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When Ren surrenders himself to the Xianzhou Cloud Knights, he is placed in the Matrix of Prescience.
Their little pink-clad diviner takes one glance into his destiny before her face turns pink as well. Poor thing is scandalized. She casts about wildly, as if suspecting chicanery, before finally returning to him.
“What do you mean you’re here to fuck the general?”
“Jing Yuan,” Ren specifies dryly because, well, there are seven generals in Xianzhou.
--
Several hours ago…
--
The mission was in Xianzhou— on the Luofu ship.
It was common practice to adopt a Xianzhou name upon arrival. He’d picked ‘Ren’ because he was fluent in the language. He wanted to be precise. ‘Blade’ was a simple, versatile name. A blade was a useful tool. A weapon at times. It meant the same thing in almost every culture, both literally and in threatening implication, and Ren had crafted enough blades to justify joining their ranks.
For the people of Xianzhou, he’d chosen the specific term that brought him to the very edge of the blade. The sharpest point; Ren met conflict head on, and he had been very confident he could accomplish Elio’s objectives with surgical precision.
Then Kafka had asked, “How do you feel about a honeypot story?” and although Ren was no less confident, he did become a little confused.
“What? Let me see the script.”
Kafka pulled the hologram monitor out of his reach and smiled kindly at him. It’s the smile she reserved for lying through her teeth. “Don’t you trust Destiny’s Slave?”
Ren wrinkled his nose and waited. When she finally showed him his mission brief, he saw that his mission was to… get captured. Straight to jail, do not pass Go. Simple, like that ancient board game he can never win, though the exposition provided by Elio held little by way of explanations.
Ren liked simple missions. He just didn’t like the ambiguity surrounding this one because stories that seemed simple, but actually weren’t, were annoying. He supposed, with an objective that vague, he and Kafka really could go about it creatively.
Ren was capable of anything. He was used to muscling through. A honey trap was not his preferred method, but Kafka liked to cause chaos wherever she went, and he was indifferent. In any case, it wasn’t uncommon for Elio to have them operate on faith alone. Perhaps more relevant objectives were in Kafka’s brief.
He craned his head to look at Kafka’s instructions, but she closed it in a blink, and Ren was left staring at her empty hands.
Irritation prickled at his shoulders. The Mara beast stirred. It prowled around his subconscious, and yet all it took was one meaningful look from Kafka’s strange, violet eyes to send it back into the recesses. Tamed yet resentful. And Kafka was inscrutable.
Annoyed, Ren followed her down the hall like she had him on a leash. “What’s the plan? You seduce the target, and then what? Am I to extract you from Xianzhou?”
“It’s the opposite, Bladie,” Kafka replied with a smile over her shoulder. That terrible, terrible smile.
Tamed and resentful, Ren scowled back.
Before he left the Stellaron Hunters HQ, Ren had Silver Wolf pull up an image of Jing Yuan for his mission. Kafka had picked him for Ren:
Arbiter-General Jing Yuan, the Wise and Brave. Ren knew who he was.
Jing Yuan was also a photogenic man, to put it lightly. Ren and Silver Wolf had been assaulted with a never-ending archive of glamor shots, and the pictures kept loading. There was even an official Jing Yuan gallery, courtesy of the Sky-Faring Commission’s own amicassador, and it was separated by seasons. A hundred years’ worth of seasons on the site. Five hundred behind the subscription paywall.
“You know Kafka’s messing with you, right?” Silver Wolf said to Ren as she scrolled through the photos across all of her screens. “This isn’t like that one improv story where you had to blow a guy to get the Stellaron.”
Ren shrugged. He’d gone into that mission prepared for a messy siege against a man known to withstand all methods of torture, but the target had taken one look at Ren and decided twenty minutes in his mouth was worth the exchange. Ren was weirdly good at oral, so the job was done in ten. Simple.
“Looks like they sold out of photos, even if you pick up on location,” Silver Wolf muttered, her eyes glued to the screens. “Can you remember what he looks like with that old geezer memory of yours?”
“Hold it still,” Ren told Silver Wolf as he lined his phone up to the screen. He took a photo. “This is fine.”
Silver Wolf snorted at Ren’s blurry image of Jing Yuan, who smiled lovingly at a fat little bird on his hand. “Wow, straight to your background. I see you’re a man of basic tastes.”
“It’s easy access for the mission,” Ren explained because kids sometimes lacked common sense. “Use what tools you have at your disposal—”
“I’m literally the one who taught you how to change your background,” she replied ungratefully before putting her headset back on to ignore him.
Honestly, that was a typical exchange with Silver Wolf, so Ren hadn’t thought anything of it. He’d even forgotten about it as he and Kafka made their way to Xianzhou, until Kafka glanced at his phone and said, “Cute. You made him your background.”
“What are you saying?” he asked as she pushed him off the airship.
The freefall was approximately two minutes.
He’d spent it wondering if setting a man as one’s phone background was supposed to mean something to women. Anyway, that was as much as he’d managed to wonder before Xianzhou’s artificial gravity slammed him right into a street food vendor’s stall. It was not the best place to land.
Silence. Blessed silence.
And then, everyone ran away screaming when Ren came back from the dead.
His phone screen had cracked like a spiderweb. Silver Wolf would have to fix it for him when he got back, but it was readable at the very least. He checked his navigation and found he was somewhere in the Exalting Sanctum. It’d changed since the last time he was there, but that was a long, long time ago, and he had no time to dwell on that.
