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Not all of their love-making begins with gentle kisses.
Sometimes it’s Hua Cheng lifting Xie Lian into his arms, already hard and aching. Sometimes, all the more often now, it’s Xie Lian pushing Hua Cheng against the wall and roughly parting his robes.
But today, it’s gentle kisses.
It’s well into the evening, and their bedroom is lit with lamps that cast a thick, molten glow over their bodies, half-dressed and pliant. Xie Lian sighs and shifts a knee between Hua Cheng’s legs. On their sides, it’s easy to cling to each other—Xie Lian’s hand wraps tight in Hua Cheng’s inner robe, bunched around his bicep. It clenches each time his arousal swells and pulls it a little lower. His breath is deep against Hua Cheng’s lips.
These are the tranquil nights, the ones where Xie Lian finds his touches lingering and his mind hanging on every whisper. His thigh rubs gently against Hua Cheng, encouraging him with little murmurs.
“My husband,” he breathes, “my home.”
The hand that isn’t clinging to him is flat and splayed over his still heart, which Xie Lian cherishes just as fully as if it beat.
Hua Cheng moans. He cups Xie Lian’s ass and grinds slowly on his leg until he’s half-hard and verging on insistent.
Xie Lian follows him up that slope, slipping his tongue across his lip then further. His breath catches in his throat when he prods at the sharp peak of one of Hua Cheng’s fangs, and his hips roll without thought.
“Mm, gege, like that,” Hua Cheng groans.
His words are savoured and swallowed.
Xie Lian starts to rock his hips just enough to give them both a gentle relief of tension. But once the rhythm is determined and steady, his tongue wanders back to examine the other fang. They aren’t prominent enough to strike fear on sight, like a wolf’s, but they’re no less bestial.
Nations tremble when he bears them in a sneer. So too does his husband, with every smile.
Xie Lian’s fingers skirt along his chest and up his neck until he’s cupping his jaw. He can feel the gentle rumbles of rolling moans through his throat, like purrs. His thumb swipes over the corner of Hua Cheng’s mouth, calmly intruding on their kiss. It’s taken in stride, though.
Hua Cheng kisses the pad of his thumb and blinks his eye open to silently bask in their shared bliss.
Their heads are cushioned by the same pillow, and the dip tilts them into each other so their noses are brushing. He traces the full swell of Hua Cheng’s lower lip, hips unconsciously coming to a standstill.
Cautiously, Xie Lian pushes his husband’s upper lip back and runs his thumb across his top teeth, pausing at his fang. They couldn’t cut like a knife does, not that viciously pointed, but Xie Lian has first-hand experience of them breaking skin. Most often that’s followed by profuse apologies and a healing touch to his lip or neck and so on.
It’s superfluous, of course. Such a minor amount of pain has long-since been inconsequential to him, and anything Hua Cheng inflicts can hardly count as pain in the first place. Especially not when Xie Lian knows he could be inflicting so much more.
Sometimes he lingers on the force of nature that his husband is, in every aspect. Sometimes that’s what really makes his heart pound.
Tonight, it seems, he’s been lingering a moment too long.
Hua Cheng laughs, low and warm and Xie Lian’s hand slides back to hold his cheek. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but gege seems to have found a new fascination tonight.”
“Hm, I’m always fascinated by you.”
Hua Cheng hums, “You flatter this San Lang. By me, yes, perhaps. But not by these.” He parts his lips and trails a tongue over one fang, then the other.
Xie Lian’s soft smile twitches at the corners. His eyes are inexplicably drawn to those points. “Ah… Am I very obvious?” he murmurs.
Instead of an answer, he receives a kiss on the nose.
It’s so much more than he could have asked for a few years ago, when showing any attention to Hua Cheng’s… less human features triggered a deep, centuries-old fear of revulsion, horror, hatred; the list goes on. Whatever he once thought might swell in Xie Lian’s chest and chase him away has been well and truly disproven by now.
“They’re handsome, San Lang,” he says, once again entranced to prod with his finger. “They really suit you so well.”
Hua Cheng’s tongue darts out to playfully lick him. “Is that so?” he mumbles, careful not to nip Xie Lian. “They add to the threatening aura, certainly.”
Slowly, Xie Lian’s hand retracts. “Mm, my fearsome husband.” He kisses the tip of Hua Cheng’s nose. “You know that isn’t what I mean.”
“Would gege enlighten me?”
