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For the past year, a monster has taken an interest in Song Lan. It isn’t like any of the yaoguai Song Lan has encountered before. It hasn’t drowned children in damp back-alleys nor stolen the breaths of virile men at night. Nor has it swept through the streets early in the morning, mimicking an infant’s cry and playing tricks on samaritans.
This yaoguai is different. Song Lan first encountered it six months ago, back when it was still warm, when he could smell Xingchen’s sweat before catching him. It’d been summer: hot and deep and full, the smell of jasmine chasing them in the evenings. Xinghchen had been silver-limned. One hand clutched at the doorway. He’d just returned—something about a late-night painting session. For the past year he’d been commissioned by a rich family ( The Jins, Song Lan. Have you heard of them? ) to paint their portraits and the deadline had just been extended. Before that, it’d been a tense few weeks. Jin Guangyao kept making requests, and the family patriarch, Jin Guangshan, didn’t seem pleased with Xingchen’s progress. Song Lan hadn’t known how to make it better. He didn’t have an artistic bone in his body.
That night, Xingchen had looked relieved, though sick. Song Lan remembers because Xingchen was rarely ill. But when he approached, Song Lan could feel very clearly the clamminess wafting over him like a shroud. And the smell too: Xingchen smelled not quite like turpentines or oils but rather—he’d smelled like an atmosphere. Like an elevator in disrepair or a shadow cupped away, like the inside of a pocket or an empty, darkened room behind a door.
“Are you ok?” Song Lan asked.
“I’m fine.”
Leaning in, Xingchen nuzzled him. His armpits were damp. His chin dug into the soft flesh underneath Song Lan’s clavicle. “I’m fine,” Xingchen said again. And then he looked up and his eyes were wide and black and depthless. A tongue found Song Lan’s nipple and swirled, and although it was hot—although the sensation went straight to Song Lan’s cock—it felt wrong. The tongue was lukewarm. And the mouth around it was in a shape Song Lan hadn’t seen before.
“Xingchen?”
“Mmm?”
“Xingchen—” Song Lan scrambled back. The drop-shadow underneath Xingchen’s mouth wiggled and then spread forth, an entire sinuous line of gray. When Xingchen spoke, his voice rang hollow.
“Don’t you like this?”
Before Song Lan could say anything—before he could shake the yaoguai out of Xingchen’s body—before he could scream—the darkness skittered away and Xingchen’s eyes fluttered shut.
Nice to meet you, gorgeous.
At first he thought he was dreaming. For several weeks, Song Lan kept his eyes peeled, watching Xingchen closely and hoping that Xingchen didn’t remember anything of his brief possession. It didn’t make sense—that was the thought that kept bothering Song Lan. They’d been leading unassuming lives for years: Xiao Xingchen, the errant do-gooder-turned-artist. Song Lan, the monster-killer-turned-handyman. They didn’t have much money. They didn’t partake in excess. Song Lan didn’t even drink. And everyone they knew had either started new lives or relocated to lead better ones.
The yaoguai didn’t seem to care. Inexplicably, it seemed to take pleasure in surprising Song Lan. Song Lan would be replacing a kitchen sink and an inky darkness would stare up at him from the faucet. Or he’d be running an errand—buying toilet paper or palette knives—lately Xingchen kept breaking his palette knives or running out of paint thinner—and the cashiers before him would look back with vacant stares, the whites of their eyes filling up with black.
Song Lan felt like he was going insane. It wasn’t even as if the yaoguai was feeding off his energy. Every guidebook he found—every self-proclaimed yaoguai expert he consulted—offered only a single stock solution for repelling a yaoguai: to lead a more orderly life. To repress one’s passions and practice restraint. Nowadays, yaoguai were rare, they all added. Song Lan must have done something to attract such a creature.
“I know what’s happening,” Xingchen says one night. They’re lying in bed together with the heat cranked up to an abominable temperature. Xingchen’s toes are still clammy—Song Lan can feel them even through the blankets walled up between their feet.
Song Lan turns around. “What?”
“Watch.”
Xingchen slips a hand beneath the blanket barrier and into Song Lan’s robes. Song Lan flinches.
“I’m sorry,” he says automatically. They haven’t fucked ever since—ever since that night—though not for lack of trying. Song Lan swallows. He’s forcing himself to stay still, to resist the urge to reach out and touch Xingchen, to run his tongue along the silver bar of Xingchen’s throat.
Xingchen huffs. “The yaoguai.”
“The yaoguai?”
