Chapter Text
“San Lang. Be still.”
Hua Cheng closes his eye, the soft timbre of Xie Lian’s voice washing over him, cooling balm to the deep obsession burning in his soul. Resting his hands against his knees lightly, the corners of his mouth quirk up to form a playful half-smile as he shifts on his chair, breathing in Xie Lian’s scent: floral and fresh, strong with divinity and brimming with life.
Xie Lian also smells a bit like their burnt dinner earlier this night, and Hua Cheng chuckles at the realization, extremely fond.
“San Lang,” Xie Lian says sternly. “I said, be still.” Then he pokes at his nose, huffing.
Hua Cheng cracks open his eye, meeting the beautiful face of his husband, now annoyed and all scrunched up. He smiles charmingly, absolutely unapologetic. “Sorry, gege.”
Xie Lian pouts, but the faint glimmer in his dark-honeyed eyes reveals the mirthful undertone behind his words. “Hm. Now, be a good boy and. Be. Still.”
Hua Cheng ducks his head obediently, hiding his smile. Once he’s managed to school his features, he once more lifts his head, eye fluttering shut just as a hand touches his face gently, cupping his cheek. A thumb caresses his skin, drawing indescribable, nonsensical patterns on it, maybe tracing the outlines of some invisible wrinkles on his unmarred skin.
Hua Cheng smiles, quiet and indulgent, leaning into the touch of his husband. It’s nothing spectacular, just his hand and yet, it manages to ignite a simmering bonfire of desire inside him, heated flames that refuse to be extinguished.
The touch continues, shifts a little, morphs into something else: a kiss of a soft brush against his eyelid. Xie Lian hums, carefully pulling at the corner of Hua Cheng’s eye, flattening and smoothening the skin to create a living canvas for him to decorate.
Hua Cheng’s lips part, tongue darting out to wet them. He stays absolutely still as Xie Lian traces the shape of his eye with a brush, confidently applying red cinnabar-ink on his eyelid. Individual bristles dig into the small spaces between his thick, black eyelashes as one solid brushstroke is followed by another, then another, until suddenly it’s over.
Only the faint scent of cinnabar-ink floats in the air.
Hua Cheng tries to move but Xie Lian shushes him. “Shh. I’m not done yet. Look up.”
He obeys, and Xie Lian uses the moment to line his lower lashes with red, too. His eye flutters shut the moment the brush leaves his skin. Then he merely waits, body relaxed and comfortable. The hold Xie Lian has on his face is grounding and he lets himself float in the space between this moment and the next, in the blissful feeling of having all the time in the world.
More brushstrokes follow, light as a feather, as Xie Lian applies what Hua Cheng presumes to be another color of plant-dyed cinnabar-ink. There is no hesitation in Xie Lian’s movements, his steady hands accustomed to creating the most beautiful of lines on paper, lines becoming characters, characters becoming a story.
Even now, Xie Lian is painting a story on Hua Cheng’s skin.
Hua Cheng sighs at the thought, easy and mollified, smitten.
He’s instantly met with a tiny giggle and a decisive “All done.”
Opening his eye, he peers at Xie Lian, who is still holding two small makeup brushes in his hand, looking at him and smiling brightly, his face illuminated by the soft candlelight. He’s so fucking beautiful and Hua Cheng doesn’t know whether he wants to hold him tenderly against his heart like he’s something fragile, or fuck him mean until he screams all his senses out of his body.
So, he stays absolutely still and waits.
Xie Lian frowns and tilts his head as if to evaluate the result of his handiwork. Nodding to himself, he turns around and rummages around Hua Cheng’s makeup basket a bit more until he finds a small handheld mirror, an intricately decorated rare lacquer piece from an auction in a faraway town they once attended during their travels.
“San Lang looks very handsome,” he says, holding the mirror before Hua Cheng’s eye.
