Chapter 1: Yuze/Mc
Chapter Text
They met in stolen hours now - after lectures ended, after the last lights in the dormitory halls were dimmed, after the weight of being seen lifted.
Tonight, it was the small storage chamber tucked behind the Reading Pavillion's back wing. Almost no one came this far. Scrolls from dynasties long dead lined the walls, their dust undisturbed.
Xiao Hua was already inside, seated on a low bench near the window’s lattice. Yu Ze slipped in quietly, latching the door behind him.
For a moment, they said nothing.
Then, without ceremony, Yu Ze crossed the room and cupped Xiao Hua’s face with both hands - his touch gentle, but no longer hesitant. He kissed him. Deeper this time. Hungrier. Xiao Hua returned it with the same fire albeit clumsier - weeks of held-back breath suddenly released.
In the silence, the soft rustle of robes falling to the floor was loud as thunder.
The bench was narrow, but they didn’t care. Hands roamed with intention now - no longer uncertain, no longer afraid. Fingers pressed into skin, tracing the lines of a body once known only in theory, now memorized in silence. Xiao Hua leaned into Yu Ze’s neck, mouthing words not meant to be spoken, not in daylight.
“Tell me to stop,” Yu Ze whispered, voice low, rough with restraint.
“I won’t.”
And he didn’t.
The air turned thick with heat, with the scent of skin and old paper. The world beyond the door faded - no academy, no rules, no roles. Just breath against ear, hands gripping tightly, a whispered name repeated like a mantra.
Time bent in that room.
After, they lay tangled together, robes half-draped across their bodies, chests rising and falling in quiet sync.
Yu Ze traced slow, absent-minded circles on Xiao Hua’s bare shoulder.
“This is dangerous,” he said.
“I know.”
“But we keep doing it.”
Xiao Hua turned his head, met his teacher’s eyes.
“Because it’s real.”
Yu Ze didn’t reply. But he leaned in, brushed his lips over Xiao Hua’s temple, his jaw, the corner of his mouth - soft, deliberate kisses that said everything words could not.
They dressed in silence. One last glance before the door opened. One last brush of fingers, as if trying to anchor the night into memory.
Then they vanished again into the halls of the academy — teacher and student by day, something far more fragile and precious when the stars rose.
Chapter 2: Wen Siyou/Mc
Chapter Text
The air shimmered with the scent of warm stone and cedarwood.
Far from the crowded towns and trade roads, hidden in a mountain pass where even maps hesitated, lay one of Wen Siyou’s lesser-known taverns - a retreat more than a business, with wooden corridors that creaked beneath the hush of pine trees and open-air corridors that led to steaming pools of mineral-rich spring water.
Xiao Hua liked this one best.
Not because it had the best wine -- it didn’t-- nor the most elegant rooms-- too rustic for that. No, he liked it because it was the one Wen Siyou rarely brought anyone else to.
Which meant, when they stayed here, he didn’t have to share.
Now, under the indigo cloak of twilight, Xiao Hua stretched languidly in the open-air hot spring behind their private quarters, arms outstretched along the stone edge, hair trailing in the water like ink bleeding across rice paper.
Mist clung to his bare skin. The water lapped gently at his collarbone, shifting with every slow, deliberate movement. Above, the pine branches rustled softly in the wind, and a crescent moon watched him through the steam.
He didn’t look up when he heard the sliding door open behind him.
“I was starting to think you’d left me to drown,” he said, voice syrup-smooth and lazily amused.
"You’d float,” came Wen Siyou’s voice -- lower, rougher than usual, as it always was after a long day. “You’re too vain to sink.”
Xiao Hua smiled with all his teeth. “That’s not a denial.”
He tilted his head back just enough to catch sight of Siyou at the edge of the bath -- his tall frame outlined by moonlight, his robe already halfway open, revealing pale bare skin.
“Are you going to stand there all night looking dignified,” Xiao Hua asked, “or are you going to join me and let the heat loosen your spine?”
Wen Siyou stepped down into the water without a word.
The spring embraced him slowly -- a ripple of steam, the glide of muscles beneath the surface. He sank beside Xiao Hua with the kind of deliberate calm that always drove him mad: not rushed, never desperate, always in control. Always reminding him who owned the space between them.
Xiao Hua turned toward him, legs brushing under the water.
“You have no idea how good you look in steam,” he whispered.
“You’ve told me. Four times this week.”
“I meant every time.”
He moved closer, closing the small distance, arms slipping around Wen Siyou’s shoulders. Water rolled between their bodies as he leaned in -- not kissing him yet, just breathing the same breath, their foreheads nearly touching.
“I like it here,” Xiao Hua murmured.
Wen Siyou let a hand rest lightly on his waist beneath the water. “Because no one’s around to hear you moan?”
“Mm,” Xiao Hua purred, “Because I don’t have to compete for your attention.”
He tilted his face up then, brushing his lips lightly — barely — against Wen Siyou’s. “Though the moaning part is a perk.”
Wen Siyou kissed him, finally.
It wasn’t rushed. It never was, with them. But it was deep — sensual, slow, full of pressure and promise. Under the water, their hands moved with more honesty than their mouths ever did. Fingers skimmed over hips, up spines, into damp hair. The warmth of the spring blurred the line between breath and heat, between a sigh and a shiver.
Xiao Hua climbed into his lap without resistance, thighs straddling strong legs, robes already floating around them like silk drowning in the mist. His chest pressed against Wen Siyou’s, skin slick with heat and want.
“I could die like this,” he whispered, lips brushing his ear. His words a joke yet the air slightly shifted.
“You won’t,” Siyou murmured, voice rough. “I won’t let you.”
Xiao Hua shivered at the tone -- possessive, low, full of the quiet promise only Wen Siyou ever gave: not protection from the world, but ownership of his place within it.
Wen Siyou’s hands slid down his back, under the water, gripping the curve of his thighs.
“You’re too relaxed,” he said softly.
"I’m in a hot spring with the man I love,” Xiao Hua replied, shifting just enough to feel the hardness stirring beneath him. “What else should I be?”
“A little more respectful, I'm still your teacher after all.”
“Or what?”
Wen Siyou’s hands tightened just enough to make Xiao Hua’s breath hitch.
“I’ll show you what.”