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Lan Xichen likes when Meng Yao cries.
The realization strikes him like a blade pierced through the third and fourth rib, rending apart his lungs and leaving him split open and raw where he kneels, nude, at the foot of the bed.
Laid out before him, his spine a sweat-slick line arched from shoulder to hip, Meng Yao sobs in a staccato pace. His cheek rests, fever-hot and flushed against the bare skin of Lan Xichen’s knee, a single insistent point of content pressing flesh to flesh harder and harder and harder to the grunted, panting beat that bounces off the walls of their bedroom. The place where they meet is slick and Lan Xichen cannot, in good faith, tell if it is from the sweat of exertion or the tears that flow freely down Meng Yao’s face.
Behind him, the cause of Meng Yao’s artful anguish extends an arm and takes hold of a fistful of his hair.
“This’ll show you what happens,” Nie Mingjue grits out, his voice like the low rumble of thunder tumbling down the mountains, “when you run that fucking mouth of yours all night.”
He punctuates his sentiment with a particularly rough thrust of his hips, forcing A-Yao harder up against Lan Xichen’s body.
Watching Nie Mingjue and Meng Yao entangle themselves in such a way is by no means a new occurrence.
Lan Xichen wishes he could say that the rising heat that crawls up his flayed open nervous system is a new phenomenon—but A-Yao’s hair flows like an oil-slick over Nie Mingjue’s knuckles, pouring off his wrist in perfect rivulets. Meng Yao bends into it, throwing his head back as a whip-wild and desperate cry rends itself out of his throat in perfect time to the hiccuping noises that drip, senseless and ceaseless between them.
The motion exposes the line of his throat.
His mouth moves, but Lan Xichen cannot hear what he says.
(His fingertips are twitching. Lan Xichen feels the sweat building on his palm—the same sweet, salt-slick mess that sticks him to Meng Yao. The same but different, all in equal measure.)
Meng Yao is a thing of sublime beauty. The principles of Lan Xichen’s family make it impossible for him to lie. Meng Yao is a thing of sublime beauty. His lips part, wet and pinkened and swollen from use, in just the perfect moment to catch the low light of their bedroom. Spit mixed with the trace remnants of Nie Mingjue’s earlier spend glints in perfect unison with the damp run of his cheeks.
His thick, dark lashes clump where his eyes squeeze shut in the mixture of pain and pleasure that Meng Yao has repeatedly assured Lan Xichen he finds desirable. Lan Xichen believes him, he believes him because the sounds that crawl from the cavern of his throat cannot be a lie—they cannot be a lie when mixed with the deep, dark blush crawling down the length of his throat and they cannot be a lie when met with the flush, stick-slick length of his cock bobbing in time with the furious, snap-break thrusts from behind him.
Distantly, he wonders what sort of noises Meng Yao would make if he bent his mouth to the salt-sweet skin of his neck. He wonders if he would cry—sharp and hard—as Lan Xichen’s teeth dug into the supple and soft flesh there. He wonders if he could taste the blood that would flow from him, how it would look mixing with the sweat that beads at his temple and flows down the graceful arc of his throat to his collar.
Lan Xichen can almost taste it, thick and bitter on his tongue as Meng Yao’s bloodshot and pupil-blown eyes find his own. For a moment, he swears Meng Yao can see through him—that those dagger-sharp eyes can dig between the sinew and muscle of his chest and find root in the hollow place between his lungs.
In a blink, it’s gone—replaced once again with the delicate twist of Meng Yao’s waist as he fights both against and into the brutal onslaught that Nie Mingjue has levied against him.
“Er-ge,” Meng Yao pleads, one weak, pawing hand reaching through the space between them—both slight and infinite in the same breath—to find the cut of Lan Xichen’s jaw. “Er-ge, please.”
Lan Xichen’s teeth find the inside of his own cheek as he slakes his apparent bloodthirst on the taste of his own. He surges up to meet Meng Yao, arms looping around him to keep him steady between himself and Nie Mingjue. “I have you,” he breathes, once he releases his own bitten flesh. “I’ll always have you.”
Behind him, Nie Mingjue fucks him.
There are no more delicate ways to put it.
Lan Xichen holds him, the trembling cup of his sweat-slick palm sliding over the skinny line of Meng Yao’s back. It is tender—in all the same ways that a cutting breeze is tender in the blistering heat of a summer day.
He holds him because he will always hold him.
###
Nie Mingjue prefers to administer his own aftercare.
Lan Xichen can understand why. He has never been in a position like Nie Mingjue’s—forcing someone’s body to bend backwards to drive himself into them until they choked on the sound of their own broken sobs—but he could imagine.
(Nevermind that he had imagined. Nevermind that he imagined quite frequently what it would feel like to feel Meng Yao’s body around him in a vice-grip—hot and tight and not slowly or carefully opened on a mixture of fingers and tongue. To feel Meng Yao fucked open on the shape of his cock until he begged him to—)
He could imagine. That is enough said there.
Lan Xichen watches, because he has always enjoyed watching.
Early on, when their relationship first took on the nature it has now, Lan Xichen had been untrained in the particulars of play like this. His family’s emphasis on propriety left little room for him to explore such things. As such, he treated every movement like a practical demonstration. It was educational. It was educational when Nie Mingjue took Meng Yao by the throat and threw him to the rug in their bedroom. It was educational when Meng Yao fought, arching back off the ground and throwing his shoulders back and forth when Nie Mingjue had him pinned.
It was educational when Nie Mingjue spat in Meng Yao’s open mouth and bit him until his chest was a thundercloud of mismatched bruises in the perfect shape of Nie Mingue’s teeth.
It was educational when Nie Mingjue forced himself into Meng Yao’s body and fucked him until he cried.
It was educational when Meng Yao pleaded for him to do it again. And again. And again.
More and more and more and harder and harder and harder.
(It was educational the first time that Lan Xichen, his fingers scrambling over the denim of his jeans, felt himself aching with a suffocating heat watching as Nie Mingjue pressed Meng Yao’s face into the tiled floor of the kitchen. It was educational when he was breathing too hard to hear anything but the ragged sound of his own breath echoing in his ears. It was educational when he didn’t touch himself. It was educational when he didn’t touch himself but he still made a mess of himself—spending in his jeans like he was nothing more than a shameful teenager yet again.)
It is educational, always, as Nie Mingjue shifts Meng Yao into Lan Xichen’s lap after petting through his hair silently for a long few moments. They're only gentle like this, a storm's-eye of peace in the wake of violent sex. Occasionally, Xichen wonders if everything is a prelude to moments like this—if every dinner-table argument and public spat is little more than elaborate, extended foreplay to gain access to a secret, forbidden tenderness.
He has never been an exhibitionist. He prefers his disagreements private and his sex even more so.