“You’ve done a good job pretending. But I know. That night—when I came home late. It was the last time we kissed. I felt something—” Xingchen withdraws his hand to rub at a spot underneath his Adam’s apple. He coughs delicately. “I felt something else. Something between us, spreading from my body to yours. I’ve been doing some reading but I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure.” He pauses. And then: “It’s a yaoguai, isn’t it?”
Song Lan swallows again. “What if it is?”
“Then we can’t do anything about it,” Xingchen says firmly. “It isn’t feeding off your life force or mine. It isn’t creating chaos in the world. It’s probably old. Maybe it used to be a darker, more brutal monster. But this—it feels familiar, don’t you think?” Xingchen shifts close until their foreheads are nearly touching. “Is it worth it to repress your desires like this? And for what?”
“What—It’s a yaoguai , Xingchen. This sort of thing is dangerous.” It sounds real when Song Lan says it out loud and all of a sudden, the air in the room seizes up somehow, grows cold and metallic. Song Lan shudders. It’s as if he’s in a bad dream. When he looks at Xingchen, he doesn’t see any telltale signs—no yaoguai, just patient eyes and a forehead sprawled with moonlight.
“Zichen,” Xingchen says carefully, “It hasn’t hurt us so far.”
“But it could still hurt you.”
“I’m not defenseless,” Xingchen says sharply. “And it’s my choice, too. Is my safety worth your—worth this ?”
It is , Song Lan thinks. What Xingchen is proposing is reckless. They don’t know what the yaoguai wants from them. For all they know, they’re walking right into its plan.
When Xingchen reaches out again, Song Lan doesn’t move. He lengthens each exhale, feigning sleep, hating himself each minute he stays awake. But eventually, sleep takes over.
The next morning, Song Lan wakes up with a headache that makes his face feel twice its size. Xingchen is already gone. Studio , is the single-word text message he receives when he checks his phone. Xingchen must still be annoyed. Song Lan could put a fist through the wall. Doesn’t.
He doesn’t have any clients today. What would have been a bathroom replacement job ends up being canceled, and so he spends the morning pacing. He doesn’t want to be selfish. He doesn’t want to put Xingchen at risk.
When they were young—when Song Lan had spent a few years tracking down yaoguai and spirits and all sorts of monsters—he’d thought himself invincible. He thought he had something to prove, as if the stuff running through his veins wasn’t just blood but rather a history or a calling. There’d been the ghost that wore a child’s face and the women who turned into foxes. But as the cities rashed themselves across woodland and desert, the yaoguai retreated. Some disappeared entirely. Song Lan was forced to find another job.
By lunchtime, Song Lan’s head doesn’t get any better. If anything, the pressure in his sinuses have grown. Song Lan stretches. Makes himself tea and drinks it too quickly without caring, just to have something to distract from the headache. When that doesn’t last, he makes his way to the closest pharmacy.
Outside, the world is festive, kaleidoscopic. Each skyscraper is a reminder that the world isn’t built for people like him—not anymore. One billboard features an ad for insurance; the doctor’s name is printed in bright yellow, blocky letters. The name is familiar, and then Song Lan places it: a Jin Group subsidiary. Nearby, screens dazzle through the smoke and the snappy cold.
A few blocks from the city center, someone jostles Song Lan lightly: a shorter man, his hair pulled back in a haphazard knot. He’s not dressed for the weather: his arms are exposed, looking like twin swords themselves, pale and bright.
“The fuck you looking at?” the man mutters, shooting Song Lan a dark look. He raises his hands as if readying himself for a fight.
Song Lan grunts. No , he thinks.
He walks on. Storefronts beam out in shades of red and green the closer he approaches the city hall. Here, the streets steam from the boots of a hundred, a thousand shoppers, their noses pink and their eyes trained on the phones in their hands. The entire scene is so busy—is so full of people and strangers and chaos—that Song Lan’s skin prickles with discomfort.
All this land—the sidewalks and their white lettering, the skybridges, the bright metro signs—-all these buildings, from the corner mart to the makeup stall to the thirty-story accounting firm—all of this was once feral. It was once alive, free of metal and Jin gold. Song Lan still remembers it—a wispy half-memory. A swamp. Toads in the summertime. It wasn’t ever truly quiet—something was always buzzing, always alive—but the white noise had been comforting. Like the catch part of a catch-and-release, the feeling of being held close to the breast of something greater: a swell of pure, vivid life.
Behind Song Lan, a scuffle pitches him forward. A car honks, swerving to avoid taking off a limb. Song Lan turns around. Spots the commotion. The man from before is picking a fight with a larger man, who swings out a fist in a wild arc.
Song Lan turns away before his blood has a chance to heat up. Order, he thinks to himself. Order.
When he comes upon the pharmacy, Song Lan sighs in relief.