Their legs are still comfortably twined, and the arousal lingers while their words are spoken with the same breath.
Xie Lian leans in until their lips brush but neither seize the opportunity for a kiss. “Your fangs,” he murmurs the word that had yet to be said, “are exciting to me. I want to see what they can do.” Xie Lian draws back a breath and looks his husband in the eye.
Hua Cheng swallows.
“San Lang, I want to feel what they can do.” His body is humming with anticipation just as it is with interest.
They’ve long since passed the point of withholding desires from each other, but that doesn’t mean the request doesn’t occasionally stick in his throat. Especially when it’s such a… novel ask.
“…I think I would like it if you bit me,” Xie Lian whispers.
Hua Cheng’s palm trails up his back and over his bare shoulder to rest at his nape. “Gege, they’re sharp,” he murmurs as a gentle caution.
“How sharp?” Xie Lian breathes, leaning in again. “Show me.”
They meet softly with the sort of kiss tonight had begun on. But this time, Xie Lian kisses like he’s offering himself. His lips linger everywhere they touch, soft and submissive.
Hua Cheng cradles his head and nips his bottom lip without his fangs. It’s a tease but it stokes Xie Lian’s excitement, winding him up for what’s coming. He whimpers and presses his body in close so Hua Cheng can feel his arousal.
“Mhm,” he encourages, eyelids fluttering.
Hua Cheng’s lips turn up in a smirk, clearly enjoying keeping Xie Lian on edge. After a minute of languid kissing—two? three?—a sharp edge teases the plush, pink inside of his lower lip and carefully pricks him. It sends that sweet pain signal between Xie Lian’s legs, but fades far too soon.
“…Harder,” he breathes, “I want it to sting.” Their kiss stutters around his words. “I want to taste blood. …I want you to taste blood, San Lang.”
A desperate moan creeps, unbidden, from Hua Cheng’s throat. His cock twitches where it’s pressed hard to Xie Lian’s leg. “Really?”
“If you don’t mind,” Xie Lian swallows.
A rough laugh brushes his lips. “How could I dare? I’ve heard the blood of the gods is sweet.”
He sighs when Hua Cheng falls into another kiss. This time, not a moment is wasted; he sucks on his lower lip then sinks in his fangs and Xie Lian can taste blood before he’s pulled them free.
His gasp is too sharp, shocking Hua Cheng away from him. His eye is persistent, searching Xie Lian’s face for signs of pain or regret.
“Shit, gege, I’m—” Then his gaze drops to his chin and his mouth twitches.
Xie Lian feels blood dribbling from the puncture marks and quickly sits up. His fingers swipe through it, smearing red over the corner of his mouth then drawing back. It’s hue is brilliant, stark against his fair fingers. His tongue swipes over the broken skin with a trace of awe and his fingers twitch as he swallows.
“Forgive me,” Hua Cheng says, voice tight. He disentangles his legs and kneels beside Xie Lian, carefully tracking his movements. “Gege—Your Highness, I shouldn’t have…”
“Did you taste?” Xie Lian looks at him with wide eyes, still prodding his swollen lip.
His apology falters.
Then Xie Lian notices the tint of red on his lip and can’t help brushing his thumb over it. “Oh, you did,” he murmurs.
Hua Cheng is silent, working through whether or not anything still warrants apologizing for.
Xie Lian climbs into his lap and cups his cheeks. In such a state of undress, his robes slip from his shoulders and catch at his elbows instead.
He presses their foreheads together and whispers, “Did it taste sweet?”
Hua Cheng inhales and it audibly hitches as if he’s caught the scent of blood on Xie Lian’s breath. His eye drifts shut and his hands pull Xie Lian close.
“The blood of the gods could only be bitter and dull compared to what flows through your veins.”
Xie Lian groans and threads his fingers through his husband’s hair to tug him into an upright kiss.
Many things go without saying between them. For example: certain weapons are for appreciating aesthetically rather than for sparring. Or whenever Xie Lian cooks, Hua Cheng will always chop the vegetables.
Right now, Hua Cheng sucking on his lip and drawing the spilled blood into his mouth is one of those things.
Xie Lian is breathing hard and rocking his hips, feeling euphoria rise in his cheeks. He opens his mouth to pant while Hua Cheng still has his lip pinched tight in his mouth.
“Mm,” Hua Cheng groans and forcefully slots their hips together so their erections rub.
