Hsr Smut - Tumblr Posts - Page 2

YOUR MAN who punishes you mercilessly whenever you show him your brattiness. he can't have you showing such attitude towards him can he? he's living his best life pressing your head against the pillows to muffle your lewd moans as he fucks you from behind with your ass up. "not so bratty now, huh? c'mon baby, show me that attitude of yours." he chuckles, the grip he had on your hips becoming tighter by the minute. his cock drilling into your pussy so deep your legs were failing you. tears forming in the corner of your eyes.

"such a slut f'me." he groans, bending down to whisper filthy words. he secretly loved it when you act all mighty because he knows he'd be fucking your brains out by the end of the night. your moans grew louder with each thrust, the way his cock bullied your tight hole was addicting. "good girl. im gonna fuckin' ruin you." he threatens, his pace getting more intense. oh he'll show you who you belonged to, alright. no need to worry your pretty head about anything and let him use you for as long as he wanted. yeah?

DR RATIO, blade, aventurine, BOOTHILL, sunday / childe, SCARAMOUCHE, wriothesley, KAEYA / TOJI, gojo, GETO

BRO'S THE TYPE TO ?????

fx — i love this LMFAO 😭 nsfw undertones.

BLADE ᡣ𐭩

— bro's the type to kiss you on the neck from behind for everytime you busy yourself over your lil tasks and startle you after you thought he wasn't going to be around today.

— bro's the type to continuously praise you with sweet words during it because how could he not? you always take him so well and he could never get over how good you feel ᡣ𐭩

— bro's the type to hungrily kiss you until you have to forcefully pull him away with your entire strength because you couldn't breathe. and after you're done chasing your breath, he'll do it all over again :3

— bro's the type to be extremely gentle with you and talk to you in a soft spoker manner <3 no matter the situation, wether it's him scolding you for your carelessness on the battlefield or him getting upset with you, he'd never raise his voice at you.

— bro's the type to plot something insane against someone who was rude to you in any way and talk to them face to face when he convinces you to buy whatever you want and come back to him after 15 minutes. enough time to threaten the guy's entire bloodline.

— bro's the type to constantly have a hand against your thigh whenever he sits beside you. no matter where you are, his hand will always find their way to them.

DAN HENG ᡣ𐭩

— bro's the type to read books to you to help you fall asleep as you rest your head against his shoulder.

— bro's the type to wait until you fall asleep before he does to make sure you're getting proper rest.

— bro's the type whose stern expression softens every time he's in your company, for your presence was the only thing that could help him relax.

— bro's the type to love being under you during intimate moments, letting you do all the work with pleasuring him until you ask him to top u <3

— bro's the type to shut you up with a kiss when you're scolding him about his battle wounds then walk away like nothing happened.

— bro's the type to let you sit cutely on his lap and watch you do his makeup or play with his hair while you tell him all about your week. it's you, after all.

GEPARD ᡣ𐭩

— bro's the type to cuddle with you in a way his ear is pressed against your chest so he could hear your heartbeats.

— bro's the type to get all red when you tease or plant kisses all over his face whenever he's on duty with the silvermane guards, he swears he could hear them snickering.

— bro's the type to hold the small of your back everytime you walk together.

— bro's the type to slightly tear up in bed when you ride him because it's all too much but you just feel sooo good and hear you mutter lustful words to his ear that causes him to come with a small cry :((

— bro's the type to defend your name when people carelessly talk shit about you, sometimes he'd hold that grudge forever even if you tell him that it's okay. because it's not !!

𝑜 𝒸𝒶𝓅𝓉𝒶𝒾𝓃, 𝓂𝓎 𝒸𝒶𝓅𝓉𝒶𝒾𝓃 ⑅ ۫ .

ᕱ⑅ᕱ ۪ ۫ 〜 ꒰ gepard landau x f!reader. nsfw — mdni . . . established relationship / public sex ( in an empty corridor ) / reader is clingy n' needy n' also a bit of a tease :3 / u call him ‘captain’ / he calls u ‘angel’ + ‘sweetheart’ / finger suckin’ ♡ / quickies / unprotected sex / creampies / read to da end for a silly littl surprise ^_< ꒰ྀི 1.8k wc

𝒸𝑜𝒸𝑜 𝓃𝑜𝓉𝑒𝓈 . . . geppie ໒꒰ྀི∩´͈ ᐜ `͈∩꒱ྀིა dis is honestly jus’ vv self-indulgent oopsie . . it is also ! my first honkai piece eeee @ . @ i hope u enjoy :3 as always , feedback + rebloops are supa appreciate C: okiz baiii-!

gepard tastes strawberries and cream on your tongue as you pull him into an empty corridor at qlipoth fort, smells sunshine on your neck as you giggle in between cheeky kisses laid over his lips, his forehead, his jaw.

“hey, hey… someone’s going to catch us.” he chides you gently but to no avail, because when you whisper over his cheeks that you don’t care if someone sees, and that you just missed him so much, and that you might die if you went another hour without him, he can’t fight the shy laugh that bubbles in his throat, nor the pretty shade of pink that dusts his ears.

and that pink spreads to his cheeks, down his neck; it turns a deeper shade of rouge when you lean your weight on him and fist at the fur of his collar, breathe soft little noises into his mouth for him to steal and make a home of in his heart. “gepard…”

you sigh his name like that— with that delicate lilt to your voice— it sounds a bit like a dream to him, and he knows it all too well; knows it from all the late nights your toes curl and tap over his broad shoulders, from all the early mornings his fingers and lips have spent pulling honey from in between your legs.

it’s a noise so sweet, so pretty; he thinks himself to be a sinner with how something so innocent and angelic makes his blood run hot and cock throb with need. 

“yes?” exasperation laces his words and the stifled groans that follow when you kiss along the heavy vein of his neck, press your clothed pussy into his sinewy thigh and find his cock already half-hard, twitching and leaking pre from the love you slather over him. he’s inhaling through his teeth when you can only bring yourself to whine in response to his question, tug weakly at the zipper of his slacks; and before you do anything else to weaken his heart, he mumbles into your hair, breath thick with a burning desire that he tries to shove back down his throat, “not now, angel— c-christ, i’m still on duty…” 

a set of metal-plated fingers wrap around your hips, squeeze gently in a silent beg when you stumble back into the wall and curl your fingers into his coat almost woefully, tugging him towards you as best you can to feel more of his warmth. “n-no! no— promise it’ll be quick, please, need you so bad…” 

and against his will, gepard finds himself twisting like a sunflower at the sound of your voice— pitchy and petulant little pleas travelling straight to his cock, to the twitch of his fingers as they dig just a tad more forcefully into your flesh. “sweetheart…” your lover inhales sharply, squeezes his eyes shut to keep from looking into your own; for if he does, he’s afraid he just might give in to your salacious whims. “my guards will notice i’m missing.”

“even if they do, no one can question you about it, right, captain?” you whisper over his lips, squeeze your legs a little tighter around his thigh in an attempt to gain more friction where you need it the most.

“you… you never play fair, do you…” a chill flits down his spine at the name you call him and his head falls forwards to bump against your own, brain clouded with lust and a certain dizziness that makes him feel as though he might faint. 

“pretty please… ‘m already so wet for you, just look,” he follows your gaze to where his thigh has been pressed up against the hot apex of your legs, and the sight of your slick staining the crotch of your panties and white of his pants has him releasing a shaky exhale.

he’s losing his war against the sun.

because the captain of the silvermane guards is famously uncompromising, stubborn, loyal to his job and perhaps to a fault, yet, when you look like this— dusk falling overhead through the stained glass to cast a halo over your head and make visible the hearts in your eyes, when you look as stunning as you do with the sun glowing from your chest, gepard feels like his bones are being seared, his muscles burnt into dust by the heat you envelop him in.

“god, you’re gonna kill me…”

even so, he doesn’t think he minds dying at your hands when it’s like this. he’s admitting defeat before he even realizes it; with your fingers tugging at the blonde that curls around his ears as he hikes up the skirt of your dress with one arm and hooks the back of your knee over the inside of his elbow with the other. and then you’re sighing— all dreamy and blissed out when he hastily pulls his cock out from his slacks and taps his throbbing head over your clit before gliding his length along your soaking folds.

it’s too slow— how he inches into you, pushing his hips back and forth once, twice, three times until your pussy swallows as much of his cock as it can, until the sharpness of his hipbones rubs against your own. and it’s so wrong, so lewd— the position he has you in, his entire body weight caging you against the wall, broad shoulders hiding you from view should any passersby turn the corner and be met with a sight so incredibly… debauch.

you paw desperately at the breastplate of his armour as he fills you up, your tight ring of muscle stretched to accommodate his girth, and no matter how long he takes to prep you, no matter how wet you are, there’s always that initial dull ache that rips through your groin when he pushes into you. it has you lurching into his chest, little sobs of ’s so big, ’s too much pressing hot on his ear.

and, oh, gepard is just so sweet, cradling the back of your head to keep it from hitting the wall as he shushes you softly, “shh, it’s okay, you’re okay— y-you gotta be quiet.” his gentle nature only makes you keen further, makes your legs tremble in his hold and your voice crack from how pitchy your whines get; he’s left with one last option to prevent the two of you from getting caught.

before he can let another sound rip from your throat, he’s tearing off his glove with his teeth, grinding his molars against the worn leather as he pushes two of his fingers past your open mouth, pressing down on your tongue to silence you as best he can.

his assertiveness makes your mind fog up with submission— it has your toes curling at the low baritone of his voice as it drills breathy groans into your ear, your heart feeling the reverberations of the growl bubbling deep in his chest— because, fuck, when you lick and suck at his fingers like that, it shreds away all the remaining patience he has, wears it thin until there’s just one thread left.

“b-baby, you’re all the way in here…” pulling off his digits with a little pop, you whisper through slurred words and bring a palm to your navel, his own hand following suit. he presses down lightly, enough to have you gasping from a blossom of pleasure, enough to have your gummy walls oozing slick around him and clamp down tightly to suck his length in even deeper. he’s so deep— you swear he’s in your womb, and just imagining his cock nestled there, throbbing and leaking hot cum to mark you with a proclamation of his love makes the blood boil blue in your chest, course through your limbs and to the aching twitch of your fingers. “feel you in my tummy, gepard.”

“o-oh, god…”

and that’s when the last thread snaps.

gepard doesn’t think there’s anything else in this universe that makes him lose sight of his cool like you do, because as soon as you’re saying those words in that sinfully sweet voice of yours, he’s given up on letting your little cunt adjust to his size. instead, he’s panting and groaning and fucking up into you without warning— hips ruthless enough in their thrusts to lift your tippy toes off the ground, leaky head of his cock grinding into the spongy patch of tissue that has you wailing out and hiccuping over your cries. "g-gepard!"

it’s almost feral, the way he silences you with his kisses, dipping his tongue into your mouth to explore the sweet concavities, a growl ripping from his throat with each draw of his hips as he grinds into the most sensitive pleasure points lining your wall and rolls his crotch into your neglected clit— his ministrations coax pretty noise after pretty noise from you that he swallows with his own, drawing them down deep into his heart. 

when you begin to hiccup on shallow breaths and your bambi eyes glaze over with honey, gepard realizes he’s worked you up to that soft, dreamy headspace; the words tumble out of your pouty lips before you have a chance to think them through— all slurred and lilted like a sweet dance— because you’re drunk on his cock, and terribly in love with him, and all that. “you’re gonna make me cum.”

you drawl out shakily as he continues to rut up into you, make a mess of your pussy as lewd slapslapslap’s ring through the empty corridor. and when you moan over his mouth and chase after his lips, gently tugging on them and whining a little k-kiss me, gepard, wanna kiss you when i cum, it’s too much.

it’s so much, because it’s only been a short while but the dreamy look in your half-lidded gaze and your pitchy voice send a glow of mind-numbing pleasure through his entire body, down from his chest all the way to his cock— and just like that, he’s cumming alongside you— thrusts sloppy and jerky before he plunges into your completely. spurt after spurt of creamy white ribbon fills your womb, flushing your limbs full of a tingling warmth only he can give you.

your cunt spills his thick seed; it oozes down all sides of his cock, down his balls and to the floor, and in your hazy comedown, your light panting breaks off into a lovely little peal of giggles. “you came s’much… ’s all for me, mhm?”

“mhm… all for my pretty girl,” the sweet sounds you make endear your lover all the more to you; it’s evident by how he smiles tiredly into your hair, sucks in his cheeks in a failed attempt to keep from blushing so much, straightens the bows in your now mussed ponytails, rubs his nose sappily over yours— one way and then the other.

your post-coital bliss ends far quicker than either you want it to, for the clang of metal hitting cobblestone and a disgusted gasp from the eldest landau has your eyes going wide, gepard’s face flushing a deep berry as he stutters over his words and tries to reason.

“ugh, gepard, get a room!”

translation

Aventurine doesn't like being understood, but he does like understanding other people. It is essential for manipulation, for scheming, for control. And he likes controlling you especially—for keeping you close but your heart a comfortable distance away, for opening your legs when he wants the pleasure of your body, for playing your emotions however he needs. And the day will come when that skill will be invaluable—the day when he must die without shattering you. (Or: You are the only person in the universe who understands Aventurine in his mother tongue. He often regrets teaching it to you.)

5k words. gender neutral reader, established relationship, angst, non-graphic sex (reader bottoms, anatomy neutral), themes of cultural loss, references to slavery, aventurine’s canonically implied desire to die. MDNI.

Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin.

Deception does not come easily to him in his mother tongue. His command of it is too weak—and too kind. The universe was a different place in the days when his life was coloured by the warble of Avgin dialect. It felt simpler, partly because he was a child and partly because Sigonia was yet untouched by outsiders. There were no corporations, no casinos, no commodity codes. His entire world was sand, desert, mother, sister, father (or more often—ghost), goddess, tent, wagon, luck, sin, rain, blessing, Avgin.

Katican.

Aventurine is sure that he knew more than just those words. He was fluent as a child. He had conversations with his sister that were complex enough to make his heart hurt, though perhaps his heart was just constantly aching anyway. But the rest of his early words escapes him. He could maybe dredge them up if he thinks long enough, but he also isn't sure if his tongue and lips could form the shape of them anymore. Sometimes he still counts in Avgin, memorises phone numbers in it, but he doesn’t remember the last time he actually strung together a full sentence in the language.

When Aventurine was first stolen into slavery (a word that he had not known as a child, and still doesn't know in Avgin), he wasn’t given a Synesthesia Beacon. He had to rely on his ears and his wits, deciphering the harsh edges of the Katican dialect and then the strange garble of Interastral Standard Language. By the time he had a Beacon installed, it was already translating all speech into Standard—his dominant language.

Sometimes he feels a little aggrieved by it, but at least it wasn't Katican. He'd have blown out his brains if it were.

But it is easy to console himself: Avgin is not a useful language anyway. Dead languages have no value, and the Avgin dialect was killed along with its people. You can’t perform commerce in a dead language, can't negotiate contracts, can't enter a gambling den and use your silver tongue to rob people blind. You can't use a dead language to fell governments and extract resources; you can't use a dead language to bring an entire planet to its knees. You can’t use a dead language to gamble your life; you can't use it to save yourself from the gallows.

You cannot deceive people in a language that is defined by sand, sister, goddess, ghost.

Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin. His command of it is too weak, and there is no one left to which he can lie, anyway.

When you ask Aventurine to teach you his first language, he gives you an amused look.

“Why Avgin?” he asks. “No one speaks it anymore. I can teach you Common Sigonian if you’d like. Or we could learn Xianzhounese together. Maybe Intellitron code? I know a little.”

“You speak Avgin,” you argue.

“Not often,” he says. “And badly when I do.”

“But it's still your language. And I want to understand you.”

Aventurine has to stop himself from laughing. Understand him? He hates being understood. When people understand him, it makes him predictable. And unlikeable. Hardly a position from which he can manipulate people in.

You understand him well enough to know that.

“You'll have to give me a better reason than that,” he says neatly. “Make it worth my while. Reward me.”

You look at him as you ponder, your eyes lingering on his. Perhaps trying to read him, though he prefers to think you're just enjoying the sight of them.

“I’ll teach you my language as well?”

“You mean—you'll reward my hard labour with more work?” he says, lighthearted.

You frown at him despite the joke. “You don't want to understand me better than what a Synesthesia Beacon would allow?” He blinks, pausing. “It’ll be convenient too. We can talk shit about other people in public and no one will understand us.”