“Name?”
“Song Lan.”
“Write it out please. Yes, on the screen. There we go. Date of birth?”
“This isn’t a prescription. You shouldn’t need my information.”
“It’s a new protocol. Store policy. What’s your insurance? I can look it up.”
“I don’t have insurance.”
“Look, I’m just trying to do my job. If you can’t tell me anything other than your name—”
The cashier’s voice tilts up and then down. Belatedly, Song Lan feels a single note wriggling along his wrists, his elbows, his hips. His eyes snap up from where he’d been training them along a pack of cigarettes ( Zichen, you promised you’d quit smoking ), and before him the cashier chokes, coughing once, twice, three times before his expression smooths. When he looks up, his pupils are blown, the whites of his eyes filling up with gray.
Song Lan. Look at you. So pretty.
Song Lan freezes. His hand goes to a spot by his hip but he doesn’t have his sword—had given up Fuxue years and years ago—he doesn’t have a weapon, only has his fists and the blood coursing through his veins. He staggers back.
All that muscle. Why don’t you like me?
The cashier’s mouth opens. No sound comes out. But before the yaoguai can speak again, the man slumps forward and Song Lan takes off, not waiting to see what happens, no longer caring to hold the monster’s interest.
It knows his name now.
Song Lan shivers. Song Lan. The yaoguai had said his name with such deliberative care. No. It’d felt—it felt as if it had already known, as if it had been waiting for Song Lan all along. But why? And what does it mean, that the yaoguai has his name? Song Lan has heard stories of people losing their will—of people ceding control of their bodies—upon having their names stolen or borrowed or lost—once giving out their names.
Song Lan’s breath puffs out in staccato bursts. His lungs feel like they’re being squeezed and pulped at the same time. He stumbles as he reaches the crosswalk, and when he looks down, he sees the surly man from before, the one who’d been dressed in black. He’s stirring, rubbing at a fresh bruise. His lips are pale, nearly blue. He blinks up at Song Lan, and the look they share feels so intimate—so delicate—so familiar—
The light changes, and Song Lan lets the crowd pull him away, back into the tide of anonymity. He hurries back home.
“He could be lonely,” Xingchen says, pulling at the duvet.
“You think the yaoguai wants to be friends?”
Xiao Xingchen huffs. “You’re always so quick to assume the worst.” There’s a stubborn smudge of paint along his jaw, a shade of pink that could almost be mistaken for a flush. Song Lan thumbs at it, then reaches for a face cloth to dab it away.
“It’s a yaoguai, Xingchen.”
“Is being a yaoguai his fault though? He can’t help it. If you’re right—if he’s been following us so far—he’s had his chances to put us in harm’s way, and he hasn’t taken them. That has to count for something.”
“ It. ”
“Zichen…”
“Fine. What makes you think he likes us?”
Xingchen flushes. “It’s just a feeling I have.” He licks his lips. They’re in bed. Song Lan is fully dressed; Xingchen is naked. Song Lan allows himself to want Xingchen for just a moment—
“—And anyways, would it be so bad to befriend a yaoguai? Maybe we can reform it. There are so few of them nowadays, I’m surprised this one hasn’t been chased away.” Xingchen uncaps something sticky and smears it along his cheeks. It makes him look dewy. The heat is set at a ridiculous temperature again. He feels himself sweating.
“I worry about you,” he says, his thoughts jumbling. “Are you so lonely that you want to befriend a yaoguai?”
A sigh. Xingchen shifts and rests his arms primly along the blanket. They’re a handspan away from touching. Song Lan clenches his jaw. Touching Xingchen—touching him would mean unbelting a part of himself that would worship at Xingchen’s feet all day, that would crawl through mud, would swallow whole swords.
“I know you love me, Zichen.” Xingchen’s voice slices through the quiet as his fingers bridge the distance, tracing the swell of a bicep. “It isn’t that you aren’t enough. Or that what we have isn’t enough. But I’d like to see—I’d like to see you indulge yourself too. You’re always so careful with me. And I’d like it if you couldn’t help yourself. If someone pushed you—”
The hand travels down, along each rib, until it sits at Song Lan’s hip. He inhales sharply, channeling all his energy into keeping his cock soft. Fuck , he thinks.
“Pushed me how?” he manages to say aloud, and that’s when he knows Xingchen has won—that by asking how rather than why , he’s already accepted Xingchen’s desire, has already adopted it as his own.
“Pushed you in the right direction,” Xingchen finally says. “Maybe he’ll help me—maybe he’ll help the both of us.” Xingchen smiles, each tooth a star. He could be a deity , Song Lan thinks, trying to bury the urge to grovel.