He took a deep breath to confirm his lungs were intact. Vision fine. Limbs still functioning. He pulled a skewer of berrypheasant fruit from his leg and ate it. That made him feel marginally better. He flicked the stick at the approaching army of Cloud Knights. Good to know his reputation preceded him.
Or not. He was arrested for property damage before they identified who he was.
--
And back to the present…
--
In the end, shackles and all, Ren is removed from the Matrix of Prescience; under great discretion and secrecy, he is marched directly to the general himself for interrogation.
He likes that it worked out so conveniently for him.
There is a blond boy behind Jing Yuan, and while the Shackling Prison is hardly a place for children, that child could easily have a century’s worth of military experience under his belt. Xianzhou natives are as long-lived as Ren.
Jing Yuan is no exception.
It’s an objective fact that Jing Yuan is as beautiful in real life as he is in the photos. Tall, fair-haired, with the complexion of sunlit clouds and eyes like ancient gold: Jing Yuan is a carefully constructed figurehead. The messy half-ponytail, the lidded eyes; yes, it all lends credence to his nickname of the Dozing General— but his armor is immaculately layered.
It’s that discrepancy between careless and careful, the mind game beginning with his very presence, that is most intriguing about Jing Yuan. Ren gleans this from a glance, but he is supposed to know more.
Ren understands that he used to know Jing Yuan. Ren also has a millennium’s worth of memories to wade through. The past is cloudy. It’s muddled with Mara. It’s all there, but it’s tiring to piece together. Entirely too much work for a man as weary of life as Ren.
And so, when Jing Yuan asks Ren if he remembers him, Ren smiles back and begins the stock monologue he tells everyone when has no interest in conversation: “I remember. Of five people, three must pay a price... You are not one of them, Jing Yuan.”
Because, ultimately, Jing Yuan is not important.
Even if Ren’s mind is eroded away by another thousand years, he need only to remember the three who must pay. It’s all he knows for certain in the universe. Otherwise, he would not bother with Destiny’s Slave.
Jing Yuan is not important, but he looks at Ren as if Ren is important.
It’s enough to make the hairs on the back of Ren’s neck prickle.
-
Jing Yuan lingers in Ren’s mind like a wound that begins to fester.
Ren thinks on the wistfulness in Jing Yuan’s expression, and it rubs him the wrong way. As much as he hates to contemplate the quality of Jing Yuan’s face, annoying things are hard to forget.
The prison cell is fine. Ren has been in worse situations, spent a lifetime in pure agony, spent another barely any better, existence itself is torture, a collection of Ren’s greatest hits in grievances, etc.
This is fine. Boring, but fine.
He just feels like he could be of better use elsewhere. Perhaps that’s annoying enough: the fact that he doesn’t even know where the Stellaron is, so he can't speed up the plot. He can make guesses, but in the end, only Kafka knows the exact location. And she has a different script than Ren.
Was Elio’s story for him really just Get Arrested, or is this another Kafkaesque game that Ren is so bad at navigating? Tricksters like her were truly intolerable at times, and that’s a bold statement considering what Ren is capable of tolerating.
On the other hand, it would be terrible in a funny way if Kafka had actually been right— if the quickest path to the Stellaron was by the way of Ren fucking Jing Yuan.
And the Cycle of Annoyance returns to Jing Yuan.
He catches himself grinding his teeth. He tastes it. He opens his eyes to see the prison cell wall. He closes them again and rubs the bridge of his nose. He paces a circle. There is nowhere else to walk. He repeats the circle and feels like a tiger in a cage. Again and again, he cycles. Ren is so tired of cycles.
He is tired of being trapped in them. Another minute ticks by on the clock’s hand. Another hour across its face. Another day, year, decade, century—
Ren’s sense of time has been shot for at least 400 years. He constantly wants to sink his fingers through his skull and scoop out the Mara that tugs and pinches at his brain…
Enough.
Ren is spiraling. He must escape. He unsheathes his sword. Too bad for Elio’s story this time. Ren decides on the obvious solution.
In hindsight, it seems somewhat careless of the Cloud Knights to not only let Ren keep his phone with Jing Yuan as the background but also his weapon. On the other hand, Jing Yuan had made that call. Perhaps it had actually been a careful calculation. Both phone and sword were broken after all. Just like their owner.
Whatever.
As Ren turns to cut through his jail cell, he stops mid-swing to see Jing Yuan watching him from the other side of the bars. And Jing Yuan watches him in the way one would observe a tiger in a cage.
They break eye contact to look at Ren’s sword in the air. Then, back at each other. It’s not awkward because they’re both too old to care about awkwardness.
Jing Yuan clears his throat to speak first, “Would you be less inclined to escape knowing that we don’t employ torture in interrogations?”
Ren scoffs on reflex. What meaningless reassurance. He raises a wary eyebrow, but Jing Yuan simply smiles back.
There is a beauty mark under Jing Yuan’s eye, but Ren already knows that. He knows what it tastes like, too.
“Hmm,” Ren says, unsure of what to do with that knowledge. Somehow, he gets the distinct feeling that he’s already been checkmated in a game he thought he’d just begun.
Had Kafka known this would happen?
Had Jing Yuan expected it?
Ren is trapped and cannot escape when Jing Yuan unlocks the cell because, for once, Ren’s body is leading him forward. For once, Ren is not dragging himself along out of spite nor through sheer force of will. He wants to go, and he doesn’t understand it. He follows the script again.
Tamed, resentful, and hungry, Ren prowls after Jing Yuan into the night.
-
Jing Yuan does not strip in a particularly sexy way.