Like that, their robes are shed and their chests pressed together. The way Xie Lian’s heaves has always been something particularly enticing to Hua Cheng, and he doesn’t pass up the chance to lay his palms flat and feel every swell.
“More,” Xie Lian slurs.
Hua Cheng releases his lip with a smack but continues to lick at it. “Can’t bite your lip again, gege, it’ll split.” His words are pressed into his skin between persisting kisses.
Xie Lian exhales hard and rolls his hips down until his teeth grit. “Then somewhere else,” he gasps, “Anywhere.”
His mind latches onto the first spot he can think of and he holds his arm out. The fair skin of his inner forearm, woven through with delicate veins, catches Hua Cheng’s eye.
He redirects his kisses to Xie Lian’s bare shoulder and skims his lips down the slope of his bicep. “…Here?”
Xie Lian nods.
“There’ll be a lot more blood,” he hums.
“Yeah,” Xie Lian breathes.
Hua Cheng groans, stirred by his enthusiasm. He mouths all the way to his wrist and back, like his lips are a divining rod seeking the sweetest gush of blood. He noses at the bend of his elbow and smiles, baring his teeth.
It’s only then that Xie Lian remembers his husband doesn’t have only two fangs; he has four.
They sink into his arm, just below his elbow and his breath fills his chest to bursting. Xie Lian bites his sore lip, throat working around a number of pretty moans. He feels the pinch of withdrawal and squeezes that hand into a fist.
Hua Cheng’s tongue slips hot across his skin, lapping up the blood that beads from the wounds. When a trickle drips from his arm onto the sheets, he can’t hold back from whimpering. A single eye, blown black with arousal, catches his gaze. Parted lips skim his skin, smearing the blood that’s welled down to his palm where he lays a kiss.
Xie Lian grinds the heel of his hand between his legs, stroking himself without finesse. The bite is radiating a dull ache that throbs in time with his arousal.
His husband looks and feels greedy. A weak trickle of blood runs in rivulets down his forearm to his palm, and Hua Cheng runs his tongue against the current, catching most but letting some of it stain the sheets with an audible patter. It’s difficult to look away.
Still, Xie Lian finds it’s not as much blood as he’d expected. Or… not as much as he’d wanted. It dawns on Xie Lian that his body might be seeking something more specific from his husband’s inhuman bite.
Over the years, he’s bled more blood than one hundred men would have in their bodies, spilt in wars or duels or clumsiness. He’s been reduced to nothing multiple times. But he’s rarely… no, never, experienced that shock of red blooming through his robes in the years since his shackles were broken. …Nor has he felt the high that runs alongside it.
Xie Lian can’t be certain, but he’s always been curious if blood loss manifests differently in an undying body. With the privilege to push aside the fear of death, losing blood becomes a little… intoxicating. Rarely does Xie Lian partake in drinking to the point of growing wobbly—although his husband makes it look incredibly tempting—so he has nothing too solid to compare it to. But the lightheadedness he would fall prey to was never entirely unpleasant.
If that feeling is universal, surely Hua Cheng knows it; he’s dead.
…How sweet it would be to have his husband reintroduce him to that numbing high. Centuries of defying death at every turn has always been a benefit, but not quite in the way it could be right now.
“San Lang…” he begins.
Hua Cheng hums his acknowledgement from his latch on Xie Lian’s arm.
“…You know I would let you have every part of me? Will let you, should you ask?”
His eyebrows approach a bemused furrow. He gently removes his mouth from his skin, which he’s more or less licked clean and left just shy of purple from sucking. The corner of his lips are stained with blood.
“Of course I know, gege. It’s the same for me, entirely.”
Xie Lian absently thumbs the ring around his neck. “Mm… And you know that I can’t die?”
Hua Cheng is silent for a moment. Then he leans in and kisses Xie Lian, whispering, “What are you asking me for, beloved?”
They don’t linger there long enough for him to taste blood on his tongue.
“How alarming would it be,” he murmurs, “if you were to take more from me? More of my blood.”
Just marginally does Hua Cheng’s eye widen.
Xie Lian quickly pushes on, not wanting to cut off the flow of confessions. “The rush it gives me is already so heady, and I think if you were the one taking me there, San Lang, it could be so much more… more…”
“Erotic?” Hua Cheng purrs, nosing along his jaw.