Aventurine considers you. He doesn't like being understood, but he does like understanding other people. It is essential for manipulation, for scheming, for control. And he likes controlling you especially—for keeping you close but your heart a comfortable distance away, for opening your legs when he wants the pleasure of your body, for playing your emotions however he needs. And the day will come when that skill will be invaluable—the day when he must die without shattering you.

He also likes the idea of talking shit in public.

“I'm listening,” he says, voice lilting. You lean in, smiling. Sweet. It makes his heart feel something he isn't used to. Something addictive. Something disgusting. He scrambles to cover it with one of the usual tools: humour or distraction or maybe just plain old lying—his most reliable weapon.

“I'll throw in a kiss?” you try.

He hums. “Just one?”

“One per day.”

“Three.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“Well, I am a businessman.”

You snort, but he knows you're endeared. You have very noticeable tells when you’re flustered.

“Okay,” you say. “Three kisses on days you teach me.”

“Deal.”

Aventurine remembers more Avgin than he thought he would.

It comes to him slowly, painstakingly. You aren't interested in structured lessons, and he wouldn't be able to provide them anyway. He has a nonexistent grasp of grammar aside from this sounds right and that sounds strange, and Avgin dialect is both so niche and so dead that no textbooks are available. The scholars have abandoned the language as much as the politicians abandoned its people. Aventurine only has you, his fragmented memory, and whatever questions come to mind as you live out your days with him.

Mostly, you ask him about basic vocabulary. Sometimes you ask him to repeat sentences from your conversations in Avgin, like he’s some kind of multilingual parrot. Each prompt forces him to wade through the fog in his mind, the one that’s been shrouding his childhood memories until now. He's startled at how naturally the old words roll off his tongue: One, two, three, four. Good morning. Good evening. Good night. Sweet dreams. Five, six, seven, eight. You're lying to me. Why do you always lie to me? I don't know what you're talking about. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Welcome home. Have you eaten? Have some bread. I made you stew. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. That was dangerous. I thought you wouldn't make it back to me. Sometimes I think you want to die. One hundred, one thousand, one million, one billion. I'm sorry. Come here. Let me kiss you. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.

When you say, How do I ask you to let me hold you, he answers easily. He'd heard the words so often as a child: Let me hold you, Kakavasha. Let Mama hold you. His mouth forms the sounds without conscious thought.

He regrets it almost immediately.

When Aventurine hears it from you—stilted, halting, but no less gentle—he stops breathing. Let me hold you. You say it all the time in Standard, but it feels different in Avgin. More painful. A strange sense of panic closes in on him when he's wrapped up in you, thinking in Avgin, thinking sand, sister, goddess, ghost. He holds you tightly, like the rags cut from his father’s shirt, or his mother’s locket won back from the shell-slashers, or a bag of poker chips beneath a card table, clutched within his trembling grip.

“Aventurine, is something wrong?” you ask in Avgin, and he replies in Standard with his usual smile.

“Hm? No. What could be wrong if I have you here?”

Lying is one of his greatest tools. Sex is another one. So he says, “I think I'd like my reward now,” and he runs his lips along your jaw, your pulse, the spot over your heart (there's a word for that in Avgin but not Standard, he tells you), until you're laughing. I thought you wanted three kisses, you tease, and he replies, Who said I wanted to kiss you on the mouth?

But he coaxes open your thighs, and once he's inside you, he collects his payment properly. He kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you—and you swallow his lies whole.

There are some things that Aventurine doesn't teach you. Mostly, they’re things that he can’t teach you.

There are countless gaps in his Avgin. His speech is painfully childish—probably more childish than it was when he actually stopped speaking it. He doesn't know how to swear (something that disappoints you) and he doesn't know how to flirt (something that devastates you). He doesn’t know any words that would be useful for work either: commercialization, governance, stakes, winnings, profit. When you ask him what his job title is in Avgin (“Was senior management even a thing in Avgin society?”), he laughs and gives you the word for gambler.

Then there are the words that he remembers—has remembered his whole life—but never says. Not to you, and not to himself. He doesn't teach you any prayers. He doesn't teach you any blessings. He doesn't teach you about Mama Fenge, or the Kakava Festival, or how the rain fell when he was born. When you ask him, What holidays did you celebrate when you were little? he shrugs and says, We didn't have any. Sigonia’s too bleak to do any partying.

Then you ask him one day, while your bodies are spent in the afterglow of sex, sticky with sweat and sweetness, how to say I love you. And he goes quiet.

Love is a cheap word in Interastral Standard. In the language of globalisation and trade, love has been commercialised, commodified, capitalised for power. You say it to him in many contexts: I love this, I love that, I love you. He hardly ever reacts, and he's never said it back. It would feel unnecessary and also cruel if he did: Aventurine has only ever said the words himself as either a joke or a manipulation.

But love feels different in Avgin than in Interastral Standard, doesn't sound like a thing that can be traded or bought. Kakavasha only ever said the word love to his mother, to his sister, to his father's grave. Love in his mother tongue feels priceless.

When Aventurine thinks about you saying it—I love you, Kakavasha, in clumsy, earnest Avgin—something so painful swells in his throat that he can hardly breathe.

“There is no word for love in my language,” he tells you.

You blink. “Okay, then what's an idiom for it?”

“There is none. There’s no word or phrase expressing love.”

You raise a brow. “That’s hard to believe.”

“Is it?” He smiles. “There’s no Avgin in the known universe who cares about love. Only scheming, thieving, and treachery—and you can't do those things when love is involved.”

You look at him in alarm. “Why are you saying that?” You're practically squirming in your discomfort. “I don't know why you think I'd believe such a racist stereotype.”

“It’s not a stereotype,” he says. “I'm not talking about the Avgin culture. I'm talking about myself.”

After all, he is the only Avgin left.

It is an unfair thing to say. A cruel thing to say. After all the laughing and kissing and crying and fucking, after all the tender eyes and gentle words from you—it is probably the worst pain imaginable: I don't give a shit about you. He waits for you to cry.

But you only stare at him calmly, studying him. You brush the hair out of his eyes, seeing them clearly.

“If you lie to me all the time,” you say in Avgin, “eventually I'll stop believing anything you say.”

Aventurine is speechless. His heart does that addictive, disgusting thing again. He thinks about leaving, but then you say, Let me hold you, and he can't do anything other than obey.

Avgin dialect was once included in the Synesthesia Beacon list of functions. The Intelligentsia Guild added it before the Second Katica-Avgin Extinction Event, when the IPC was trying to get a political foothold on Sigonia via the Avgin people. The language was alive then, with enough value to be included into the Synesthesia LLM by the linguists.

But since the Extinction Event—since Kakavasha ran away from home—the Synesthesia data on Avgin has been stagnant, a fossil. Aventurine knows because he's subscribed to software updates for certain languages (Avgin Sigonian, Common Sigonian, Interastral Standard, and now your mother tongue). He gets pinged every time there's a new addition for slang, for neologisms—but there hasn't been a ping for the Avgin dialect since he had the Beacon installed. The live translation function hasn't even been available since the previous Amber Era. When he checks its page on his Synesthesia app, it's very clear why—

SIGONIAN, AVGIN DIALECT SPEAKERS: 0 STATUS: Extinct END OF SERVICE: 2156 AE

The complete death of the language has led to an irritating dilemma for you and Aventurine. You keep running into words that he doesn't know—this time not because of his childlike speech, but because they never existed in his language to begin with. Ocean, tropical, rainforest. Starskiff, accelerator, space fleet. Stock market, shortselling, mutual funds. Black hole, event horizon, spaghettification. All things that never came up for Kakavasha, but now come up for Aventurine, and the language has not evolved to include it.

He always wants to switch to Standard to discuss these things, but you're insistent on speaking in Avgin as much as possible. He doesn't know why, but he doesn't mind humouring you—partly because he likes to indulge you, and partly because he’s grown used to hearing the honeyed timbre of Avgin dialect in your household. The place would feel strange without it.

So you start filling the gaps with other languages, filtering them through the lyricism of Avgin. Loanwords, he thinks they’re called. You take ocean, tropical, rainforest from Amazian; starskiff, accelerator, space fleet from Xianzhounese; stock market, shortselling, mutual funds from Interastral Standard. For the astrophysics terms, you try directly translating them—with limited success.

“Can't I literally just say ‘black hole’?” you ask in Avgin, and he nearly spits out his coffee.

“Please don't. That's a dirty word.” He can't bring himself to say what it means, but from the way you’re laughing, you can clearly guess.

“I thought you said you didn't know how to swear.”

“You've just reminded me how.”

“You're welcome.” You look on the verge of cackling. Aventurine finishes his coffee and wonders when you're going to surprise him with your newfound vulgarity.

“Let's just do the space terms based on Standard,” he says. Begs.

“No, that's so boring.”

“Then let's do your language.”

You open your mouth. Close it. Give him a blank look.

“You don't know how to say those words in your mother tongue either, do you,” he intuits.

“Well, ‘spaghettification’ doesn't really come up in everyday conversation, does it?”

“Then maybe we don't need it.” He smiles, senses an opportunity. Smells blood. “How about ‘love’? I'd much rather know how you say that. I bet it sounds beautiful.”

You give him a long look. Your eyes are vulnerable when you share it: Love. I love you. He’s fascinated by the sound of it. Your voice is never that fragile when you say it in Standard. It's never so earnest. He repeats it, staring at you, and your gaze falls to the ground. His mouth curls.

“I like it,” he says. “Let's use that. It'll sound nice in Avgin.”

You try to recover. “Sure. That works. But back to ‘black hole’—”

And the two of you continue like that for days, weeks, months. It feels like a complete bastardization of his mother tongue on some days, in some conversations. Almost unrecognisable. But it doesn't feel bad. It’s all he has, it's all you have, and when he walks into your home, he starts speaking it without thinking: your bastard, patchwork language. The Avgin dialect that exists only in your house. A tongue that can only be understood by a liar.

And then, one lazy Sunday morning, he gets a familiar ping. He expects it to be Interastral Standard, as usual. The language balloons with each planet that the IPC colonises.

But instead, he opens his screen and freezes.

SIGONIAN, AVGIN DIALECT SPEAKERS: 2 STATUS: Endangered. SERVICE RESUMED: 2157 AE NEW UPDATES: 103 loanwords and 5 neologisms added.

He can't stop looking at the status. Endangered. Endangered, which means dying, but alive. The Avgin dialect is alive again. The Intelligentsia Guild determined it, so it must be true. But Aventurine can't agree: there are no Avgin speakers in the known universe other than the two of you, and what you speak isn't real Avgin. The Avgin spoken by his mother and father and sister is dead; the Avgin spoken by Kakavasha is dead. The festivals are gone; the deserts have been terraformed. There are no wagons; there are no dances; there are no prayers. There are no blessings, and he has no home—

As long as you are alive, the blood of the Avgin will never run dry.

His throat locks up.

“Aventurine?” you ask. Your voice is drowsy, but concerned. “Is something wrong?”

He looks at you from his phone, a polished smile on his face.

“No.” His syllables are plain and efficient in the noise of Interastral Standard: “Just looking at details for a new assignment. It’ll be a long one.”

“Oh.” You frown. “Will you be away from home for a long time, then?”

He stops himself from swallowing. “Yes, I'll be away from the house. For several months, probably.”

“Okay.” Your voice is small. “Take care of yourself, okay? I'll miss you.”

Each word you speak resonates with heartbreak. It always does in these conversations, even in Standard—but the sorrow is amplified in Avgin. His mother tongue has an inherently sad quality to it, he's noticed. His people have lost so much over their history—their language is one of loss. It's his language of loss. Kakavasha did all his grieving in Avgin; Aventurine has never felt sorrow in Standard. When the language died, so did Kakavasha—and all his regrets with it.

“You'll come home to me, right?” you ask. It's a beautiful sentence in Avgin. A heartrending one. He feels something that he hasn't known since he was a child.

It's a feeling he has to kill.

“Yes,” he says in Standard. “Of course I'll come back.”

This is not the first time that Aventurine has been mistaken for dead, but this is the longest time.

The latest world to join the IPC network was a tough acquisition. It had been ruled by a despot who wreaked havoc on both the people and the planet, and who was too stupid and reckless to resolve conflicts with his trade partners. He probably would have blown up the whole star system had he been left to his own devices. Aventurine had no qualms about bringing him to ruin, nor did he have qualms about nearly dying in the process.

If things had gone his way, he'd either be dead or missing. This would have been the perfect opportunity to do the latter, actually—to be freed from the IPC. Free to drift alone, speaking with strangers in strange, unfamiliar tongues. No connection to his past, to the cruel history of his luck, to his commodity code. No tether to his inherently unjust destiny. But instead he's back in your house, pockets heavy with his borrowed wealth, speaking to you in his bastardised, childish Avgin. I'm sorry. Come here. Let me kiss you. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.

Your Avgin is—shockingly fluent. He doesn't know how. He can't think about it right now. All he can process is the wounded animal noise of your speech as you yell at him, as you cry. Like an injured songbird, or a weeping child. Why did you leave, why did you lie, why do you always lie to me, why don't you give a shit about me, you spit. Why do you want to die, why do you want to die, why do you want to die, you keep saying. Sand, sister, goddess, ghost, he keeps hearing. Sand, sister, goddess, ghost. Don't leave me, big sister. People will die. Why do you have to go?

“I’m sorry,” he tries again, this time in your language. “I'm so sorry. Come here. Let me hold you.”

You collapse into your mother tongue. Aventurine is both relieved and horrified. Relieved that he doesn't need to hear the language of his grief—horrified that he needs to hear yours. He's never heard you cry like this. He's never heard you break like this. These must have been the words you used when the soldiers found you hiding in your closet, when they dragged you out of your home. You were just a child.

Aventurine doesn't know the words you are using—you've never taught them—but he still understands them.

You're very malleable when you’re sad; even more so when you're hysterical. Aventurine understands this about you, and he understands how to calm you—this time in your native tongue—and he understands how to kiss you. He understands that you need to feel close to him. He understands that there are ways to accomplish this other than sex. A normal person would talk it out, have an honest conversation, come to a mutual understanding, and maybe even stop trying to kill himself. They wouldn't fuck you into the mattress while your face is still wet with tears.

But Aventurine is not a normal person. He doesn't know how to have an honest conversation, and he doesn't want to be understood. Lying is his greatest weapon, and sex is a close second. So he kisses you until you’re too breathless to cry, fucks you until you can't think, and makes you come so hard that you’re in too much bliss to grieve. And maybe it's horrible of him, but he enjoys it. He enjoys the way your body takes him in so easily, the way your nails dig into his back, the way you tighten around him when you climax, so wet and needy for him. The way you beg for him in your language for liars as he spends himself inside you: I love you, Aventurine, I love you, I love you, I love you—

Only because it feels good. This is all only because he enjoys fucking you. This is all only because you enjoy fucking him. This is all it'll ever be, and it'll be this way until he gets to meet his end.

(Some months ago, Aventurine started dreaming in Avgin.

It surprised him when he first noticed it. The last time he remembers having a dream in his native tongue, he was twelve years old and still in chains. And even then, it had become a sporadic, strange thing. Awful to wake up from. One minute he was with his mother and sister on a cool, rainy day, speaking fluently in Avgin as he laughed and played—and the next minute, he was being shaken awake in his cage, hearing the cruel lash of Katican.

But ever since he's started speaking Avgin with you, he's been dreaming in it. Vividly. Sometimes he's a child in these dreams, and sometimes he's grown. He's always back in the Sigonian desert, among the tents and the campfires and his family wagons. His mother and sister are alive. Sometimes his father is too. The skies roar with thunder and the stellar winds are always harsh, but they always keep him cocooned up in their arms. He's always warm.

Sometimes Aventurine dreams of nicer days. Clear skies, warm sun, cool breeze—all blessings from the Mother Goddess. On these days, he tends to be an adult, and you tend to be there with him. Your Avgin is fluent but strange, filled with funny loanwords and peculiar slang. His father likes the neologisms and starts using them—but only in wrong ways. His sister finds it embarrassing and keeps apologising to you.

His mother loves you. She loves you so much it hurts. This is how I know you're blessed, Kakavasha, she says, glowing. You’re so lucky to have found such a kind person.

Kakavasha knows this. He knows he's lucky, and in his dreams, that isn't a bad thing. In his dreams, his luck means that his home is not violently excised from his heart: his father never dies; his mother never dies; his sister never dies. The tents are not burned; the wagons are not destroyed. He is never forced to forget his people's dishes, their songs, their language, their joy. And in his dreams, his luck means that he meets you anyway, without all the loss and the chains and the lying.