Once, Nie Mingjue would have informed him as to what to do next—where to touch, how to hold, what to say. He doesn’t need to anymore. Not after so much of this.
Lan Xichen’s thumb smooths over the sweat-dampened hair at Meng Yao’s temple, pushing it back and soothing the pads of his fingers down behind an ear. “You did so well for da-ge and I today,” he says, perfectly sincere. “You’re so beautiful, A-Yao.”
In the cradle of his arms, Meng Yao wriggles closer. His breath sticks in a high-caught whimper. Lan Xichen slides a hand down to stroke over the rise of one hip and ease him, gently, up against himself.
“My apologies, er-ge,” Meng Yao breathes, “and thank you. I love pleasing you and da-ge it… it’s wonderful that he is able to be so free with us, don’t you think?”
“There is nothing you must apologize for.” As he flushes, Lan Xichen is thankful for the darkness muting the blotted color he knows rising to the tips of his ears. It’s subtle enough that only Meng Yao would notice had there been sufficient lighting to do so. “And I do appreciate the openness that Mingjue has in private. Though if anyone asks, he’ll pretend he isn’t making you a cup of tea right now.”
As it stands, Meng Yao pushes his nose up into the crook of Lan Xichen’s jaw and sighs. “It must be so hard for him to be so vulnerable,” Meng Yao muses, one thin hand coming to rest on the rise of Lan Xichen’s shoulder. “I’m glad to offer him a place to release his frustrations.”
“Da-ge has been under a tremendous amount of pressure for a long time,” Lan Xichen reminds him, his tone as soothing as the balm that Nie Mingjue had rubbed into Meng Yao’s muscles ritually after every scene. It’s not untrue. Lan Xichen wouldn’t dare claim to know how Nie Mingjue feels at the end of each endless day—the ancient, ill-healed aches of loss and grief buried under a seemingly insurmountable mountain of pressure. The responsibilities of his family, of his brother, of the business, of the lives and wellbeing of hundreds of employees were hoisted onto his shoulders when he was still far too young to be anything but far too angry. Lesser men would crumble. Stronger men would crumble, Xichen thinks, if stronger men existed. “You understand.”
Meng Yao hums, a low and even note. For a moment, Lan Xichen presumes he’s falling asleep. It would hardly be the first time he’d done so, laid across Lan Xichen like a particularly sun-warmed kitten. “I do. It must be so hard, taking care of Huaisang as much as he does. It takes so much from da-ge, and I’m certain he only lets us know a fraction of how much it drains him.”
Lan Xichen soothes a hand down the length of his back, following the sweat-sticky line of him down from the narrow space between his shoulders to the rise of his behind. He does not delve lower, he does not slide his finger-tips over the abused flesh—pink already melting into a dark, mottled array of purples and blues in the shape of Nie Mingjue’s hand again and again and again. (His fingers twitch.) “He loves his brother.”
There is an implication Lan Xichen does not give voice to. There’s no point in doing so.
He loves his brother, but—
He loves his brother, but sometimes Nie Huaisang drains every ounce of energy he has.
He loves his brother, but that doesn’t make it easy.
He loves his brother, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to strangle him when he finds him with another pet he won’t finish taking care of.
He loves his brother, but he is going to send him to an early grave. Whom to which hardly matters, most of the time.
Meng Yao burrows deeper into Lan Xichen’s arms—like he’s trying to become part of him. “Something I’m sure you two can empathize with one another,” he sighs, each group of muscles unwinding and relaxing against Lan Xichen’s skin. The sweat has dried tacky between them, but Lan Xichen can forgo a shower for another few moments.
At least until Mingue returns.
And, even then, as Meng Yao’s breathing evens out to a slow and steady rhythm.
Actively, and with much effort, Lan Xichen does not consider the implications of what Meng Yao has said.
###
Lan Wangji calls Lan Xichen at 6:45pm the following evening.
Lan Wangji has called Lan Xichen at 6:45pm every evening for the past twelve years.
It hardly matters what Lan Xichen could possibly be in the middle of—whatever work emergency or cooking disaster or significant other pressed to his back—he hasn’t missed a single call in twelve years.
And he has no intention of doing so.
Regardless of anything.
Regardless of weather, of illness, of travel.
Of work, which had long been completed for the day, or dinner, which was simmering on the stove and threatening to over-reduce itself down to a miserable sludge, or Meng Yao, settled on his knees with his nose nuzzling into the fabric of Lan Xichen’s trousers.
He sighs, warm and easy, as wide, brilliant eyes blink up at him.
“Er-ge,” A-Yao sighs, a tender and sweet sound dripping saccharine-sweet from spit-slick lips. Both of his hands have been settled on the backs of Lan Xichen’s thighs since Meng Yao had gotten home. Lan Xichen had started supper—a stew, bubbling and cooking and reducing and reducing and reducing towards perfection and then rapidly away from it—when Men Yao swept in, his bag dropped by the door and his arms wrapped around Lan Xichen. The welcoming evening embrace was followed by a soft kiss, and then a harder one, and a deeper one and a deeper one until Meng Yao was bent backwards at the waist with Lan Xichen’s tongue pressed between his gasp-split lips to taste the line of him.
It wasn’t long at all until Meng Yao was on his knees. “I’ve been thinking about this all day,” he sighs, staring up at Lan Xichen with tremendous, pupil-shot eyes. One practiced, talented hand sweeps around the side of Lan Xichen’s trousers to slip up the perfect seam and rest on the rise of his hips. “Forgive me for being so forward.”
Lan Xichen’s hair cushions the slight blow of his head striking the wall of their kitchen under the force of his own arousal.
“Meng Yao,” he breathes, like the name itself is sacrosanct. “There’s never any need for apologies.”
It’s always a tender sentiment for the fraught, obscene moments of stolen intimacy in such places. Before him, with his cheeks pinkening at a rapid rate, Meng Yao drops his gaze down for a breath before raising those soft, wide eyes up to look at him properly.
Meng Yao has always looked at him like that—like Lan Xichen was some strange entity, like he was something that Meng Yao had never seen before. He has always looked at him like a puzzle piece, something that he couldn’t quite find the appropriate home for and would keep struggling to find the corners and edges to fit him into.
“You’re too good to me, er-ge,” Meng Yao breathes, his cheek sliding up the feverish, evident line in Lan Xichen’s trousers.
There was a time when Lan Xichen found it mortifying how readily his body responded to Meng Yao’s, how quick it was to telegraph his desires for as little as a softened gaze and the weight of a hand high on his thigh. Meng Yao never seemed to mind.
He all but purrs as he slides the tips of his fingers up along the seam-line of his trousers, fingers drifting towards the sleek black belt and innocuous silver buckle. Feather-light and quick.