In Song Lan’s dream, Xingchen is being fucked by the yaoguai.
They’re in a plain room. No bed, just a chair. Xingchen has his legs splayed out, knees knocked open. The monster is fucking him from behind with limbs that don’t look like anything Song Lan has ever seen before. The yaoguai’s body billows out like a net of hair. One moment it has no shape at all—a black-black donut, a hole, an amorphous stain against the white room. The next moment, it’s grown a dozen arms, each slick and black and corded. The appendage that’s fucking Xingchen— it’s cock, Song Lan realizes with a jolt—runs thick as an arm. It pulses with promise. As Xingchen’s hips lift up, Song Lan can make out the barest outline of a tip: something flared and flowered, like a chrysanthemum in bloom. Every once in a while, it bulges at the base before rippling up into Xingchen.
“Fuck,” Xingchen hiccups. He’s panting. His belly bows outwards, as if he were actually—
Song Lan dismisses the idea. He feels woozy. Xingchen’s cock has always made him feel as if the floor has been stolen from beneath his feet. He stares at it, unable to look away. It’s pink. Pretty. Its the same cock that Song Lan has seen for years yet somehow it inspires a certain hesitance—the fear that, if Song Lan were to give into his desires, he wouldn’t be able to stop.
“Zichen.”
Song Lan’s eyes snap back up. There’s a black mass along Xingchen’s mouth. It isn’t a hand but it isn’t not-a-hand. Xingchen trembles into the hold, and somewhere in Song Lan’s hindbrain he knows that the voice is in his head, that this is what Xingchen wants —that Xingchen wants more of this—that the worst thing that could happen now is if it were to stop.
The not-hand drips. The darkness spills, pooling down Xingchen’s chest, an obscene tapping, like fingers slicked with cum. By now Xingchen’s legs are parted so widely that Song Lan can see everything—can see the moment that the yaoguai circles a separate—another hand— around Xingchen’s cock, encasing it in a tangle of ink. The air sizzles.
“Xingchen,” Song Lan breathes.
It’s a shame, Zichen. Look at him. You’ve left him untouched for so long.
There’s a moment where nothing happens, where the world falls away and the only thing Song Lan knows is the pitch of Xingchen’s keening—slow, steady, pitched too high for any human throat.
The darkness recedes. Pulses. And then—
“ Zichen. ”
A fine finger of darkness swirls up around Xingchen’s cock and burrows in. Almost immediately Xingchen screams as his cock swells, engorged from the inside-out.
If you’re not going to fuck Xingchen, I’ll just do it for you.
The darkness pumps—once, twice, three times—as Xingchen’s thighs quake. He’s so hard—so flushed—Song Lan has seen him like this maybe only once, maybe just the first time they fucked, when Xingchen had been desperate for it—for a touch—for—
“— anything, please please please —” Xingchen is babbling. His cock bobs from the heft of the yaoguai inside of him. Song Lan should stride over. Fight.
He tries to get up, tries to stumble up, but finds himself immobile.
“Fuck—”
When he looks down, he realizes he’s being held back by his ankles. Sticky black veins root him to the floor. He blinks. There’s something wrong. His cock—his cock isn’t there. Where it would have once stood, stout and thick and angry—is instead a strange emptiness—a shadow that stretches from thigh to belly. When Song Lan shifts his hips, trying to understand—to comprehend the change in his—in his—
His insides thrum as something slithering tongues up, sucking at his chest.
You taste like a bruise.
Song Lan heaves. Bucks up to throw off the shadow but the motion only allows the darkness—the yaoguai—to clamp down further. He twists as pleasure begins to bloom from the yaoguai’s touch. It’s incomprehensible. It’s—
Dully, a part of him realizes that he’s now hollow between his legs. Yes. That’s it. His cock has shrunk, has inverted itself. And the darkness between his legs balloons out, an empty tunnel, like a glove seeking a hand.
There you go. I’ll fill you right up.
The yaoguai shifts and from behind it drags a limb slowly-slowly-slowly forward. Song Lan struggles against his restraints—twisting and stretching the thick oppressive darkness—holding him down. But his attempts only seem to solidify the hold.
Fuck, he thinks, fucking yaoguai, fuck—
Xue Yang, please , a voice in his brain thrums.
Song Lan gasps. Xue Yang— Xue Yang touches the flutter of Song Lan’s not-cock, brushes it almost politely, and Xingchen cries out, darkness shooting from his own flushed cock. It’s like they’re being joined, being fucked by a single continuous line, and the yaoguai beams into their brains, shuddering pleasure through each nerve, through each vein, each reserve of qi, each pinprick pressure-point—
Song Lan wakes up choking. He comes.