In his dreams, he is able to bring you to the desert. He is able to teach you the Avgin he spoke as a child, to cook all the meals his mother used to make, to share with you their coffee and their tea. He teaches you prayers. He teaches you blessings. He tells you about Mama Fenge, about how the rain fell when he was born. He takes you to the Kakava Festival, shows you how to dance, sings to you all the Avgin songs until you're singing back. He presses his palm to yours in prayer; he kisses you in devotion, not avoidance.

Sometimes the two of you still fight, the same fights that you have in real life, but he handles them with honesty. He listens to you. He apologises to you. He tells you that he’ll change, and he means it—because this world is a kind one, and he has no need to be so cruel to you.

In this kind world, when you lay in bed with his arms tight around you, you smile at him and say, I love you, Kakavasha. You say it in Avgin—real Avgin, not the dialect born from genocide and deceit—and when he responds, there's not even a little bit of insincerity in his voice. Because Kakavasha never became Aventurine in these dreams, so he has no Interastral Standard in which he can lie to you, no silver tongue with which he can manipulate you, no commodity code that inspires his fear of being controlled by you. Kakavasha only knows Avgin, and he only has his sand, his family, his goddess, his home.

And he has you. Finally, he has you.

He kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you—and then he tells you the truth.)

.

.

.

Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin.

You noticed this very early on: whenever he lies to you, he always switches to Interastral Standard. Probably he wouldn't be able to do it in his mother tongue. His command of it is too weak, and the words he knows are all too kind. He speaks with the innocence of a child, and children cannot deceive people in the way that adults can. Children cannot perform commerce or negotiate contracts. They cannot use a silver tongue to rob people blind. They cannot save themselves from the gallows.

So Aventurine’s Avgin is defenceless. Vulnerable. So vulnerable it hurts. You are not so vulnerable in your first language because your captors spoke it on occasion, and you learned to lie in it to gain their pity. You told Aventurine that knowing it would help him understand you, but this was a deception. Aventurine’s mother tongue was a language of trust, but yours is a dialect of abuse.

The Avgin language died before Aventurine could be gutted by it; this is why it disarms him so completely. This is why he’s so indulgent and so warm when you use it with him, why he yields to all your requests. Not requests for money or gifts—you’re certain those are meaningless to him—but for affection. Let me hold you. Let me touch you. Let me kiss you. He can never say no.

This is also why he loves hearing you speak his mother tongue, you think—it makes him feel at home, it makes him feel safe. Maybe it even makes him feel loved. He never seems so at peace speaking any other language, so you try to use Avgin as much as possible. You like seeing him happy. You like it even if it means you need to teach him your own native language in exchange, even when it means you need to hear him say all the things your captors used to say. You don't mind it if it's him. You never mind the harm he inflicts on you, especially not when it brings you closer to him.

It is convenient that he cannot lie in Avgin. You only wanted to learn it in the first place because he talks in his sleep—mostly in Standard, but sometimes in his native tongue. And now that you know he cannot lie in Avgin, you also know he's always being honest in his dreams. Honest when he throws his arms around you in his sleep. Honest when he grabs you so tightly that you bruise. Honest when he buries his face into your neck and whispers prayers into your skin.

Most of the words he says are common ones, the earliest vocabulary that he taught you. But there are some things he's withheld from you—and to learn those things, you had to track down linguists from the Intelligentsia Guild, bribe them with your dirty money, have them give you all their deprecated, extinct data. It felt two-faced, and it was violating, but it was the only way. You already know that Aventurine would rather die than translate his feelings for you, would never want this part of himself understood.

I'm sorry for always leaving you.

I'm sorry for making you cry.

I can't bear the thought of losing you.

Freedom would be too lonely without you.

I don't want to hurt you anymore.

I don't want to lie to you anymore.

I missed you.

I want you.

I need you.

I love you.

end

afterword

ART OF THE BEDCHAMBER | part 1

"Dual cultivation with you wouldn't be very useful. You might have extraordinary qi as a Vidyadhara, but it's sealed when you're in your human form."  Dan Heng stares at your fingers, deliberates as you trace the invisible paths of his meridians.  "Then," he says, "what about my dragon form?"  (Or: Dan Heng dreads the thought of outliving you and will do anything to help you achieve immortality. If that means fucking you in his dragon form, then so be it.)

6.5k words. smut, fluff, established relationship, xianxia elements. semi-explicit sexual content (only with dan heng in his human form in this chapter, sorry). reader is gender neutral, afab — they have breasts and bomb pussy game. cultural notes: "yinyue jun" is the chinese equivalent for "imbibitor lunae". please see the end notes for information on cultivation. other notes: this is set pre-1.2. 风月 was based on this fic so some things may feel very familiar! network: @trailblazernet. MDNI.

When Dan Heng—in a rather unexpected move—fell in love with you, he didn’t foresee all the agony that would come with it.

Shockingly, you aren’t the direct cause of this agony: a remarkable fact, given your routine of pestering him for as many hours as the day will allow. Dan Heng often complains about your many inconvenient behaviours (e.g., trying to cuddle with him in the archives, trying to kiss him in the archives, trying to have sex with him in the archives), but to the amazement of his fellow trailblazers, he never actually does anything about it. After getting over his initial embarrassment at such public displays of affection (this took quite some time), he’s come to tolerate it.

You often like to tease him for his leniency, all playful smiles and lilting tones: You don’t have to act so shy, Dan Heng—I know you enjoy the attention. My Heng'er likes to be spoiled, huh?

He always rolls his eyes in response. Consider it a miracle that I haven’t kicked you out yet, he’ll usually say, flicking you on the forehead. He never tells you if he means kicking you out of the archives or if he means throwing you out of the Astral Express itself, right into the vacuum of space. (Most bystanders are astonished that the latter hasn’t happened yet. So are you.)

He also doesn’t tell you how wrong it feels when he isn’t listening to the background noise of your shameless flirting. Or how wrong it feels when he doesn’t get to humour you with a kiss every once in a while.

Which brings him to the root of the problem: the wrongness that he’s feeling right now. The emptiness of the archives without your laughter, the tasteless quality of his food when you’re not there to dine with him, the restlessness of trying to sleep without you—it’s all wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong enough for it to be a little agonizing, now that he’s nearing one hundred and twenty days of this.

You often have to leave the Express for many months in a row, so Dan Heng is no stranger to these unsettling feelings. Neither are you. If I could spend more time with you, I would, you’d said before leaving last time—and the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that. But I can’t avoid going into seclusion. It’s part of the whole Cultivator gig, y'know—gotta go to a mountain somewhere and meditate for a few months. That’s just the price of immortality if you’re a measly human. Then you’d given him a little smile, pecked him on the lips. Most people do it for years at a time, but I wouldn’t be able to leave you alone for so long.

The first time you’d pointed this out, Dan Heng was startled by the relief that flooded him. Vidyadharas have an intuitively different sense of time compared to human beings, and two or three years should feel like nothing to him: relative to the centuries he’d lived as his previous incarnation—or the decades as his current one—it would be only a fleeting moment.

But in your absence, it would feel like an eternity.

It surprises him how much he hates the crawl of time without you. Dan Heng had never before been a needy person: solitude and isolation had always been the norm for him, in a lifetime absent of human touch—first imprisoned from birth, then exiled from the first moment he got to see the sun. Even after leaving the Alliance, he hadn’t allowed himself to become particularly close with anyone: it would have been too complicated because of the sensitive matter of his past, and he simply didn’t feel deserving of it anyway. Nor was he in need of it.

Then he met you.

Then he met you, and he became accustomed to the sound of your laughter, and then your offhanded, warm touches, and then your smile as you sat in the blue glow of the archive floor and poured baijiu into everyone’s cups. (Scalding, bitter; you had laughed as he made a face and warmed up huangjiu specifically for him next time, and it was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.) And then he became accustomed to talking to you—to letting you unearth things he’d buried for decades, to revealing his suffering and receiving your compassion, to the gentle feeling of your hand on his shoulder. Then the tender, nervous look in your eyes, then the silky press of your lips, then the closeness of your unclothed body, and then the breathless warble of your voice—Dan Heng, I’m close, I’m so close, please—and then the euphoria of having you arch and fall apart so beautifully in his arms.

And then the afterglow. He hadn’t only grown used to that: he’d become addicted to it. Warmer and headier than huangjiu, something that he’d have never been able to imagine while growing up in the night-dark prison of his childhood.

Even the memory of his first taste of sunlight aboard the Luofu pales in comparison to the feeling of having you in his arms. The first time he’d had the privilege of holding you, he caught himself thinking: If paradise is but a dream, then I wish to sleep forever.

And now, each time he lies awake on his futon, alone except for the glow of artificial stars, Dan Heng becomes acutely aware of the emptiness left by your missing form.

He isn’t exactly deserving of your companionship. He knows that.

But he is in need of it.

After one hundred and twenty one days of seclusion, you are ready to return to the Astral Express.

Time moves differently when you cultivate behind closed doors. The act of such intense meditation and training distorts the flow of the world for you, makes entire months feel like days. Emerging from seclusion always comes with a certain anxiety: Are your friends well? Have they forgotten you? Has the Express continued its journey across the galactic railroad, or has some terrible event happened to your home—a supernova, a meteor shower, the destructive force of a stellaron?

And, most importantly: Did anyone murder your boyfriend while you were away?

There is at least one intergalactically wanted criminal who's tried to kill Dan Heng a number of times, and an entire alliance consisting solely of his haters. Half the reason you take your cultivation so seriously is to prepare for the inevitable day that someone is going to seriously attempt to murder him in front of you (probably the aforementioned criminal). You want to be strong enough to one-hit KO Arbiter-General Jing Yuan himself, if it ever comes down to it.

Of course, the downside is that the murder attempt might happen while you're off training, but you're hoping that March 7th and Caelus can cover for you in that case.

Still—while you have nothing in confidence in Caelus’ abilities (you adore March, but will not comment on hers), you sigh in relief when your phone begins to buzz.

> Are you out yet? We're on our way. > Get something to eat if you haven't yet. I'll make sure something is ready for you on the Express too. > I know you can practice inedia, but you're still a human at the end of the day. Please get something to eat as soon as possible.

No hello, no I missed yous, just plain, practical concern—as always.

You are not a practical person.

> GEGE! > GEGE GEGE GEGE > DAN HENG GEGE > come fast i want to kiss u > i'll die if u don't kiss me soon > i missed you!!!!!! > did you miss me??????

You can more or less imagine the expression on your (hopefully unharmed) boyfriend's face: deadpan exasperation. The first time you came out of seclusion during your relationship, you texted him no less than twenty times in a row from a new number, and he reflexively flagged it all as spam. He's since told you to tone down the double texting (and triple texting, and quintuple texting, and dectuple texting…), but always replies anyway.

> The Express is about to warp. We'll be there soon. > I'll do whatever you like, please just eat.

You watch as an ellipsis appears at the bottom of your chat window, then disappears, then appears again. When he finally sends his text, a smile stretches wide across your face.

> And yes, I thought of you the whole time you were gone.

With your return to the Express, you make Dan Heng engage in all your usual couple activities. Which is to say: you act disgustingly sweet with him and the other passengers experience varying degrees of shock and entertainment at his complacent behaviour.

You surprise him as he works in the archives, looping your arms around his waist and pressing against his back so you can whisper things into his ear: Gege, pay attention to me! or Dan Heng, can't you take a break now? or Heng'er, are you really going to ignore your lover like this? So cruel!

Dan Heng doesn't react during these moments, but he also doesn't push you away. Sometimes he'll shove a stack of books into your hands and say, If you have time to mess around like this, then you can work on digitizing these for me. You always agree, but wheedle a kiss out of him in exchange for your hard labour.

(Welt Yang walks in on one such kiss, coughs loudly, and walks back out. Dan Heng pulls away from your lips to stare at the door in abject horror.)

You give Dan Heng a number of books and films from your travels, and keep him company as he dives into them. He always gravitates toward the latest Xianzhou novels first, especially the ones that give mention to everyday life on the Luofu. You suppose that he's never been able to rid himself of his curiosity about the life that he'd been denied, enthralled by visions of night markets and starskiffs, teahouses and cross-talkers. You can see his longing in the crease of his brow, the softening of his eyes as he reads.

Seeing his wistful expressions, it is impossible to stop yourself from keeping him company. You press into his side, resting your head on his shoulder—something that will comfort him, you hope—and read alongside him. Sometimes the two of you fall asleep like that, wrapped up in each other on the archive floor.

(March 7th stumbles into one of these moments and can't help but snap a picture of the two of you. Dan Heng later pales when he sees your lock screen, where your slumbering, entwined forms are clearly visible.)

You often convince Dan Heng to have a proper, sit-down dinner with you in the dining car. He won't ever do it for food from the kitchens, preferring to eat in the archives instead, but he'll do it for food you cook together. The two of you enjoy your meals while watching the interstellar scenery roll by outside, stargazing at distant galaxies. Sometimes you savour the tangy-sweetness of tomato-egg stir fry (your handiwork); sometimes you enjoy the rich broth of delicately steamed xiaolongbao (your boyfriend's handiwork); sometimes the both of you sweat over the punishing numbing-spice of malaxiangguo (a combined effort and favoured couple's activity—right up there with building furniture).

The other passengers wave whenever they see you, impressed that Dan Heng has emerged from the archives. They joke as they greet you: I guess you're the only one that can pull him out of his cave!

(The older ones—Himeko especially—laugh and talk fondly about young love when they spot you. Dan Heng's expression stays as stoic as ever, but the tips of his ears go red and he accidentally burns his tongue trying to eat his own bao.)

You address Dan Heng with an astonishing number of pet names at an alarming frequency; your excuse is that you need to make up for the four months you couldn't call him anything. Mostly you call him 'Gege' in public, which he usually doesn't mind as it saves him considerable face relative to all the alternatives, but this changes when Caelus starts teasing him about it.

Morning, Gege, he starts saying at breakfast, drawing a long stare from Dan Heng. Gege, can you help me with finding these records? he asks whenever he strolls into the archives. Before expeditions, he starts turning to Dan Heng and using his most sugary voice: You'll protect me, right, Gege? And Dan Heng turns to Himeko to flatly state, I will not be held responsible if he dies.

Eventually, Caelus grows bold enough to join you both for dinner: Gege, he asks, do you want me to hand-feed you these noodles too?

Dan Heng replies by rising from his seat and walking straight out of the dining car.

(Your long-suffering boyfriend eventually says, during one of your reading sessions, that Caelus is quickly becoming unbearable with this new habit of his.

Well, you muse, since he’s just teasing you about the way I talk to you, I could stop calling you ‘Gege’.

Dan Heng stops. He looks almost hesitant, like he wants to protest, but his expression flattens into a deadpan when you continue: I could always call you 'baobei' instead. What, you don't like that? But Heng'er, you're my baobei, my xingan baobei, my little little apple and beloved husb—whoa!

You laugh hysterically as you dodge the book he chucks at you.)

Sometimes you do get him to reciprocate your actions. Shockingly—despite his reserved and conscientious disposition—you have the greatest success with this whenever you tease him while he's working. You find it works best to crawl into his lap and kiss at his jawline, whispering into his ear while he tries to focus on his screen.

I’m so pent up, Gege, you often start with. I've been trying to take care of myself, but my fingers aren't enough. You like to straddle his hips as you talk, grind a little if you think you can get away with it. You whine if you do, pressing your face into his neck—right beneath his clenched jaw. Won't you give me some attention? Just ten minutes on this desk is all we need.

Dan Heng can only ever endure about fifteen minutes of this before throwing you over his shoulder. You inevitably find yourself being flipped over in a fireman's carry, being lectured in a flat tone. I don't know where you get off lying like that, he usually comments as he makes his way to your room, ignoring your yelping and kicking. 'Ten minutes'? Every time you act like this, you end up taking up my whole evening.

(He does, in fact, spend the rest of his night in bed with you, making it clear that there is no need for you to ‘take care of yourself’ so long as he’s around.)

But despite all the grief you give Dan Heng with your public, grand displays of affection, your favourite moments with him are the private ones. The ones where you sit next to him on his futon, sharing a pair of earbuds and listening to the latest hits from the various worlds to which you’ve travelled. The ones where you make dumpling skins together during the quiet hours of the kitchen, flour dusting your fingers as you roll out the dough that Dan Heng has kneaded. The ones where you spend lazy mornings in bed together, Dan Heng holding you as you talk at length about nothing at all.

