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On the first day Xue Yang starts to weep.
Not literally of course, he would never be so unguarded, even if he were still capable of it. But every hole in his body starts to leak until the bedsheets are dripping with it.
Song Lan is fascinated by it. He laps at the sheets, at Xue Yang’s chest, he scoops up the excess from his cheeks and lets it drip into his mouth.
Xiao Xingchen is less enthusiastic. The taste burns on his gums and sticks to the back of his throat when he tries to kiss it out of Xue Yang’s mouth. Instead he combs his fingers through his matted hair and presses his affection into his scalp. Though, as he fucks into the ruined hole between Xue Yang’s legs, he must admit it is a more effective lubricant than blood.
The sweet smell of peaches surrounds Xiao Xingchen as he embraces Xue Yang. This is what has ruined him. It drowns out his horror like sugar water suffocates the fruit fly. It is salvation and destruction all at once.
The liquid around Xue Yang’s entrance bubbles as Xiao Xingchen pulls out. One long translucent string clings to his cock like a needy lover.
Xiao Xingchen laughs and pats Xue Yang’s mottled thighs. Even in death he is too sweet to them.
Immediately Song Lan replaces him on top of Xue Yang latching his mouth onto his nipple like he was starving. Xiao Xingchen watches the skin shift and stretch like dough under Song Lan’s assault. When he slides in he bites down in ecstasy, a moment away from ripping it right off.
Xiao Xingchen places a firm palm on Song Lan’s forehead and pushes him back. Song Lan’s mouth makes a wet plop, as it’s plucked from the abused nipple.
Song Lan looks at him with wild eyes, untethered as he cries out and pushes against Xiao Xingchen’s hand, too hungry to stay empty. Xiao Xingchen thumbs the sweat off his brow and runs his fingers down to cradle Song Lan’s jaw. Slowly, making sure Song Lan is caught in the motion, he takes his hand and places it above his own nipple.
“Gentle,” he reminds Song Lan, rolling it between sweat soaked fingers.
Xiao Xingchen laughs as Song Lan disregards his words and latches on, biting and licking and worrying Xingchen’s tits as he fucks into Xue Yang with a vengeance. The first brush of wet heat is so thrilling it takes minutes to come back to himself. When he does it is with a hazy awareness, blunted by the pleasure radiating through him. He threads his hand through Xue Yang’s, and takes his own advice, squeezing the stiff fingers lightly enough that they don’t bend, but tight enough to have something to hold onto.
As he uses his other hand to press Song Lan more firmly into his chest, he catches Xue Yang’s clouding eyes and grins.
He hadn’t known he was also wanted.
On the second day Xue Yang starts to move. Xiao Xingchen groans into Xue Yang’s open mouth as his tongue pulse against Xiao Xingchen’s like, like it as a heartbeat of its own.
It fills Xiao Xingchen with such disjointed longing he has to rest his head against Xue Yang’s frozen chest and catch his breath.
Song Lan doesn’t hold back. Xiao Xingchen watches as he pries Xue Yang’s stiff legs open, the joins creaking and popping as he does and starts to feast on the mess between Xue Yang’s legs.
They pass hours like that, entangled in each other - enmeshed. Xiao Xingchen is too far gone to orgasm again, but he feels the desire passing through him, from one body into the next, tainted and terrible and sweeter than anything Xiao Xingchen has ever known.
When Song Lan is finished he dutifully takes the puddle of come from between his own thighs and spreads it across Xue Yang’s stomach.
Xiao Xingchen’s world narrows to that thin strip of skin. For a moment it almost hides how the rest of Xue Yang is turning dry and red like leather, billowing out, like his soul was too small for his body.
For a moment he is as pale and unblemished as when they first found him.
The third day is when the maggots come.
They burrow out Xue Yang’s body, ripping him apart in slow motion.
First they take his eyes, then his tongue and everything inside of his skull. They act like children, teething on what’s soft and easy before moving on to tougher meat. There is not much Xiao Xingchen can do other than to witness it and to endure.
He lies to one side of Xue Yang and Song Lan stays on the other. There is nothing to say as wave after wave of maggots blossom from him swallowing every identifying feature except for his prosthetic finger. Xiao Xingchen hadn’t even known it was fake until the maggots rejected it, leaving a space around it as they stripped the other fingers to the bones.
He has the urge to comfort it, to take it from Xue Yang’s shattered hand and cradle it to his own. But he cannot risk it, lest the worms recognise him by touch alone and try to consume the dead flesh of his heart.
It is the sixth day, or maybe the seventh when the disgusted cries of cultivators pierces their little cocoon.
There is not much of Xue Yang left other than bones and the slick black sludge of human sulphur that Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan are lying in. The maggots have either died or burrowed into the thin mattress beneath them and Xiao Xingchen loses himself in his imaginings of following them. Of being surrounded and connected to Xue Yang in ways he’s yet to understand.
He is so deep he doesn’t even realise what is happening until Song Lan has already reacted. He leaps at the door in a blur of predator instinct and the cultivator doesn’t get the chance to scream again before Song Lan bites into the soft flesh of their throat.
Xiao Xingchen catches their eyes as Song Lan shoves them aside to deal with the others and feels something stir in him as he watches pain and terror fade into emptiness.
Is this how Song Lan felt when he crushed Xue Yang’s heart in his chest? Like something was shifting inside him, trying to get out?
Xiao Xingchen gasps, and lifts his hips off of the bed. The smell of fresh blood is getting stronger, like a sword glare cut across his senses. It is beautiful in its own way, but it makes Xiao Xingchen crave something richer, sweeter. He twists and buries his face in Xue Yang’s remains, wanting to choke on it, dragging his tongue against the fabric to get as much of it inside him as possible.
He can hear the sounds of Song Lan creating carnage outside and his chest burns in elation.
In his desperation, he tries to crawl inside Xue Yang’s ribcage, needing to be contained, to be held, but he is too large, he is too much. He screams and the bones shatter and a hundred thousand wing beats applaud his rebirth.
Song Lan returns drenched in innocent blood which catches and drowns dozens of the hundreds of flies that fill up the room as he walks towards the bed. Xiao Xingchen smiles at him, sticking out his tongue to show the black blood that clings to his gums. To show him that he’s finally gotten used to the taste.
Their first kiss is full of tender understanding and rotten longing. It makes Xiao Xingchen feel faint.
When Song Lan finally releases his mouth and starts to move down his body, Xiao Xingchen reaches for Xue Yang’s skull and lets it rest against his chest.
“Gentle,” he reminds the spirit as it burrows deeper into his soul, feeding on Song Lan feeding on Xiao Xingchen feeding on Song Lan.
It is a perfect feedback loop. A life cycle.
Xiao Xingchen is soaring, he is filled to the brim and bursting with the joy of it, so much so that when Song Lan pushes in and connects them completely, he can do nothing else but weep.