“Yes.” Xie Lian flicks his tongue over his lip; it’s beginning to bruise. “Yes, and with fangs that could rend flesh from bone… With so much power, San Lang…” He takes a steadying breath.
Hua Cheng pulls back and studies his face. “This is what you really want?”
“As much as you’re willing to give me,” he pleads.
There’s no reason to make this a matter of trust; their trust for each other is woven into their beings just as deeply as their love.
A smirk flits over Hua Cheng’s face before evening out, and he says, “So… gege is asking me to inflict upon him mortal wounds?”
Xie Lian cups his cheeks and leans in until their noses bump. “No, I’m asking you to devour me.”
An undeniable snarl curls from Hua Cheng’s throat. “Fuck; done.”
The answer is sharp and zealous, and precedes his husband pressing him down into the bed. Never would he have gotten such an easy, let alone enthusiastic answer a few years ago. Their bond has grown by leaps and bounds, away from the traumas they once shared and towards who they’ve become in each other’s arms. Pain still rears its head, and will for many years to come, but it’s long been overshadowed by wave upon wave of insistent, creative, undisguised pleasure.
Xie Lian moans and clutches at Hua Cheng’s back as he kisses hard down his neck and over his chest.
Rather than the recklessness Xie Lian expects, he’s even more cautious than usual with his fangs. Usually a bite will punctuate such a string of kisses, but his lips only part now to facilitate the hungry drag of his tongue. Briefly, teeth catch on his collarbone but it’s little more than a tease.
His nipple, though, is awarded some attention. Hua Cheng nips and wraps his lips around it to suck on while his thigh slips between Xie Lian’s.
A whine works its way out from between Xie Lian’s lips and he lifts his hips to find more of that pressure. His eyes slip shut, then promptly fly open again.
A sharp pain blooms around his chest, and it has him wincing just as it has his cock aching. His mouth falls open, panting when he sees Hua Cheng with his fangs piercing his chest above and below his nipple. They stay stuck into his skin until blood bubbles up from around them, at which point he pulls back and draws his tongue over the puncture marks and past his nipple.
Xie Lian wails. He wraps his legs around Hua Cheng’s thigh and ruts against it. “Exactly like that, San Lang! Oh my—” His voice chokes out.
Hua Cheng lifts a hand to the mess and skims his fingers through it. They rake a path across his pec like the swipe of a predator’s claws. It’s a weak stream, far enough away from any major sources of blood, but its placement paints a stunning picture. Two lines follow his ribs off the side of his body, the other two trickle down the valley of his chest, puddling and dyeing his breastbone vivid red. It’s exciting to his eyes, lighting up the still-active panic centre in his brain, which is pointedly suppressed.
Hua Cheng’s fingers, still tipped with blood, slip over Xie Lian’s nipple and he gasps. His blood is still hot on his chest, but the air has cooled what Hua Cheng’s fingers are sticky with. It’s messy and slick, thumbing and flicking his nipple while he paints the right side of his chest.
Then two of those fingers slide between Hua Cheng’s lips. They linger for a few seconds, in which Xie Lian desperately grinds on him, unable to tear his gaze away, before coming away clean.
“His Highness’s blood is a luxury,” he murmurs, dipping to lap at what little has accumulated between his pecs. “Forgive me if my indulgence becomes a profligate one.”
“San Lang, please,” Xie Lian chokes out. He’s frustratingly hard and growing frantic.
Red-ringed kisses slip down his chest, to where a single rivulet has dribbled far enough to soak into his pants. He’s stripped naked and his legs naturally fall open; they always do when his husband is between them. Xie Lian pushes onto his elbows and swallows hard.
Countering the sudden pain of being bitten, it almost tickles when Hua Cheng noses over his hip bone. It feels like his hands are everywhere, grabbing his sides, and tracing his abs, and streaking crimson in grotesque, abstract patterns.
Very suddenly, Xie Lian realizes he’s become a canvas. Or a serving platter, perhaps.
Hua Cheng digs his thumbs deep into the muscles where his legs meet his pelvis, scrubbing his hands from there down his thighs. He bends Xie Lian’s knees and starts to mouth along one thigh, eye flicking up.
It’s uncanny how this mimics the build-up to an orgasm. Following his husband’s lips back and forth across his thigh, knowing without a doubt that something is coming but not knowing when… The anticipation claws at him, and his hips begin to wiggle impatiently.