Hua Cheng laughs, delighted. The black and red lines hugging his eyelashes are perfect, absolutely stunning, bringing out the shape of his eye and the dark danger lurking in it. Immersed in Xie Lian’s art as he is, he doesn’t even pay attention to his ever-present eyepatch.
“This one thanks gege for his effort,” he says, shooting an easy grin at Xie Lian. Inside, his chest feels funny, full and suffocated.
“Mn,” Xie Lian nods absently, as if thinking. “I think…” he coughs, “ahem. San Lang would look very handsome with some rouge on his lips.”
Hua Cheng quirks an eyebrow in surprise, suddenly amused. “Gege wants to doll this husband up?”
“San Lang,” Xie Lian half-huffs, half-snorts, a tiny amused sound, painfully intimate and soft like this lingering moment between them.
“It’s alright. Gege can do as he pleases. Free access, exchange if unsuitable.”
Xie Lian laughs and smacks his cheek playfully, face reddening with embarrassment as he slots himself between Hua Cheng’s spread thighs once more. Chuckling, Hua Cheng closes his eye and waits, lips parting in anticipation.
For him, makeup is no different from adorning his body with jewelry and all things fine. He feels absolutely no shame over decorating himself, incomparable strength and power mixing with aesthetic pleasure. He is a man of Xianle as much as he is a man of Xie Lian’s, after all.
A delicate hand with fine fingers grabs his chin and tilts his head up. Hua Cheng lets his lips go lax and malleable under Xie Lian’s treatment, lets himself melt under his touch. The brush is back, soft and sticky with the high-quality rouge Hua Cheng sometimes uses on his lips.
He relaxes completely as Xie Lian pulls and tugs at his mouth here, touches him there, all the while applying crimson red on his lips, making them stand out from his pale face like two wickedly shaped gemstones. His brushstrokes are determined as they burrow into the softness of his lips, sure to fill every natural crease and wrinkle with blinding color.
Xie Lian’s lips are sometimes chapped and cracked, exposed to the elementals when they work in the village. Hua Cheng’s always remain soft and smooth, kissable, as Xie Lian likes to tell him with a coy look on his face.
Hua Cheng sighs, again leaning into the touch, only to have it end all too soon. Letting out a disappointed grunt, he blinks his eye open.
Xie Lian is smiling at him, face flushed. He swallows, hard, his throat bobbing and at a loss for words. “My handsome husband,” he finally croaks, blushing even more. Then he tucks a strand of inky black hair behind Hua Cheng’s ear, giving a small tug at his silvery sharp earring.
A dangerous sparkle of want skitters across Hua Cheng’s spine. He knows the flush on Xie Lian’s face falls deeper, travels all the way to his chest and paints his upper body with the color of lust, making his dusky nipples stand out.
Dusky pierced nipples, a small part of Hua Cheng screams, his head booming with the sound of it.
Even now, Hua Cheng can’t forget of the wrecked sound of ecstasy Xie Lian made when he pushed the small needle through his sensitive flesh, when he embedded the studs sprinkled with the speckles of his ashes inside his chest. He doesn’t know how it’s possible, but Hua Cheng worships his god even more after discovering some of those secret likes and preferences, the ones they had learned after years of being together, slowly exploring each other while clad in nothing but a cloak of naked trust.
Xie Lian holds the mirror for him and Hua Cheng peers into it, smiling. His lips are perfectly red, vivid and alive, dripping with danger and decadence.
He loves it.
“Thank you, gege,” he says, a low rumble of a laugh escaping his chest. “For indulging this one.” Desire licks at his limbs like the surrounding candlelight, sparkling across his recently decorated features.
Xie Lian merely laughs, putting away the rouge and the plant-dyed cinnabar-ink, meticulously taking his time to clean the brushes before stacking them away, too. “Haha. I wonder, who’s indulging who… Ahem,” he clears his throat, “it was no trouble at all. I love seeing San Lang… ah. Like this.”
