Work Text:
Wu Xingzi generally felt a bit awkward whenever he went to Goose City. Even though it was so close to Qingcheng County, it was so much more sophisticated, and he was well aware that sophisticated was something he was not. Today, however, he was determined that he was going to go to Goose City and have a good time. He was going to buy some expensive food, or maybe some nice clothing or some unnecessary wall hanging. He was going to stay the night at an inn with room service. He was going, in short, to enjoy a day of hedonism in the manner of a man who had a limited budget but until now had no budget at all.
The reason Wu Xingzi had this determination was simple: For many years now he had been paying off the debt he’d incurred borrowing money for Yan Zaizong, and now, only just recently, he had finally paid it all off. For the first time in practically as long as he could remember, Wu Xingzi had received his salary with an awareness that he could spend it purely on himself. This was going to be the life! Of course perhaps the next time he received his pay he would spend it on something more practical, like fixing up a hole in his roof. But for now, Goose City awaited.
…except. The restaurants here, they really were very expensive, weren’t they?
Wu Xingzi approached one restaurant after another. A few had such intimidating staff at the front that he didn’t dare to go all the way in with the plain clothes he had on. Others, he went in and asked about prices, and despite having decided to spend frivolously, was too intimidated to go on.
It seemed old habits of modest spending were hard to break.
The truth of the matter was that he’d seen a very nice dumpling stall right outside the inn he had chosen, but had told himself he needed to go somewhere nicer if he was really going to embrace the spirit of his little holiday. Only now, every time he approached a restaurant, he was really only thinking of those dumplings. From a distance they were calling him—Wu Xingzi, come back, come back…
And in the end, stomach growling, he did indeed head back.
It was getting late by then, but he didn’t worry the stall would be closed. Around here, stalls stayed open to all hours. Still, it might run out of its best flavors if he didn’t hurry. Considering this, Wu Xingzi took a shortcut through a dark alleyway, and it was like this that he stumbled upon the most beautiful man he had ever seen.
The stumbling was literal. The man was lying crumpled against the wall, and his clothing was dark, and Wu Xingzi didn’t notice him until he’d tripped over his legs. He began to apologize, but trailed off, because looking at this man, he came to several realizations at once:
- The man was unconscious, so he probably wouldn’t appreciate the apology.
- The man was incredibly gorgeous. He had smooth, pale skin, and delicate red lips that made Wu Xingzi think of flower petals and also made a new kind of hunger rise up in him.
- There was a whole lot of blood on the ground pooling around this beautiful man, and in fact, before stumbling, Wu Xingzi had absent-mindedly stepped in it. The blood was apparently coming from a wound in the man’s leg.
This! This was not very good! Wu Xingzi felt at first that he had been blessed to stumble upon a god in the middle of nowhere, but after a second’s thought it seemed like that man might be on death’s doorstep! Hurriedly he crouched and shook the man’s shoulder, trying to wake him up. The man’s hand shot up and grabbed his wrist. The grip was lethal. (Later on he would appreciate that if the man had been at full strength, his wrist might well have been broken.)
Dark, glittering eyes cracked open. They took Wu Xingzi in, narrowed judgmentally, and then fell closed. But the hand was still on Wu Xingzi’s wrist.
Wu Xingzi had never been touched by such a beautiful person but it was not a good moment to appreciate it. Awkwardly he did his best to haul the man upright at least enough that he could support his weight a little ways, just far enough to step out of the alley and call for some assistance.
So it was that rather than spending his hard-earned money on a day of luxury, Wu Xingzi ended up first paying a physician to take a look at the beautiful stranger’s leg. At the same time, though, he did manage to get one the inn workers to buy him some of the dumplings. The excitement had him feeling very hungry, and besides, he felt that even if he had ended up bringing this injured stranger back to his room, he still had made a commitment to eat the dumplings that had to be honored. He was not, however, able to sneak out and get them for himself, because the man refused to let go of Wu Xingzi, maintaining a death grip that was inconvenient, slightly painful, and irrationally attractive. Wu Xingzi hoped that if the doctor examining the man’s leg saw Wu Xingzi flushing, he would assume it was a case of nerves and not a reaction to the hand on his wrist and the fact that the leg, even injured, was very shapely, just as beautiful as the man’s face, and made Wu Xingzi wonder about the rest of him.