The ones where you pause in your long-winded ramble to find him staring at you, his gaze fond and fully attentive. Met with such tenderness, you have no choice but to lean in and kiss him, long and deep and smiling—and in the privacy of your room, your boyfriend is more than happy to return it.

Some weeks after you return to the Express, Dan Heng gives you a long look after one such moment and says, "You should spend more time with me."

You raise a brow. "Eh? I already spend plenty of time with you, Heng'er. I've been bothering you 24/7 now that I'm back on the Express… It's a wonder you aren't sick of me yet."

"Of course I'm not sick of you," he replies plainly. "I could never be."

The admission makes you blink. Heat prickles the back of your neck. It's not often that Dan Heng is so straightforward with his feelings.

"And I mean"—he looks away, the red paint along his waterline hidden by his lashes—"that it'd be nice if you didn't have to leave the Express so often. If you could stay here all year round."

You can't stop yourself from frowning. "You know I don't like leaving you, but I really don't want to compromise my training." Your fingers sweep gently at his brow, brushing away his hair. "I wanna be strong enough to protect you, Gege. After I get to that level, I promise I'll be around more often." Then you smile a little. "And if I'm lucky, I might even get a long life out of it!"

Dan Heng's brow dips. "A 'long life'? The whole point of cultivation is to achieve immortality, isn't it?"

"Sure, in theory. In practice, almost no human ever becomes immortal by these means. If cultivation were so easy, then people wouldn't turn to shortcuts like magical elixirs or blessings from Aeon Yaoshi." You purse your lips, voice starting to colour with derision. "Not that I'd ever be shortsighted enough to chase either of those things, mind you. I'd rather work hard, have a long and healthy life, and die and reincarnate properly if it comes to that. Immortality isn't worth the strife caused by any other method."

Dan Heng studies you closely, his eyes steadfast on yours. "Then… what do you consider a 'long life'?"

You hum, thinking. "If I don't slack off with my training, I have maybe eighty to a hundred years of youth before I kick the bucket."

"Eighty years?" Dan Heng's eyes go a little wide. You aren't used to seeing it.

"Yes?" You shift, fidgeting. "But that's only if I'm lucky. Pushing for anything more would be tough. I could undergo a qi deviation and die… or I might just not be talented enough to reach that stage of cultivation and pass away from natural causes… someone could also just kill me at any time, given my lifestyle. I've got a lot of options for dying, you know."

Dan Heng doesn't reply, nor does he look at you. It occurs to you that this whole conversation might be unsettling for him, given everything that's happened with the Xianzhou Alliance, with the matter of his past life and that vengeful monster he seems unable to kill. The mere thought of immortality must be painful for Dan Heng.

"I'm sorry, Gege," you say. "It's insensitive of me to talk about these things with you. Anyway—I'm not seriously trying to become an immortal, so you don't have to worry about me. I'm not looking to break any taboos."

Your lover gives you a long, unreadable stare before replying, "Right. Of course. Nothing good can come from the pursuit of immortality." Cinnabar paint flickers as he looks away. "Human life should be as morning dew—fleeting and ephemeral."

Dan Heng starts to behave strangely, after that. Quieter and withdrawn. Not just subdued in his affection, but absent in it.

When you bother him in the archives, he no longer scolds you or distracts you with any work—merely continuing with his tasks, completely immersed in them. When March 7th and Caelus tease him about his many pet names, he doesn't get flustered—only rolls his eyes and ignores them. When the other passengers catch sight of the two of you dining together and fondly comment on your relationship, he hardly reacts. He only continues eating, staring absently at his dish—usually something you've made, because he seems uninterested in eating anything else these days.

(Are you sure you don't want actual food from the kitchens instead? you ask once, studying what's supposed to be dough for fried breakfast buns. For whatever reason, you can't get the consistency right. The Express chefs are way better than me, you know.

No, he insists. You made it, so I want to eat it.

You don't need to be so polite!

I'm not being polite. He looks down at your fingers, dusted snow-white with flour. It's just what I want.)

You wrongly assume, for a little bit, that he's somehow lost interest in everything but your cooking. It only feels like the logical conclusion, especially when Dan Heng gets into the habit of ignoring you for most of the day despite your use of every trick in your arsenal—from kissing him to teasing him to begging him for sex. He simply tells you that he'll entertain you later, and is otherwise too deeply absorbed in his work to pay attention to you.

"Is something wrong, Dan Heng?" you eventually ask, voice small. "Is it that you don't feel the same way about me anymore? Do you want to break up?"

Dan Heng goes stock still when he hears this. Without saying a word, he puts down his tablet, locks the door, and kisses you long and hard. And then—for the first time in your relationship—he proceeds to actually fuck you in the archives. He rails you next to the terminal for the better part of an hour, forces an earth-shattering orgasm out of you that ruins the carbon-fibre surface you're laid out on, and then he fills you up to the point that his spend starts trickling down your thigh.

Hazy and fucked out, you wonder idly if it's dripping down onto the phosphorescent tiles below. Dan Heng will probably make a fuss about it, especially since this is technically a public space, and the terminal is its most high-traffic area. He'd have a stroke if anyone ever saw this mess.

When he stands up, you assume that he's getting right to cleaning, like usual. The guy can hardly ever relax.

You don't expect it when he gets onto his knees and puts his head between your thighs.

"Gege?" you say, solidly confused, but before you can ask him what he's doing, you feel the press of his tongue against your dripping entrance and then all you can do is moan.

By the time Dan Heng is done with you, the two of you are messy and breathless, collapsed and tangled up in each other on his makeshift bed.

You stare at the ceiling, mind whirring even in your exhaustion. It had been hard to process the situation while your boyfriend was railing every thought imaginable out of you—but now that he’s finally done, the shock is settling in.

Holy shit, you think, Dan Heng never gets this nasty. Something really is wrong!

You think of broaching the matter, but Dan Heng beats you to it. He turns to you, says, "I don't want to break up," and then gets back on top of you for another round.

You decide to put your foot down.

The next night, you invite Dan Heng into your bedroom. You're all business this time. There's no whining, no teasing, no Heng'er, you don't want to touch me? There are no desperate and indirect plays to get his attention while you simmer in anxiety about what he's hiding from you. (This change is not because of your own strength of mind—of which you have none, when it comes to your boyfriend—but because you're now sure you won't break up, whatever happens.) Instead, you seat him at your table and regard him with a firm expression.

You're careful to keep your voice gentle, but you still don't hesitate: "I know something's been bothering you, Dan Heng. Can we please talk about it?"

Dan Heng is prepared for the question. "I'm sorry I've been neglecting you," he says instantly. "It won't happen anymore. I'm very serious about our relationship, and I have no wish for it to end."

You know he's being earnest. After spending the rest of his night fucking you—slow and sweet in your bed, rather than the desperate way he'd done it in the archives—he'd woken up this morning and gone back to normal. Paid attention to you, paid attention to others, humoured your public displays of affection and initiated his own in private. Acted like the past two weeks never happened, and that nothing’s been weighing on his mind.

Were he anyone else, you'd assume that you're simply being strung along for sex, or perhaps being distracted by it. But Dan Heng isn't anyone else: he has absolutely no interest in physical intimacy without the emotional kind. He'd slept with you as an affirmation of his feelings for you. (He probably also did it because you kept begging to be fucked, but that's neither here nor there.)

Still, as much as you liked having your back blown out in the archives, semi-public sex isn't exactly a healthy way to deal with relationship problems.

"I know you'll be more mindful of my feelings now," you reply, "but I'd still like you to tell me what's been bothering you. I won't force it out of you, but if you did tell me, we could maybe fix it?"

"It is unfixable," he replies, "and not a problem to begin with. Simply the nature of things that I must accept."

His tone is neutral. Factual. Certain of the insignificance of whatever the issue is, even though you know that he's not the type to be bothered by insignificant things.

You frown, confused. "If it's the nature of things, then it won't hurt for me to know."

Dan Heng isn't looking at you anymore, instead fixated on the view beyond your window. Peering at the many moons of this galaxy, he finally relents: "'The night-blooming cereus flowers only once.' This is how Vidyadharas describe human life."

You consider his words, contemplating the bittersweet air of the idiom.

"Because human life feels ephemeral to you?" you discern.

"Yes. The lifespan of a human is but a fraction of ours. It's never bothered me before, but"—he's finally looking at you now, and his expression guts you—"four months without you feels unbearable. I can't imagine four centuries."

You go quiet.

Dan Heng is right: this is the nature of things. Skilled as you might be, you aren't likely to be one of those rare few humans who can ascend to immortality without Yaoshi's fruit. He’ll likely need to spend the better part of his life without you, and then every lifetime thereafter. Such is the reality for a Vidyadhara choosing to love a short-life species.

“...I’m sorry, Dan Heng,” is all you can bring yourself to say, but he shakes his head.

“There is no need for you to apologize," he says plainly. "I should have prepared myself for this eventuality when I chose to commit myself to you. It cannot be helped."

Dan Heng loves this phrase, you think to yourself. It cannot be helped that I had to live alone for so many years. It cannot be helped that I was exiled from my home. It cannot be helped that I was punished for the sins of Yinyue Jun.

It cannot be helped that you will someday leave me.

A splinter digs into your heart. You reach out, squeeze his hand, and wish that you could do more.

"It cannot be helped," you agree, "but that doesn't make it any less painful."

Dan Heng does not speak, but the way that he closes his eyes is enough of a reply. No matter how unfeeling he makes his voice, his pain is evident.

You wait for him to collect himself. Listen to his breaths—deeper than usual, meditative, reflective. There is hesitation in his eyes when he finally looks at you. A weakness that he only ever shows at night, after waking from a terrible dream.

"...I know it's a cruel thing to ask of you," Dan Heng eventually says, and the bitter edge to his words surprises you, "and perhaps a sign that this soul of mine will never change in its sins, no matter how many times it is reborn—but is there no way for us to spend a life together?"

You forget how to breathe.

What he's asking you is not just heretical for him—it's traumatic. An echo of the crime he'd committed in his past life, the tragedy that marked him for suffering in this one. He must be desperate for an answer if he's voicing the question at all.

You struggle as you think through your options.

"Seeking out the Peaches of Immortality is out of the question," you start. "And Sanctus Medicus is just a bunch of nutjobs—no way could they make me immortal. Demonic cultivation is another Path, but I don't think you'd like the thing I'd become by the end of it."

A brilliant river of stars streams past the window, like the one in that ancient folktale about the bridge of magpies. You can see the reflection of your lover's face in the window: muted, sorrowful, already mourning you. And of course he's mourning you long before your death, with how much he'd lost long before his birth.

Oh, Heng'er, you think, even if I drank from Meng Po's bowl and lost every memory of you, I'd still find my way back to you in my next life.

It would be too cruel to say aloud, so you remain quiet—merely staring at the galaxy before you, hoping quietly to see some kind of bridge.

Then a nearby sun flickers, and you remember something.

"...I guess there is another option," you say slowly, "but I can't imagine you being happy with it."

He straightens up. "What is it?"

"Well…" You take a deep breath. "Sometimes people practice dual cultivation as a way to extend their life. It's quite safe, but would be difficult given our relationship."

Dan Heng stares. "What exactly does it entail?"

"Well… it's basically cultivating by having sex. If I slept regularly with an immortal being with highly refined qi, I could probably exchange energy with them and achieve longevity that way." You make a face at the thought. "But it's not exactly easy to find an immortal who'd want a lifelong friend with benefits… and I'd really rather not have sex with anyone other than you, anyway."

It would probably make him miserable.

You're surprised when Dan Heng looks thoughtful, rather than disturbed. He studies you for a long moment, considering.

"Vidyadharas are immortal," he says, "and the qi of a High Elder is much more powerful than that of any other species. Is it not helping that we're already coupling so often?"

"Not really." You reach out across the table, hold out your palm, and he knows to give you his hand. You turn it over, tracing a finger along the length of his wrist. "Dual cultivation with you wouldn't be very useful. You might have extraordinary qi as a Vidyadhara, but it's sealed when you're in your human form."

You feel for the warm glow of his meridians, even though you already know what you'll find—an ordinary, unremarkable life force coursing through his body.

Dan Heng doesn't seem discouraged, though, when you look back up at him. Only curious.

"Then," he says, "what about my dragon form?"

It doesn't end up being very straightforward.

For a full ninety minutes, Dan Heng sits in your room and listens to you discuss the mechanics of dual cultivation, also known traditionally as the 'art of the bedchamber'. As its name would suggest, there are quite a few nuances and technical considerations involved: different positions enhance your qi in different ways; certain acts are more useful than others; mutual pleasure must be attained for the greatest possible benefit.

It isn't just a lecture that you give him. You take out one of your cultivation manuals and show him various diagrams and poses. You whip out your tablet and visit "questionable websites" for "video demonstrations". You quiz him intensively at the end of each unit.

At around the seventy-minute mark, you catalogue Dan Heng's expression—thousand yard stare, stiff posture, red ears—and decide that you're overwhelming him. So you tell him the most important takeaway, which is that one thing he must absolutely do is—

"—finish inside you?"

"Mhm." You sound completely unbothered. "As much as possible. And as many times as possible."

He gives you a long, blank stare, and then crosses his arms. "...all of this is just a ploy to get me to do one of your favourite things in bed, isn't it."

"What? No! I wouldn't lie to you about something like this, Gege!" You're being truthful. Though your sex drive can sometimes drive you to try insane things, it never drives you to be cruel. "I'm being dead serious right now. This really will extend my life. Those cultivation manuals were proof!"

Dan Heng considers you. "You're right. You wouldn't lie about something like this."

"Thank you."

"You're already so shameless about begging for it—I don't think you'd see the need to come up with an excuse."

Wow.

"...okay, yes, but you're also pretty shameless about giving in."

Dan Heng clears his throat, and you try not to laugh. "Well, I've never had a reason not to, since we don't need to worry about pregnancy…" He tries very, very hard to assume some semblance of dignity as he deflects: "Anyway. I think I understand the gist of it. You more or less want me to do the usual things."

"Yes—but while you're in your original form, of course."

"Right." His eyes narrow, and his expression becomes uncertain: something you've only seen a handful of times. "...I do need you to know that taking that shape… complicates things. There is a reason why my powers are usually sealed."

You nod. You've known for a while now that Dan Heng hates invoking his Vidyadhara powers—he considers it as taboo as much as a Xianzhou native would. Truthfully, it did occur to you some time ago that exchanging qi with a dragon would make your cultivation progress leaps and bounds, but after learning about how much he despises that form of his, you'd scrapped the whole idea and put it out of mind.

You're surprised that he's even consenting to this, all things considered.

Noticing the tension in his body, you leave your teaching set-up (tablet, an annotated cultivation manual, and smartboard with various stick figures you've drawn) to rest a hand on his shoulder.

"I don't know if we have to worry about that. The Alliance only sealed Vidyadhara powers due to historical reasons relating to the Sedition, right?" you try to console him. "Rather than anything to do with your nature in this lifetime, I mean. You aren't inherently dangerous."

You can see the conflict in his eyes; your words run exactly counter to everything he must have heard while imprisoned on the Luofu.

"I don't know," Dan Heng finally says, "but for better or worse, things are still different when I take my true shape. I'm no longer used to it." He frowns a little. "The amount of power feels overwhelming to me now. It's fine in normal circumstances, but—" He struggles for a moment. "...I don't know how I'll behave in… these circumstances with you."

"Ah, I see. You're worried that you won't be able to control yourself while fucking you're me, huh?"

He gives you a disgruntled look. "Do you have to use such crass language?"

"Sorry, Gege. I'll try to speak eloquently like you: Yinyue Jun may fall to his base instincts once he's crossed the threshold of the chrysanthemum gate, right?"

His expression turns from disgruntled to disdainful. Evidently, he's not a fan of your erotica novel slang.

"Please be serious for once. We need to be careful if we do this. I might behave impulsively—do something rash. Accidentally hurt you."

You hum, considering his words. "That's surprising. I thought dragons were generally supposed to be pretty calm and wise…" Then you think about how you couldn't walk this morning. "Though I guess you weren't particularly calm yesterday."

He snorts. "Well, I usually am. Unfortunately, I find it exceptionally hard to control myself around you, with how much you like to provoke me," he says plainly. "It'll just get worse if I switch forms."

You try not to stare at him, shocked at how unbothered he is by these admissions. You suppose that multiple rounds of semi-public sex might have forced him to cross an event horizon of shame, and now his face is finally getting thicker.

"It isn't just my behaviour I'm worried about," he continues. His arms cross again, and his brow furrows. "You might find my form… unattractive. You probably won't like it."

