his borrowed sword-blade ground against a ribcage too small for it to slide through, and became trapped so tightly that it had to be abandoned in the two bodies it had pierced. And if he only knew it because he hadn't let anyone he led bear the burden of knowing it instead, so what? None of the ones he had sworn to protect had even lived to be spared it, in the end. They were gone: Liang Jiuxiao first and worst of all, after finally seeing what the shixiong he'd trusted really could be and what he could be capable of, and then all the others behind him. And here he still was, the one who should have died before any of them, or at least soon after. None of this was anything he deserved.

But Wen Kexing had never seemed to care what he deserved. And if he thought about that, Zhou Zishu supposed that he understood it; he supposed that he didn't really care what Wen Kexing deserved, either, not when put against what he wanted Wen Kexing to have. Of course it went without saying Wen Kexing wasn't innocent of such things either, not even by comparison, but that had never stopped Zhou Zishu from wanting to do any of what he had wanted to do for him: to kill, to die, to give him back everything he had ever lost, a home and a family and a place under the sun of the living world. And even if he hadn't ultimately been able to give Wen Kexing any of that -- not to keep -- then neither had Wen Kexing in the end been able to give him back his manor and his honor and his old unbroken body, so maybe that was all right. Maybe it was more than enough just to be able to give each other themselves, and the rest had been too much to ask, for two people like them. After all, say what you would, they were still here. The dead were still dead, and they had survived.

...Except they hadn't, really, had they? The way he kept idly thinking of this to himself, as a new life, was correct, and not in some pretty, metaphorical way. Newly immortal, bound to the cold for good and sealed away for the winter, this was a completely new life for both of them -- but also one that marked the irretrievable end of the old. In practical fact, without quite understanding that it was happening, Zhou Zishu had done what he'd set out to do: he'd walked away, and then left the world of the living behind. Wen Kexing had hurried to catch up and walk beside him, and in the end had just gone with him to a much kinder underworld than the one he'd already crawled his way out of. They'd come to the Bridge of Helplessness together, and with all their joined skill somehow tricked their way past every demon's test, and bluffed all the merit Zhou Zishu didn't believe for a second he'd actually managed to gather in his last efforts before the end. And they'd emerged reincarnated into whatever this was now, to start anew.

Or maybe not, Zhou Zishu thought dizzily, with his eyes closed and mouth pressed to Wen Kexing's and their hips rocking vast, pounding waves of pleasure through him. Maybe it wasn't nearly as happy an ending as all that; maybe they'd both really failed, and fallen, as they surely more likely deserved. But maybe what nobody told you was that even Hell could feel like Heaven, only by having the right single person there too, at your side.

He'd take it. He'd take it, and be glad.

Every slap of his hips down into Wen Kexing's lap brushed Zhou Zishu's cock against Wen Kexing's lower belly, and with every crest that too-light caress felt more like a torture than a tease. He bit at Wen Kexing's mouth as it built up too high to stand, increasingly frantic, and groaned when Wen Kexing nipped back, and then broke out of the kiss suddenly on a gasp and a loud wet sound of their parting. He wrapped his one arm more firmly over Wen Kexing's shoulders to keep his leverage, and shoved the other down between their bodies, gasping again and groaning out loud when he got his own fist tight and hot and sweat-sticky around his cock. Wen Kexing made a thin hungry sound and mirrored him exactly, hefting one arm more firmly around down Zhou Zishu's back and under the curve of his ass to keep hold, and letting go with the other to cover Zhou Zishu's hand with his own.

They worked together to move him around Wen Kexing's cock, and their hands around Zhou Zishu's. The constant drag of pressure against that place inside him made him insatiable, his cock throbbing with it inside the joined slick grip of their hands. He set their pace fast, barely aware of the hungry, wounded sounds panting out of him almost constantly -- the only way he could bear how much everything felt. It was overwhelming, only managing not to make him come right away because it was just too much, overpowering his senses into confusion.

Then his eyes fluttered open, to find Wen Kexing's just barely open enough to look back at him. Wen Kexing watching his face, with his own expression open-mouthed and sweat-run and delirious and in awe. Here with him, in him and around him: the thing unlooked-for that had come anyway when there was nothing left, and become everything.

After a moment of that, Wen Kexing's lips trembled and he swallowed, and his expression softened even further, apparently overcome; then, perhaps to hide his shaking and the newly bright sheen in his eyes, he pressed his face forward tight to Zhou Zishu's throat instead. "A-Xu, come for me," he whispered there, seeming to barely manage to choke it out, with his lips brushing the skin as they moved. His rolling hips and the grip of his hand merciless, squeezing Zhou Zishu's own hand in tight and hot around himself. "Come for me, please. Let me see."

And it was never anything but a game for Zhou Zishu anymore, resisting anything Wen Kexing wanted. The second Wen Kexing really asked for something in earnest, he couldn't help but give it.