But this one isn’t a surprise like the last. No, Hua Cheng’s gaze is steady as he hovers over one particular spot on his inner thigh, then opens his mouth and sinks his fangs in.
A slow sob is wrung from Xie Lian’s chest. His hands curl into the sheets and he uses everything he has to resist rocking forward. This time he can feel the blood running down his thigh before he can see it.
“That’s right, that’s so— nn, really good!” he quivers. “Is my San Lang gonna drink it all?”
Hua Cheng’s eye falls shut: blissful and accompanied by a small whine. He closes his lips around the bite and sucks hard enough for Xie Lian to feel the dangerous sting of blood being pulled from him.
The thigh is a precarious spot—he’d nearly bled out from there once before. And even though Hua Cheng’s fangs can’t slide deep enough to trigger that kind of vital loss, there’s still an impressive spurt of blood when he pulls his mouth away. Xie Lian’s cock jumps, already flushing a deep, rich pink.
“Fuck,” he whimpers with a broken voice.
Immediately Hua Cheng begins lapping it up, seeming to be over delicacy. His nose and chin are soaked and his throat is working hard to swallow what he gets. Watching his tongue, feeling his tongue slide hot over his naked, bloody thigh is making Xie Lian dizzy.
The spot he’d chosen is frustratingly near to his cock, and Xie Lian is close to tears with his need to be touched. Blood streams into the crease of his thigh then down between his legs.
The one leg is held in an unyielding grip, being fed on, so the other stretches out. Xie Lian slips his foot between his husband’s thighs and carefully grinds it into his cock.
The grip around him tightens. Hua Cheng groans and closes his legs around his foot to use as a sweet bit of friction. His mouth falls open and he pulls back just enough to be seen.
The first clear look at his husband’s face has Xie Lian biting his tongue. He’s an animal, a predator, stained from the cheeks down with a fresh kill. He smears a palm over Xie Lian’s thigh, ending at the knee.
“Your Highness,” he breathes, and he looks back up. There’s an uncontrolled flame flickering in his eye that had been lit with the order to devour. “That the very same blood that anointed me could now ignite this kind of fervour feels only too poetic.”
Whether his words are metaphorical or literal, they strike a deeply personal chord and Xie Lian is driven to cup his husband’s cheek. The blood is still warm between his fingers.
“And so? Is your fervour an act of prayer?”
Hua Cheng shudders and turns to kiss Xie Lian’s palm. “Every second of it.”
This is the beginning of the unconventional euphoria, he can tell. His body is still very human, and the adrenaline is already working its way out of his system in place of weakened bliss. But where a human would die, Xie Lian will, at most, fall unconscious for a few minutes.
“Then pray,” he breathes, feeling rosy.
Hua Cheng never needs to be asked twice. He bows his head and drinks like it’s a sacred responsibility, both palms slicked with red. He licks from the bite wound up between Xie Lian’s legs then kisses the side of his length. Xie Lian nearly cries. He runs a thumb down the length of Xie Lian’s cock like he’s absently fondling a trinket, then wraps his hand around the base. The blood-slicked fist works so carefully up his length; he’s taking his work one second at a time to commit it to memory.
Xie Lian falls back on his elbows and moans in a struggle for words. Hua Cheng pumps his cock so tenderly and wholly, lighting every point of pleasure. The blood smeared up his length would be alarming were it not for the primal treasure map of handprints that lead it there. Precome beads through the blood, insistent on making a show of his arousal.
Hua Cheng leads him to his mouth and presses the head to his tongue while he continues to stroke.
“Don’t come yet,” he murmurs, slurring around the tip of his cock.
“I want to,” Xie Lian gasps.
“I know, gege.” Hua Cheng’s voice is soothing, and directly contradicts his actions when he takes Xie Lian into his mouth.
He can’t hold back the hissed string of mindless pleas, not when the pleasure between his legs is so greatly supplementing the starry fog in his head.
It’s different from how Hua Cheng usually goes down on him—there’s more tongue, to an almost messy degree. Cleaning him of his own blood seems to rank high in his priorities. The lips wrapped around him are red-stained and eager, tight, too tight, around his cock.
“I can’t,” Xie Lian chokes. “San Lang, I need to—!”
With practiced precision, Hua Cheng circles the base of his cock and pulls away, still gently lapping at the head.
He reigns in a wrecked sob, yanking at the blood-spattered sheets.