By the time the beauty woke up, it was quite nighttime. Wu Xingzi had finished his dumplings. He was still hungry but felt embarrassed to summon room service again. The man’s leg had been bandaged and his clothes put back on by the doctor, who had left after telling Wu Xingzi he’d be back in the morning and to make sure the man got plenty of rest. Wu Xingzi had been trying to decide whether to lie down in the bed next to the beautiful man or not. It was very late and he figured the man couldn’t complain about him sleeping in a bed he had paid for, but… lying down next to a man who was already asleep and could not offer an opinion did not feel quite right, and also, the bed was very thin, meaning Wu Xingzi would practically have to lie on top of him.
The man’s first words on waking were, “Where is this?”
Wu Xingzi said, “Oh, you’re awake now. That’s good. This is the Goose Inn, one of the best inns in Goose City that’s still affordable. The doctor said someone stabbed you in the leg, but the wound’s been cleaned and bandaged, and if you stay off it, it will probably recover.”
The man was clearly listening, but at the same time he looked about the room and at Wu Xingzi himself very suspiciously. “Why am I here?”
“I found you in an alley. You had collapsed. Do you remember who stabbed you? I can help you make a complaint to the magistrate. I don’t know him personally but one could say I have a good working knowledge of how to do such things.”
“Spies, most likely,” the man muttered. “Could be from a number of people… I didn’t think it was spread about I was here.”
Asleep, the man’s face had been peaceful but limp; awake it was angry and tense but at least animated. Unfortunately for Wu Xingzi, who was trying to behave in a concerned, reassuring, but essentially polite and distant manner, this made him look even more attractive.
“Do you have many enemies, then?” Wu Xingzi said, trying to focus on what the man was saying and not on how his lips looked even more luscious when they frowned than they did when slack. “Of course with the war on, I suppose we all do… Are you a soldier?”
“Yes, I’m a soldier,” the man said. “My courtesy name is Haiwang, you can call me that. And yours?”
Chang’an, Wu Xingzi didn’t say, because thinking that name brought him back to thinking about Zaizong-xiong, who he’d been deliberately not thinking about. It wasn’t that Zaizong was an open wound, of course. It had been many years since they had parted. But when he had finished paying off that debt, it had been a strange feeling—it had been good, of course, but also there had been a sense of loss at that one last connection to Zaizong breaking. For years his work had been paying off the money he had given to Zaizong, and so he had felt as if he were still in a way providing for him, somewhere in the back of his mind, despite knowing this was not an accurate description of their now nonexistent relationship.
Ah… this was his holiday. He really hadn’t wanted to think about Zaizong. Why had this lovely man reminded him? He shook his head, pulled his thoughts back to the present. “Haiwang, you should drink some water. You lost a lot of blood and the doctor says that for the next couple weeks you should drink lots of water and eat lots of meat. I don’t have any meat up here, but I do have water.”
“I don’t feel hungry anyway,” the man—Haiwang—said.
“Yes, I’ll just pour you some water from this pitcher—ah, you’ll have to let go of my wrist.”
Haiwang only now noticed he was crushing Wu Xingzi’s wrist and even his upper hand. He stared at where their hands were touching, and a slight flush appeared on his cheeks, which was surely a good sign, since Wu Xingzi had by now realized some of the paleness of his face was caused by blood loss. Wu Xingzi tugged, and reluctantly he let go.
He drank a couple cups of water while Wu Xingzi chattered at him, telling him the details of how he’d found him, how startling it had been, everything the doctor had said, the fact that the doctor would be back in the morning, the types of meat dumplings they had at the stall just outside the inn that he could sample in the morning. In the presence of such a beauty he would ordinarily have been a bit tongue-tied, but since he had seen Haiwang close to death, he felt a bit more detached, and at the same time, this man was in his bed, drinking water he provided, which surely meant they could interact with a certain level of equality even if Haiwang was much more beautiful and, judging by his clothes, probably of a higher social standing.
Eventually Haiwang cut in to say, “Probably, you have saved my life.”