They don’t talk about it in the morning. Xingchen is quiet as he floats through the apartment. It’s the last day before his commission is due, and there are a few errands, a few things for him to take care of in the studio. Wordlessly, he heats up congee for the both of them, uses leftover rice and broth they’d thawed the other day. It’s serviceable. Song Lan eats it plain. Xingchen adds chopped spring onions and fried crispy shallots from the can, swirls in sesame oil and a hot chili sauce. He inhales the bowl by the spoonful and then in long gulps. Somehow he still manages to make it look graceful.
They don’t speak, not until Xingchen leaves. As he winds a scarf around his neck, Song Lan is struck by the need to seek out forgiveness.
He catches Xingchen’s wrist in mid-air, careful to keep his hold loose.
“Sorry.”
He doesn’t know why he feels like he needs to give an apology. But the dream was obscene and frightening and hot and they still haven’t agreed on how to approach the yaoguai.
“Let’s talk when I’m home,” Xingchen says simply. He looks at Song Lan with such confidence—with such solemn, loving assurance—that Song Lan can only nod.
When Xingchen returns, he’s glowing. The Jins, apparently, are thrilled with the painting. And they’ve agreed to donate half of Xingchen’s astronomical commission to the charity of his choice.
He’s happy; his lips purse around each word that bubbles from his mouth. He’s dancing around the kitchen. Living with Xingchen, Song Lan is reminded of just how different they are. Who would have thought—someone as plain as Song Lan—all brute strength and little else—would find Xingchen thrilling. Sometimes Song Lan doesn’t think he knows how to appreciate Xingchen fully—thinks himself lacking, thinks himself small against Xingchen’s brightness.
Xingchen tiptoes close. Kisses him along the chin. For once, Song Lan doesn’t wince or step back. The nightmare—the dream— Xue Yang— is still fresh in his head. And he could fuck Xingchen now—he could fuck him now, could turn Xingchen around and bare his ass and plunge his tongue into Xingchen’s hole. He knows Xingchen wants it—he can smell him, can feel the precum dampening the front of his pants. Xingchen rubs himself along Song Lan’s thigh. Sighs.
“ Zichen ,” he says, hot and damp. Song Lan bows his head, sucks in as much air as he can—
“Zichen,” Xingchen says again, and this time he’s the one who steps back, who breaks off the touch. Song Lan looks at him uncomprehendingly.
Xingchen quirks his lips. “I have a plan,” he says. “The yaoguai. I think I know how we can find him.”
According to Xingchen, the yaoguai needs a vessel, a body to inhabit. When the body is asleep or unconscious, the yaoguai can take over.
“So you see,” Xingchen says, turning around in bed, “the yaoguai and its vessel are probably within walking distance. Think about it: if the host doesn’t know he’s being possessed, the yaoguai has to make it back to wherever the person lives in time. Or if they have some sort of deal, then the person is sleeping within a day’s journey.”
Song Lan frowns, sitting up. He hadn’t realized the depth of Xingchen’s interest.
“You keep calling it a ‘he’ and not an ‘it,’” he says slowly. He doesn’t miss Xingchen’s startled blink. There’s something that Xingchen isn’t telling him.
“Xingchen? What is it?”
Xingchen hesitates but soon the rest pours out: he’s been having strange dreams, and in his dreams he speaks with the yaoguai, and the yaoguai is friendly, please, Zichen, just give him a chance.
“He wants to meet us, Zichen. He says it’s fate. That he’s supposed to meet us, that—”
“Have you,” Song Lan says, tamping down his temper, “have you only been talking with him? Or do you do other things in your dreams too?”
Xingchen flushes. “And how would you know?”
Song Lan sighs. He closes the distance between their bodies once more, pulling up the blankets and rocking their hips together. He allows himself one kiss, one kiss before he speaks.
“What if it’s a trick, Xingchen? What if—”
“A trick?” Xingchen shakes his head. “I’m not dumb.” He gives Song Lan a disappointed look, one that unnerves Song Lan more than it should “It’s—he’s real,” Xingchen insists. “He just wants to meet.”
For several minutes Song Lan is silent. And then: “Fine. If you see him in your dreams, set a time and date.”
Xingchen beams.
Sleep doesn’t arrive no matter how still Song Lan holds his body. Frustrated, he pulls out his phone, flipping aimlessly from one app and another, until he toggles onto a few bookmarked channels.
When Xingchen first found out about Song Lan’s guilty pleasure, he’d nearly tackled him from behind. Had laughed—a tinkling sound like champagne against glass—and nipped at Song Lan’s ear.