“Er-ge,” Meng Yao sighs, his breath warm enough that Lan Xichen can feel it melting through the fabric of his clothes. Metal clinks as Meng Yao works his belt open, fingers dropping down to his fly. They’ve done this so many times, so many different ways. It has never stopped leaving Lan Xichen’s pulse rabbiting in his throat. “May I?”
Lan Xichen drops a hand to smooth through the long, beautiful ink-fall of Meng Yao’s hair. “Of cou—”
The soft, tender slant of his voice is cut, immediately, by the hauntingly familiar chime of his cell phone.
Lan Xichen jumps, his hand whipping off Meng Yao’s head as if it was something more than Lan Wangji’s ringtone interrupting him.
His eyes snap to the glowing clock above the stove.
6:45pm.
“A-Yao, I’m terribly sorry,” he says, as his fingers drop down to his back pocket. The second ring sounds.
Lan Xichen rarely lets it ring three times.
From the floor, Meng Yao looks up at him with the startled, lost eyes of a kitten left out in the rain. He offers a smile up at Lan Xichen. “Take it. Your brother is important.”
Lan Xichen sucks in a stabilizing breath before he answers in the middle of the third ring.
###
“Wangji,” Lan Xichen greets as he turns the stove off with a wince. The stew was most assuredly ruined. “I hope you’re doing well.”
Meng Yao appears at his elbow a breath later after taking a moment to—to readjust—and shoo’s him off to take care of it.
There is a comfortable silence on the other end, and Lan Xichen can nearly see the shape of his brother’s terse, taut frown. “I am.” Another brief pause. “I hope I was not interrupting.”
“You’re never interrupting.” Lan Xichen crosses the threshold out of the kitchen and into the heart of the living room. It’s a comfortable, well-used space. Lan Xichen takes pride in the balance between keeping it clean and tidy and not so terribly so that it is sterile. “I’m always happy to talk to you, Wangji. You know that.”
“Mm.”
Lan Xichen tucks his phone between his ear and his shoulder as he plucks up one of the soft, woven blue-and-silver blankets off the back of the sofa and sets about refolding it to ensure the corners are perfectly tight together. “How were your classes today?”
“...fine.”
Fine.
Lan Xichen keeps an internal database of Lan Wangji’s speech and mannerisms. He has to. He’s been building it since they were children, running around their family’s tremendously over-sized estate with little in the way of entertainment but for each other. Lan Wangji is not cold. He is not emotionless. Lan Xichen has been straining to teach others that, often to no avail.
There is more meaning to his words than he would ever confess.
For anyone else to say that work or school was fine would mean that their day had, likely, been minorly irritating or frustrating at the worst. It was not good it was not bad — it was fine.
To be fine was to be middling.
For Lan Wangji, to be fine was to be the furthest thing from.
Lan Xichen keeps himself from grimacing into the phone. “What happened?”
Lan Wangji is going to say: nothing happened.
“Nothing happened.”
Lan Wangji is going to say: It isn’t important.
“It is not important.”
Lan Xichen lays the neatly folded blanket over the back of the sofa and sets about adjusting the touch-dented and bent pillows. “Was it Uncle?”
The silence is tremendous. It’s weighty.
Lan Wangji’s silences are always weighty. Lan Wangji has never said more with the words from his chest than he ever did in the silence that stuck in his throat. Lan Xichen had to learn how to read them. He had to learn how to read them when the silence was all he had, growing up in the distant, ancient quiet of a family home that should have been thriving. He had to learn how to read them in the absence of space where Lan Wangji used to be in the carved out space of his heart made in the shape of his brother.
He had to learn how to read them in the days following—
Well.
Lan Xichen tries not to think about that.
Lan Wangji’s silence has always meant a lot of things. Today, it means: Of course it was our uncle. When is it never not our uncle? Today it means: I won’t tell you what he said to me, but whatever it was it cut me to my quick. Today it means: I’m tired of it, Xichen. Today it means: I’m tired.
Lan Xichen is never more afraid than when Lan Wangji is tired.
He takes three carefully measured breaths—a meditative practice wrought between his bones and his lungs—and says: “Wangji. He cares for your wellbeing. Whatever he said, I’m certain it was only out of concern.”
“He wants me to return to the estate for the summer.”
Ah.
There are layers of translation that occur. Lan Qiren has never once tolerated an idle summer. Lan Wangji returning to the family estate for the summer would mean he would be put to work at the firm—more likely than not placed among the corporate lawyers working at the branch, given his growing experience at law school.
Lan Wangji working the summer away means he is supervised. It means he is watched.
Lan Xichen frowns, a tight, taut thing. “...I’m certain his interns at the firm would value your guidance, Wangji.”
“Mm.”
Mm.
A hundred things, a hundred thousand things. Lan Xichen swallows his desire to press and press and press until his brother coughs up the truth of his feelings. Instead, he feels himself prickling with the broken-glass fragments of concern that have been buried beneath his skin since Lan Wangji was a teenager.
He lets the quiet between them hang, a fraught thing.
(The silence says: Xichen, I don’t want to do it. The silence says: I don’t want to go back to that place. The silence says: don’t ask me to do it. The silence sounds so tremendously, like a child sitting in a hospital waiting room, patiently anticipating the good news that will never come. It sounds like a child sitting there, even when the bad news broke. It sounds like a child in a bed too big for him, swathed in blankets that will never smell like her again.)
Lan Xichen sucks in a careful breath and tries his best to not envy Mingjue.
Mingjue, who keeps his brother tucked under his wing, despite his insistence that Huaisang is a wild, irritatingly unkeepable thing. Mingjue has no shame in leveraging threats of violence to keep Huaisang in line. Mingjue who has no qualms in lashing Huaisang to their home, who has no qualms about keeping him in line to the best of his ability.
Can you not see? He wants to ask, into the buzzing receiver of his cellphone. You’ve never been stupid, you’ve never been blind. Why can’t you see what I’m trying to do?
One breath.
Then another.
That Lan Wangji does not immediately capitulate to their uncle’s request is not necessarily new so much as it’s telling. There are few reasons for Lan Wangji to want to stay away from home and even fewer still that he would dare defy their uncle to do so.
A third breath, as Lan Xichen digs for the lede his brother has buried. “Consider it. Unless you were looking forward to another opportunity, of course.”
It would be a conversation, of course. Not one that Lan Xichen had intended to have, of course, but one that he would be willing to foster if it meant keeping Lan Wangji in his eye line for a summer spent with their uncle.
“I will consider it.” Lan Wangji pauses, and then speaks again. “I… received an offer for a position.”
(Translation: I was offered something our uncle would tremendously disapprove of. Translation: I have not told him yet. Translation: I don’t want to come back, I want to do this. Translation: I’ve made my choice and I don’t know how to say I’m not coming home.)
Lan Xichen swallows the stone in his throat. “Ah.” Lan Xichen pushes a breath out through his nose. “Wangji is it…”
Is it to be with him?
