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Zongzheng Huai'en has taken other lovers on occasion—but only for one night. He chooses them with care to ensure that they won’t be clingy, that they won’t get too close. He fucks them and he moves on, appetite sated. It has never been a problem before.
Maybe it’s some lurking aftereffect of the aphrodisiac clawing open his heart, but it is a problem now. Not the first time on the forest floor, maybe not the second time in an opportunistic moment, but once Zongzheng Huai'en has gone so far as to run away with Jin Xiaobao, has gotten irritable and snappish when Jin Xiaobao’s eyes stray, has started to extract promises of faithfulness—well. Perhaps Jin Xiaobao is no longer the problem.
“You can’t lie to me,” Zongzheng Huai'en says, sounding needy and pathetic and so obvious that he is almost embarrassed for himself.
Jin Xiaobao agrees immediately. No questions asked.
They’re on the bed already, so it’s easy enough for Zongzheng Huai'en to start undressing him slowly, peeling Jin Xiaobao out of endless cloth of gold. The last two times, he’s rushed things, but now he takes his time, revealing every part of Jin Xiaobao. His skin, snow pale and delicate, gleams under the candlelight. When he looks at Zongzheng Huai'en, Jin Xiaobao gazes with a wonderment that makes Zongzheng Huai'en feel as if perhaps he were not a monster born to make up for the failings of others.
When he picks up Jin Xiaobao’s hand and brings it to his lips, Jin Xiaobao’s fingers are trembling. Zongzheng Huai'en kisses them, a peck on each finger.
“Are you going to get undressed?” Jin Xiaobao says, breathy with anticipation. “I want to see you.”
Zongzheng Huai'en shakes his head. He flicks his tongue over the pad of Jin Xiaobao’s thumb, and Jin Xiaobao squeaks.
“How are you going to do that to me if you’re dressed?” He pouts extravagantly, standing up and folding his arms over his chest, tossing his head.
“I didn’t undress before.” Rising, Zongzheng Huai'en puts his hands on Jin Xiaobao’s shoulders and turns him around, pushing him stumbling toward their bed.
Jin Xiaobao peeks over his shoulder, lips shaped into another soft pout. “You don’t want that?”
Zongzheng Huai'en smiles at him for a moment—can’t help it—before wiping the expression away back to his customary blank flatness. “Wait and see.”
He watches Jin Xiaobao clamber back onto the bed. A more sophisticated young man—or at least one with more experience of this sort of thing—might have lain down on his stomach. His naive little Jin Xiaobao sprawls out on his back, legs slightly parted, and looks up at Zongzheng Huai'en with his enormous eyes. In that moment, he looks like nothing more than a well-fed young master, plump and unmarred by scars. So obviously not a man of jianghu. Something tender and succulent to be eaten up, the meat stripped off him to the bone.
Zongzheng Huai'en retrieves the little jar of ointment he needs—because, yes, he does want that. As soon as Zongzheng Huai'en climbs onto the bed, Jin Xiaobao’s legs fall open for him, making room, and Zongzheng Huai'en claims his place between them. He bends his head to kiss the inside of Jin Xiaobao’s knee, making him squirm.
“That tickles,” Jin Xiaobao says. His cheeks have turned a flushed pink. His hair is spread across the pillow, its delicate ornaments askew. When he catches Zongzheng Huai'en looking at him, he bites his lower lip and looks down through his lashes, guileless and pleased.
For a long moment, longer than he wants to admit, Zongzheng Huai'en just looks at him. This can’t be what love feels like, this swooping sensation in the gleaming space before the darkness of sleep. No one could torture a child for years because of this. He bends his head, pressing a kiss to the softness of Jin Xiaobao’s belly and then another and then another. He can feel Jin Xiaobao’s deep shuddering breaths, the gasps he gives every time Zongzheng Huai'en’s lips touch his skin.
Jin Xiaobao’s hips roll, seeking friction, and he lets out a needy little whine. This boy, who is accustomed to being waited upon hand and foot, lacks patience.