“I never knew,” he’d said. But then he’d paused, thinking, and added, “I guess it makes sense. You always like figuring out what’s real and what isn’t.”
It’d felt more unkind than Xingchen had probably intended. But Xingchen wasn’t wrong. The videos on Song Lan’s phone are all structured in the same format. A secondhand handbag. A reseller pointing out the flaws. And then the conclusion: fake or real? And if it’s real, then how much is it worth?
Sometimes it bothers Song Lan how much he enjoys the videos. He doesn’t have to be so—so on point. So in-character. He doesn’t even need a handbag. But the videos have a soothing quality. Every bag has its flaws, and every reseller evaluates the flaws, trying to come up with a history and then a price. How much would you pay for a vintage Louis Vuitton Keepall duffel bag? Sure, the leather may be roughened along the seams, its straps may be weather-worn, the inside lining sticky from use—but hey, it’s an older bag, one with a story. Or what about a Gucci from the 60s, its rumpled calf-skin softer than the inside of a wrist?
If only, Song Lan thinks, it were so easy. If only one could simply look at a person and determine his worth. If only he sit back and have someone else look in the mirror and weigh each flaw—his stubbornness, his bluntness, his aversion to touch, his disgust with himself—
And here we have a gold Versace satchel. You can see it’s worn in places—I can spot some general signs of use along the hardware—which is also gold, if I may add. Internally, the bag is in preloved condition, though no stains are visible. The lining has come away from the slip pocket here—do you see—but only in a 5 centimeter strip…
Song Lan presses the phone up close to his eyes. It’s a livestream, though there are few viewers. He isn’t surprised. The voice drones on in a bored monotone, which is what pricks Song Lan’s attention. Usually the resellers are peppy and some level of frozen: either their foreheads Botoxed or their cheeks lifted. But the man in the video is none of those things. His chin is dagger-sharp—too sharp to be healthy. When he holds up the bag his nails are painted soot-black, his cuticles angry. There’s a bruise crawling up one cheek, maybe several days old—
Song Lan startles. Drops his phone. It’s the man from before, the man he’d bumped into the other day. And something tells him—something unerring and sure—he’s surer than he’s ever been—something certain froths up inside of him.
“Xue Yang,” he whispers.
The plan is that they have no plan. Xingchen manages to track down the IP address ( Have you known how to do that all along? A pause. Do you want to know the answer ?), and then they take off from there. Song Lan feels insane for it. But what does he know? It’s a yaoguai. He tries to think of it as an it, rather than as a him .
The yaoguai lives across town, a train and then a bus ride away. Out here, the glow of the city has fallen away. What remains: the skeleton of the old manufacturing center. Empty factories the color of rust and nosebleeds spackle themselves across dark concrete.
For a moment, Xingchen stops after they get off the bus. Takes in the sight.
“Zichen,” he says. His cheeks are pink from the cold. “Kiss me.”
They kiss. They break apart.
“This way,” Xingchen says. He pulls Song Lan away from the bus stop and together they navigate across an empty playground, then an empty parking lot. It begins to snow. Each flake falls fatly from the sky, but Song Lan feels strangely warm. Maybe, he supposes, it’s simply Xingchen’s palm in his.
As they pass an (empty) convenience store and an (empty) gas station, Song Lan catches a flicker of black behind an auto shop.
“There,” he points, and Xingchen nods.
They take off, crisscrossing across several quiet blocks before reaching an alley. And then there’s a whoop.
“Hey!”
The—the yaoguai, Song Lan realizes, is smaller than he remembers. Like before, he isn’t dressed for the weather. A black tank top clings to his skin. His nose is nearly blue. But his eyes are dark—are glittering—are familiar.
“You,” Song Lan breathes, and he strides forward, hand outstretched, and holds the yaoguai by the throat, pressing him against wet brick.
“Fuck! What the fuck!”
“ Zichen! Stop this.”
Xingchen strides up. By now the snow is falling at a faster rate. Song Lan has to blink to see clearly but it’s like blinking away TV static, fuzzy and soft. Xingchen places a palm along Song Lan’s wrist.
“Please,” he says.
Song Lan releases his grip.
The yaoguai splutters. “Who do you think you are? What the fuck ? You could have killed me, you absolute moron, you fucking crazy fuckers—”
Song Lan growls but Xingchen shoots him a warning look. He doesn’t move. Slowly, Xingchen turns to the yaoguai.
“I’ve been dreaming of you,” he says softly.
The yaoguai stills. “Yeah?” The word comes out off-key.
So he knows, Song Lan thinks, and he’s about to reach up and squeeze that throat again, to place his hand around muscle and squeeze because no one should lie to Xingchen—no one should be tricking Xingchen and playing at ignorance—but he’s too slow. Song Lan is too slow to react—too slow to do anything as the yaoguai lunges forward, blade in hand.