“It is in…a town. In Yunmeng.”
Lan Xichen breathes twice and tries not not to envy Mingjue.
He breathes twice and tries not to envy Mingjue.
He breathes twice and— “I trust you know what you are doing.”
“I do.”
There are farewells, stilted and formal, between them. Lan Wangji hangs up first because Lan Xichen has never been able to hang up first on his brother in nearly a decade and a half.
He drops down onto the sofa as carefully as he can to not disturb all the hard work he’s done making the living room look nicer and nicer and nicer.
“...er-ge?” Comes the tender, soft-edged voice hovering around the entrance to the kitchen.
Wreathed in golden, artificial light, Meng Yao wrings his hands together. “How is he?”
“He wants to accept a position away from home. He has a year left in law school.”
Meng Yao isn’t hard to read either. He’s always been a shrouded thing—but that was for other people. A mask he lays over his smile to protect the one beneath it. The one he reserves for quiet evenings like this, where he can fold himself into the soft, slate-colored sofa beside Lan Xichen and tuck his cheek into the point of his shoulder.
They fit so well together.
“Would it be permanent?” Meng Yao asks, winding a slender arm beneath Lan Xichen’s in a gentle, insistent push until they’re wound together. “I know it’s hard being away from him, you love your brother. It must be so hard, taking care of him as much as you do.”
Something about it pings, familiar and aching. Lan Xichen doesn’t answer the question. He doesn’t say anything, but he turns his nose into the crown of Meng Yao’s hair instead. He smells sweet, like flowers and the subtle, soft sharpness of spice.
“I’m sorry he’s making it so hard for you.”
“Wangji never makes things hard for me,” Lan Xichen corrects, his lips moving in the soft nest of dark hair. Lying is against his family rules. It is true. Lan Wangji has never made his life harder. Lan Wangji is a product of other people’s actions and inactions. He cannot be blamed. “I…worry.”
“Er-ge,” he says, with a gentle edge of humor to his voice. “Sometimes I wonder if you were born worrying.”
A soft, narrow-boned thumb slips up between them. The pad of it presses into the furrowed space between his brows. “I bet you were born with this.”
Lan Xichen feels himself break with something akin to a laugh as he pulls his face back. “A-Yao.”
Meng Yao smiles up at him, a soft, dimpled thing before it melts into the same open expression of delicate concern. “Er-ge,” he says, with a measure of sincere weight to his tone. “There is something you should know…”
His chest seizes at once. “Is this about Wangji?”
“No!” Meng Yao flushes and bows his head. “I… my apologies. I was trying to be clever. The stew… I’m sorry, er-ge, I really did try to save it. I distracted you and it over-reduced.”
The tension, both current and residual from his ritualistic phone call, melts at once. “I was worried that would happen. Why don’t I place an order for us?”
“I would be happy to do so for us,” Meng Yao says, pulling himself up onto his knees. It’s a rare position that renders him taller than Lan Xichen, so Meng Yao takes the opportunity to wind his arms around Lan Xichen’s shoulders. “I know what you like, and it’s my fault, anyway. I just couldn’t keep my hands off you.”
Lan Xichen feels himself heat. “I would say I was certainly far from an innocent party.”
Meng Yao unwinds himself long enough to take his phone from his pocket and place the order while wound around Lan Xichen. “...er-ge. It won’t be here for half an hour.”
“That’s fine, A-Yao.”
He settles back on his heels. “Er-ge,” he presses again, his hair falling loose over his cheeks. Lan Xichen cannot restrain himself from tucking it back over an ear. “We have the house to ourselves tonight. And dinner won’t be here for half an hour.”
The implication strikes him deep, deep in the gut. He feels himself darken.
“I… feel as though there may be things that could be done to pass the time. If you are amenable, of course, A-Yao.”
“There is little else I want.”
###
The next few days are an exhausting endeavor.
His uncle calls him the following evening, nearly exactly the moment he hangs up from his nightly call with Wangji.
It goes approximately as well as Lan Xichen expects.
Lan Wangji told his uncle as much as he had told him, but their uncle had never had the capacity to understand Lan Wangji the way that Lan Xichen did. He never took the time to untangle the knot that Wangji made of himself, he never took the time to take the pieces apart and find the places where they were supposed to be whole.
He never bothered finding the minute, faint cracking.
Or maybe he did. Lan Xichen couldn’t speak to that.
Regardless, between Lan Wangji’s insistence on taking a position that he refuses to name, and Lan Qiren’s insistence on holding Lan Wangji tighter and tighter and tighter the more he struggles—Lan Xichen is exhausted.
He understands their uncle's desire. He does.
Sometimes he wants to lock Lan Wangji in a room until he comes to his senses.
“Take it from me,” Nie Mingjue says, his low voice reverating through him like a wave. “It won’t work. Younger brothers don’t listen to things like that.”
Lan Xichen was unaware he was saying that out loud.
He feels his cheeks burn as he buries his face into the pillow he had stolen from the head of their oft-shared bed. He had been laid out on his stomach for the past fifteen minutes.
They had already eaten, and Lan Xichen had gone directly to lie down in the calming darkness for as long as he could get away with it following his call with his uncle.
He wasn’t sure when Nie Mingjue had seen fit to follow him, but he isn’t unhappy that he did.
A strong hand lands in the center space between his shoulder blades. “You’re tight.”
“Excuse me?” Lan Xichen asks.
“Your back, Xichen,” Nie Mingjue says, that thin thread of amused-unamusement wriggling its way through the usual low rumble. “You’ve been spending too much time with Meng Yao.”
“It’s impossible to spend too much time with him,” Lan Xichen says, as he adjusts his arms for what he knows will come next.
The bed dips beneath the weight of Nie Mingjue joining him—once on one side of Lan Xichen’s hips and then again on the other side. Nie Mingjue straddles the breadth of Lan Xichen’s hips as the tell-tale crack of air-bubbles popping in the space between his joints is the only prelude before two hard, firm hands find their way to his back.
Lan Xichen hisses, his breath catching at the sudden burst of pleasure so sweet it’s turned itself back ground again into pain.
“To your point,” Nie Mingjue says, as he works out whatever stubborn knot he’s found on Lan Xichen’s back. “You can’t force your brother to see reason. Trust me. If it was possible, A-Sang would be a functioning member of society.”
Nie Huaisang is an artist, Lan Xichen does not say. And Lan Wangji is—was—graduating law school in a year’s time.
To him they are the same. Members of society in equal measure.
“Nie Huaisang is a clever young man,” is what he says, instead. “A-Yao commissioned a few of his original works for the living room a few weeks back.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Nie Mingjue huffs, as a thick, heavy thumb finds an aching place in the nest of tangled bones and muscles. It digs and digs and digs until Lan Xichen is catching his tongue between his teeth. “I did what I could and I still do what I can for him. That doesn’t mean that it worked.”