As this came right in the middle of the monologue about dumplings, it took a moment for Wu Xingzi’s brain to adjust to the new subject, and before he could respond properly, Haiwang said, “I will repay you in any way you choose. There isn’t much I can’t do for you.”
Ah! What a kingly offer!
Wu Xingzi knew exactly what he wanted to ask for, but it seemed wrong to take advantage of a poor injured man. “You really don’t have to do anything. I only happened on you by chance; someone else would have found you eventually. What I did, anyone could have done.”
“I could have died,” Haiwang said sternly. “You have to let me repay you.”
Wu Xingzi bit his lip. Well, now. This was clearly an honorable man with a lot of pride. Maybe if Wu Xingzi didn’t ask for anything he would feel guilty about it or embarrassed. It was for the best if Wu Xingzi made a request. “Well… if I can really ask for anything…”
“Nothing is beyond me,” Haiwang said loftily.
“Perhaps… you could let me look at your legs?”
Haiwang gaped.
Wu Xingzi felt this request was not too unreasonable. Seeing Haiwang’s legs, as a man, would not damage his virtue, even if Wu Xingzi was a cut-sleeve. Moreover, he had more or less seen the legs already, only he had not been able to really enjoy the sight because he had felt guilty about it. If Haiwang showed him the legs with full consent and awareness, it would be much better, and also he would show both legs, the full length, which Wu Xingzi had not been able to see earlier because the doctor had been at least a little concerned with Haiwang’s modesty. He might even be able to get a look at Haiwang’s third leg, which he was not quite audacious enough to ask for but was very much interested in.
Haiwang closed his mouth at last in a bit of a smirk. “Well, if that’s what you want, of course it’s a simple thing for me to do. My rescuer deserves far more.”
“Oh, it would be quite enough,” Wu Xingzi said eagerly.
Haiwang, continuing to smirk, laboriously maneuvered his pants off without displacing the bandages underneath or hurting his leg too much. It was inelegant but Wu Xingzi still enjoyed watching him, all the more when he pulled his robes open so that Wu Xingzi got not only a full view of his legs—and his cock!—but in fact of the whole front of his body, from slender neck to shapely foot. Wu Xingzi wasn’t even sure where to look; no, that was a lie, there was one part he found particularly of interest, and Haiwang could, by the widening of his smirk, tell pretty well what it was.
“Come here,” he purred, for Wu Xingzi was hovering by the bedside table, slack hand resting on the pitcher. “You can examine my legs as much as you want.”
But when Wu Xingzi did step closer without a moment’s hesitation, he did not allow for this close examination, but grabbed Wu Xingzi by the waist and pressed their lips together.
This was very startling! Wu Xingzi’s imagination had been running away with him ever since he first encountered this man bleeding out in an alleyway, but he hardly expected his daydreams to become a reality! He was a simple adviser of Qingcheng County, and a thirty-five year old virgin. Things like this didn’t happen to him. However, since this supreme beauty had offered his lips to him—and his hands, squeezing Wu Xingzi’s ass, and the rest of his body as well—of course, Wu Xingzi would not refuse! He accepted! He definitely accepted!
He accepted right up until he jostled Haiwang’s thigh in a way that made him gasp in pain, a reminder that even though this man was beautiful, talented, and willing, he was also a patient who recently had been on death’s doorstep, and if his condition worsened, the doctor (who had been a strict-looking type) would probably murder Wu Xingzi in his place.
Reluctantly—so reluctant one could hardly express it—Wu Xingzi pulled away from Haiwang’s kiss and said, “Haiwang, you need rest. We can’t do this kind of thing tonight. You should really have more water.”
Haiwang’s mood was apparently somewhat broken by the pain as well, and so he agreed—tonight, he would rest. He even agreed that he would take the bed rather than sharing it with Wu Xingzi, so that Wu Xingzi wouldn’t kick his wound while sleeping.
Tonight, he would rest. Tomorrow, Guan Shanjin told himself sleepily, he would already be feeling much better, and show this rescuer of his that the Southern Garrison General could surely repay a favor.
How could he have predicted that tomorrow said rescuer would be gone, leaving not even a note behind to explain himself?