Beautiful. Dangerous. Decorated and all dolled up.
He says nothing but Hua Cheng understands it all regardless. The flush is there again—even the tips of Xie Lian’s ears are red—and Hua Cheng fights something hungry inside, a growling, starved beast wanting to break free and bend his husband over the closest surface, tear his clothes away and ruin him with pleasure.
Xie Lian, blindly oblivious to the molten desire swirling inside Hua Cheng, pulls him up and beckons him to follow. “Why don’t we stargaze a little first, eh? Now that San Lang’s all handsome, it would be a pity just to stay inside.”
“I see. Gege wants to show this husband around, then. Pimp him for money, perhaps? Ah, gege, you wound me.”
“San Lang!” Xie Lian huffs, absolutely scandalized, opening the door and concealing his flushed face. “What nonsense are you even spouting?”
Laughter follows them as they step out of their cottage and into the fresh autumn air, breezy enough to soothe the skin after a hard day’s work.
After that, Hua Cheng doesn’t know how much time passes, doesn’t really keep track of it. For them, the concept of time itself is transcendental. At some point it gets colder outside, stars twinkling a bit more sharply in the increasing chill of the air.
They return inside, just like that, hand in hand, fingers entwined tightly.
Xie Lian goes to wash up first, his slender body disappearing behind the movable gauze screen to give him a false sense of privacy—as if he needs it in the first place. Hua Cheng knows him inside out.
Staring at his shadowy figure moving on the other side of the thin fabric screen, he purses his lips together, the feeling of rouge both glossy and velvety on his skin. Slowly, he spreads a scroll he’s been studying on the table, absently lighting a small spiritual light between his fingers to illuminate the extravagantly written characters.
Accompanied by the faint sloshing sounds of Xie Lian bathing, he loses himself into the scroll for a bit, reading about a rare saber of Yong’an origin with soul-shattering powers, presumed to have been buried alongside its owner during a devastating landslide centuries ago. Quite opposite to his violent reputation, Hua Cheng really likes to immerse himself in reading and educating himself. It’s no trouble for him; bits and pieces of information easily sink into his brain as neatly compartmentalized blocks of data, ready to be pulled out to support Xie Lian with his decision-making whenever needed.
“San Lang.”
“Mm, gege?”
“I’m going to bed.”
Hua Cheng turns his head around to look at Xie Lian, who’s got his sleeping robe haphazardly tied around his perfect dainty frame, perked up nipples and the glimmering studs Hua Cheng had gifted him fully on display. His skin is rosy and glowing, errant droplets of water still traveling across the expanse of his bare chest.
Hua Cheng’s brain rattles like a cheap rattle-drum and his mouth waters at the sight. He instantly moves to put the scroll away, intent on joining his husband.
But it seems that this very husband of his is full of surprises tonight.
“You stay up for a little while longer, San Lang. Alright?” Xie Lian says, voice cracking the tiniest bit, hooking Hua Cheng’s belly just so, making it swirl with endless waves of yearning. “Don’t remove your makeup.”
The last comes out as a quiet whisper, hot and demanding yet shy, begging and breathless—the intoxicating combination that forms the essence of Xie Lian.
Hua Cheng looks at Xie Lian, at his bath-flushed face and soft, towel-dried hair and nods, lips quirking up minutely. “Yes, gege.”
Xie Lian is obviously planning something, and Hua Cheng has no intentions of ruining the surprise. Thus, he plays a bit dumb and vaguely obedient—they both know it’s all an act—and turns his gaze back on the scroll, faking ignorance of the sounds of the sheets rustling, his god preparing himself for sleep.
Between his fingers, the spiritual light keeps flickering even though the candlelight goes out. He carefully transfers the flames from his fingers to the heart of the candle. Outside, cicadas scream their hollow cries and fireflies dance as night creatures wake up to hunt.