Zhou Zishu cried out, his breath heaving deep into his stomach and then out the shaking stretch of his mouth, where it was half-buried in Wen Kexing's white hair. His whole body seemed to clench and build and boil up inside like a volcano on the verge -- and then came the eruption, the core of him going molten and overspilling all his edges, wiping him away with its force. His back bowed, the muscles all along his thighs and the inside of him clenched down and shuddered, his hand on Wen Kexing's shoulder clamped white-knuckle tight and his cock pulsed and spurted between their hands, on a last few wild bucking thrusts of his hips. And then once deep in the grip of it, he just held where he was, rigid as stone, his head thrown back and his every thought obliterated.

He wasn't really aware of anything for a moment, before he finally tumbled back into himself a little. As he did, the first thing he could feel was Wen Kexing grabbing around his hips and striving desperately inside him, panting noisy voiced breaths almost more like whimpers against the side of his throat. The force of Wen Kexing's plunging cock battering against his oversensitive insides was almost too much to take right now, but Zhou Zishu just winced a little and then exhaled with it, relaxing into it. He brought his arms back up to drape over Wen Kexing's shoulders almost lazily, leaning his heavy head on Wen Kexing's with his eyes closed even as he was moved and jostled and bounced. Wen Kexing had more than earned taking anything he wanted from this, now.

"It's all right," he was barely aware of murmuring, drowsily, into Wen Kexing's hair; "it's all right, go ahead. Do it inside."

And just like it had worked for him, it had the same effect on Wen Kexing at once. Zhou Zishu could feel Wen Kexing's whole chest rise with a loud, hard gasp of breath, and then it came out as a fully-voiced cry into his shoulder; then the cry was followed with Wen Kexing's teeth, biting down on the ridge of his flesh there hard enough to be a little painful but a lot more oddly satisfying. His hips drove up harder than ever, in three more short rough thrusts, and then buried him as deep as he could go with Zhou Zishu also pressing his own weight forcefully down onto his cock. He came undone there in an unfurling of slick, wet heat deep inside Zhou Zishu, that felt filthy and messy and good.

Wen Kexing was almost completely still for a moment himself, with Zhou Zishu just slowly stroking and once pressing a kiss into his hair. Then finally some of the tension ran out of Wen Kexing, all at once, and he collapsed in on himself a bit where he sat, a shiver working through him. Seeming to come back to himself by degrees, he abruptly released the place he'd bitten with a small rueful noise, and then just panted muffled against Zhou Zishu's maligned flesh for a few seconds before gathering himself to press a soft line of tender, apologetic kisses across the bruises he had no doubt left. Zhou Zishu just let a bit of an indulgent smile sit on his mouth, his eyes still closed as he rested his cheek against the top of Wen Kexing's head, and let him do it without comment. Nothing to complain about, really, as far as he was concerned; at least Wen Kexing hadn't broken the skin this time.

They didn't move much for a moment: just sat tangled with Zhou Zishu wrapped in Wen Kexing's lap, arms around each other, heads resting together. The pressure inside Zhou Zishu lessened as Wen Kexing's cock softened, until things began to shift and trickle and drip uncomfortably, and he finally had to make a slightly revolted face and lift himself up briefly to let it slide free altogether -- which made matters worse for a moment before they got any better, but never mind. Wen Kexing exhaled heavily as Zhou Zishu settled back down against him, and then finally cracked his eyes open to smile at Zhou Zishu, sleepy and satiated and unbearably sweet even from almost too close up to properly see. Zhou Zishu smiled back at him, because he could hardly do anything else, and rested their foreheads together again, and just breathed.

It was a while before they climbed out of position, and even then they did it only slowly and gradually. Zhou Zishu's knees and thighs ached when he untangled them from around Wen Kexing's back, to say nothing of everything that squelched and stretched and throbbed inside him when he moved around, and Wen Kexing grunted under his breath when he rolled his shoulders and neck, and then unfolded himself. But they were superficial complaints, quite easily borne by two bodies that really couldn't suffer any more serious hurts anymore without some effort, that had gone at last entirely beyond such considerations. Soon enough, the two of them had fumbled themselves around and stretched out again on the bed, and lay there tumbled luxuriously together and breathing in slow, uneven rhythm.

It was still very dim in the barracks, with only a few lanterns lit and no natural light to move across them and tell the time of day. Zhou Zishu's body seemed to feel like it had slept a full night through, but there was no way of telling for certain. It could have been the next morning, or the next afternoon, or still the middle of the night. They could have been still inside the mountain or miles deeper than that under the earth, never to reach daylight again. The world outside here might as well no longer exist.

Zhou Zishu closed his eyes, and lay with his arms around Wen Kexing's shoulders, Wen Kexing's head tucked tight between his jaw and the crook of his shoulder. He could feel every line of Wen Kexing's warm, living, treasured body pressed along his, but they weren't looking at each other, and couldn't see each other. Even so, it took him a long time to speak.

"You tried to leave me here alone, you bastard," he said, out of the shadows and silence. His voice was hoarse with exertion, a little bleary from tiredness, but it was taut and raw and ragged, too, and not just from everything they had just done.