Ren has been inside exclusive clubs for gentlemen. He has been the target of many amorous intentions across his missions. Stellarons crop up everywhere, after all, and Elio has a script for each one. Ren, on the other hand, has no interest in stories anymore. He has lived a very, very long time and has experienced far more than he ever wanted.
That’s to say, he knows what it looks like when someone is trying to seduce him. Jing Yuan just looks tired after a long day’s work.
“I see you’ve returned to Xianzhou,” Jing Yuan says, conversationally, as he unbuckles the vambraces around his wrist. He sounds tired, too. “You have my attention. I think we can discuss this reasonably. We go back a long way, don’t we?”
Ren leans back against a lacquered dresser and folds his arms across his chest. He watches Jing Yuan undress before him. It’s a meticulous ritual, and it’s as Ren suspected: Jing Yuan is carefully layered, buckled, and buttoned. He speaks to Ren as he discards each layer.
“Correct me if I’m wrong. If you’re here, then there must be a Stellaron nearby. You didn’t come alone. Fu Xuan, our diviner, has informed me you arrived with a partner for the job…”
The ornaments unclick easily enough beneath deft fingers that must have unclicked them a million times. Accessories find their respective hooks and mounts. They glitter in the lamplight, which dims into its artificial sunset mode. Jing Yuan’s black-and-red scarves, embroidered in gold, fall to the floor and settle in waves, in patterns of molten lava.
“Surely you understand what it means for a wanted man, such as yourself, to return to Xianzhou,” Jing Yuan continues, and the armor comes off next.
Burnished, lacquered leather; set in gold and galvanized steel. It’s not made for war, but Ren suspects the weave of micro-lamellar would save Jing Yuan’s life in a surprise attack. Not that it’s of much use on the table against the wall, but Ren is the only threat in the room. Jing Yuan is safe enough.
“Is this specific Stellaron so important to you that it had to be you who retrieved it?”
Jing Yuan is down to his white robes and red trousers. The tailored silk brocade slides off his shoulders, and he lets it fall without a care. The floor is extraordinarily clean.
Ren watches Jing Yuan walk barefoot to the bed, where he takes a seat with a sigh. Age is but a number to an immortal, but Ren supposes that after 800 or so years, anyone would begin to act old. Even someone as spirited as Jing Yuan had once been.
Jing Yuan tilts his head incliningly, as if hoping for a single word in return, but Ren keeps his observations to himself. His memories, too. Anything he says and remembers will most certainly be used against him by a man as cunning as Jing Yuan. Ren knows that much.
Still, he watches. He listens to the beautiful man awash in golden light and pretends they are not both tired and ancient relics.
“It seems like a needless risk for you to take personally.” Jing Yuan unbuckles the suspender belts around his thighs and then looks up with a cheeky smile. Like a cat that’s eaten the canary. “Unless, of course, you simply missed me.”
How annoying— no, it’s almost disturbing how effective that is. And annoying.
Ren suddenly feels young again—genuinely—and raring for a fight with a youth that needs to be knocked down a peg. He finds himself drawn forward, irritated into action until he is looking down at Jing Yuan, touching him. He holds Jing Yuan by the jaw and examines him. The curves and slants of his face bring vague memories bubbling to the surface. The beauty mark evokes desire.
Ren shoves him down on the mattress. Before Jing Yuan is even able to prop himself back up, onto his elbows, Ren has already relieved him of his pants.
“You really did come to fuck me,” Jing Yuan says in amusement. He does absolutely nothing to help when his underwear gets caught around his ankles, despite Ren’s best efforts to untangle him. “How exactly does that fit into your plans of securing the Stellaron?”
Fuck if Ren knows.
Ren gives him a withering stare as he gets down on his knees between Jing Yuan’s thighs. He pulls his glove off and and tosses it over a shoulder to give Jing Yuan an exploratory tug with his good hand. Everything seems to be in working order, and Jing Yuan smiles sweetly. He blinks in that slow, sleepy way cats do when they’re unafraid. It pisses Ren off.
May Nanook grant him calamity, Ren will instill some sort of fear in this man if it’s the last thing he does, so help him.
“Either tell me what you’ve figured out already, or shut up,” Ren says, finally, before taking Jing Yuan into his mouth. He lets his teeth graze the tender, vulnerable flesh, and Jing Yuan flinches.
“Ah,” Jing Yuan responds with far less composure than before— and for that, Ren is viciously glad. Jing Yuan clears his throat. “Obviously, you are not the one who brought the Stellaron to Xianzhou.”
Ren pulls off Jing Yuan’s cock and licks a wet stripe up its length. “Obviously.”
Despite his calmness, Jing Yuan’s face is red, the blush spreading downward to the pale skin of his chest. His thighs tense up in a way that makes Ren want to bite them. “Do we have a common foe? If so, it only makes sense for us to become allies.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Ren sneers as he tucks a lock of hair behind an ear. He gets back to work.
Jing Yuan flinches again when Ren swallows him, and he looks up at the ceiling with an exasperated mutter, “I see. So, that’s how it is.”
Once again, fuck if Ren knows. He has already lost track of the conversation and has more interesting things to do.
One flick of his tongue is enough to make Jing Yuan’s larynx bob. Ren wants to see what it takes to break this man famed for his tranquility. He can tell Jing Yuan is expending an appreciable amount of effort to keep his hips still, and what beautiful hips they are. Firm musculature rippling beneath porcelain skin. The only blemishes are beauty marks. It’s been a long time since the general has seen any real combat.
Ren could fix that.