Suddenly, Hua Cheng can’t ignore the thick, matte feel of the rouge on his lips—not now when he knows all this was a part of Xie Lian’s plan all along. His mouth feels as dry as his elegantly painted lips.
However, instead of quenching his thirst with water, he reaches out to the basket of brushes and paints, skillfully applying another layer of vivid red. Biting into the plushness of his lower lip, he traces it with the tip of his tongue, satisfied with the newly glossed feel.
Only the very best for his god.
Closing his eye and not even pretending to read anymore, Hua Cheng waits for another half an incense time before turning around. Xie Lian is there, eyes closed and curled up under their thin blanket made from the highest quality thermosilks in all the realms. Hua Cheng’s gaze rakes the sleeping form of his beloved, landing on his beautifully defined naked shoulders and collarbones begging to be bitten and licked and marked.
A slightly feral grin tugs at his lushly painted lips as he prowls to the bed, already shedding his outer robes and his jewelry.
Xie Lian’s chest raises and falls, he seems to be asleep.
Hua Cheng lets him pretend.
He slowly lifts the blanket, revealing Xie Lian in all his naked glory, soft skin illuminated by the warm spiritual light by the table. Staring, Hua Cheng drinks in the sight like he’s been deprived of food and drink for years: Slender arms leading to finely defined shoulders full of skill and hidden strength. Pierced nips begging to be tugged and tormented. A slim waist and a surprisingly soft lower belly, a beloved spot for Hua Cheng to nuzzle his face against. Willowy legs, strong and lean, leading to elegant ankles and soft, perfect, bath-fresh feet with cute toes like flower blooms.
They wriggle instinctively, as if realizing they’re being stared at.
And finally, at the center of that all, Xie Lian’s perfect, plump ass, framed by the dimples on his lower back—the ones Hua Cheng loves to dig his thumbs into as he grabs Xie Lian’s hips while taking him from behind, ruthlessly railing him into oblivion.
Taking his sweet time, he really looks at his husband, his beloved, the solitary shining star in the blackness of his universe. However, it seems that he’s taking too much time, based on the barely there wiggle of Xie Lian’s butt, the way his pinky finger twitches against the soft, white sheets.
Ah.
Hua Cheng gets it now.
He smirks but feels faint.
The makeup, the rouge, the pretense.
His husband wants him to mark him up, sully and taint him until he’s made dirty with the signs of Hua Cheng’s passion.
His cock twitches in his pants, hard from the sight alone.
Grinning impishly, Hua Cheng removes the rest of his robes while leaving his pants on for now. The spiritual flames on the table grow stronger in tune with his desire, casting long shadows on the walls of their cottage.
Flipping his limp, pretend-sleeping husband to lie on his belly, Hua Cheng strokes his sides and neck, feeling the soft skin under his fingertips. He traces the curve of Xie Lian’s spine gently, a black-painted nail tracking each bump to map the dips and swells of Xie Lian’s body. Smacking his lips, he makes sure they’re still abundant with color before following the path of his finger with his mouth, covering Xie Lian’s spine with red lip-marks, painting it decadent red.
Finally reaching the end, he bites down on Xie Lian’s ass, nipping at the soft, round globe of flesh and leaving behind mean, red stains. Under him, Xie Lian is still and pliant, his breathing as even as ever. His dark lashes fan his cheeks, still rosy from the bath, his lips barely parted.
Fucking hell.
Hua Cheng’s head swims with want as he slowly lifts Xie Lian’s hips and ass, parting his cheeks to reveal the tiny hidden entrance between them, soft and sweet and bath-pink. One of his hands snakes around Xie Lian’s body to touch his cock, just to get some feedback, and oh.
His mock-sleeping husband is hard and wet already, drooling on the sheets.
Hua Cheng swallows down a low growl, pulling his hand away and focusing all his attention on that puckered ring of muscle between Xie Lian’s cheeks. Blowing cool air against it, he watches as it twitches and flutters with interest, inviting him to touch more.