What would working even look like? Is what Lan Xichen wants to ask. Would working look like him being rent apart and put back together in the shape of you? Or someone else?
“His arduous nature when it comes to his art is a result of your raising him, Mingjue,” Lan Xichen reminds him. “I would say your lessons paid off. Wangji… he is going to be successful at whatever he does. That does not stop the fact that I worry about him.”
“I know you do, Xichen,” comes the uncharacteristically tender response. It lingers there, on the brink of another sliding jab of a thumb into the space beside his spine. “But you can’t love someone onto the right path. If Wangji wants to throw his life away in Yiling, that’s up to him, isn’t it?”
Lan Xichen closes his eyes.
He hadn’t said it—none of them had. A law firm in a small town in Yunmeng. It was as far as any of them could admit.
(They had always spoken in code, in secret secondary-languages that whisper beneath the original. Lan Xichen had always been so good at languages.)
A position in Yiling.
He isn’t coming home, he isn’t returning to the company, he isn’t going to spend his summer toiling away under his uncle's watchful gaze.
He was going to Yiling.
And Lan Xichen could not be certain that he was going to come back.
Lan Xichen presses his forehead into the pillow, burying the sudden wash of—of—of something he refused to name. It tasted far, far too bitter on his tongue to give a name to.
It doesn’t deserve a name, the twisted, broken thing on his tongue. It doesn’t deserve to be named.
Whatever it is, it isn’t real.
It’s a gut-instinct. It’s an instinctive reaction.
Nie Mingjue’s hands soften as they work the knots from his back out and out and out until he is unfurling Lan Xichen to the core. “Xichen,” he says, his voice too soft to be his own. It sounds like a man spent far too long with Meng Yao—not that Lan Xichen would be so cruel as to account for the similarities. “I wish I had a better answer.”
“It’s alright.” It comes wetter than he would prefer. “I cannot hold Wangji here. Our uncle did something similar our entire lives—he kept us under a careful eye. I don’t know that he would have been the same had we been raised differently and I hold no grudge against my uncle—of course—and I don’t know if I would have wanted to have been brought up differently… if going is what he needs to do.”
“Then he’ll go. The best you can do is try to put out the fires when he does.”
Lan Xichen does not know if Nie Mingjue is envisioning Lan Qiren when he says that, or a bridge. The hands settle low on his hips. “Mm.”
“Xichen?”
“Thank you for your advice, Mingjue. It is appreciated.”
“You’re allowed to be mad at him, Xichen. I hope you know that.”
Lan Xichen turns his face, pressing a cheek into the pillow. He can only see the shadow cast of Nie Mingjue’s body at this angle—the shape of him darkening a comically large portion of the bed. “I would never be mad at Wangji. He—”
“He’s acting like his head is stuck so far up his ass he can’t tell right from left.”
This time, Lan Xichen does wince. “He’s… it is a difficult position for him to be in. I cannot begrudge him.”
How do you blame a man for being in love?
My uncle hated that I became involved with you two. How am I supposed to judge him for making the same mistakes?
Above him, Nie Mingjue only makes a muffled little noise—the closest thing Lan Xichen would ever get to him conceding a point.
His hands slide, bunching up the fabric low on the small of Lan Xichen’s back. It’s a question as much as it’s an offer.
Lan Xichen twists, pushing himself up just enough to permit Nie Mingjue’s strong hands in the dark space between his stomach and the bed. Broad, calloused fingers spread low there for a long moment before he starts working the buttons open.
Being undressed by Nie Mingjue is the most indulgent thing that Lan Xichen permits himself. Mingjue rarely does things tenderly—and even this is hardly tender. It’s perfunctory, quick and easy to strip the soft, sky-pale button-down off his shoulders and toss it mindlessly aside. Meng Yao would have folded it. Meng Yao would have been tender.
Lan Xichen doesn’t want to consider why that makes his skin feel strangely tight in anticipation.
Nie Mingjue’s hair tickles where it falls in the space between Lan Xichen’s shoulders—a prelude to the brush of lips at the nape of his neck. Just one before he settles into the continued pace of his rough, deep massage.
“You’re still allowed to be mad at him, Xichen.”
He focuses on the feeling of his ribs expanding and the swell of his lungs in his chest. Once. Twice. “Da-ge,” he says, eyes closing. “I cannot ascribe him fault.”
“Mm.” It’s different when Nie Mingjue says it, the sound forced between tight-pressed lips. There is no need for additional layers of translation. There is no need to read the microexpressions that flutter over a well-trained face. There is no need to consider the greater contextualization of every slight noise.
To Nie Mingjue, a low huff of a noise means: I think you’re wrong but I can’t say that.
Which is, ultimately, very much the same as saying it.
Lan Xichen pushes out the third breath. “What do you do when your brother upsets you?”
It is hypothetical.
Purely hypothetical.
“He’s too old to threaten to send to boot camp,” Nie Mingjue says, as his palm twists and presses down to wrench a thin-breathed gasp from Lan Xichen’s throat. “Do you mean what do I say to him? What do I do to him? Or are you asking what I do when I can’t lock him in his room until he stops crying?”
“...the latter, da-ge.”
“Meng Yao.” Nie Mingjue moves his touch up to the rise of Lan Xichen’s shoulders. “You’ve seen what we do when I need to feel in control.”
I’m glad to offer him a place to release his frustrations.
Meng Yao’s voice rattles and Lan Xichen feels himself flush against the pillow.
“...ah. I… had thought it was something to that extent.”
The hands fall off him, leaving cool swaths of skin in their wake. Lan Xichen feels himself shiver as Nie Mingjue’s weight distribution shifts across the mattress.
“Alright.” One knee lifts, and then the other, a balancing act to move Nie Mingjue into the bed beside him instead of over him. “Come on.”
Alright, come on. Has few other meanings to Nie Mingjue other than: We’re going to talk about it.
Lan Xichen pulls himself up, feeling suddenly bare in nothing but his trousers. Nie Mingjue hardly seems to mind this half-nakedness. Not that Lan Xichen would expect him to be, considering their relationship status, of course.
“Have you considered trying it?” Nie Mingjue asks, with the forward-barreling gracelessness that only he could make seem poetic.
Lan Xichen’s flush spreads like a wildfire. He can feel the heat of himself consuming down from the points of his ears to his throat and chest. “...I had wondered why you seemed so interested in treating him in such a way. It—it seems as though you get a tremendous amount of relief from it.”
“So does A-Yao,” Nie Mingjue says, sitting cross-legged on the well-made but movement-creased bed.
Lan Xichen does not point out the rare moment of tenderness in the familiar naming. Doing so would stymie it. He knows that. “It is mutual…interest. I’ve noticed.”