He sucks angry red splotches onto Jing Yuan’s perfect skin. One on each inner thigh, on spots that make Jing Yuan squirm under him. Ren leaves another at the juncture of his thigh and hip. Three along the juts of his pelvis. Ruining pretty things is almost as satisfying as the road to self-destruction.
But Ren does pause for a moment, his teeth on warm skin, savoring the heartbeat underneath that light trail of snowy white hair below Jing Yuan’s navel. As he considers which direction to move next, Ren looks up to see Jing Yuan watching him with rapt attention and parted lips.
Ren smiles with bared teeth. “Don’t tell me you’re scared.”
Jing Yuan smiles back, with affection. “I’m excited,” he says. “More than I’ve been in centuries.”
Ren’s mouth absolutely waters at the sincerity. His brain short-circuits. He wants to rip into that defenseless abdomen and drink all the hot blood that gushes out. He wants to crawl inside Jing Yuan, close his eyes, and cease to exist.
What actually happens, while Ren is distracted, is that Jing Yuan takes the lead. He grabs Ren by the collar and pulls him onto the bed. He flips them over, straddling Ren’s lap while Ren’s long black hair gets caught beneath them.
Stuck, Ren can only look up as Jing Yuan tugs the loosening red ribbon out of his own hair. White tresses fall past Jing Yuan’s broad shoulders down to his waist, shining in the light. Ren feels the weight of that wise, golden gaze in all its glory. He feels the awe Jing Yuan’s enemies must have felt when the renowned general swung his glaive down upon them in the legends passed down by mortals.
This is not the Jing Yuan Ren knew, once upon a time ago, though Ren has changed infinitely more. They are both the stuff of legends now, and the thought leaves him feeling adrift. He is a hollow cautionary tale.
But, well, it’s not the best time for an internal crisis anyway.
By the time Ren gets a hold of himself, Jing Yuan has helped himself to Ren’s cock. Ren funnels his inner conflict into something more like confusion. He can handle confusion. “It’s… going in rather easily.”
“Hmm?” Jing Yuan blinks at him with that infuriating cat smile. “Well, I’d actually turned in for the night, but I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I figured if you were going to keep me up, you might as well do it in person, and so…”
Ren is incredulous. “You prepared yourself and then put all your armor back on to fetch me.”
“I like to be prepared for all methods of attack.” Jing Yuan smiles handsomely, and a finch hops out of his hair and onto his shoulder with a chirp, as if to complete his image.
Both men stare at it in surprise.
“You know birds shit everywhere, right?” Ren deadpans.
Jing Yuan summons up some indignation on behalf of the bird. “No, they know better than that.” He coaxes the fat little thing onto his finger and says, “My finches are very polite and well-behaved.”
The bird takes that as permission to hop from Jing Yuan’s hand onto Ren’s chest, where it leaves a dropping before flying away. That’s an omen if Ren ever saw one. He levels his most unimpressed glare up at Jing Yuan, who—for once—looks like he has no idea what to do next.
But then, Jing Yuan laughs, and it sounds like the way dark honey tastes. He undoes the cord straining to keep Ren’s jacket closed and says, “I guess she liked you.” Ren swats his hands away, and Jing Yuan coaxes with that rich, sweet voice, as if Ren is another bird fluttering about him, “Easy now. You’re going to take it off anyway. I’ll have it cleaned by morning—”
“Tch.” Ren pushes himself up and peels the jacket off. He does this quickly, with impatience, and tosses it on the ground. When he turns back around, he finds himself staring directly at Jing Yuan’s tits. He swears he feels his own pupils blow out because there is nothing in his brain but what his eyes are sending him.
And it’s strange, but Ren starts thinking about the last time he’d eaten white wheat buns that were warm and fresh from the oven...
Jing Yuan grabs Ren by the hair before he manages to sink his teeth around a perfect brown nipple.
“What do you say we don’t bite everything tonight?” Jing Yuan suggests hopefully. Ren breathes a playful growl in reply.
“You’re lucky I didn’t bite your dick off,” he says before landing a punch right below Jing Yuan’s ribcage. Jing Yuan lurches in surprise, and Ren gets him in an easy headlock. It feels like the satisfaction of tying a perfect bow when he brings Jing Yuan crashing down with him into the mattress.
“Unnecessary,” Jing Yuan coughs as Ren pins his wrists above his head, deep into the pillow. He isn’t angry, though, just tired and fond. Ren glances away.
He looks at the reddening spot where he’d landed his blow. He hadn’t felt any bones crack on impact, but it’ll leave a pretty bruise in the shape of four fingers. He pats it and smiles back at Jing Yuan.
“It’ll heal.”
It is, after all, both the gift and curse of Abundance. They both know that. Jing Yuan follows the lines of bandages around Ren’s torso with his eyes. Maybe he’s like Elio, imagining the stories beneath them, along the spots of dried blood. Ren lets him think what he will.
Jing Yuan doesn’t have to know just how Ren heals like a monster— that sometimes the scars grow back like a cancer. Layers of dermis gone hypertrophic and haywire. When they’re thick and itchy and unbearably tight, Ren cuts them off. He gives the skin another chance to crawl back over his muscles, slower this time, to accommodate the movement of his body. If it doesn’t obey, then he cuts it off again. The misery of ever-regenerating meat.
It’s the worst when it happens around the tendons, locking them in place and robbing him of their function. It happened when he burned his hand down to the bone for a mission. Now, he can’t play co-op with Silver Wolf in her games anymore.
“It’ll heal,” Ren repeats, and Jing Yuan’s gaze flicks from his bandaged hand back to his face.