His husband waits patiently between his legs until his insistent, frustrating burst of ecstasy subsides and his breathing evens out.
Then his hand slowly releases. And traces down between his cheeks, following a path his blood has already forged.
“Mm, is my San Lang going to— oh!”
Xie Lian is loose enough from this morning to take two fingers, but he doesn’t expect them to slip in so easily, slicked only with his blood. A slippery mewl is punched from his chest, burning his cheeks, and he tilts his hips for Hua Cheng to slide deeper.
His fingers twist around, casually stretching him, and his mouth returns to the bite wound. The flow of blood is sluggish now, but he runs his tongue along the puncture marks with just as much reverence. If anything, it’s more erotic the slower and deeper his motions are.
He closes his lips over the marks to suck as he squeezes in a third finger and Xie Lian’s hips jerk, bouncing his cock against his stomach.
“Hurry, San Lang,” he begs. “Inside me.”
A wet sound comes when Hua Cheng pulls back with parted lips and looks up at him.
“I know I can take you,” he whimpers, bearing down on the fingers to fuck himself deeper.
“I know you can too.” His lips skim the innermost part of Xie Lian’s thigh. He doesn’t raise a disagreement, though.
Perhaps he’s calculating how much blood Xie Lian has lost already.
Hua Cheng sits up and pulls him up with him, right into his lap.
He gets a good look at the sheets beneath them and his breath hitches. A pool, edged with uneven spatters and occasional speckles of the deepest crimson, spreads out from between his legs.
While he’s eyeing the mess, Hua Cheng begins kissing his cheek and ear. His hands press into the small of Xie Lian’s back and nudge him forward until he can feel the head of his husband’s cock between his cheeks.
He turns back around and pulls Hua Cheng into an enthusiastic kiss. His mind is pleasantly numbed and twinkling softly and he wants to be folded into his husband entirely. The tang of blood masks everything else Hua Cheng ever tastes of, but Xie Lian can’t pull his mind far enough away to mourn the loss. He feels his own blood transferred to his lips, his chin, and groans, rolling his hips as encouragement.
“Get in,” he breathes, before sucking on Hua Cheng’s lip.
Xie Lian hisses when one palm runs up his injured thigh. It breaks into a moan, though, when that hand falls back to Hua Cheng’s cock, slicking himself with the accumulated blood. He leads Xie Lian by the hip, probably for the best since his legs are beginning to quiver.
Bit by bit he takes his length—partially eager and impatient to be fucked, partially unable to hold himself up from the intense numbness rippling outwards. It’s so uniquely satisfying, to be both floating and weighted in his husband’s arms.
When he’s fully seated, Xie Lian murmurs little moans into Hua Cheng’s jaw. He lifts up on shaky legs and falls back down, turning all his attention to this. He manages to bounce up and down until he’s set a jerky pace. His cock slaps Hua Cheng’s abdomen with every dip, punctuating the way he’s messily riding him.
Hua Cheng huffs and helps him along, sitting back just a touch to watch Xie Lian bounce in his lap, painted with dried and drying handprints.
“Would His Highness permit another bite?” he murmurs. “For a poor gluttonous ghost to indulge in you one more time?”
Xie Lian is already so deeply lost to the pleasure of being filled, but he gasps and shudders at the thought of being drained. Their gazes meet with fire and want between them.
They seem to hone in on the same spot—Xie Lian brushes his hair behind his shoulder and Hua Cheng dips to kiss his throat. Every artery seems to thrum with life in the moments preceding. This is the last effort a human’s body would surge with before succumbing, but for Xie Lian, it’s the peak of the high.
His eyes cross slightly as Hua Cheng’s fangs pierce his skin.
The healthy gush of blood is immediate and violent, spilling out across his shoulder and rushing sweet onto Hua Cheng’s tongue. Unable to manage the desperate cry of pleasure he feels, Xie Lian coos weakly and rocks forward in his husband’s lap. That subtle shift nudges his prostate and Xie Lian hiccups, jolting. He can feel the unnerving rain of blood onto his shoulder, where it then streams down his chest. And not only his chest.
Hua Cheng, for all his power and status in the ghost realm, and notoriety as a ghost, has always seemed so deeply human. Of course Xie Lian knows he is human, in all but breath and blood, but after getting to know a great many ghosts outside the walls of Paradise Manor, he would be willing to avow that his husband’s humanity is above any other ghost’s. A more concrete, powerful earthly tie, perhaps, is to blame.