You frown. "I can't imagine that. I bet the real Cold Dragon Young is super handsome."

It's a testament to his anxiety that he hardly reacts to your stupid comment. He just studies you carefully, uncertain. Apprehensive.

"I guess we'll find out."

END PART 1

notes: for those unfamiliar, this fic is set in the same universe as fengyue. fengyue was actually based on this fic, but due to my inability to manage deadlines, it came out way ahead of this LOL

i'm sorry there was no dragonfucking in this part when i have been promising dragonfucking for ages on this blog. but i am 12.5k words into part 2 and i can assure you that there is an excessive amount of incredibly nasty dragonfucking in it, so please look forward to that

this was written way before 1.2 came out (and in fact, before I had even caught up to 1.1 content). hopefully the characterization still holds up ok!

big, big thank you to @petrichorium for helping me navigate canon lore and riffing w me on this piece. please go check out their works, they have banger star rail content!

cultural notes:

cultivation is the practice of using martial and spiritual arts to cultivate one’s qi, gain spiritual powers, and attain immortality

dual cultivation is the act of refining your qi through having sex

I will be honest. I cannot remember the other cultural refs I dropped because I just kind of blindly write them in so please let me know if you have any questions about things LOL

translation notes:

gege is a term meaning "older brother", though it is often used for non-familial relationships that are very close; it can come off as either flirty or childish. heng'er is a diminutive of dan heng's name.

“If paradise is but a dream, then I wish to sleep forever” - this was a reference to the chinese version of dan heng’s ult line. in english, he says “this sanctuary is but a vision”. however, in chinese, he says “洞天幻化，长梦一觉” which is closer to something like “paradise is an illusion, reveals itself to be a long dream”

"The night-blooming cereus flowers only once" - this is how I rendered the idiom "曇花一現", which describes thing that are short-lived

"Human life should be as morning dew" - this is how I rendered the idiom "人生如朝露", which describes the ephemeral nature of human life

yes I really made dan-gege break out the chengyu and poetic speech... I'm not sure how he sounds in english but my man has his super literary moments in chinese haha

God I loved that yan!playboy you did! If you could, can I please get another one, this one where the reader is fully aware of what he's doing and is just leading them on, until they finally let him back into their life and get back together? I'm a huge sucker for exes getting back together and growing as people, but this one has a lil evil twist ;)

Glad you liked it! I loved writing this sm♥︎♥︎

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

What if's

Pt.2

You knew. You always knew.

Yan!playboy!ex who is oblivious to the fact that you knew about his little break in's.

Yan!playboy!ex who felt like luck was on his side every time you wear less and less clothing while sleeping when i fact, it was all your doing. You knew about his him coming into your dorm at night, knew about how he jerked off right there and then if he even caught a glimpse of your shown skin.

It wasnt his fault his pants got too tight and he had a boner that bordered on painful! And you certainly werent complaining either. The broken whimpers and slick sound of his hand running up and down his swollen cock or even better-of his fingers pumping in and out of his ass.

Yan!playboy!ex who doesnt know youre quite aware of how his body reacts to your praises. Unbeknownst to him, you knew about his raging boner that showed up right after you called him a simple "Good boy" out of habit, or that you knew about how he had to go to the bathroom to relieve some tension off his weeping dick even though he already came in his pants moments before.

Yan!playboy!ex who was sure you didn't know about how he was the one to kill your boyfriend,when in fact, you did. And while it did sadden/detach you from him at first...you forgave him after a while.

Yan! playboy!ex who loved how you came to his dorm more and more often. One thing you didn't know though, is that he had to rub his cock on the spot you were sat on. He needed you and that was as close as he was going to get on direct contact. ....for now

Yan!playboy!ex who actually cries and sobs when you accept him back into your arms.

Yan!playboy!bf who is afraid to touch you at first, feeling the guilt from his previous actions. So you'd probably have to insist quite a bit...but don't worry! He'll do anything to make you stay!

Yan!playboy!bf who can stay for hours on end in between your legs, it's his favourite! The feeling of your thighs squishing him while he makes you cum is just the best! It has him cumming in his pants more often than he'd like to admit. Moans and muffled groans vibrating through your whole body, letting your legs feel like jelly when he's finally finished. And if you stick a vibrator up his ass? None of you is done without passing out, covered in your mixed cum.

Yan!playboy!bf who loves when you touch him. Pinch his nipples? Moaning mess. Fingering him? Sobbing and cumming so much from both his dick and ass. Riding him? Congratulations, you got yourself a bitch in heat.

Yan! playboy!bf who thrusts his dick in between your cum covered thighs, sobbing from overstimulation while pleading for more. And when you finally graze his tip with your thumb, his dick is pulsing, sending ropes of cum on your hand. Nevertheless it stays rock hard.

Yan!playboy!bf who is a broken, whimpering mess if you suck him off. Probably cums so much too! He'll be gripping the sheets, his legs thrashing around as he tries to hold onto sanity.

Yan!playboy!bf who loses it when you kiss him while he is having an orgasm. He's reduced to a messy, trembling, sobbing state, squirming under your body, moaning against your mouth and almost choking from the lack of air, saliva dripping down the corners of his mouth due to the blissful sensation, unable to reciprocate and just lay there with his tongue plunging into your mouth, eyes crossing and dick throbbing around your warm hand.

Yan!playboy!bf who loves you and basically is a worshipping sinner to a god who's name is unwritten in paper but carved in his mind.

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°

Might turn this into a series cuz I like it. MAYBE.

IF YOU LIKE THESE PLEASE FOLLOW, I CAN AND WILL DO MORE ♥︎♥︎

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deranged being

© uvuyai 2024

ᑲᥙᥒᥒᥡ rᥲᑲᑲі𝗍

Yandere! Blade x FEM! Reader

–genre. Smut, nsfw

–tw. Stalking, breeding kink, size difference, also bunny reader, spanking, dacryphilia, stomach bulge, mentions of marriage, possessive behaviors, creampie, overstimulation, mentions of heat,

–synopsis. You are running away from the infamous Stellaron Hunter. Unlucky you still get caught by him anyways.

Mari/yai's message – YESS! i know easter has passed but who cares. Im a slow person. Also please boop me 🙏

APRIL FOOLS!!!!✌️😼

But maybe it'll come to my mind and ill rite the full story for you babes

lion tamer - jing yuan x reader (12.4k)

it's taken for granted you'll take the job that nobody else wants, whilst the general is indisposed. you just didn't expect things to turn out like this.

cw: not sfw, minors dni. chubby reader. reader is afab but no gendered terms are used. descriptions of raw meat (animals eating), food, pining, fingering, cunnilingus, coming inside. pet names including little bird, darling, little thing. reader is implied to be shorter than jing yuan.

This was a commissioned work.

It’s a quiet whisper, at first - gossip among the lower-downs of the Luofu. You hear it on the fringes and the edges, but you dismiss it as really none of your business; you’re already working harder than most everyone else thanks to the small matter of your far shorter lifespan, and you don’t intend to set yourself back by listening to idle gossip. You have other things to concentrate on; the busywork that you’ve been assigned to as a junior (very junior) member of the Seat of Divine Foresight. 

Really, though they call you a ‘non-administrative support specialist’, you know what you really are; a general dogsbody, somebody to pick up all of the pieces that others sweep by. Still; just getting a position here means you’ve outdone most people, and you hold in your heart the idea that you could get even further up this ladder of success if you simply tried hard enough. You’ve heard tell that even some of the long-life species haven’t managed to make it as far as actually working within the Seat itself, so really . . . you can’t help but feel a little proud of yourself. 

Which is why you choose to ignore the swirling rumour about your esteemed Arbiter-General until you’re called into a meeting with Yong Hai himself. 

(The General is sick, the rumours say. The General may not last another day. The General’s laziness has caught up with him, the General may not make it, and what will we all do then--)

“So,” Yong Hai says, all business. “You’ve probably heard about it already.”

There’s a flare of disquiet in your gut; that the gossip and the rumours you’ve been so steadfastly avoiding are true. You don’t know what the Luofu would do with General Jing Yuan; you cannot imagine the ship and the world without him, when he has been such a stolid presence - and the way that the general public will react doesn’t bear thinking about--

“Stop that,” Yong Hai says, with an amused look in his eye even as he fights to keep his mouth in a firm, commanding line. “It’s not as bad as people are saying. The General has simply . . . contracted something that he isn’t bouncing back as quickly from as we’d hoped. We’ve had to send him off to the Alchemy Commission for a few days, just to see if we can work out how to help . . .” The secretary catches himself, clearly remembering he’s talking to someone who amounts to little more than custodial staff. He coughs. “Anyway. It’s left us in a bit of a conundrum, and after some discussion, we think you’re qualified to handle it.”

You tilt your head to the side as you try and think what you could possibly do to assist in this matter.

You’re no healer; you’re no nurse. You can’t help them figure out how to cure the General, you’re not equipped to sit at his bedside and mop his feverish brow (your cheeks go hot and your face burns at the very thought of it). You certainly can’t take over any of Jing Yuan’s actual duties. The idea of you as any kind of military strategist is laughable--

“How can I help, Sir?” You ask, partly because that is what’s expected of you and partly because you really have no idea what use you’ll be in the situation. 

“Ah,” he says, and then he coughs again - he looks into the corner of the room, as if he’s begging someone to help him, and you remember that he and his sister are most often found together. But here, it’s just the two of you, and he has nobody to help him to break whatever news he’s going to break to you. You hope it’s not going to involve cleaning up a sick-room; you’re really not good with that kind of thing--

“We need somebody to tend to his home affairs,” Yong Hai says, eventually. “He . . . Ah, look, I’m going to come out and say it. General Jing Yuan has a penchant for taking in stray animals and the like, and he only even agreed to let himself be looked at on the caveat we had to promise to find someone to look after them.”

You think of the statues of lions that decorate the place, and you feel a trickle of cold sweat down the back of your spine. You hope desperately that the secretary isn’t implying that you’re about to quite literally be fed to the lions--

“Stop looking like that!” He says, exasperated. “All of them are perfectly tame, and you’ll be in no danger. He has a . . . lion that he’s incredibly fond of. Several birds. And . . . ah,” he looks embarrassed again. “He’s informed us he usually leaves out a veritable feast for any other neighbourhood strays on his balcony, and he was very worried that they weren’t going to be properly nourished whilst he was away.”

Finches. You can do that. Neighbourhood strays - cats and dogs, you suppose - are all very well. But the lion . . .

That doesn’t matter. Yong Hai seems to have reached the end of his meeting with you, to his tangible relief. He’s already bustling about his desk and looking longingly towards the closed door. 

“A new schedule’s been drawn up for you and sent to you already,” he says. “All of the relevant information should be in the attachments! Have fun, won’t you? The General is so very fond of his pets, you see--”

Your phone beeps as if it is punctuating his point; the secretary beams at you, and you get the distinct impression you are being told to put your best foot forward and roll with the punches. ‘Get on with it’, as someone without any manners might say. 

“Understood,” you say, and you force yourself to smile and look on the bright side of things even if you’re sure you’re going to have nightmares about being eaten alive by a lion tonight. This is a post that the General wanted filled personally! This is almost as personal as someone can get to the General, actually; it appears you’ll be working in his actual home! It’s a . . . a step up! A stepping stone!

You force yourself to ignore that it is actually very much a case of sticking the lowest ranked person (and someone well-known for taking on as much as they can with cheerful aplomb, due to your fear of ever really saying ‘no’) onto the job that nobody else wants to do. 

“I’ll do my best,” you say, and Yong Hai beams at you even as he gestures for you to go and get to grips with your new role. 

Well. 

You have no other choice then, really, but to Get On With It. 

You are quite frankly terrified the next day, when you turn up to your newest duty. The documents sent to you had instructed you to pick up raw meat for the lion from the General’s most trusted supplier before you went up to his chambers; apparently, birdseed and cat-and-dog food was kept there, but the lion’s appetite could not so easily be sated. You have to give yourself a pep-talk before all of it; have to convince yourself that running away from this new responsibility would be both awful for your career prospects and terribly cruel.

“Ah,” says the supplier, when you turn up and tremulously hand over your phone so he can see the attachments displayed on the screen giving you this new Meat Power, “So you’re looking after the waifs and strays and Mimi, then?” 

“Mimi?” You ask, your voice tremulous, and he laughs as he hands over two incredibly full buckets of raw meat. It’s a good job you’re not squeamish. 

“That’s the lion,” he says. “The General tried to name her Snow Lion after he realised she wasn’t just going to be a pretty little white housecat, but . . . Mimi fits. You’ll see!”

The concept of Jing Yuan attempting to adopt a pretty little white house cat and being saddled instead with a huge lion, and having to continue to refer to the powerful beast as ‘Mimi’ despite his best efforts, keeps you entertained right up until you’re outside the door to the General’s chambers and you remember that a carnivorous predator awaits you on the other side of it.

“Well,” you say to yourself, hoisting the buckets up and taking a deep breath, “there’s no point delaying the inevitable. If I get eaten today . . .”

And you let the pass-key you’ve been given float against the sensor, until the ornate doors to Jing Yuan’s chambers slowly part and admit you into the Arbiter-General’s inner sanctum. 

The first thing that you’re struck by is how it seems that the General left in a rush. The entire place, whilst not dirty, has an air of untidiness. You hear the cheeping of finches from the first room; excitement that their Master may have finally returned to play with them. You can’t help but feel sorry for them - from what Yong Hai has said, it may be quite a while before Jing Yuan is well enough to return to his home. 

There are touches of the General everywhere, now that you’re looking. Delicate flowers (you’ve heard he likes small, delicate things, and you can’t help the nervous tug at your clothing as you consider just how indelicate you find yourself). Ceramics and porcelain that you fear are so fragile they may shatter even under your gaze. An unfinished game of star chess, a coffee cup left half-drunk . . . That last one could fetch a fine price in the black market. You’ve heard those traders hawking ‘tissues used by Helm Master Yukong’ or even ‘a book enjoyed by General Jing Yuan’s protege!’. 

Before your mind can lead you too far down that dangerous path, though, the lady of the hour appears. 

She’s beautiful. 

You have to stop yourself gasping aloud. Any fears you might have had seem to fall to the wayside, unimportant, compared to the majesty of the lion before you; the pure white fur, the wise face, the mane that fluffs out from her. She’s pure white; lean, but perhaps with a little pouch at the tummy. Not a single snarl or tangle mars her fur, not a single speck of dirt upon her, like the false moon looking down upon the Luofu--

She sees that you’re holding two big buckets and seems to recognise them, because it’s barely a breath before her ears twitch and she pounces like a kitten, seemingly not realising that you are smaller than her owner and she is far larger than the average kitten is. All of the wind is knocked out of you as you cry out her name and are tackled to the ground. 

You find yourself beneath the warmth of her body, a sweet scent emanating from her fur as if the esteemed General regularly bathes and shampoos her. Delighted, she sticks her snout right into one of the buckets. A low, pleased rumble emits from her throat as she works her teeth over the meat--

You reach up, hesitantly, with the one arm that isn’t pinned by the great weight of her. Your fingers hover for a moment, unsure of what to do - is she like a cat? Does she prefer chin scratches or ear scratches?

You settle for a very light pet at the side of her mane, just by her face. Her fur is just as soft as you had thought she would be - a lady who is clearly incredibly spoilt. Well-cared for. You have another flash of a vision of Jing Yuan - combing her mane, tying a shiny ribbon about her neck to match the ribbon he wears in his own hair. 

Mimi pauses in her enjoyment of the food. Your breath catches in your throat, all of your senses on a sudden high alert - what if she didn’t like being touched like that? What if she’s about to mistake your hand for a part of the buffet you’ve brought her?

A moment that seems like an hour passes.

And then she leans into your hand with a pleased rumble-squeak-growl, her eyes closing in pleasure, and despite how your heart is beating and your legs are aching from the way she’s twisted them and trapped them beneath her . . . you smile. 

For the first week, every time you let yourself into Jing Yuan’s space, you are alone aside from the animals he keeps there. Mimi launches herself at you, but you’ve learnt to sidestep and laugh and ruffle her mane, offering her choice little tidbits to curl up and gnaw on her food whilst you see to the strays that congregate on Jing Yuan’s balcony. They had taken a little longer to warm to you, but after the second day when it became clear if they wanted the same food Jing Yuan usually prepared they would have to come to you, they had thawed considerably. You leave them to their devices, and finish off with the finches. 

They hop from place to place in their cage, cheeping brightly. Sometimes they hop onto your finger or your shoulder, looking at you like you’re the most wonderful being in the universe. Once one had hopped onto your head and you’d stayed stock-still for five minutes, afraid of disturbing it. 