The thing is, he doesn’t need Jing Yuan to know any of that because Jing Yuan is already looking at Ren in a way that makes Ren prickle. Even to an immortal, Ren is an abomination.
But Jing Yuan lets Ren touch him.
He lets Ren grip him by that sturdy waist, by the nook of his knee, and lets Ren bend him however he wants to accommodate himself— until their foreheads are pressed together, trading breaths— and Jing Yuan’s beauty mark tastes of salt.
Ren holds him open and fucks him so hard, so deep, that the bed shakes beneath them. Jing Yuan’s chest heaves, shining with sweat. His eyelashes flutter against Ren’s cheek with every thrust.
It was obvious to Ren the moment their eyes locked in the Shackling Prison that Jing Yuan was after dick. Ren had nearly laughed upon realizing the Cloud Knights didn’t have a clue because their Arbiter-General had probably only ever expressed the most civil of interests toward the fairer sex— and maybe never for his own.
But Ren has been the recipient of dark desire enough times to know what it looks like on a man, and the truth of it has been consistently uninteresting: men who desired Ren were messed up, yes, but not as much as Ren.
These were powerful men, bored and looking for a means of escape from their boring lives in power. They saw all that freedom in Ren, but they got the wrong man. Ren couldn’t even escape his own life, and with Nanook’s blessings, he has certainly tried.
Now, here’s the thing that piques Ren’s curiosity: a man in Jing Yuan’s position could easily have anyone he wants warming his bed, even someone more agreeable that looks like Ren, yet Jing Yuan is taking cock like he hasn’t gotten laid in a century. He has an arm wrapped around Ren’s shoulders, his other hand on the back of Ren’s neck, holding him so close like they’re lovers reunited.
Ren pauses, and Jing Yuan’s leg around his waist shifts at the sudden stop. Ren doesn’t start again. Instead, he slips his good hand around Jing Yuan’s neck and finds the pulse of the jugular. He squeezes lightly just to see what Jing Yuan does, but Jing Yuan only stares at him with soft eyes, his face flushed. Waiting.
Maybe waiting for a century.
“You.” Ren moves his hand up to grasp Jing Yuan by the jaw so he can’t look away, taking cruel delight in his realization: “You are the one who missed me.”
Jing Yuan doesn’t deny it. He blinks slowly, without shame, and he tips Ren’s head to his in a kiss. It’s such a smooth, calculated motion, already set up by their positions, that Ren makes the second realization on the heels of the first: Jing Yuan has gotten everything he wanted from him that night.
Jing Yuan has always been a clever one. Awful taste in men, though. It’s kind of embarrassing.
Jing Yuan starts kissing Ren again and again, chaste little pecks, as if politely knocking on a door. It’s so unexpectedly cute that Ren feels real fucking weird about it. Like a blood-rushing-straight-to-his-cock sort of weird. Even Elio couldn’t script this shit.
Ren doesn’t keep track of the stories. He really doesn’t care. He barely recognizes endings because every end is simply a new beginning to someone never-ending. Still, Ren can’t— for the life of him— remember how they got to this point. He finds himself opening his mouth. He sighs and gives in to Jing Yuan, and they sink deeper into the pillows.
Ren can recognize defeat when it’s wrapped around him, kissing him, and probably working with a better understanding of what Ren is doing on this godforsaken ship than Ren himself does. It’s too much trouble to care. And Ren is tired.
He tries not to care.
He fucks Jing Yuan more deliberately this time. He pays attention to what makes this formidable general mewl. The slow drag of his cock inside Jing Yuan activates nerves Ren thought had gone dormant across his body, and it makes them both pant for breath, interrupting their kisses. They blow hair out of the way because neither of them had been good about keeping their bangs trimmed. Their teeth click against each other’s when they’re inevitably drawn back together.
There’s a familiarity to it all that Ren can’t place, but he won’t question it. Jing Yuan feels hot and electric in all the places they touch, and for once, Ren is free. He is untethered to the cycle he has come to know. He marvels instead at how he is reduced to a creature chasing heat and pleasure wherever they lead. What a foreign luxury.
It’s better than good. It’s the best damn lay Ren’s had in decades.
He falls so deep into Jing Yuan. His sense of time shifts. The Mara haze lifts.
In that second, he is mortal again. Before the first Great Pain, before the first Death. His nerves are intact in the way there were meant to be— before he was piecemealed back together ad nauseum in that endless cycle of cursed regeneration. He is mortal again.
He is all that he will ever be, and he is whole.
So, he comes harder than he has in over 600 years. It’s fucking phenomenal.
If only it’d last longer.
The bliss of it leaves as quickly as it’d arrived, and he’s back in the present again. Like he’d been extracted from the depths of an ocean, his blood boiling, all the while reaching for what he’d left behind in the waters.
Nine long centuries fall onto his shoulders with the familiar weight of all their trauma.
He is shaking when he comes to.
The fissured and mismatched neural pathways relay their signals once more, and the intrusive voices return. He is Ren again. Blade.
And beneath him is Jing Yuan.
Beautiful, healthy, post-orgasm; Jing Yuan blinks drowsily. His hair is strewn across the pillows like moonlight on sand. There is a softness to him, as if age and wisdom had nourished him. He’s weathered the years far better than Ren has. He’s glowing.
It’s almost unfair, one would think, but Ren knows better. Jing Yuan is no more fortunate, and no less. In the span of eternity, all odds shake out the same. Eliminate pure luck from the equation, and what remains is personal aptitude. Jing Yuan is simply too cunning to allow fate to batter him around as it has Ren.