Trailing a single finger up the length of Jin Xiaobao’s leaking cock, Zongzheng Huai'en hums. It’s thick, fat and lovely, dark at the tip and slick where Jin Xiaobao’s precome is sliding down it in messy little pulses. He runs his fingertip over the head, watching Jin Xiaobao gasp and buck and clench down on nothing. Missing Zongzheng Huai'en inside of him. He has not asked what Jin Xiaobao might like before—if he knows, which Zongzheng Huai'en doesn’t think he does. He’d just fucked Jin Xiaobao open and made him take it. The first time, he hadn’t thought. The second time, he had needed to know if it had really been like that, or if it had only been the aphrodisiac softening the edges of everything, hazy and warm. This time, he can say, “Hands or mouth?”, and wait with curiosity to see what Jin Xiaobao’s answer will be.
“Both,” Jin Xiaobao says after giving the question serious thought.
Zongzheng Huai'en huffs. “Inside or outside?”
Jin Xiaobao shudders. “Inside.”
The desperation in his voice makes desire throb in Zongzheng Huai'en’s gut. Suddenly, that is the only possible answer. He opens the jar of ointment and dips his fingers in, slicking two of them up. Around him, Jin Xiaobao is tense, nervousness thrumming in him. Zongzheng Huai'en slides his hand down, brushing his fingers over Jin Xiaobao’s entrance.
Jin Xiaobao yelps at the touch. “Don’t tease.”
But Zongzheng Huai'en wants to. He wants to tease. That itself feels strange, alien, divorced from himself. He rubs his fingers in little circles over Jin Xiaobao’s rim, the tight furl of it, and doesn’t even try to push in. Just revels in the gasps and whimpers and flickers of his hips, in the way he can feel it clench and flex under his fingertips. Zongzheng Huai'en remembers what Jin Xiaobao felt like, the hot clutch of him, how he writhed on Zongzheng Huai'en’s cock. He grinds his own hips against the bed, desperate for it, but his robes are in the way.
“Please,” Jin Xiaobao says, a little teary. “Please, please, please.”
Zongzheng Huai'en can’t bear it. He has to give Jin Xiaobao what he wants. Slowly he pushes two fingers in, Jin Xiaobao tight with nerves at first.
But after the initial shock of it, Jin Xiaobao melts into the bed, just as easy with it as the last two times. Made to be fucked. His body bears down greedily, trying to take more. Jin Xiaobao lies there, panting, saying nothing, as his hands twist in the sheets. Waiting for Zongzheng Huai'en to give him more.
“You can touch yourself,” Zongzheng Huai'en says, generous.
Jin Xiaobao shakes his head. His eyes are shut, and he looks sweetly beautiful, flush creeping down his chest, plump lower lip tucked between his teeth, his eyebrows drawn up.
Zongzheng Huai'en bites into the soft meat of Jin Xiaobao’s thigh, skin warm under Zongzheng Huai'en’s lips. Jin Xiaobao tightens around him, shivering, and Zongzheng Huai'en starts to suck a bruise into the inside of his thigh. He adds a second bruise, a third, Jin Xiaobao mewling above him, fucking himself on Zongzheng Huai'en’s fingers with little movements of his hips.
“Huai'en,” Jin Xiaobao whispers. “Please.”
Another man would be begging for a touch to his cock. (Another man might bother to touch himself, Zongzheng Huai'en thinks wryly.) But this is his Jin Xiaobao and he is begging to get fucked, round cheeks flushed, lips bitten even redder. He begged like this last time too when Zongzheng Huai'en had pretended to think better of fucking him.
It’s easy enough to give him what he wants, to pull his fingers out and thrust them back in again, not angling them any particular way, just fucking him full. Jin Xiaobao groans, back arching, and spreads his thighs farther like he’ll be able to take Zongzheng Huai'en’s fingers deeper. Zongzheng Huai'en fucks him like that for a while, slow languid thrusts of his fingers, as he sucks bruises into his tender thighs. There is a pool of precome where Jin Xiaobao is dripping onto his own stomach, some of it sliding down his flank when he squirms and writhes. Just looking at Jin Xiaobao’s cock makes Zongzheng Huai'en ache, makes him need to work a hand under himself, palming his own hard cock to take the edge off.
Jin Xiaobao doesn’t touch himself.
He does, however, reach a hand down, grabbing for Zongzheng Huai'en, whining, and Zongzheng Huai'en has to stop rubbing at himself to clasp the offered hand. Zongzheng Huai'en stares at their intertwined fingers, the intimacy of it. His Jin Xiaobao has sweet little fingers with neat nails. He squeezes his hand and doesn’t stop fucking Jin Xiaobao with his fingers, pushing moans out of him. Zongzheng Huai'en shifts a little, adjusting the angle of his fingers until he finds it. Presses ruthlessly against Jin Xiaobao’s sweet spot. Jin Xiaobao takes a sharp breath, and Zongzheng Huai'en hesitates—some men don’t like it. He is loath to be kicked out of bed for this. When Jin Xiaobao says nothing, Zongzheng Huai'en rubs against it again, more insistent.