And who is Hua Cheng to deny anything from his beloved?
Spreading Xie Lian’s cheeks even more, Hua Cheng absently mouths the meat of his milky thighs before burying his face between his cheeks, tongue flat against Xie Lian’s hole. Licking around and sweeping up and down, he pulls away just enough to see the unmarked skin become smeared with the red from his lips, stained and so fucking hot.
Delirious, he dives in once more, sucking on Xie Lian’s rim, mouth tight and demanding around the wrinkled skin of his entrance. Under him, Xie Lian twitches, but there is no other sign that his god is awake. The idea that he’s using his god does something funny to his head, the connections between his brain and the rest of his body quickly cracking undone, even if it’s all just an elaborate pretend play.
Panting, he grabs Xie Lian’s ass even harder, slowly fucking his tongue inside, smearing rouge and saliva all over the sensitive, tormented skin. It’s just the tip at first, but finally that tight ring of muscle gives in, allowing him to wiggle his tongue even deeper.
Hua Cheng barely registers the way his own dick throbs in his pants or the way he feels the rush of ghastly blood inside his veins.
He’s going to ruin Xie Lian.
Spitting on his fingers while staring at Xie Lian’s entrance, now stained crimson red and sticky with drool, Hua Cheng carefully works the tip of his wet index finger inside his ass, then another, palms lying flat against those meaty cheeks.
Then he pulls, stretching Xie Lian’s hole just so that he can fit the whole of his tongue inside.
Under him, Xie Lian gasps and a full-body tremors surges through him.
Hua Cheng pays it no mind because he’s got his mouth full of Xie Lian, has his fucking tongue inside him. He eats him out frantically, tasting him and lathering his skin with red, making it messy and wet. He drools, he knows it, but is beyond caring because fucking hell, the feel and pressure of Xie Lian all over his mouth is sublime.
Xie Lian’s thighs start to quiver but he still refuses to let out any other sound, eyes screwed shut. When his hips buck into the touch, when his body starts to tighten and tremble, Hua Cheng pulls away, leaving him hanging right there on the edge, bullied and shaking pitifully.
Fucking delicious.
He stares at the sight before him blearily, the evidence of his mouth all around Xie Lian’s ass pulling at the strings of lust inside his abdomen, his cock pulsing in his pants. Almost coming in his pants like a lovesick teenager, he grabs the base of his clothed dick, biting his lip.
When the imminent danger of coming too early is over, Hua Cheng quickly spreads Xie Lian’s thighs, just enough that he can grab his dripping hardness, tugging it backward and towards himself, mindful not to hurt. He maneuvers Xie Lian’s thighs again, forcing them to squeeze tightly together while leaving his cock wedged on the other side—on Hua Cheng’s side.
Xie Lian, he notices vaguely, bites his lip, helpless and completely at Hua Cheng’s mercy, ass and cock gloriously on display.
Desperate to fill his lungs with something other than the burning sensation of minemine-fucking-mine dripping down to his very marrow, Hua Cheng stares at the sight before him: Xie Lian’s sexy buttocks and tormented hole, stretched and stained in rouge. Saliva trickling down to wet his balls, tightly kept in place by the way he pushes his tempting thighs together. And under them—his cock, flushed and pretty and hard, forced to rest against the back of his legs, staining the jade-like skin with pearly precome.
Fuck. Fucking hell.
Fucking hell.
Hua Cheng dives in again, licking the area around Xie Lian’s hole eagerly before moving to mouth at his balls, satisfied to see that there is still enough color on his lips to dirty the pale skin. Kneading Xie Lian’s buttocks with his large hands, he tongues them gently, giving them a little suck. Xie Lian twitches and shakes uncontrollably, but remains silent.
Hua Cheng smirks through his burning desire. A challenge, then.