After all of the pets and animals are fed, you’ve gotten into the habit of sitting with them for a little while. Curling around Mimi and stroking her mane and her tail (you’ve braided it, actually, and told her how pretty she looks with little red ribbons in her fur as she blinked at you her slow, lazy blinks). Listening to birdsong. Letting the strays rub about your feet and imagining the Arbiter-General himself doing all of these mundane tasks. 

It’s strange, to think of him as so . . . so much a real person. General Jing Yuan has always seemed a man of mystery and just a touch of romance to you; a long life species who has outlived almost everyone he’s ever worked with, who has steered the Luofu into glories and battled bravely and heroically against Abundance abominations for longer than you’ve been alive. The first time you’d met him, when you’d gotten your place at the Seat of Divine Foresight (before you’d quite found out how meagre your duties really were), you’d been utterly tongue-tied. 

He’d been charming, naturally. Smiling and charismatic and low and pleasant-voiced, saying how glad he was to have you aboard and how he hoped you would enjoy your time here. There’d been, perhaps, a flash of sadness in his eye at the knowledge you were a short-life species-- but you’d quickly tried to dispel that notion, scolding yourself for your own romanticism. Jing Yuan is your colleague, your boss - better to not harbour such idealism, to make him into a storybook character instead of a man. 

Still. It’s rather hard to imagine him out of breath, puffing and wheezing, after pulling the bucket Mimi had gotten her paw stuck in off of the silly lion’s foreleg before she sent herself into a panic. 

You think that the menagerie that he keeps in his private quarters have grown fond of you in turn. The task that everyone had seemed to find so onerous quickly becomes one of your favourite parts of the day; there is something to be said about the healing properties to the soul of having a lion roll over to show you her tummy and wiggle enticingly until you give in to her and give her all of the rubs and tickles that she so clearly desires. 

So for about a week and a half, everything chugs along; you fall into routine, and the animals recognise you in turn. They sometimes still crane their necks and heads hopefully around you to see if Jing Yuan is around (Mimi especially occasionally looks dejected at his absence, though her ears perk up once again as soon as she remembers the buckets you come bearing are filled with delicious morsels for her), but when it is just you they still seem somewhat satisfied. 

Nobody gives you any warning that Jing Yuan has returned to his own rooms. 

Which is why you walk into the main room with your buckets swinging on your arms, singing a silly little song you’ve composed for Mimi about how the meat is soon to be ‘delicious and yummy’ in her ‘full-up-tummy’, you’re so surprised to hear a velvet soft chuckle floating from the big circular sofa in the centre of it that you almost drop all of those delicious-and-yummy steaks and thighs all over Jing Yuan’s ornately tiled floor. 

You stare at the sofa, your cheeks going all-over hot, as a mass of blankets moves and shifts and a slightly ruffled pale head emerges from them.

The General himself. 

It’s obvious, looking at him, that he hasn’t been feeling his best. His normally tied up hair falls over his face in unstyled sweeps, there are dark circles beneath his eyes and a sharpness to his cheekbones that you have never noticed before. Instead of the armour you have grown so used to seeing him clad in, he wears civilian clothes; a loose shirt that shows off the lines of his throat, his collarbone. 

Despite all of that, though, he is still the most handsome man you’ve ever seen. Your heart still skips a beat. He takes you in for a moment, his face scrunched up as if he is not quite awake; and then, a small smile spreads over his handsome face. 

“Don’t stop on my account,” he says, in that low, musical voice. “I’d like to know where the song has to go, after her tummy has been filled.”

“I’m so sorry,” you blurt out, awkward, nervous, unsure of what to say. “I-- nobody told me you’d be back, I can leave, I didn’t mean to--”

He holds up a lazy hand, the smile still on his face. His eyes are half-lidded, his overall look almost indulgent.

“Please,” he says. “I’m . . . better, but not fully recovered. I’ve been given strict instructions that I'm not to lift heavy objects or do anything more than relax for at least another week. I’d be much obliged - if it’s not too much trouble on top of your own duties, of course - if you could carry on seeing to my . . . what did they call it?” Another small, secret smile. “Ah yes. My little zoo.” 

“I-if you’re sure . . .” You say, surprised to find when you say it aloud that you’re relieved. You truly have gotten attached to all of the animals, even in this short time. 

Mimi butts your leg, impatient for her food, her huge paw petulantly tapping upon the floor. Jing Yuan laughs again, and you feel your stomach clench at the warm sound as it fills the room. 

“Oh, she likes you,” he says, in delight. “I’ve never seen her be so patient with anyone but myself, you know.”

“She’s been friendly since I met her,” you reply, reaching down to scratch her behind her ears and to place the buckets somewhere she won’t make such a mess (though she’s actually a fairly fastidious eater, for someone with no thumbs; you suppose she’s so proud of her lovely white coat that she doesn’t want to risk staining it).

Jing Yuan hums in consideration, his smile not leaving his face, as he watches you pet Mimi and her affectionate head bump before she dives back into her food. As you move into the other sitting room - the one that the finches reside in - you hear more rustling, and as you gather the birdseed you’re surprised to see that Jing Yuan is following you, sloping afterwards determinedly. There’s a definite tilt to his walk - the walk of a man who’s been in bed for a week - and you can’t help but say something.

“Sh-should you be out of bed, General?” You wince at the slight admonishment in your tone, fearing he will think you’re scolding him - but Jing Yuan simply smiles. 

“I need to check on my sweet little charges,” he says. “Come now. I’ve been in bed for days. Let me wander about my own rooms without worrying your pretty head too much about it, alright?”

It takes all of your grace not to turn into a pathetic, embarrassed mess at the easy way he says ‘your pretty head’ - somehow, you manage to keep your composure, keep some measure of poise, even as inside you feel yourself turn to mush. 

He sits down upon a chaise by the birdcages as you reach in to fill the small bowls and scatter the feed, his eyes not leaving you for a second. He smiles when he sees a finch or two hop upon your hand to peck at the seeds and bits left in the crevices of your palm. 

“A true animal whisperer,” he says, watching one of the more inquisitive finches hop up to your wrist and your forearm to tug teasingly at your elbow-length sleeves. “They’re not too fond of strangers, either.”

“I have been feeding them for a week, Sir,” you say to him, with a smile at the finch as you urge it off of your arm and back to the rest of its friends. “They’ve gotten used to me.”

He shakes his head, his hair falling about his shoulders, and you’re struck with the thought that he and Mimi even look similar. You’ve heard the old adage about how pet owners and their pets grow to look the same, of course, but you’d never realised quite how true it was until that moment and the sight of Jing Yuan doing a motion you’ve grown used to Mimi doing. 

He follows, too, as you take food and water onto the balcony. As cats wind around first your ankles, and then his - as dogs wag their tails and lick at your hands. 

“If I were a jealous man . . .” He says, laughing. “They must see something truly special in you.”

“Me?” You ask, aiming for a tinkly laugh but landing on ‘incredulous’. “No, they’re just sweet creatures. All of them are.”

He’s unerringly patient with the animals; his big hands tender as they scratch ears and tickle chins. Seeing the great General being so delicate makes your heart turn over in your chest; his big, scarred hands in direct opposition to the delicate bones and the soft fluff of all of the creatures that mass here. 

“Don’t be so modest,” Jing Yuan says quietly in reply. “I’ve known some of these animals for years. If they didn’t think you were something special . . .” 

Your cheeks are hot again. Somehow, in the course of this conversation, Jing Yuan has gotten closer and closer to you. Out here on the balcony, under the warm false sun of the Luofu, there’s nowhere for Jing Yuan to sit and watch - so he’s stood close to you. Close enough that you can see the warm gold amber of his gaze, the fan of his lashes, the mole high up beneath his eye. You swallow, and the sound is almost indecently loud even with the background mewls and barks and purrs. 

“I’m glad that they found someone so able to do this for me,” he says, his voice still quiet. That single word, those single two syllables, somehow manage to be imbued with more meaning than you’d ever imagined they could be. “I’ll be looking forward to seeing you.”

“Just until you’re feeling a bit better,” you reply, cheeks still hot, throat still sore, heart still beating far too fast in your chest. You wonder what Jing Yuan is thinking as he looks down at you - if he has noticed your anxiety, the way that he seems to set you all aflutter. You hope he thinks it is merely because he is your superior, and not because it’s so very hard not to dwell on his looks and his warm voice and the surprisingly different persona that he shows when he’s doing this--

Jing Yuan is still smiling at you, from back on the sofa covered in his blankets with Mimi spread out protectively over his feet, as you foolishly wave goodbye and leave his chambers. 

You get to witness Jing Yuan’s recovery firsthand. The first few days, he is still unsure of his own limbs; he still slowly lopes around the rooms. Once or twice, you come in to feed the animals and he stays wrapped within his blankets, Mimi only leaving his side to demand some cuddles and some meat from you. 

Despite his illness, though, he always has time to talk to you. He always asks you how you are feeling, what you have been doing; he teases you for how the animals seem to recognise you just as well as him now. When one of the finches pecks at your cheek, he chuckles and says;

“Ah, wouldn’t we all like to give our little bird a kiss like that?”

You don’t know how to respond to that, ducking your head, muttering something unintelligible that wins another of his laughs. His words err on the edge of being flirtatious. Once or twice he compliments your outfit, your hair - how lovely you look today. You never know how to react to such things; you force yourself not to dwell on them, reminding yourself of Jing Yuan’s own looks and his position and trying to tell yourself not to get attached and that the General is merely trying to be polite. 

One afternoon, he asks you to sit with him and have tea. 

It would be rude of you to say no; not when he has placed two teacups before him, anticipating your acceptance, a plate of sweet treats in an amount that would be gluttonous even for him arranged with the tea service. So you try and gracefully position yourself across from him. You try and remember your manners as you take the cup by the handle, as you choose the least ornamented and sugary of the delicacies on offer--

(It’s hard not to remember being told not to indulge at all. You feel conscious of eating in front of him--)

“Have this one,” Jing Yuan says, as if he can read your mind, and he pushes towards you an intricately decorated little cake resplendent with sugar roses and ruffles. “It’s one of my favourites.”

Your mouth waters. You give him an embarrassed smile as he encourages you further, reaching over to pick it up himself and place it upon your plate instead of merely pushing it.

“Really?” You ask, trying to pick it up neatly. “It’s a bit more delicate than I thought you’d like. I suppose I imagined you liking things a little rougher--”

Your face goes hot as you realise what you just said, but Jing Yuan ignores the innuendo and simply smiles at you. 

“Ah,” he says. “I like things that are . . . delicate. Smaller than me. So lovely to observe and enjoy, don’t you think?” His gaze doesn’t leave your face. You have never considered yourself delicate - the curves that you display have put an end to that - but under his eyes, you can’t help but think of the breadth of his shoulders and his height and think how a man like him could make even you feel small and breakable. “What do you think?”

The little cake is sweet on the tongue, flavoured with a hint of something you can’t quite name. Your eyes widen in surprise. 

“It’s wonderful,” you tell him, swallowing the bite and enjoying how the taste lingers. “Truly.”

“I’m so glad you enjoyed it,” he says - and then, he reaches over the table. “You have something--” 

You go stock-still, embarrassed and shocked at the intimacy of the gesture, as he uses his thumb to wipe a smudge of icing from the corner of your mouth. He keeps your gaze the whole time. It is something a lover does - it is not something you’d ever expected General Jing Yuan to do for you--

“There,” he says, returning to his cake as if nothing has happened. “It would be a terrible shame if I couldn’t see all of your lovely face, after all.” 

He is always saying things like this; off-the-cuff remarks that, if he were not the General of the Xianzhou Luofu, you would interpret as being flirty. He mentions them when you have tea together, when he ropes you into playing a game of star chess (“Don’t think I will go easy on you because you are nice to look at,” he says, as he places the counters into their starting positions), when he watches you and Mimi and you and the finches and tells you that he cannot decide which is cuter. 

You see him get gradually stronger and stronger. No more limping. He is almost always dressed, now. His hair no longer falls in shaggy waves about his face. His dark circles dissipate, his voice getting somehow even deeper and more velvety. 

The unspoken reality that soon, Jing Yuan will be well and you will no longer have to take on this extra duty hangs over your head.

You find that the idea makes you feel sick. You are not only enjoying caring for the animals, now, but you’ve also started to look forward to seeing the General. 

Well.

That’s not quite it.

You have to be honest with yourself, don’t you? 

You’ve developed a crush on him. 

You can’t imagine not seeing him. Not being greeted with Mimi’s butts and her batting paws; not hearing the pleased chirps of his finches whenever they see you. Not enjoying tea with him any more, simply existing in this lazy golden time when you do not have to think about work or his position above you or anything other than the four walls that surround you and the multiple hearts beating within it. 

Jing Yuan brings it up first.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, coughing one day after the two of you have played a game of star chess that you were thoroughly destroyed during. “Well. I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’m getting better.”

“I’m glad to see it, Sir,” you say, forcing a smile to your face even as your heart falls into the region of your feet. “We were all very worried about you. Everyone is always asking me how you are and when you’ll be returning to work--”

His face clouds, a flinch so quick you almost miss it.

“Yes,” he says, a mournful tone to his voice. “I’ll soon be returning to work.”

You tell yourself sternly not to cry. This was never supposed to be permanent. 

“Then I suppose you won’t need me any longer,” you say, forcing a smile on your face. You are going to be gracious if it kills you.

“Ah,” Jing Yuan replies. “That’s what I’d like to talk to you about. I . . . we are all very fond of you, you see.” He motions to Mimi, who has come to curl beside you, her head laid against your knee. “I fear Mimi will riot if you were to stop bringing her all of those steaks, you understand. And who knows what she’d do, deprived of your song about her tummy?”

You squeak in embarrassment. Mimi lifts her head and gives you a slow, displeased look, much to Jing Yuan’s amusement. 

“Well. I’m very aware that it’s not part of your duties, and I’d be willing of course to pay you more for all of the trouble, but--” 

You see Jing Yuan falter for one of the first times; as if he is afraid that you are about to reject him outright. He coughs, trying to hide his anxiety, but it is an emotion you’re intimately familiar with and as such you recognise it for what it is. 

“We’re all so very fond of you,” he repeats. “Won’t you keep coming?”

You barely leave a breath before you’re happily agreeing. 

It’s not quite the same. 

You knew it wouldn’t be; you knew that you wouldn’t see Jing Yuan anywhere near as often, as he resumed all of the many duties that the Arbiter-General has to take on. Despite how unenthused he had seemed to be returning to his work, you knew that Jing Yuan took his responsibilities terribly seriously). 

Still.

You had thought you might see him more. Might still be able to drink a cup of tea with him, even if it could not be the same kind of slow, languid time the two of you had taken over it before. You’d thought that there’d still be time for a conversation or two. 

The reality is that you almost never see the General now. 

At work, your paths had crossed only rarely; now, hyper-aware of his presence, you realise that you see him almost never. Not at work, and not at his own home. 

You’re still excited to see the animals - for the finches to happily chirp at you as if they’re telling you about their day. One of them rides about on your shoulder, now, even when you go out to feed the strays. You’re still excited to tell Mimi what a good girl she is and rub her tummy and play with her (she’s inordinately fond of ribbons and the chasing thereof, like an overgrown housecat). 

But without Jing Yuan there . . .

There’s something missing. 

You still do your duties as well as you can - Jing Yuan has negotiated a hefty raise for you, all things considered - but you can’t help sometimes leaving his home feeling a little empty at the lack of seeing the General. You can’t help being disconsolate as you think about him - as you remember his flirty little asides, the way he’d looked at you across the room, the smile that played across his mouth whenever he did. You know he couldn’t really be interested in you, that he was probably like that with most people - but a secret little flame cannot help but burn in your heart even so. 

Days pass, quiet, lonely. You work, and feed the animals, and go home to your own empty quarters. You work, feed, go home, work, feed, go home--

Until one evening, when you’re just about to leave Jing Yuan’s chambers, when the door opens and the General appears. He looks a little red in the face; his breath comes in short little pants. You’ve never seen him so obviously flustered; usually, Jing Yuan fits perfectly up to his reputation as the Drowsy General. 

“Are you alright?” You ask him, rushing over. You’re touching him before you’ve thought through consequences; finger hovering over his pulse point, reaching up to feel his forehead to make sure he’s not running a temperature. Through the panting, he looks at you and smiles. 

“I’m afraid,” he says, still breathing heavily, his voice rasping. “I made up a little lie to be able to get back here on an errand that doesn’t really exist.”