“He needs someone to force him out of his head. He thinks too much and he likes getting me worked up because he likes when he feels like he’s worked me up so much that I can’t do anything but fuck him in half. I’m not going to get into whatever’s wrong in his head that he thinks he can’t ask for it—but he needs it when he needs it. And when he needs it,” Mingjue pauses, spreading a hand out. “I can give it to him.”
“And you?” Lan Xichen asks, his mind picking at the strands that Nie Mingjue leaves abandoned. He shifts over in the bed, moving until he can lean forward and lay his forehead on Nie Mingjue’s shoulder. A broad hand winds its way into his hair without hesitation.
Nie Mingjue shrugs, the movement gentle to avoid rocking Lan Xichen too much. “It’s about something you can control. Don’t get me wrong, that little shit won’t do a thing I ask if you’re not in the room outside of the bedroom. But if you grab his hair and push him around, he’ll do whatever you say. He wants to do whatever you say.”
“And you enjoy that?”
“You’ve seen it plenty,” Nie Mingjue says, the faint edge of humor crawling up the line of his voice. “Can’t you tell?”
Lan Xichen pulls his face up to look at him. “I have certainly been able to tell how thoroughly you enjoyed yourself in the evenings with our A-Yao.”
Nie Mingjue’s brow raises. “I also thoroughly enjoy myself in the evenings with someone else as well.”
Lan Xichen’s head tips slightly in a coy question. “Oh? Please, da-ge. It would be my honor if you should inform me of who else is the subject of your enjoyment.”
A thick, strong arm coils around his waist at once and the world tips and sways before it tumbles over itself, leaving Lan Xichen spread out on his back.
“Do you want to know why Meng Yao loves it when I shut him up?”
Lan Xichen’s arms wind around the broad, powerful shoulders above him. “Please.”
###
The following day, Lan Wangji calls at 6:45pm.
###
Again, the next day, Lan Wangji calls at 6:45pm.
Lan Qiren calls him an hour later.
Lan Wangji does not pick up when Lan Xichen calls him again. And again. And again.
###
Three days later, Lan Wangji does not call Lan Xichen until 8:51pm.
For two hours and six minutes, Lan Xichen does not panic. It is not in his family’s rigid structure to panic.
###
It takes three days for Lan Wangji to confess that he has moved to Yiling.
It takes two questions for Lan Xichen to coax the confession from him that he is not living along.
It takes almost an entire day for Lan Qiren to ask Xichen for Wangji’s new address. It is against his family’s traditions to lie, so Lan Xichen is forced to admit the truth: Wangji did not tell him.
He is not certain Wangji will ever tell him.
(He is uncertain he will ever see Wangji again.)
And Lan Xichen is not angry.
And Lan Xichen is not angry.
And Lan Xichen is not angry.
###
The next time that Lan Xichen watches Nie Mingjue bend the sweat-slick length of Meng Yao’s body into a perfect, bow-taut arch under the force of bruising hands and biting teeth, he cannot say that he understands. He cannot say that he gets it.
But he cannot say that he doesn’t.
He cannot say that he does not understand as Nie Mingjue’s brows knit in determination, as his hair sticks to his temples and plasters to his neck in sweat-slick strands, coiling and curling with each desperate, panting breath. He cannot say he does not understand as Nie Mingjue drives into Meng Yao with a force that Lan Xichen used to fear would snap him in half. He cannot say he does not understand.
He cannot say he does not do worse. He cannot say he does not feel that same muted, muffled fire in his belly flickering to life as Meng Yao’s red-rimmed eyes turn up to him.
He cannot say he does not crave it. He cannot say he does not itch to slide his hands up fevered skin. He cannot say he does not wish to take and take and take and take. He cannot say he does not wish to feel what the tender, delicate column of Meng Yao’s through would feel like cradled in the center of his palm.
His mouth is dry, as Meng Yao thrashes, as Nie Mingjue flips him onto his back—laying him out like a feast for the taking. Like something to have.
They are on the bed again. Lan Xichen hates making—he hates— he hates doing whatever this is anywhere else. He doesn’t mind watching when it’s elsewhere, and he hardly minds the occasional dalliance in the kitchen or the living room. But this?
This belongs somewhere soft. Somewhere safe. Somewhere where they can be little more than this strange charade of the things they are, in the place where only they are permitted to see the shadows of one another.
The mattress creaks with Lan Xichen’s interest as he shifts from his sitting position at the foot of the bed to kneel slightly.
Most nights, when Nie Mingjue and Meng Yao are doing this, Lan Xichen merely watches until they finish the play-fighting they insist on burying themselves in—once they’d both reached an exhausting, embattled climax, Mingjue would pull Lan Xichen into his arms. He’d hold him against his chest and touch him while Meng Yao would either offer up his mouth or his body, whichever he thought best in the moment. They’d both whisper something filthy, something he couldn’t ever repeat—even to himself—until he’d find his own peak in the cradle of their arms.
That is, of course, most nights.
And most nights are not all nights.
“Off the bed, Xichen,” Mingjue pants, from his position amongst the kicked-aside pillows.
Lan Xichen obeys, slipping off the bed with no protest to stand, bare, before it.
They were always a beautiful sight together.
At the head of the bed, Mingjue kneels with one arm wrapped around Meng Yao’s narrow waist. Pale, delicate legs are thrown over his shoulders, bending Meng Yao’s frame all but in half as he buries himself in him—not that Lan Xichen can see from this position. All he can see is the painting of a feverish flush down Meng Yao’s chest, pouring up the length of his throat to pool in his cheeks where his head tips towards the end of the bed. His hair pools like a starless ink-void on the edge of a table, running and dripping over the edge.
His lips are red, bitten and slick from a combination of Mingjue’s mouth, fingers, and cock—each in rapid succession from one another and mingled between the others—and Lan Xichen wonders how they taste.
It’s an idle thought before Mingjue, from his space between Meng Yao’s legs, grits out: “Stop staring and kiss him before I fuck him off the bed.”
Lan Xichen kneels, the soft carpeting of their bedroom still too rough for the hyper-sensitive, under-touched skin of his body. He shivers in anticipation, one hand cradling the back of Meng Yao’s head.
“Is—” he asks, because he cannot think of a time where he has not asked Meng Yao if he could kiss him—if being there, if being with him was permissible. “May I?”
Meng Yao’s eyes—clear and fuck-fevered in equal measure—sharpen for a half-step before he nods and tips his chin out towards Lan Xichen.
It’s as awkward as it is sweet, the slick, wet slide of lips against lips. Kissing Meng Yao has always been as beautiful a thing as he is.
It is tremendously unlike kissing Nie Mingjue. Kissing Nie Mingjue has always been like kissing an earth slide. Nie Mingjue kisses like it’s a bare-knuckled fight. He kisses like he’s battle-worn, like he’s fought for so long and so hard that he’s forgotten how to be tender and he kisses like he’s still trying despite it all.