Blowing cool air on the ruddy head of Xie Lian’s cock, he licks the underside of the shaft from the bottom to the tip in an inverted motion, stopping to play with the sensitive spot right below the mushroom head, poking and laving it with his nimble tongue.
Xie Lian’s dick pulses against Hua Cheng’s red mouth and even more viscous, clear fluid beads at the slit, dripping down to stain his thighs and the sheets.
Hua Cheng wheezes and blindly snaps his fingers to conjure up a jar of oil, slicking up two of his fingers immediately. He inserts one inside Xie Lian’s hole, rushed and not too gentle, pushing it all the way down to the first knuckle. There is no resistance; the glide is smooth and inviting, the heat around his cool digit almost unbearable.
Images of their past entanglements flash before his eyes and he can almost feel that tight, wet heat around his cock instead of his finger.
His body trembling with want, Hua Cheng keeps tonguing that sensitive spot on Xie Lian’s cock as he slowly, very slowly, fucks his ass with just one finger, crooking and wiggling it around. It takes no time at all to locate his slightly swollen prostate, Xie Lian’s full-body tremor and the shocked, overwhelmed hiccup a telltale signal.
Brain hazy with feelings so profound he thinks he’s going to shatter from the weight of them, Hua Cheng then proceeds to torture his husband with just one or two fingers, alternating between rubbing and pushing and teasing and tickling, stimulating his prostate while massaging the underside of his cock with the thumb of his other hand.
It’s extremely slow.
It’s torturous.
It’s fucking amazing.
Xie Lian sobs at some point, whole body flushed even redder than Hua Cheng’s rouge as he fingers him, violently intent on milking him dry.
Bending his body down, Hua Cheng seals his mouth around Xie Lian’s turgid cockhead still nesting against the bed of his thighs while continuing with the slow ministrations of his hands. He sucks and sucks, rubs and massages and nudges and milks, and just as Xie Lian is about to come, his balls drawing taut, Hua Cheng pushes down on his prostate with the pads of two fingers and sharply smacks his ass once, twice, thrice.
Then he sucks, really sucks, and that’s it.
Xie Lian comes inside his mouth with a drawn-out, high-pitched scream, soiled and sullied and wrecked and so fucking beautiful. Hua Cheng doesn’t stop moving his fingers, milking him dry and helping him ride out his orgasm, swallowing every drop of come that Xie Lian gifts him.
Once Xie Lian is done, Hua Cheng desperately pulls down his half-soiled pants and releases his cock, hard as hell. He nudges the fat head against Xie Lian’s quivering, red hole. His husband’s ass is a lovely mess of red color—rouge, kisses, smacks—and Hua Cheng can’t tear his eye away from it as he jerks himself off forcefully and without any care.
He wants nothing more than to sink into the warmth of Xie Lian, but they still have time tonight. For now, it’s enough to—
Hua Cheng groans, deep and throaty, as he releases all over Xie Lian’s hole and ass, decorating the beautiful map of reds with the white of his come.
Red and white.
Fucking exquisite.
His head feels like exploding and his chest is too tight with emotions. His good eye burns with something foreign as aftershock wrack his body. He knows the cinnabar-ink on his eyelid must be smudged with sweat, and that his painted mouth is a filthy mess.
A silvery wraith butterfly appears from the thin air and flutters about, very close to the mixed chaos of colors he’s painted on Xie Lian’s skin. Hua Cheng laughs, low and warm and wrecked, and the butterfly flutters to where Xie Lian has finally cracked open one hazy eye.
Face sweaty and red, he peers at the image pasted on its wings, of his ass covered in the red of Hua Cheng’s mouth and the white of his seed.
Closing his eyes, a small, satisfied smile tugs at his lips.
And Hua Cheng…
Hua Cheng really has no other option but to flip him around and kiss him stupid, kiss him mean, kiss him hot and bothered and ready to be fucked, kiss him until he can taste his soul, until their joined mouths are nothing but a hot, wet mess of love.
Just like it’s meant to be.