“General,” you scold him. It’s not like him to shirk responsibilities. He laughs. 

“Yes, yes, I know, little thing-- but I had to see you. I wanted to see you again.”

You think he’s misspoken.

“I have to get back,” he says, and he reaches down - his hands upon your cheek again. You don’t know how to reply, what to say, what is going on. All you know is that you are there, and Jing Yuan is there, and something is happening. Fizzing on the air is a promise that something is going to change. “But . . . I couldn’t-- I needed to finally--”

Jing Yuan kisses you. 

It’s a kiss as messy and rushed as he is right now. A kiss that says that he has to hurry back, despite how much he doesn’t want to. You, unused to being kissed and even more unused to being kissed by handsome military leaders who feel a hundred times out of your league, do not kiss him back. He’s messy and wet, and his teeth clash against your lips as you stand there, feeling foolish and wrong-footed.

He realises you’re not kissing him back, and he stops - he draws back, his eyebrows furrowed. He opens his mouth to speak. 

He’s going to say it was a mistake, you realise. He’s going to say he thought you were someone else, that he was carried away in the heat of the moment. You and Jing Yuan? No. It couldn’t be. It’s absurd, it’s silly, nobody could ever believe it - and yet.

And yet.

Your heart couldn’t take his rejection.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt out - and you push past him and out of the door and back towards the comforting ordinary normality of your own empty rooms. 

Despite your embarrassment, fear and all of those other emotions keeping you up all night, when you wake up the next morning you know that things will be worse the more you put them off. So you get dressed for work and you thank Lan that, when you walk into the Seat of Divine Foresight, Jing Yuan is nowhere to be seen. 

You hope he is hard at work, far away from you. You cannot quite face him yet. You haven’t properly said goodbye to your foolish dreams. 

You can’t shirk your other duties either, so at the ordinary time you stand up from your desk (you’ve somehow been saddled with the job of reviewing paperwork for grammar inconsistencies. You feel certain there ought to be software of some sort that does this job for you, but it had been laid here on your desk when you’d gotten to it and you were not in the habit of arguing about your duties), and you head to the designated supplier of raw meats for Mimi’s consumption.

“Oh,” says the supplier, the evening after Jing Yuan had finagled a way to see you. “He told me to let you know to go straight up today.” 

You frown, not quite sure why; you hope Mimi is alright. It feels strange to be going towards Jing Yuan’s home without your arms weighed down with buckets of meat, but you push forward even so. You hope last night - the awkward kiss, the way he had looked at you - does not sour things between the two of you. You hope that he isn’t about to tell you to never come back. Your heart makes a new home, somewhere in the vicinity of your throat, as you hesitantly knock upon his door.

A beat passes. Your mind helpfully provides you with all of the ways in which Jing Yuan could be about to fire you - or worse, let you down gently and admit that he had a moment of weakness. In that moment, you suddenly seem so much more aware than before of yourself - of the unfashionable curves, of the amount of space you take up, of how a man like Jing Yuan could surely not have really wanted to kiss someone like you - and then, he has opened the door and he is smiling at you and he doesn’t look angry.

Instead, upon seeing you there, a smile passes across his face; tugs at the corners of his lips, crinkles the corners of his eyes.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” he says to you - and he reaches across the threshold and his hand brushes your cheek, as soft and tender with you as he is with his finches. “I’m sorry if I frightened you last night.”

“I’m sorry I ran,” tumbles out of your mouth. “I just . . . I didn’t think you-- and somebody like me-- and I was afraid--”

He lays a finger over your lips, still smiling. 

“It’s alright,” he says, in that low, smooth voice. “I’m sorry if I caused you undue trouble, little bird.” The pet name falls from his lips as easily as any other trifle, though it makes you feel hot and aware of yourself and flattered all at once. “Please come in.”

He takes your hand to gently urge you across the threshold, his touch still feather light. You think, as he does it, of all of the other things those hands have done; all of the battles they have waged, all of the strength that must be contained within them despite how gentle his touch is now. 

“I’ve asked someone else to take care of the animals,” he says to you, not letting go of your hand as he leads you through the front room. You realise with a start exactly where he is taking you as he approaches a door you have never had reason to open before. He looks at you, eyes keen and golden. “I wanted us to be alone. I would hope, little bird, if you do not want this . . .” 

“I do,” tumbles from your mouth. It is nothing but the honest truth. You let the crush that you’ve been trying to deny, the fear of Jing Yuan not liking you or finding you attractive, the anxieties of not being good enough, all wash over you, in favour of the beating of your heart and the feel of his hand on your face and the sight of his hand upon the doorknob of his bedroom. 

He turns fully so he stands before you. Hands come up, cradling your face; thumbs brushing the plump apples of your cheek, fingertips upon the soft flesh. He is smiling still, even as he dips his head lower, so low you can see the multitudes of swirling shades of gold in his eyes. 

“Promise me,” he murmurs, low and soft. “Tell me you want me the way I want you. No expectations, little one. Your career, your position, your everything - nothing will change if you do not want me as badly as I desire you. Honesty.” You realise a tear has escaped from the corner of your eye. You have never felt so . . . seen. So very much wanted. So sure of anything in your life. He wipes that tear with his thumb, tilting your face closer to him so that if you just angled your head differently you could kiss him. “Promise me.” 

“I promise,” you whisper, and Jing Yuan’s lips meet yours. 

This kiss is entirely unlike the one from yesterday; this kiss is slow, luxurious. Jing Yuan starts off gentle with you, his hand still cupping your jaw - his lips moving against yours in slow, indolent waves. He nips at your bottom lip with his teeth and wins a gasp from you, a hitch of your breath, as your own hands come up to rest lightly upon his chest. You feel his mouth curve into a smile against your own. 

“You’re adorable,” he rumbles, pulling back just enough that you can still feel his breath on your face. “Truly - you don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this to you.”

“I--” You helplessly stare up at him. You can barely believe this is happening, as he pushes open the door to his most private of domains. “Really?”

He laughs again, gently taking your arm and urging you into the room. You are helpless to do anything but follow him - to let him slowly, slowly, slowly pull you beside him and onto his bed. 

“You really have no idea how . . . desirable you are?” He asks, voice low and husky, humming with want. His hand skims over your cheek, the nape of your neck, following the line of your jaw and your throat to linger over your collarbone. His eyes follow the path his fingers take, not moving from your form for an instant. “You really didn’t notice me staring at you, little bird?” He leans in, close enough for his breath to tickle your ear. His lips brush over the pulse point in your neck, making you squeak in surprise again even as it sends a bolt of heat to the space between your legs. “Imagining what you would feel like under my hands? Imagining what you would look like, divested of that maddeningly conservative uniform they make you wear?” Another kiss, this one with a hint of teeth. You realise with a hot flush of embarrassment mixed with want you have cried out at the sensation of the almost-bite. “Imagining how you would react to every touch I gave you?” 

“Sir,” you pant, dazed and amazed and hot and needy. “I-- I thought about you, too--”

“Oh,” he murmurs, as his big fingers slide over your body, feeling the ample shape of you through that same conservative uniform. His big palms brush the soft chub of your upper arms, the meat of your chest, the shape of your waist and over the curve of your hips, basely appreciating your body even beneath the fabric. “I’m sure they were no match for the utterly filthy things I imagined doing to you.” 

His thumb digs into the indent of your waist, tugging you closer to him so that you’re pressed tighter against his body. He smiles down at you, every inch the conquering general, and your heart beats in time with the pounding between your legs. He looks at you like he wants to devour you. Wanting and hungry and lustful, like you’re the most delicious thing he’s ever seen. It’s not a look you’re overly familiar with receiving - but oh, does it feel amazing to be on the receiving end of it from Jing Yuan. 

“Such a fragile thing,” he murmurs down to you, and you almost laugh, for you do not feel fragile - but Jing Yuan continues speaking, and you get lost in the dulcet tone of his voice. “So very mortal. So very ephemeral . . .” He sighs, dips his head and kisses you again, a flurry of pecks upon your lips as his thumb draws circles where it rests. “Will you let me make the most of having you, little bird? Let me show you how beautiful you are?” He smiles. “I have always had a weakness for delicate things.” 

He means it. 

Any time you have ever felt too big; ungainly, or ill-shaped - all of it falls to the wayside under the warm haze of being looked at and admired and wanted by Jing Yuan. You find yourself smiling up at him, aware you probably look as though there is not a thought in your head, but the General doesn’t seem to mind as he looks at you with hunger colouring his gaze. 

“May I undress you?” He asks, voice low and cajoling. His fingers tease beneath the neckline of your uniform, and it feels as though they leave a trail of fire everywhere they linger. You do not trust yourself to speak; you nod at him, your breath coming out in short little pants. He makes a soft noise of approval, before his fingers are working at buttons and fabric. Cool air hits your bare skin; your uniform is gently cajoled off of your body, tossed aside to be worried about later as Jing Yuan’s hungry eyes drink in every new inch of your exposed skin. 

He does not stop praising you as he does it.

“Look at you,” he murmurs, as your top half is bared, as his eyes roam over your chest and his hands come up and squeeze the generous curve of them, palms rough against delicate skin. You shiver as his thumbs find your nipples, as they rub over them again and again until the buds stiffen beneath his touch and a soft whine escapes the back of your throat. “You’re beautiful.”

His tone is nothing if not worshipful. By slow, luxurious degrees, Jing Yuan helps divest you of your garments. As your underwear and bottoms are rolled down, as fabric bunches at thighs and knees, he does not stop murmuring sweet nothings about how soft you are, how beautiful, how lucky he is to be able to see you like this. 

About how he has been thinking about having you like this since the moment he saw you. 

“You looked so beautiful then too,” he murmurs, as your underwear is pulled from your ankles. He briefly gazes at it, the gusset saturated with your slick, and he smiles. “Ah . . . that little song, the nervous, shy reaction to realising I was there - the sight of you all soft-eyed and adoring with Mimi . . . I’ve never wanted to have my wicked way with somebody quite so much.” 

You’re bare beneath him, Jing Yuan slowly urging you to lay down upon the coverlets of his large bed. You suppose that it’s so large so that if Mimi desires to sleep with him, she can, but it alongside Jing Yuan’s own size simply helps you feel small and delicate and breakable in a way you never have before. 

“I wanted to know,” Jing Yuan murmurs, leaning down and brushing his lips over yours, teasing and feather-light. “If you would be quite so adorable, squirming and nervous and vulnerable, if I were to have you like this.”

Your cheeks are hot. Jing Yuan has not lost a single garment of his own, but you are entirely unguarded to whatever he wants to do to you now - bare of every scrap of fabric. His gaze lingering on your body almost makes you want to draw in; to curl around the exposed flesh of your stomach, to cover the pudge. 

Jing Yuan notices something in the way you hold yourself. He smiles down at you and cups your cheek.

“Don’t hide,” he breathes. “I want to see all of you, little thing. I want you to know how beautiful I find you.”

“I--”

He takes your hand in his, shifting so he is on his knees between your legs. Gently, he guides your unsure hand to the space over his own crotch. Even through the layers of fabric, you can sense the heat of him; the stiffness pushing against his trousers.

“If I did not want you,” he says, “why would you make me so needy, hmm? Feel what you do to me.” He presses your hand a little harder against it, a soft hiss of breath escaping him, encouraging you to not simply take his word for it. Your face hot as ever, you do so; give a gentle squeeze that makes him groan. “Ah-- be careful, sweet thing. I want to take my time over you.”

He lets go of your hand, gently urging you to place it back beside you. Your fingers find purchase in his sheets. You still cannot quite believe where you are; that it’s the great Arbiter-General leaning over you, looking down at you like you’re the most beautiful thing that he’s ever seen. 

“I-it’s not fair,” you say to him, your voice dry. “I’ve lost all of my clothes, and you’re still fully dressed--”

He chuckles. This time, when he bends down, there’s a slow, deliberate quality about him. He kisses your neck again; trails wet butterfly kisses over your collarbones, lower and lower to the swell of your chest. His hands come to cup the generous weight of them, even as his mouth floats closer and closer to your nipples, tightening and stiffening in anticipation. 

“I told you,” he says, murmuring in between flicks of his tongue against the buds. “I want to take my time over you.” He looks at you, eyes half-lidded. “Ah, you short-life species . . . You never learn patience. I have all of the time in the world to give you ecstasy over and over--”

People call Jing Yuan the Dozing General. As he applies his tongue to your nipples, though - as he suckles and nips and bites, as he kisses and squeezes until you feel dizzy with the attention he’s lavishing upon you, you realise that they are misinformed. Jing Yuan is not lazy or dozing - Jing Yuan merely likes to take his time over things. 

And oh, is he enjoying taking his time over you. 

You whine under his touch. You whimper and squirm, your cheeks flooding hot, your entire body prickling with tension and pleasure as his attentions upon your nipples send shockwaves of pleasure down to your sex. You feel wetness fair seeping out of you; slick rolling down your thighs, making a mess of Jing Yuan’s bed sheets. 

“Please,” you manage to get out, dry-voiced and wanting, after what seems like an eternity. “Please, Sir--”

“Jing Yuan,” He corrects you, a smile on his face as he continues to trail wet kisses over your bare skin. “What kind of man would I be if I allowed you to call me ‘Sir’ buried knuckle-deep in you, sweet thing? We are on even ground here.”

It’s hard not to think of him as the General. You are currently barely able to string a thought together, and he hasn’t even touched the place between your thighs yet. Still - you need him to touch you somewhere else. You need his attentions to give your chest a break (your nipples are sore, stiffened points - your skin slick with the wetness of his licks and kisses) and move to somewhere else. You force out, through your desire to genuflect to his status, his given name.

“Jing Yuan--”

“Hmm?” He asks, raising his head. His lips are swollen and pink, his eyes amused. “Do you need something, little bird?”

“Please . . .” A soft exhale, trying to work through the mass of sensations and needs that your body seems to have become. Jing Yuan does not stop touching even as you try and get out your words; still gently squeezing and toying with the weight of your chests. He’s smiling, enjoying watching you desperately work through the haze of your desire. 

“Your words,” he says, a maddening smile pulling at his lips. “Tell me what you want, and I promise I’ll do all in my power to give you it.”

“Please,” you say again, your brain fuzzy. His hands move from your chest now; big palms travelling over the curve of your stomach, your hips, resting there in a way that makes you almost lose all of your senses. “I want you to touch me . . . there--”

“Where, little thing?” He’s still smiling. “Here?” A gentle squeeze to your hips. “Here?” His palm roves over your stomach, the soft pouch just above your mound. You whimper again. “Ah. Come now--”

“Between my legs,” you whisper, voice tight and breaking with desire. “Jing Yuan, please--”

“Ah,” he laughs, dips down and kisses you once on the mouth. “You need only to ask. Spread your thighs for me, lovely thing.”

You do, utterly helplessly. Jing Yuan sighs reverently, moving further down so that he can bend his head to look at you. Your face burns under his scrutiny, fearful that he will find something lacking in your body even as his eyes greedily drink you in like you are the finest wine. He breathes deeply, and you hope that your scent is not off-putting - and then, his fingers are sliding slowly and surely up the soft plush of your legs and closer and closer to the space between your thighs and your heart is beating too fast and your breath is coming in short pants.

“Calm down,” he murmurs, and you keen as his hands reach your sex; as he uses his thumbs to spread the plump lips of your labia apart and the cool air hits your slick, heated core. “Ah, darling . . .”

There is so much in those two syllables. Hunger and desire and adoration, all mixed together as one. In another world, with another person, it might have made you feel self-conscious; but Jing Yuan looks down at you as if you are the most beautiful treasure he has ever had the good fortune to witness. 

He leans down, down - and you squeak as you realise what he’s about to do, surprised, but it does not deter him at all as he lets his tongue take a slow, luxurious lick down your sex. The base of his tongue presses against your clit, the pressure on the swollen hitherto ignored nub almost enough to make you come right there and then - but then he pulls back again, chuckling.

“Mm,” he says. “If I allow myself to sample too much of something so sweet, I’m afraid I’ll lose my composure.” He moves his hand instead; lets his fingers explore the length of you, fingertips brushing against your clenching entrance and dancing about your swollen clit. There is little pressure exerted on your sex; merely Jing Yuan’s slow, considering explorations. You clench your own fingers into the bedsheets in order to stop yourself writhing. 