Meng Yao kisses like he’s a well-won prize. He kisses like an offering, broken-up upon an altar and laid out for the taking.
(Nie Mingjue has never agreed. He’s always said that Meng Yao kisses like a hired gun. He’s always said that Meng Yao kisses like he’s slipping you poison under his tongue. Lan Xichen has never understood. Poison does not taste to sweet, and steel has always been too sharp for the taste of Meng Yao’s gentle touch.)
It’s difficult to kiss him upside down, so he shifts to adjust—collecting Meng Yao’s head in his arms to twist them together and kiss him properly. He slides his tongue over the warm, slick pout of his lower lip before he pushes past the line of parted, welcoming teeth.
Meng Yao bows to him, the same way he always has. He yields into the force of Lan Xichen’s kiss, into the way he traces the line of his tongue with his own, into the way he chases the taste of Nie Mingjue’s mingled spit and come off the back of his teeth.
He loves the way they taste together—an obscene mess made of one another, interwoven inseparably down to the fibers of their DNA.
Every part of him is beautiful, every part of them is delicious. Lan Xichen pants, his arm tightening minutely around Meng Yao’s shoulders as he shifts to kiss him harder and harder and harder—
Lan Xichen kisses him until Meng Yao whimpers against him, his lower lip caught between the sharp edges of his teeth and Meng Yao gasps and Lan Xichen knows he should release him. He knows he should let him go and—
—and he tastes—
Lan Xichen releases, wincing back with a start. “A-Yao. I—”
Meng Yao smiles, a wet, bloodied thing. “Er-ge,” he breathes, in a voice only tender like this. “Kiss me again?”
Lan Xichen’s eyes jump to the shape of Nie Mingjue—the slow grind of his hips keeping himself on the teetering edge of oblivion inside of Meng Yao’s body.
Nie Mingjue watches him with something—something—written across his face. And maybe Lan Xichen has never been good at reading him. Maybe he’s never been good at reading either of them.
It looks like something stuck between relief and love.
Lan Xichen bows his head and kisses Meng Yao again. This time, his tongue sweeps over the split skin, collecting copper and iron and smearing it over the gasping, stung mouth pressed against his own.
It’s filthy. It’s disgusting. It’s obscene.
It’s worse than obscene.
Lan Xichen has never been harder in his life.
He devours him. There is no other way to describe it.
He consumes him, tongue and teeth and lips as he kisses him until he can’t taste anything but the co-mingled taste of all of them, of Nie Mingjue mixed with Meng Yao mixed with the sticky, slick saliva passed off Lan Xichen’s tongue with each shove deeper and deeper into his mouth.
Lan Xichen kisses him until he cannot think of anything but the shape of Meng Yao’s mouth, until his hands have done nothing but trace the line of his throat up to his jaw and down to his chest again and again and again, until he’s made of nothing but the shape of him against his skin. Until he is nothing but the shape of him against his skin.
He could touch him until they were three churned and worn down into one. He could touch him until they were nothing but ghosts of who they used to be, shed of the skins only they have ever remembered and pressed together into one thing. Into one creation. Into one atrocity of love and devotion.
Lan Xichen only pulls back when Meng Yao’s hand drops to the back of his. It stops him with the curve of his palm resting on—
—on—
“A-Yao,” he breathes, as he feels the fluttering of Meng Yao’s breath beneath his hand. He can feel him swallow, he can feel the beat of his pulse beneath his fingertips.
Meng Yao holds Lan Xichen’s hand to his own throat with half-lidded eyes and dark, tear-clumped lashes. “Er-ge,” Meng Yao says, his blood-and-spit slick mouth open with each panting syllable. “Please.”
Lan Xichen does not know what to say. His own mouth, kiss-stung and half-numbed, works around a host of things he thinks.
He has seen Nie Mingjue do it before.
He knows where to lay his fingers. He knows how to count, how to squeeze.
His fingers itch for it. His entire body lights like a livewire as he lays his hand in the proper position, and it thrums like a well-tuned instrument when he presses.
And presses.
And presses.
In his arms, Meng Yao stiffens—his head thrown back as he pushes his hand into the grip with enough force that Lan Xichen almost worries he’s going to hurt himself.
But he doesn’t.
His eyes roll back, but he doesn’t thrust himself up into the center of Lan Xichen’s palm.
Lan Xichen has never been an addict. He has never tried gambling, he has never indulged in the temptations of the world in excess.
He does not drink. He has not tried the things that Nie Huaisang has brought to their home.
There has not been a vice he has fallen to before this.
Lan Xichen knows, the first time he releases Meng Yao’s throat and listens to him wrench him a rough, ragged breath, what it must be like to crave something more than you crave the beating of your own heart. He forces himself to wait before he takes hold of him again, a cinching pattern of squeeze and release and squeeze and release.
Each breath, each thrumming of his own desperate pulse in his veins, drives him closer and closer to something—to something.
He feels equal parts held together in a shape too tight and too close and undone and unspooled into a thousand disparate threads as his hand closes around his throat once again and Meng Yao thrashes to the beat of Nie Mingjue’s hips.
It is as if nothing exists but them—nothing but a bed housing a single pulsating, form composed of three distinct component parts. Nothing but the sound of Mingjue’s panting breath, mingled with the occasional, soft-pressed sound of rare-won praise. Nothing but the sound of skin against skin as he shoves himself into Meng Yao’s fuck-pliant body with a pace starting to near brutal once again. Nothing but the sound of ragged breath-stop-breath-stop-breath-stop as Meng Yao’s throat paints itself an array of pinks and reds in the shape of Lan Xichen’s fingers.
Nothing but this.
The tightly-coiled emotions that have sat, balled up like a furious prey animal in the center of his chest, have come undone alongside him. The tension wound neatly into the muscles of his biceps and down the line of his arms and into his wrist and fingers and hands into every controlled and careful press of fingertips on either side of Meng Yao’s delicate trachea—lives and dies in each individual moment as he chokes him and chokes him and chokes him.
“He’s so fucking tight, Xichen,” Nie Mingjue grits through the clench of his jaw. “Gonna make him blow like this.”
Lan Xichen cannot stop staring. He cannot stop staring at the saliva welling in the corner of parted lips. He cannot stop staring at the gleaming, glinting tracks that run ceaselessly down from the corners of his eyes.
He’s crying.
He’s crying.
He surges forward as Nie Mingjue chokes something up from the other side of the bed—a rough and raw noise that Lan Xichen can feel through the shared points of Meng Yao’s body as chases the taste of his tears along his breathless lips.
Lan Xichen doesn’t know what is better—the taste of him then, or the taste of him when he releases him. He feels himself throb and ache with a perverse interest the moment that Meng Yao manages a stuttered, half-coughed breath up against the shape of his own lips.