Jing Yuan was always like that. Back then, too, he’d been the only one who’d known...
No, Ren can’t go there.
Ren is so sick of his own thoughts. He collapses flat onto Jing Yuan with a bitter sigh. “You got fat,” he says, and the envy in his voice could not be thicker.
Jing Yuan is still for a heartbeat. Two, then three. Then, his chest rumbles with easy-going laughter, and he pets Ren’s hair.
Jing Yuan smells like ambrosial wood and nostalgia. Jing Yuan is soft in repose. He is wonderfully warm against the parts of Ren’s skin that Ren can still feel, and he doesn’t have bird shit in his hair.
This is fine, Ren tells himself, but it really is better than fine. It’s nice. And that’s what keeps surprising him: the constant surpassing of his expectations, how good he feels, how much he wants it to last.
The two of them are separated by the warm line where their skin meets. The heat of Jing Yuan’s steady hands calm Ren. It’s comfortable. Ren’s mind wanders. He can almost remember the days when Jing Yuan was still following that woman’s heels and her commands— except in the moments he was pestering Ren at the forge.
Ren tries to hold on to an image that surfaces: a beauty mark, bright golden eyes staring eagerly at a weapon Ren must be holding. Ren can almost feel the weight of it in his hands. It’s a masterpiece.
But Ren is too tired to hold back the dark Mara curtains that are quickly falling over the scene. Maybe they are gone for good after all, these memories that Ren can’t save to his phone’s background.
He thinks about the blurry picture he has of Jing Yuan with his bird. He thinks of the mission.
Ren has done enough. He must have been a distraction in the story. A red herring before a plot twist. Jing Yuan has entered with his own machinations. He’s probably biding his time until Kafka comes in with phase two of the plan. Ren couldn’t care less what they do. He decides that he is now in limbo until she does whatever it is that she intends. Fine. Whatever.
Ren will wait until Jing Yuan falls asleep. Then, he will escape and lie low until he is needed again. He’ll hide for a while. Figure out what to do with this annoying turmoil growing in his chest. Maybe eat. He might be hungry.
But first, Ren will rest his eyes for a few minutes. Four minutes max. It’s not so bad in Jing Yuan’s bed, warm, with his cheek on Jing Yuan’s collarbone, his forehead against Jing Yuan’s lips. He has been in worse situations, had insomnia in worse places, cold and hurt. This is fine. For a little while, four minutes max, it will be fine.
It’s when he registers the gentle stroke of Jing Yuan’s thumb on his shoulder that something doesn’t sit right with him.
The warmth is weakening.
He can barely feel it.
If Ren didn’t know any better, he’d think there was a thick blanket around him, dulling his senses. But that’s not the case. He takes a deep breath and tries to push the claustrophobia down. His body is settling back to the way it is now, the way it has been for the past few centuries. That’s all it is.
He wishes he could’ve fallen asleep before then. Just a little longer in respite before returning to the grueling eternity of it.
But Ren is wide awake now. He’s grinding his teeth. He opens his eyes to find a distraction, but it’s too late. The turbulence in the back of his brain swells and reaches his throat and uneasy heart. It explodes into despair, a black hole of it, and sends cold tingles all across his back.
He funnels it into anger.
Pure rage grips him before he can control it. He feels more alive than he has in ages, which compensates for the numbness in his fucked-up fingers. He throws off Jing Yuan’s arm and sits up. He swings his head wildly in search of his clothes. No, he doesn’t even need his clothes. Four minutes was too long.
He has to escape now.
He has to throw himself off the side of the ship and die in space.
He has to die over and over again until he doesn’t have a body to feel nothing with—
Jing Yuan catches him by the wrist.
He looks at Ren, blinking blearily, as if he had only just awoken and was acting on reflex. The fuck? How the fuck had he already fallen asleep? Ren could’ve cut his throat and thrown Xianzhou’s entire government into chaos. Ren stares at him. Jing Yuan stares back.
Then, Jing Yuan says, cautiously, “Do you… want to fuck me again?”
“NO!” Ren hisses, and he bats at Jing Yuan with his free hand.
“Okay, ow, I see.” Jing Yuan blocks everything with a good-natured yawn, which is even more infuriating. “Then, what do you want?”
Ren is so gripped with rage-induced panic all he can say is, again, “NO!”
But Jing Yuan does not let him go. In fact, he catches Ren’s other hand and looks Ren in the eye. Ren can’t move in his grip. He tries, but their arms only quiver in exertion. Unstoppable force meets immovable object. Invincible spear meets indomitable shield.
Ren is so filled with fury that he can’t even breathe.
“I want to die,” he says at last, and the words are like gravel rolling out of his clogged throat, “but I can’t.”
Jing Yuan knows that. He looks at Ren with pity, and it is unbearable.
“Every time a piece of me regenerates, I feel it shrinking.” Ren’s breaths are shallow, but he forces them to even out. He forces them to last longer. “The nerves don’t grow back the way they were. Entire lifetimes of muscle memory wiped out. I have nothing left of my original self.”
He says all these things because out of everyone on this ship, surely Jing Yuan would be the one to understand. They’re both the oldest. They were in the same place when everything went bad. If anyone could help Ren, wouldn’t it be the current Jing Yuan? Jing Yuan, the Wise? Hadn’t Ren traveled through time the slow way, 800 years into the future and back to Xianzhou, for this?
It’s just that Ren doesn’t know how to explain to Jing Yuan how he is trapped inside his own body. His nerves have given up. It’s like they know their evolutionary purpose serves no function in a vessel that has become immortal and self-healing. On bad days, his own flesh feels like ballistic gel against his fingertips.