But now, streaked with blood and radiating hunger, he looks every part the ghost king children must picture in their heads. Dripping the crimson of his namesake and caressing his flower.
He’s gorgeous.
He runs his tongue hard over the bite, stuttering the flow, then continues all the way up Xie Lian’s neck to his cheek.
“So fucking sweet,” he growls, nipping Xie Lian’s earlobe.
Xie Lian just breathes, shuddery and raw and desperate. The high is nearing the point of overwhelming and all his impulses are sitting just below the surface.
Hua Cheng lets his tongue loll so the more forceful spurts paint it with layer upon layer of red. He swallows gratefully and runs his nose along Xie Lian’s cheekbone.
The hands on Hua Cheng’s shoulders creep up his neck towards his face. Xie Lian slides a thumb through the blood on his chin, up to his lips, then forces it into his mouth and strokes his fang. The other hand cups the back of his neck for a bit of leverage to continue riding him with. He sinks so far onto his cock— it almost feels deeper when he’s running on his body’s last reserves of energy.
Hua Cheng sucks on his thumb until it eventually slips from his mouth. Xie Lian’s lungs seem to shudder. He’s already lost enough blood that a human would be dead twice over. His head is swimming, as is his vision. Everything is lagging, and his brain seems to slur even his own thoughts. He’s glowing with the ecstasy of it.
“San Lang,” he whimpers, “I’m… mm, sleepy. Need you to do it, ah.”
“To keep fucking you?”
“Please, please.”
“Make you come nice and hard?”
Xie Lian is buzzing, hot and cold, and everything his husband says just ramps the sweetness up. He sniffs and, dragging a sluggish hand over the bite, falls hard into his arms.
Hua Cheng hoists both arms around his neck and Xie Lian manages to keep them there, tucking his face into his shoulder. Then he feels himself flipped nearly upside down—no, onto his back—and Hua Cheng starts pounding into him.
Xie Lian wails, finding a bit of misplaced strength to cling to him with. His feet kick up and hook around his back as he’s fucked harder into the mattress.
Blood spills across their pillows and Hua Cheng dips to drink from him. He presses Xie Lian down, chest to chest, and latches sloppily while he continues to drive into him.
Xie Lian is well past pain by now, wrapped only in a hazy blanket of pleasure, distant and immediate at the same time. His husband, nearest of all, is the constant, the anchor—he gives him everything he could need.
Hua Cheng’s mouth begins to grow lazy as his thrusts speed up, and that’s when he finally takes Xie Lian in hand, jerking him off to the same desperate pace he’s being fucked at.
His moans are like chimes, more delicate than they would otherwise be on the brink of orgasm. “Nn—I’m, come—c-coming—”
His climax is a different kind of bliss entirely. He whimpers as he’s swept up into a full-body release, and Hua Cheng slows his strokes to drag nice, long shudders from him. His come is washed out completely by the curtain of blood still flowing from his neck, but Hua Cheng runs his fingers through it anyway.
His lips and tongue are already thoroughly dyed so it makes no difference when he lifts them to his mouth, but Xie Lian, on his way down, heaves a moan at the sight.
Hua Cheng’s moan overpowers his, and he comes just a moment later, spilling inside. His eye darts back and forth across Xie Lian’s face, which is already turning up in a mindless, sleepy grin.
“Thas— nn, my San Lang always give—gives me so much, ah. So pr-pretty.”
Hua Cheng presses their foreheads together and draws his hips to a standstill. “Beautiful, Your Highness,” he breathes. “You’re a god among gods.”
Xie Lian’s eyelids flutter. He wants to say a lot to him. Thank you, namely. For the risk, the vulnerability, and so on. But his head is hardly comprehending the world around him, and his body is thrumming with a new shot of raw spiritual energy.
So instead, what he says is, “Mm, sleep now for… few days. Sorry, San Lang… ‘S messy.”
Hua Cheng chuckles and hushes him. “Gege, can I clean you while you’re sleeping?”
Xie Lian murmurs his wish for him to do just that, leaning into the hand caressing his cheek. After a moment, he takes that hand by the wrist and places it over his heart. It’s a little weak, given, but still plays the steady double beat of a living person.
Just in case he needs the reassurance.
Hua Cheng pauses, then smiles and kisses his nose, lingering there.
“Sleep well, my beloved.”