Guan Shanjin asked the doctor who his rescuer had been, and then the workers at the inn. But somehow in the excitement, names had never come up. No one knew who the man had been or where he lived or anything about him, and Guan Shanjin realized to his horror that he knew nothing either. He hadn’t even succeeding in prying a courtesy name out of those delectably plump lips, and in all his chatter, the man had given no personal information except that he loved dumplings. And asking the dumpling stall owner if he knew the man was pointless because apparently the man had never actually been down to the dumpling stall due to Guan Shanjin’s death grip on his wrist the previous night.
It was infuriating.
The annoyance lingered for months, and even after years, it did not entirely dissipate.
The war drew to a bloody close. Guan Shanjin was barely able to leave the front. His foray in Goose City had been to meet up with one of their side’s agents, who never showed up—perhaps he had been trying to lure Guan Shanjin into a trap and had defected to the other side. In general, Guan Shanjin was either at camp or on the battlefield. His mind was full of war; when he was not busy thinking of strategies or the practicalities of keeping the camp supplied, his mind would drift to dark places, picture dismembered corpses, absently tally how many dead were because of him without much conviction—war had taught him to think of all living beings as creatures that could become dead easily, and so it was difficult sometimes to feel guilt, to feel enough investment in a battle’s outcome. His heart was numb, his soul weary, but his mind was still agile, and he could still calculate his way to a victory. Only it was hard to feel any joy in any of it. When he smiled or laughed these days, it was always hollow. All his humor was gallows humor.
In the midst of all this, however, there was one small light that continued to shine to him in the darkness. This was the thought of his rescuer. When Guan Shanjin began to think all men were self-serving scum, he remembered he had once been saved by a man who had asked for barely anything in exchange, and who had even turned away from what Guan Shanjin had tried to give him. He remembered that there was at least one simple, honest man out there, and he hoped that man was still alive (he felt so little faith that anyone would stay alive, even as far from the front as Goose City) and he hoped that man was happy.
When the war was over, he thought, well, maybe now that I’m leaving the front, I can be someone like that too, and maybe I will meet lots of people like that. Civilians. Honest people who have neither schemed nor killed in their lives.
Maybe he too could get that invested in the different flavors of dumplings.
In the end he got only one out of three of these hopes. He did not meet lots of people like his rescuer or become a simple and honest man, but he did find he enjoyed cooking more than he had in the past. Dumplings, porridge, soups… he learned how to make all sorts of things, wondering if his mystery man would have enjoyed his cooking.
His heart was restless. He hooked up with a number of men and enjoyed it but got no long-term satisfaction. Briefly he revisited his adolescent crush on Lu Zezhi, even—there were some similar qualities to his mysterious rescuer there, a certain purity and simplicity—but found in the end that Lu Zezhi’s will-o-the-wisp nature could not match the memory of his rescuer, who had been a devastating combination of extremely down to fuck and completely unobtainable. The unobtainable aspect was more in retrospect but it was absolute. Guan Shanjin had sent men to search Goose City up and down without a hint of luck finding his rescuer; he had done everything short of pasting reward posters. Hopeless.
Sometimes the thought that he would probably never again encounter his rescuer—never get a chance to fuck his rescuer—would occur to Guan Shanjin when he was in the middle of something else. In the middle of a conversation, he would suddenly be biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. In the middle of drinking tea, his teacup would shatter in his hand, and scalding tea would splash all over his clothes. In the middle of having sex he would let out a mindless roar that his partner would take for enthusiasm. He would have screamed his rescuer’s name in rage at all these moments if he had known what that name fucking was.
In short, it became something of an obsession with Guan Shanjin, and while he remembered it less often as time went by, his fury whenever he was reminded only increased. Life for Guan Shanjin was very unfair. All he had wanted was to give his rescuer an appreciative (if perhaps by this point somewhat punishing) fucking. It was an almost altruistic desire; why was it that fate would not allow it?
Fate couldn’t truly be this cruel, right?
As it turned out, it really couldn’t.
It had been five years since the war when Guan Shanjin was sent by his parents a copy of the most recent Pengornisseur, apparently in the hopes that he would at last change his wild ways and find love. Ridiculous, he thought. For a hook-up I can always find someone easily enough. As for the one I’m interested in, he can’t be found through searching and interrogation; there’s no way I would find him on the page of a gazette.