There is a layer of void between his skin and himself that he can’t cut off like a keloid scar. It grows with every century, and the thought of it growing worse with eternity is overwhelming. There’s no relief, not even in pain.
And in all the quiet moments where he is without distraction, the Mara is crushing him.
No, this isn’t something Jing Yuan can help him with at all.
This is Ren’s own problem. An annoying problem.
Very, very annoying.
It is fine, but annoying and embarrassing because it brings him such grief when he least expects it.
“…It’s fine,” he says through gritted teeth in the way he does countless times when he’s alone somewhere in a pool of his own blood. There’s some comfort in hearing those words said to him at another death, even if he’s the one saying them.
Ren gathers himself in the way he always does, in the way he has for nearly nine centuries. He lowers his hands, but Jing Yuan closes his fingers over them and holds them. Ren sees that. He tries to will himself to feel the electricity that had passed between them so freely and pleasantly.
Jing Yuan has said nothing this entire time. He just looks at Ren with those kind, golden eyes. That pretty little beauty mark. He pulls Ren closer, gently, and asks, “Are you sure fucking me again won’t help?”
Ren is wretched and tired, but he is calm, and Jing Yuan is gazing at him with his sleepy cat smile.
Ren shoves Jing Yuan back into the pillows. He feels like a petulant child being pacified, but he’s not going to unpack that tonight. “It might,” Ren admits.
And it does.
The next time his head is nestled beneath Jing Yuan’s chin, he listens to Jing Yuan’s steady heartbeat and soft snores, and he focuses on them until everything else finally fades away.
-
Jing Yuan’s phone alarm goes off four hours later. Jing Yuan hits the snooze button and rolls over, back asleep immediately. Ren lifts Jing Yuan’s arm off himself and gets up instead.
Ren is deeply disappointed in himself for sleeping three hours and fifty-six minutes longer than he’d intended. He sits on the side of the bed and stares at the floor for a long while.
His clothes are gone.
He tries to pull the covers off Jing Yuan, so that he doesn’t have to walk around naked, but Jing Yuan is the indisputable master of hogging blankets. Ren hits him with a pillow. Jing Yuan snores soundly through it.
Ren searches the room angrily until he finds a door that opens to reveal a closet. Inside, Ren’s clothes hang neatly, clean and fixed. Even the hole in his pants from the berrypheasant skewer is gone. Ren looks around, suspicious of everything. There is no way Jing Yuan got up in the middle of the night to do laundry and darning, and surely Ren would have woken up to the sound of housekeepers intruding…
A chirp catches his attention, and he looks up at the shelf to see a familiar finch staring down at him. Ren stares back in disbelief. Had the bird…?
No.
Ren dresses quickly. He looks for his sword on the lacquered drawer where he’d left it, but he finds it instead on the table next to Jing Yuan’s things, along with his own accessories. As he puts his glove back on, he notices that the bandages on his fucked-up hand are new. He hadn’t even bothered to check the ones around his chest, but he suspects those had been changed while he was asleep, too.
Disturbed, Ren puts on his earrings. Then, his belt and hairclip. He is already thinking about his exit strategy when Jing Yuan speaks.
“There are facilities in Xianzhou that excel in scar treatment.”
Ren hears a flutter of wings. He doesn’t have to look back to know Jing Yuan is playing with the bird. Of course, he is. Ren’s mind races, but he says nothing. He’s already said too much last night. He takes his sword and heads to the door.
“You may go wherever you like. It’s all the same to me,” Jing Yuan says. “So long as you are on Xianzhou-Luofu, you remain within the palm of my hand.”
Straight to jail, do not pass Go.
Ren stops in his tracks. He knows it’s a trap, but he turns around anyway. High risk, high reward.
Jing Yuan lounges against the pillows with his chin on his knuckles, artfully tangled in the sheets. His hair is a glorious mess, and morning sunlight falls across him, illuminating all the bites and fingerprints. Jing Yuan is magnificent. He coos at the finch in his hand and looks so innately fuckable that Ren almost takes a step back toward the bed.
As if on cue, the bird takes off at Ren. Ren swats and misses the bird when it tries to peck at his mouth. Jing Yuan laughs, and Ren glares at him balefully before running into the hall.
He escapes at last.
“General! Look at the deal Yanqing scored this morning!”
Shit.
Ren ducks into a corridor to avoid the blond boy running eagerly to Jing Yuan’s room with an armful of swords. Jing Yuan can deal with that on his own, Ren decides smugly as he rounds a corner only to immediately enter a staring contest with a big white lion.
Shit.
Okay, Ren should’ve seen that one coming. It had been in his mission brief, but he’d completely forgotten about Jing Yuan’s stupid Wave-Treading Snow Lion, which is a stupid, stupid name.
Annoyed, Ren lifts his sword, but the lion just pads up to him and gently headbutts him in the stomach. It sniffs his crotch and then, apparently satisfied, walks down the hall toward Jing Yuan’s room, where the boy is starting to raise his voice, “W-what do you mean ‘nothing?’ Who did this to you?!”
Ren lowers his sword and brings his hair to his face. “Huh,” he says to no one in particular.
He does reek of Jing Yuan.
-
Ren escapes from the Seat of Divine Foresight by cutting the queue for the starskiff ferries. He punches the first man who gives him guff, and the rest of the passengers fall into line behind him without another word. By the time guards arrive on the scene to find the man left behind—and waking to a loose tooth— Ren is already looking at a fast-food menu in the Exalting Sanctum.