Wen Kexing was very still for a moment. Zhou Zishu thought even the soft ripple of breath over the skin of his own shoulder stopped, for a heartbeat or two. Then Wen Kexing let it out in a sigh, more felt than heard. "You did it first," he said, but there was no heat in his voice. It was soft, and resigned. "You would have let me think you were going to be saved, when you were coming here to die. Is that any different?"

"Yes," Zhou Zishu said at once, though he then had to pause to swallow. "It's not the same thing." He could feel Wen Kexing stirring against him now, as if to respond with more strength this time, but didn't let him speak. "I left you there. You tried to leave me here -- after making sure my life would last forever, that I couldn't even go after you and catch up. After dying for me." Though he had to pause again there, Wen Kexing seemed to have nothing to say this time. Not even breath to let out. "What would I have done, if I hadn't been able to save you? Do you even have any idea?"

"You would have been fine," Wen Kexing said. His voice was still soft, but there was a thin, steely thread through it now, a greater certainty. "You'd be alone here now, but after that... you have your disciple. Your reborn manor. Your Lord Seventh and his husband. Your health, and all the wonders of the jianghu still to see." Zhou Zishu tried to speak, but this time it was Wen Kexing who cut him off; long graceful fingers dug into his nearer arm to Wen Kexing, where they had fallen, gripping him tightly. "I've lost... everything, A-Xu, except for you. Everyone, and everything that I cared for, except for having only you left. A-Xiang, and... Without you, I..." He stopped, and swallowed audibly, and picked up a different thread again. "But that's not true for you. And I'm glad. I wouldn't wish it another way. I was... glad to know that you would still have them, those other things and people to return to."

Zhou Zishu let that sit for a moment or two, taking a slow breath, before responding. "That's true," he said, finally, quieter now. "I know you've lost so much, so recently, though I wish it weren't true. And I know there are still other things I care for." He let out another breath all the way, slowly. "But why don't you know that, if I had to, I would still trade all of them for you?"

Wen Kexing froze against him again, breath rattling to a stop; his hand clenched tight again around Zhou Zishu's arm. "That's a very stupid decision," he finally managed to say only moments later, and even then his voice sounded thick and choked, even when he tried to let out his held breath in a laugh. Zhou Zishu didn't answer it.

"Probably," he agreed, though, and not without a touch of humor in it. "But it's mine."

They just lay like that a moment: both silent, those words falling into a a silence that closed smoothly over it, like stones dropped into a very still and deep pond. The sound of Wen Kexing's breathing was thick and unsteady and uneven, but Zhou Zishu didn't pry at it, and let it be. Finally, though, when it became clear that Wen Kexing wouldn't be able to, he also let himself be the one to speak again.

"I wouldn't have been fine," he said, quietly, breaking the silence again. "I would have been like Senior Ye: left behind on a barren peak, stuck living forever without any of the things that gave life savor, or the person who gave it all its meaning." He paused -- thinking, but not saying, because it felt like too much to pile on: I would have really been in the Hell that I deserved. Instead, he said, again with a little gentle humor: "Except it would have taken me a fuck of a lot less long to figure out it wasn't worth it."

Wen Kexing's breath shuddered again -- and then the stretched-out line of him tucked in a little bit, curled closer, as if he could fold himself all the way into Zhou Zishu's body and disappear. He audibly took another very deep breath in, and then let it out. "All right," was all he said, finally, and if it was still thick and choked it was at least making a bold try at being a little stronger; "all right. I'm sorry. I was wrong." He took a breath, and then when he spoke again he managed to sound almost amused. "At least it isn't as though I can do it again."

Zhou Zishu was surprised into laughing a little, and he shook his head, tucking it down slightly into Wen Kexing's. "No," he agreed again. "I can't either, even if I wanted to, for what it's worth. It seems like we're both done with trying to leave each other behind."

Wen Kexing made a small affirming sound against his chest, and Zhou Zishu held him there and shut his eyes. They were still again for another moment like that, just holding on.

"There's so much that I still don't know how I'm going to bear," Wen Kexing confessed after what felt like a long time, still half-buried where he'd pressed his head to Zhou Zishu's chest. "I can't even begin. I can only pretend it isn't there at all, for now." His breath was shaky, tickling over Zhou Zishu's skin. "It feels like the mountain outside: as big as the world around me, but covered in snow, so it's hidden. I don't know what will happen when the snow all melts away."

Zhou Zishu also let his breath slide slowly out of him, his eyes still closed. His hand stroked at Wen Kexing's hair, smoothing away what he could reach of it from Wen Kexing's temples. "I know," he said, softly. "I've had to face that mountain, too, not that long ago. I wish I could say I know to tell you how to get over it safely, but I don't. I don't know if anyone does." He let that rest a moment, thinking, and then craned his head down enough to press his lips briefly to Wen Kexing's hair. "But it'll be a while before spring comes, so there's no hurry. We can just be here together, and take our time." Pausing to take another breath, he found his mouth curving just slightly, into a bit of a gentle smile. "When you're ready, the mountain will still be there."

Wen Kexing was quiet for a moment, and then made another soft sound in assent. And then they just lay there together, holding on to each other: under the ground, far from the world, not feeling the cold. A couple of lost souls, found.