Except when he turned to the thirtieth page of the Pengornisseur, there his rescuer was.
He stared. Man Yue, who was looking over his shoulder, asked, “Oh, does he look like your mysterious lost love?”
Guan Shanjin stood. The Pengornisseur said this gentleman was Wu Xingzi of Qingcheng County. It offered no address, but that was more to go on than Guan Shanjin had had in years. “I’m going to Qingcheng County.”
“….ah? Right now? Sir…”
Wu Xingzi, meanwhile, had gone about life the same as always after his strange encounter. While it had been enjoyable and exciting, he did not intend to cling to it. After all, he had only just recovered from the debt incurred by his first love. Falling in love with another unobtainable man would have been foolhardy, and Wu Xingzi was not stupid. Having done his duty by the injured Haiwang, and told him all the doctor’s instructions, he hurried away from the inn the morning after the encounter, and went back to Qingcheng County to work on paperwork and accumulate enough money to have a more genuine holiday next payday. Although it seemed this holiday never really came—work piled up more and more, and he began to think more about saving money than spending it for pleasure—he still enjoyed the thought of it, just as he enjoyed the memory of Haiwang. Well, not quite in the same way, as he tended to enjoy the memory of Haiwang late at night in bed… but they were both fun to think about, possibilities that didn’t have to come true to be savored.
He worked, saved money, talked mostly just to his neighbors, coincidentally never ran into any of the searchers Guan Shanjin sent to Goose City, and after five years discovered the Peng Society. Ah, it had been so long since his first, ever-so-passionate kiss. Wu Xingzi thought it was about time he sought out companionship again. Perhaps he could find a life partner like Ansheng, or perhaps simply another tryst. Even if it was another near miss, he wouldn’t really mind that either. In the end he mostly ended up collecting lewd illustrations, and even that satisfied him greatly.
He would never have expected that one day he would come home from work and find Haiwang, the mysterious beauty of years past, sitting at his table with a large bowl of porridge in front of him, and smaller bowls set out.
(Later, he would learn this porridge had been handmade by Guan Shanjin in preparation for this meeting. It was meant to serve as bait so that Wu Xingzi wouldn’t try to run off again. Guan Shanjin, even knowing Wu Xingzi’s name and address now, was paranoid Wu Xingzi would vanish like a ghost. He would refrain temporarily from tying Wu Xingzi up, but at least he would offer some food, a gift he was almost certain—based on a conversation he could remember word for word—Wu Xingzi would not refuse.)
“It’s you after all,” Haiwang said.
“Hai-Haiwang,” Wu Xingzi stuttered. Was it really him? He looked a bit older now (of course, who wouldn’t?) and was a bit less pale, and was wearing finer clothing. But no, it really did seem to be him. Wu Xingzi could never forget the face that had accompanied such a beautiful cock.
“Yes, I’m Haiwang,” Haiwang said. “And you’re Wu Xingzi of Qingcheng County. Apparently.”
He was growling, but there was a smile on his face.
…it was a bit of a predatory smile.
Wu Xingzi gulped. “Yes, that’s me. Ah… it’s been a while.”
“It certainly has.”
“Did your leg heal up well?”
Haiwang stood. “Why don’t you see for yourself? You never really finished examining it.”
Wu Xingzi licked his lips. “Well, uh.” This was all very sudden. It had been something like six years since their last meeting and Haiwang wanted to immediately pick up where they had left off. He didn’t even know how Haiwang had found him or why Haiwang was here! But, on the other hand, when Haiwang was looking at him so intently… ah, Wu Xingzi had been horny today and really only been planning on looking at his collection of illustrations, but lovely as they were, with a real living Haiwang in front of him…
A real living Haiwang who was already pulling at his robes and leaning over to nip at his neck. Oh, oh! He hadn’t gotten around to kissing anywhere but Wu Xingzi’s lips last name… Ah, but he was biting pretty hard, wasn’t he? What was he so angry about? Like this, he was going to eat Wu Xingzi right up. But that was actually kind of hot to think about too…
The questions, Wu Xingzi very logically decided, could wait for later.