His phone buzzes with a text from Silver Wolf.
Silver Wolf: Did u actually fuck him
Ren ignores her and tries to focus on the meal combos in front of him, but the words are jumbling before his very eyes.
There are too many options. He’s too tired for this. He needs to eat something to settle the hunger pangs beginning to jolt through him, but not something so heavy that it knocks him out once the adrenaline fades. He can’t make an educated decision like this and asks the attendant for the smallest meal they have. She looks confused.
“The… Uh, kid’s meal?”
“Fine,” says Ren.
She pauses at her register and then glances at him again. “Are… are you sure?”
Ren just stares at her until she awkwardly types in the order. The screen on the machine in front of him prompts him for payment. He stops staring at her to stare at it instead. After a moment, he pulls his conversation with Silver Wolf back up on his phone. He skips her text wall and types quickly before actually reading what she’d written.
Silver Wolf: Holy shit u did fuck him, didn’t u???
Silver Wolf: WOW
Silver Wolf: Isn’t that like the 4th time u did that for a mission?
Silver Wolf: Is that just gonna be ur thing now?
Silver Wolf: Sluttin’ for Stellarons
Silver Wolf: [Silver Wolf Winky Face.emoji]
Blade: How do I use my phone to pay for something?
Blade: No.
Suddenly, Ren’s phone glitches in the telltale way it does when Silver Wolf hacks in and takes control. He watches her invisible hand tap through the nested apps until she pulls up his digital wallet and selects the company card. Ren holds the phone to the machine, and it beeps in approval.
A window appears on Ren’s phone to indicate the transaction went through. A second window follows it, telling him he also sent 10,000 credits to Silver Wolf with the note: “Finder’s fee.”
The attendant gingerly slides him a buzzer and asks him to wait at a table. Before he even sits down, Silver Wolf starts blowing up his phone again.
Silver Wolf: Wait, why are u getting a kids meal at McGenshins?
Silver Wolf: Can I have the figurine?
Blade: You have McGenshin’s at home.
Blade: Don’t look at my receipts.
Silver Wolf: The gacha gods are against me on this one!! All I get are 77s. I need the Keqing to complete my collection.
Blade: I don’t know what any of that means
Silver Wolf: Just take a picture when you get ur food!!!
Feeling deeply inconvenienced, Ren snaps a photo to send to her when the attendant brings him his brightly colored order. Then, he thinks better of it and takes another photo at the angle he’s seen her take of food. He sends this one to Silver Wolf, hoping it’s unassuming enough to avoid her usual scathing commentary. He’s wrong, of course. She responds in a barrage of texts.
Silver Wolf: [Laughing Crying Face.emoji]
Silver Wolf: WHY IS IT SO AESTHETIC???
Silver Wolf: YOU FIT EVERYTHING IN THE FRAME??????
Silver Wolf: [Laughing Crying Face.emoji]
Silver Wolf: [Laughing Crying Face.emoji]
Silver Wolf: [Laughing Crying Face.emoji]
Silver Wolf: A FOODIE PIC
Silver Wolf: OF A MCGENSHINS KIDS
Silver Wolf: mEAL
Silver Wolf: I’m sending this to Elio for the Hunters socials
Ren stares at his phone in consternation. He doesn’t know what he did wrong, but ever since the day he oversaw Silver Wolf’s first mission, it’s like he can’t do a thing without getting roasted by her.
Silver Wolf: Anyway okay yeah, I need that figurine. Bring her back when ur done w/ ur mission, sir!!
Blade: Finder’s fee 10k credits
Blade: Or she goes in the trash
Silver Wolf: [Shocked Silver Wolf.emoji]
An alert window pops up on his phone to let him know Silver Wolf has refunded the 10,000 credits. Ren closes it and sets his phone down to eat in peace. He finishes the meal in four mouthfuls, and as he waits for his body’s internal chemistry to normalize, he opens his messages to text Kafka.
Blade: Where are you?
Kafka: Bladie! How did it go?
Kafka: Did you fuck him?
Blade: A couple times, yeah
Blade: Still don’t see what the point of it was. Where are you?
Kafka: Bladie
Kafka: Have you ever read your own file?
Blade: No.
Blade: Why would I?
Blade: You know how long it is
He watches the three dots at the bottom of the screen indicate Kafka typing something for a good twenty seconds before she finally responds.
Kafka: Okay.
Kafka: Never mind.
Kafka: I’ve contacted the Astral Express. If I go offline, extract me from the Matrix of Prescience.
Blade: Do I have new objectives in the meantime?
Kafka: Just keep doing what you’ve been doing
Kafka: And be a good boy. We’ll catch up later
Kafka: [Silver Wolf Winky Face.emoji]
Ren considers her words as he turns Silver Wolf’s toy around in his hand. He tucks the little figurine into his jacket where its littler weapon pokes into his chest. It’s fine. This is his life now.
As he reaches for his sword, he sees a finch perched on its hilt. It cocks its head at him, and Ren looks around suspiciously, his blood pressure rising. He doesn’t see Jing Yuan, but that doesn’t mean it’s not his damn bird. Ren tentatively shoos it away with a wave. It flies onto the roof of a building, where it sits and watches him. Ren scowls at it.
There truly is no escaping Jing Yuan in Xianzhou-Luofu, but the thought doesn’t annoy Ren as much as he’d expected. And since Kafka suggested for Ren to keep doing what he’s been doing, he supposes he now has plans for the evening.
“See you,” he tells the bird.
And with that, Ren picks up his sword and disappears into the crowd, still smelling of ambrosial wood and nostalgia.