He should be ashamed. He should be horrified. He should be disgusted.
(He’s never been harder in his life.)
Meng Yao twists, fighting against the cage of Lan Xichen’s arms and the vice-grip that Nie Mingjue has on him, slowly turning his waist into a thunderstorm of affection. There’s no point, but he fights regardless and Lan Xichen—
Lan Xichen holds him tighter.
He doesn’t let him go, he doesn’t loosen his grip around his shoulders to let him turn around. He doesn’t let him go. He doesn’t let him go.
He knows he’s leaving marks on more than his throat, he knows he’s leaving bruises behind.
He knows he is hurting him.
He knows he is hurting him.
Lan Xichen’s hand closes around his throat again as he wrenches Meng Yao up to kiss him to the beat of Nie Mingjue’s frantic pace. He knows when Mingjue gets close—he’s always been able to. He can hear when his breath starts to prick, when the endless thread of filth starts to render itself into little more than grunts and bitten-off groans in the shape of slut and bitch. He can see when his hands slide to grab hold of Meng Yao’s waist to pin him to the bed, holding him in place to take him and take him and take him—chasing the peak of his own pleasure into oblivion.
He feels when Nie Mingjue releases him like pulling the end of a spring as far as it can before letting go. Meng Yao is up like a shot, rolling to slip out of Lan Xichen’s arms and grab hold of his shoulders and start pulling him back onto the bed with a gasp.
“Er-ge,” he manages, in a hoarse, rough voice that Lan Xichen knows in some distant part of his mind is his fault. His fault. His fault.
It only makes his stomach burn hotter.
It doesn’t help, the things he says as he urges Lan Xichen to follow him back into the cage of Nie Mingjue’s arms. “Er-ge, have me,” Meng Yao sighs, a warm, slick noise bubbling up from his chest. “I want to feel both of you, I want to be full of you both, er-ge, please. Let me please you, please, let me have you, let me make you feel better. Let me give you this, fuck me in half, fuck me until I can’t breathe, er-ge. You can choke me while you do it too.”
Lan Xichen doesn’t know how he makes it back onto the bed. He doesn’t know how he ends up kneeling with Meng Yao pressed between his chest and Nie Mingjue’s. It happens in the beats of his heart, it happens in the hollow space between his ribs as he climbs after Meng Yao’s siren call voice and the calloused hand that Nie Mingjue extends to stabilize him. It lands, warm and comfortable and grounding on the rise of Lan Xichen’s bicep.
“Go on, Xichen,” Nie Mingjue sighs as Meng Yao turns properly to sit with his back flush to Nie Mingjue’s chest. Nie Mingjue tucks his chin down against his shoulder. “He’s all fucked out and ready for you.”
Nie Mingjue’s broad, strong thighs spread around Meng Yao’s slight body, the sweat-slick, undulating muscle a perfect landing ground for each of Meng Yao’s own legs as he drapes each of his own thighs over Nie Mingjue’s.
Meng Yao is a thing of sublime beauty. His hair hangs, long and sweat-slick over the fuck-flushed chest and the blossoming bruises starting to manifest on the long column of his throat. His still-trembling legs are spread over Nie Mingjue’s, leaving his beautiful, leaking cock slumped and flushed against his stomach. It catches in the low light of the bedroom, sticky-slick pre-come glinting with each of his heavy, panting breaths.
Lower, Lan Xichen feels himself heat to an impossible degree to see the place where Nie Mingjue had fucked him open. He’s reddened with use with a perfect dribble of Nie Mingjue’s come already starting to leak as he twitches around the nothing that is filling him.
“Don’t wait,” someone says, and Lan Xichen doesn’t know if it’s Meng Yao or Nie Mingjue and it doesn’t matter because he isn’t waiting. “Let go.”
Let go.
Let go.
Lan Xichen has never let go in his life. He has held fast to everything he has ever had. He has held fast to his family, to its rules. He has held fast to his home, to his uncle. He has held fast to his brother and his brother and his brother. He has held fast to Nie Mingjue and Meng Yao and his life.
He has never let go of anything before. (What if it doesn’t come back?)
He surges forward to meet them, his own hands finding Meng Yao’s trembling thighs to hold them steady as he shoves himself into him without hesitation. (Let go.) Lan Xichen fucks him with abandon, driving into the willing, keening body beneath him. He can feel the way that Meng Yao tightens around him, the way that his body twists and tightens and clenches in a fever-blister vice grip with each rough, half-violent thrust up into him. He can feel the way each shove of his cock deeper and deeper and deeper into his body forces more of Nie Mingjue’s come up from him, and makes more and more and more of a mess between them.
Lan Xichen gasps, a desperate, breathless thing, into the sweat-slick curve of Meng Yao’s bruised and battered throat.
“There you go,” comes a rough, low voice before him—a prequel to the hand on his arm sliding down to hold steady at his wrist. “Let go, Xichen. We’ve got you.”
Another of Nie Mingjue’s rough, strong hands slips down between them and if he were still a sane man, Lan Xichen would know he was offering Meng Yao the decency of a hand to alleviate his suffering.
He doesn’t know when Meng Yao comes, but he’s certain he does.
His own orgasm rushes up to him with both great and no surprise. He had been walking the blade’s edge of release since he first wrapped his hand around his throat. It shreds through him, feeling like it’s taken him apart strand by strand and then shoved him back together in the same moment.
Lan Xichen wrings himself out inside of Meng Yao’s body, with an endless series of blow after stuttering blow to feel himself painting him.
He fucks Meng Yao through his own orgasm, a feat that lasts somewhere between a moment and a millenia.
It might be a thousand years before he’s able to pull his face up from the crevice of Meng Yao’s throat. One of Nie Mingjue’s hands lifts off Lan Xichen’s wrist to guide his face into a warm, slow kiss. He feels his pulse stutter and slow, steadying inch by inch.
Nie Mingjue tastes like comfort. He tastes like the edge of bone and muscle and comfort, mixed with the distant taste of their supper.
Lan Xichen has never had to come down from anything before.
But he likes coming down like this.
Mingjue’s voice filters through him, kiss-bitten lips sliding against his. “You alright there, Xichen?”
“I—” the words swell in his throat. He should be horrified.
He should be disgusted.
(He isn’t. He cannot be.)
His stomach lurches.
Between them, with his eyes damp and glistening with something that Xichen cannot comprehend, Meng Yao’s rasped voice comes. “Hold me?” Meng Yao asks, a cutting press of breath.
Lan Xichen does as he is bid. As he always does.
As he always does.
A weight disappears off the bed as he gathers Meng Yao into his arms. His eyes slip shut before the weight returns—bearing with it a warm, damp rag and comfortable, strong arms.
A strong line against his back, a strong line against his chest.
And slowly, Lan Xichen draws in a shuddering, shivering breath.
And then—all at once—lets go.