In the end, the yaoguai is easily subdued. Xingchen knocks the blade out of its wrist. Song Lan manages to get in a jolting punch along the spleen. The yaoguai grunts from the force. Spits blood. It looks up, eyes glittering, straining against Song Lan’s hand back around his neck.
“You’re lucky,” it hisses. “I’ve been having a shit day. Otherwise you’d both be bleeding out.”
“Xue Yang,” Xingchen says tentatively.
The yaoguai rolls its eyes. It stares at Song Lan instead.
“What is it, Zichen? I’ve done nothing illegal. What do you want from me?”
“You— you —stop haunting us—stop following us—stop appearing in our dreams—”
“Oh, are you dreaming of me?” Xue Yang sneers and waggles his eyebrows. He relaxes into Song Lan’s grip and angles his chin down to suck on a knuckle.
Song Lan flinches.
“ You —”
“Xue Yang!”
“What? I can’t help it—it was too easy!” Xue Yang tosses the hair out of his eyes. Up close, Song Lan can spot the old bruise. But there’s a fresh cut along his temple. And a black, tar-like substance clings to the nape of his neck. Quietly, Xue Yang adds, “And plus, it’s not like I can help it.”
“What do you mean?” Xingchen asks, his voice serious.
Xue Yang shrugs. “The yaoguai in me. We’re—well.” He huffs. “We have an arrangement of sorts. He’s been in me for so long, you’d think he was a ghost or something. But it’s like I’ve been waiting. Or that this was meant to happen.” He looks around. Waves a hand but then winces as his elbow cracks. “I’ve lived here all my life. Been stuck here, really. Unable to leave the perimeter of the city.”
“You mean you haven’t left at all?”
“Yeah, what else would I mean?” Xue Yang grins viciously. “I can only go in. Not out. But earlier this year I started dreaming—” He breaks off. Stares at his boots. “Well. You’ve been in the fucking dreams.”
Xingchen gives him a small smile. “Well,” he says, “in my dream you seemed almost—almost jealous .” Xue Yang immediately looks up, pupils blown.
“Xingchen,” Song Lan says, confused.
A light laugh. “Don’t worry, Zichen.” Xingchen steps towards Xue Yang, who suddenly looks vulnerable, out of his depth. “You want what we have, don’t you?” Xingchen says. “It’s why you’ve been watching. I—I can’t explain it, but I feel like I know you from somewhere—maybe in a past life or another time, long, long ago. But we have unfinished history, don’t we?”
Xue Yang gulps. Xingchen ghosts a breath over his face.
“You can have it if you want, Xue Yang. Zichen and I won’t bite.” Xingchen throws Song Lan an affectionate glance. “See? He isn’t saying no.”
Something—something unknots in the air. Xue Yang slumps, goes boneless in Song Lan’s palm. The space between their bodies shimmers.
Do you want this?
The voice comes not from Xue Yang’s mouth but rather from inside Song Lan’s head. Xue Yang chuckles and a familiar tendril, thin and dark as Xue Yang’s hair, creeps its way around Song Lans wrist, linking them together before looping up towards Song Lan’s mouth.
Here, open up. Now suck.
In the distance, a train croons.
They tumble together, Xue Yang hitting the snow first. Already he’s shifted—transformed. The bottom half of his body is all dark, a writhing mess of muscle and frenetic yaoguai energy. A snaking swirl of black loops around Song Lan’s pants, tugs, and—
The grip around his cock is hot and wet and steaming. Song Lan gasps—gags—gasps again into the air. There is no kissing. Xue Yang is just staring back at him, lips peeled away, tongue forking forward, the tip darkening in a promise of pleasure.
“Fuck,” Song Lan says. He’s hard. He wants it—knows he wants it—but it’s wrong. He knows. How long has it been since a yaoguai has tried to—tried to seduce him? Never, really. But this defies all logic. Why does it want him when Xingchen is right next to him? But then Xingchen lets out a tiny cry, breathy and glass-thin, and Song Lan knows with a cement-heavy certainty that Xingchen is getting the same treatment—that parts of Xue Yang are making their way around Xingchen as well.
For a while, they’re simply a tangle of limbs. But the snow is heavy—is a curtain that threatens to pummel them in, to freeze them, to negate the heat that’s flaring up from between Song Lan’s thighs. He recalls his dream now, vividly—clearly. He imagines the hole in between his legs, nearly chokes at the memory, the disorienting emptiness. He doesn’t want to be hard right now. He wants to be small, to be soft. He wants this thing—this yaoguai—he wants Xue Yang— to leave, to leave him alone to jerk off alone, to beat himself off till he’s soft-soft-soft, till he’s wilted. But his body rebels. He does want. He wants it again—he wants a repeat of whatever it—whatever Xue Yang— did in Song Lan’s dreams.