This time, the noises Jin Xiaobao is making go high and insistent immediately. He crushes Zongzheng Huai'en’s hand in his grip like it’s the only thing keeping him from falling over a precipice, so hard it almost hurts. It doesn’t matter—the pain is immaterial—Zongzheng Huai'en wants this, wants this more than anything. He wants to watch Jin Xiaobao come untouched on his fingers. Jin Xiaobao gets louder and louder, keening gasps turning into near shouts, until he breaks off halfway on a sob and spills hot over his belly in long wet pulses. His eyes are wet at the corners, and he looks shocked, the pleasure cracking him open. It takes a long time before he finishes, before the trembling in his limbs stops, before he settles back onto the bed, wrung out.
Zongzheng Huai'en wipes his hand on the sheets. He allows himself to feel smug for a moment. Then he works his robes open, pulling his pants down far enough to get himself out. He starts to stroke himself off, quick and efficient, aiming for the mess already on Jin Xiaobao’s stomach.
He is getting close when Jin Xiaobao says, “Can I do it?”
Zongzheng Huai'en looks up. Jin Xiaobao is looking back at him, guileless and sweet. Jin Xiaobao has never touched him beyond ministering to his chest, holding his hand, kissing his cheek. He has never asked to touch. The idea of Jin Xiaobao touching him makes Zongzheng Huai'en half want to close his robes and hide all his skin away.
Instead, he says, “Yes.”
And Jin Xiaobao beams at him.
Zongzheng Huai'en squirms out of his pants and, robes falling open, climbs on top of Jin Xiaobao. The position is not unfamiliar. He moves higher, though, straddling Jin Xiaobao’s hips, so it is easy for him to wrap his hand around Zongzheng Huai'en. Jin Xiaobao’s hand is soft and uncalloused on him, his grip gentle. Jin Xiaobao looks down between them and Zongzheng Huai'en follows his gaze, watching the way the head of his cock slides obscenely in and out of Jin Xiaobao’s fist. Jin Xiaobao plays with his foreskin with his thumb, sliding it up and down, and it feels too good, looks too good, and Zongzheng Huai'en has to stop looking, has to bury his face in Jin Xiaobao’s neck. He tastes like sweat there when Zongzheng Huai'en kisses helplessly at his throat, swallowing sobs before coming apart in Jin Xiaobao’s gentle hands.
Jin Xiaobao says, “Oh!”, in a pleased little voice. As Zongzheng Huai'en shudders through impossibly intense waves of pleasure, toes curling, whimpering like he’s buried deep inside, Jin Xiaobao kisses the top of Zongzheng Huai'en’s head. He keeps stroking him until Zongzheng Huai'en tells him in a shaking voice to stop, too sensitive to be touched anymore. Eventually, Zongzheng Huai'en works up the nerve to peek up at him, half afraid to see that Jin Xiaobao didn’t like it, that touching Zongzheng Huai'en makes him sick. Jin Xiaobao is holding his messy hand up, a rivulet of Zongzheng Huai'en’s come sliding down his wrist. As Zongzheng Huai'en watches, Jin Xiaobao licks it off, wrist to fingertip. He makes a face, wrinkling his nose, adorable.
Zongzheng Huai'en wants to kiss him. He doesn’t, though. “Did you like it?” he asks, meaning the taste of his come, meaning touching him, meaning letting Zongzheng Huai'en fuck him.
“I always like it with you,” Jin Xiaobao says, beaming, so his dimples show. “Because I love you.”
He makes it sound so simple. Like loving Huai'en is something that costs him nothing.
Zongzheng Huai'en curls up against his side, using the corner of one of his robes to clean Jin Xiaobao’s belly. He doesn’t look at Jin Xiaobao, but he knows without looking that Jin Xiaobao is looking at him. Zongzheng Huai'en sucks in a breath, steeling himself like he did before he killed his first man, and says the words back.
Jin Xiaobao squeals and wraps his arms around him and holds him close and says them back to him over and over. Freely given. Jin Xiaobao loves him. Jin Xiaobao loves him so much that it takes Zongzheng Huai'en’s breath away.