“I—” he starts, but Xue Yang laughs—an ugly, crackling, liberating sound—and when he stops, the snow stops, the cold stops, the wind that scissors through their clothes stops.
Song Lan blinks as the landscape around them falls away. There hadn’t been an artifact—there hadn’t been an array. But somehow they’re in bed, back in the stuffy apartment with the heat set at a thousand degrees. Xingchen is giggling softly beside him. Already his mouth is stuffed with a liquid shape, and his throat—normally slender and pretty—is thick, pulsing. It’s like he’s being pumped full, as if he’s being impregnated from the inside-out. And as if sensing Song Lan’s wants—his fucked up thoughts, his inwards desires—his cock is obedient: soft from the cold and the change and the snow, from the heat and the confusion.
He wants, Song Lan realizes again, he fully wants this yaoguai: he wants it in him, wants Xue Yang around him when he’s soft like this. Wants to come while he’s soft—wants it forced out of him, milked like an animal. And Xue Yang is so close in his ear, is stuttering and muttering and whining quietly. Just take it , he says over and over again.
The pleasure builds. Song Lan doesn’t know—is too afraid to look down—to see if his cock is still there or if it’s in miniature or if it’s been swallowed, gone, ghosted and fallen away. All he knows is the sensation of being swallowed wholly. At some point two thick ropes spill out from Xue Yang’s back and hold him in place, forcing his head down. He stares at the darkness between his legs, at the way it pools up around his cock. Somewhere, Xingchen is gasping.
Watch .
Song Lan’s cock twitches. From the darkness, a hair-like strand sprouts outwards and inches into the hole. The sensation isn’t one of a thickening but rather of a spilling inwards. Song Lan groans as his cock grows in weight. It leans to the side, pliant, like something not truly his. Xue Yang hums in tune, and so too does the finger of ink, and when he realizes what’s happened—when he realizes how soft he’s become and yet how he’s still on edge—his breath seizes up—
Relax.
Xue Yang’s voice is no longer taunting, and Song Lan tries—fails—to buck his hips up, to fuck the air, to fuck the space between his cock and Xue Yang’s black-webbed chest and Xingchen’s breathy pants—and when he comes he’s soft and he’s watching, watching as his cock twitches violently before it leaks, like a fruit being juiced, his cock small and tiny and helpless ( I can make it even smaller, Xue Yang’s voice reverberates, amused). He twitches again. Once, twice. And then the darkness streams out of his cock, and in a slow-rolling wave, blankets it. Turns it into—
My little hole .
The next orgasm Song Lan has rocks him. Unmoors him. He can hardly feel Xingchen beside him, but a part of him knows that Xingchen too is coming, that they’re both holes, both pliant and wet and waiting—waiting for Xue Yang, waiting to come.
Xue Yang isn’t there when Song Lan wakes up, but a stickiness in his guts has him immediately grasping his belly.
“Fucking yaoguai,” he mutters.
Fuck you too, a familiar voice echoes between Song Lan’s ears.
He blinks his eyes open. Watches in awe as Xingchen looks back. In the morning light he looks serene, sated.
“Manners, Xue Yang,” Xingchen whispers. He presses a kiss to Song Lan’s bicep. Traces—as if everything were normal—as if this were simply an everyday occurrence—the slowly hardening pebble of Song Lan’s nipple.
There’s a laugh inside Song Lan’s skull.
I’ll see you two tonight
Xingchen blushes. He peers into Song Lan’s eyes, bringing their foreheads close.
“Are you in?” he murmurs.
Song Lan rolls his eyes. He feels loose. Unshackled. It’s like there’s something inside him that’s been completed, though he’d never admit it.
He nods. He knows that doing so—that doing this again—will lead to trouble. There’ll be consequences to what they do. If they were able to find Xue Yang so easily, who’s to say someone else—someone with worse intentions—might also find Xue Yang, might use him for less than honorable purposes? Song Lan recalls the picture of Xue Yang—how he’d looked so delicate—so furious—on the street, in the middle of the city, his body the only splash of black against a kaleidoscope of color.
Fucking Xue Yang again will have consequences. Song Lan knows this. He knows that Xingchen knows this.
And yet—
There’s also the sense of unresolved history. The promise of something to fill their days—something other than errands and errant pipes. The fucking.
Song Lan nods again.
“I’m in.”