“Lovely,” Jing Yuan says to himself. “Ah, you feel like velvet. Such a pretty thing; so perfectly made . . .” He sighs, even as the tip of his longest finger nudges against your entrance. Your hips move of their own accord, trying to suck him in and get him to put his finger inside of you, but he clicks his tongue with an amused chide; “Impatient,” he says. “Ah. You’re lucky you’re so irresistible--”

He slides his finger inside of you, slowly but certainly. You sigh, your lashes fluttering closed - his touch stokes all of those fires inside of you, of course, burning to fever pitch . . . but the sensation of finally having something inside of you has also made you realise how empty you felt before. It feels good, to have something to fill that pulsing space. Jing Yuan watches with rapt attention as he slides his finger half out, and then half inside of you again. 

You have had some experience, but you have never felt the way Jing Yuan makes you feel. 

“You take it so well,” he murmurs. “Look how pretty you look with something inside of you. Ah. I could spend hours doing this to you . . .”

You make a soft whine of discontent at the idea and he laughs, clicking his tongue even as he’s letting his second finger dance at your entrance ready to join the first. 

“No, even I do not have the patience for that right now,” he agrees. “Not when you feel so wonderful, little bird. Not when I cannot wait to see you come apart.”

The second finger; a slight scissoring motion as it enters you, getting you used to the size and stretch of two of his digits instead of one. The heel of his palm presses against your clit with every wet pump, sending frissons of pleasure to the tips of your toes; but he still does not rush himself. He still lets himself enjoy the feel of you clinging tightly to his fingers, the sight of them disappearing inside of your slick, drooling hole. 

“Does that feel good?” He asks you, deciding you haven’t spoken recently enough. “Tell me if you want me to go faster, sweet thing--”

“Please,” you say, ragged, breathing heavy. You can feel a tight hot ball of tension between your legs, rolling in your gut, threatening to overwhelm you. “Please, Jing Yuan, faster--”

“Very well,” he smiles, and he crooks his fingers inside of you to find your g-spot - causing your back to arch involuntarily, a whine of pure enjoyment to loose itself from your throat. At the same time, his thumb moves to play with your clit - to toy with the bud, to roll and to circle and to press against the swollen bundle of nerves. What already felt like electric shocks of pleasure move on; instead, they are lightning bolts, ricocheting up your spine and stopping just short of striking earth. 

“You’re close,” Jing Yuan says, and you are staring at his mouth. How a strand of your own gossamer-thin arousal is still glimmering at the corner. How his eyes are so focused on you that his gaze feels almost scorching. “That’s right. Let go for me, sweet thing--”

His soft entreaty pushes you over the edge, and the lightning strikes home as your peak hits you with all of the force of a storm.

His fingers work you over the crest of your orgasm, the two inside of you constantly rubbing against that spongy spot that makes you see stars, the big pad of his thumb roughly sliding over your twitching clit in circles and lines. As the waves come to a head and then slowly begin to dissipate, he slows his attentions too - until the slow strokes of his fingers fade out into nothing. He does not seem to care that you’ve soaked his fingers and his palm and the fabric he wears and his bed too - merely keeps looking at you, smiling, like you’re giving him the most precious gift imaginable. 

“Good,” he praises you. “But . . . I’m afraid that just that taste from earlier wasn’t quite enough, little bird. May I use my mouth on you?”

Who would ever believe this? Who would ever imagine little old you, on the Arbiter-General’s bed, as he looks at you and waits for your permission to fuck you with his tongue? You feel rather tongue-tied yourself - but you recall what Jing Yuan said earlier, about using your words.

“Please do,” you say, aloud, and Jing Yuan gives you that same smile that makes you feel like the only being in the whole universe.

“Thank you,” he says, sounding entirely like he means it - like it’s truly an honour for him to be able to serve you on his hands and knees. And then he has moved his body further down the bed, elegant and graceful and leonine, and his mouth is heading towards the slick-soaked place between your legs and his tongue is glinting wet in the bedroom and then he is on you, licking at you, hungrily devouring your sex like it is his last meal before an execution. 

You’re still oversensitive from his earlier attentions, and the sensation of the wet muscle of his tongue working over you almost pushed you into another early orgasm. Your fingers move from where they’re still clenched into the bedsheets to cling to his hair instead, pulling on the silvery pale strands as your back arches and you blindly cant your hips forward towards his mouth.

He groans aloud at having his hair pulled, and the groan sends vibrations all through your body that make you feel weak at the knees, your toes curling. His tongue continues its assault; back and forth, back and forth. Wetness drools from your sex and onto his face; you can feel the heat in his cheeks, the fan of his lashes against your bare skin. 

He twirls his tongue about your entrance, teasingly dips into it, as the channel of your sex constricts and pulses in an attempt to pull him even further in. He groans as your hands knit further into his hair, fucking you for a moment with his tongue before he seems to try and work his face further into your sex. 

It’s like he wants to engulf you; soft noises of pleasure keep falling from his mouth, interspersed with rumbling groans. He’s almost gyrating against the bed, you realise, your cheeks hot - grinding his crotch into the mattress as if he’s desperate to have some attention of his own. 

That sight makes your mouth go dry; all of the moisture in your body instead congregating between your legs to make a new home in Jing Yuan’s mouth and smeared across his cheeks. 

His tongue flicks across your clit and the noise that escapes you is almost animal; Jing Yuan says something, perhaps, or at least makes some kind of muffled noise from his position happily buried in your sex before he shifts his tongue just so and his mouth fastens around your clit fully. 

Sucking and licking, suckling upon the pearl like his life depends upon it; tongue occasionally just brushing under the hood, where you’re most engorged, and you can do nothing but cling onto his hair and pull at it as the most intense orgasm you’ve ever felt rips through your body.

You cannot put into words the way that you feel as Jing Yuan devours you. Your entire body feels, suddenly, as if it weighs nothing; as if sparkling lights suffuse your fingers and toes and you float into the stratosphere, white lights dancing behind your eyes in time with your whine (a whine so loud you’re sure everybody on the Luofu must have heard of it).

You come down, eventually, to the sound of Jing Yuan panting. The wet noise as his mouth separates from you, the pleased grin on his face as he uses his thumb to wipe his mouth of some of your slick. It’s a pointless endeavour, really; his face is so saturated with it you’re not sure if he’ll ever be dry again. 

“Darling,” Jing Yuan repeats, looking you in the eye, smiling like the cat who has gotten the cream. “You have no idea how much I enjoyed doing that.”

The words almost make you go over shy - but you push that to the side. There is no point, you decide, being nervous of a man who has now known you so intimately.

“In which case,” you say, breathlessly - your voice is still a little scratchy from the moaning and whimpering you’ve been doing - “Will you let me make you feel just as good?”

He looks at you for a moment, before he throws his head back and laughs.

“Why,” he says. “Of course I will.”

“Come,” Jing Yuan is murmuring, and he is finally removing his own clothes. Armour drops to the side of him, shirts unbuttoned and fastenings unhooked. His body is muscular and dotted with scars, befitting his status as a military hero; a light dusting of pale hair upon his proud chest, down into a trail to the vee of his hips. You swallow, your throat dry, trying to blink back the waves of pleasure that are still lapping gently at your shores in order to concentrate on what’s going on. His face is still wet with your slick, his hair damp with sweat and falling in messy strands over his flushed face. He looks well-fucked even without you touching him back, as if merely getting you to feel good was enough for him. 

His cock. It’s stiff against the hard planes of his abdomen, a thick, pretty specimen bubbling with precome at the flushed tip. He sighs, running his hand over it once, and your mouth practically waters at the way it twitches. It looks stiff and hard enough that you wonder if it hurts, to want so badly - but Jing Yuan looks at you and smiles, as he rearranges himself on the bed. Pillows are moved, and before you know it he has sat against them, propping himself up like an emperor upon his throne. His cock stands proud and wanting, and he gently pats his thigh as if he is calling an obedient animal to him.

“I don’t wish to hurt you, little bird,” he says - and again, you think of how it feels to be smaller than him. How he does not care about the flesh that spills from straps or curves over fabric. How he looks at you like the most beautiful thing in the world and calls you ‘delicate’ and ‘little’ and ‘precious’ and means them. “Come. Take a seat. As slowly as you need.” 

Despite how he has seen you so intimately, you cannot help but feel a little flare of fear as you approach him. He smiles, entirely at peace and at comfort with you going at your own pace, and you could kiss him for it.

“Touch,” he murmurs. “Don’t be afraid.”

With trembling fingers, you reach out; let your hand encircle his cock, get used to the width and the feel of him and imagine it inside of you. He pulses beneath your palm, a soft hum of pleasure falling from the back of his throat as you give it a cursory pump. He curses softly as your thumb rubs across the slit of his cockhead, the bubble of precome wetting the pad.

“Touch,” he says, with a smile. “But don’t get me too excited, little bird. I don’t want to come anywhere but inside of you.”

Your cheeks go hot at his easy profession; your tongue darts out to trace your lower lip. You’re used to the feel of him now; the heat that seems to stir beneath the surface of his cock, the veins that marble the side of his shaft, the ruddy pink of the head. Taking a deep breath, you spread your legs and let yourself readjust, straddling him. His own hands come up to cling to your thighs, sinking into the soft flesh there.

“You’re so soft,” he murmurs, as if in devotion, as if praying to an Aeon. “You’re beautiful.” 

His cockhead brushes your clit as you fit it snugly between the lips of your sex; you shift your hips, until it catches against your entrance and your eyes flutter closed. 

Your eyes are still closed as you begin to lower yourself down, so you feel every inch of him as he makes his home within your body. Your eyes being closed, of course, you miss the softness and the warmth that fills Jing Yuan’s gaze as he looks at you. The brief moment of sadness that passes behind his eyes as he remembers that you are a short-life species; that he cannot have all of the time in the world with you, to teach you pleasures the likes of which you do not yet know. The sadness he cannot spend his lifetime learning you by heart--

But you hear the soft murmur of your name, as he bottoms out inside of you and you take a moment to simply rest there with him buried as deep inside of you as he can go. You feel the way one of his hands slides up your spine to grip the back of your head and to pull you into a kiss as deep and adoring as anything else he’s done so far. 

Teeth and tongue and lips, whimpering and gasping into one another’s mouths until you do not know where he ends and where you begin, Jing Yuan somehow manages to murmur;

“Move whenever you want, sweet thing. Set the pace.” 

It does not, in the end, feel like either of those things happen. Instead, it feels as though the universe sets the pace for you; as if you simply know when to begin to move your hips, how to bend and angle yourself just so in order for Jing Yuan to hit all of the most sensitive spots inside of you.

One hand remains on your hip, helping you with the pace - the other remains on the back of your head, to allow him to kiss, as if he doesn’t want to let his mouth separate from yours for any longer than necessary. It’s a romance that you didn’t expect of the General, but it’s hardly one you’re going to complain about when his mouth feels so good and the constant nibbling of your lip and curl of his tongue against yours is distracting you from the mounting pleasure already starting to coalesce inside of you. 

There is nothing in the world for a while except Jing Yuan’s body underneath yours. His hands, his mouth, the feel of his shoulders beneath your own palms where you cling to him for leverage. You sweat and breathe and kiss and fuck as one, until the call inside of you becomes too much to ignore.

“I’m--” You pull back from the kiss to whisper, voice hoarse. “I’m going to--”

“Shh,” Jing Yuan says, kissing again. His own voice climbs in pitch, and you hear a shiver and a shudder in his syllables that makes you aware that he, too, is not far from his own release. His teeth nip at your lower lip as he half-begs into your mouth. “Please. Come again for me, sweet thing, little bird, pretty-- let me feel you--”

Your third orgasm crashes over you, your sex spasming around his cock, tight and hot and pulsing - and Jing Yuan groans into your mouth as you push him over the edge too, and you feel his cock spasm in turn. Ropes of hot release shoot inside of you; you had thought, earlier, that having his cock buried all the way inside of you was the extent of how full you could feel. 

You were wrong.

You bite at his lips, whining and half-sobbing, as the please encompasses you like a cloak of warmth. Jing Yuan groans in return, his hips making needy fast circles to chase the dregs of his own release. It feels right, for the two of you to peak together like this. For the two of you to chase every last drop of pleasure, entwined together and sweating and kissing and as close to one being as it’s possible to be.

Eventually, your breathing slows. Eventually, the kiss turns tender instead of frenzied. Eventually, you pull back from Jing Yuan with a foolish smile on your face and your cheeks hot and tears of pleasure (that you hadn’t even realised you had cried) rolling down your face like sparkling diamonds.

You stare at each other, the enormity of what has happened washing over you. Jing Yuan’s face is calm and serene, but his eyes are bright still, his cheeks still high in colour. 

You fear for a moment that he is about to dismiss you; that what the two of you just shared will mean nothing now that it is over. You fear that you’re about to go back to what you were before; a colleague and an employer, a General and a subordinate. But then, Jing Yuan lets out a deep rumbling sigh, pleased, as he collapses back upon the pillows. He opens his arms for you to dismount, his cock sliding slippery and wet outside of you, his come trickling down your thighs.

“Come here,” he murmurs, sounding tired but terribly pleased; the cat who has gotten the cream. He’s like a lion once more. You are helpless to resist his indication that he wants to cuddle, and so you let him pull you into his arms, let him manoeuvre you to lay against his chest until you can hear his heart beating. His fingers stroke your head, like you’re a sweet-tempered animal yourself. “Mmm. Rest with me, little bird.”

You let yourself. Your body is aching and sore from the orgasms and the sex, and you let your eyes drift closed, lulled by the comforting rhythm of his breathing. 

A sleepy kiss is dropped onto the crown of your head.

“Enjoy it whilst you can,” Jing Yuan hums. “Before we start having to make room for Mimi every night.”

He's so pussydrunk that he fucks you so fucking good that you're just too blissed out to even comprehend his praises. He babbles about how good you're to him, how you're taking him and how beautiful you are. Fuck, he just loves how your warmth is wrapped around him. It's so good, he loves being buried deep inside of you, feeling your warm gummy walls wrapped so tightly around him, practically milking him out. He's just in love, so in love. He loves everything about you, all the way to your tight n' warm cunt that flutters around him whenever the crown of his cock would kiss your womb with every thrust he made. Your sweet, sweet moans were music to his ears. He would die happily like this if he could.

—— AETHER, DILUC, albedo, zhongli, childe, xiao, THOMA, gorou, KAVEH, tighnari, cyno, dainsleif, baizhu, ITTO, KAZUHA, GEPARD, luocha, luka, dan heng, JING YUAN, sampo, welt

He's the one who makes you a dumb, babbling, cockdrunk for him. He has your face flushed into the pillows, tears forming in your eyes, cheeks flushed and drool coming from the corner of your lips. You were babbling incoherent words, but he found it cute that you were too overstimulated, too cockdrunk to even comprehend anything. It's not like he minded, afterall, that pretty little head of your don't need to think about anything except for his cock that continues to ram inside of you, mixed cum leaking out of your hole and staining his cock. Your walls were squeezing him so tightly while he gives another slap to your cheek, making you jolt forward a bit and yelp from the sensation of his slap. He's so mean, he would slap your ass to keep you awake, pull your hair, and leave bruises on your hips..but it's not like you minded anyway. Afterall m, you're his cute little cockdrunk slut <33

—— SCARAMOUCHE, abyss!aether, kaeya, AYATO, ALHAITHAM, dainsleif, HEIZOU, TIGHNARI, XIAO, cyno, DAN FENG, BLADE, jing yuan

Dead Taste Buds

[Dom!Fem!reader x Sub!himeko]

[Nsfw warning! this is based on the in game message she sent to the trailblazer abt her using their coffee beans]

[I was, in fact, moved to tears.] You don't know why, ever since Kafka gave you life and you joined the astral express crew; you were the only passenger that was fond of himeko’s coffee. Welt, Dan Heng, March, and Pom-Pom thought your tongue had some infection or maybe your tastebuds were dead after you said her coffee isn't all that bad, but you reassure them you were fine. Himeko heard your little compliment from afar and smiled, promising to herself that she will experiment more on her little coffee hobby just for you. She starts messaging you frequently, saying if you’re willing to try some newly brewed coffee she just made, you never said no. Especially when she said it in a manner that made it hard to not resist.. Those little hangouts slowly turned into little coffee dates, which turned into makeout sessions and sex inducing activities. The smell of coffee and lust was in the air, and so was in your mouth as you kissed himeko with a newly found passion, her tongue tasting like that new cup of brewed mud that you really liked while her lips tasted like her sweet chapstick. Was it cherry? Was it strawberry? It made you go crazy as you kissed himeko deeper, leaving her a panting mess when you broke the kiss, a string of saliva connecting the ends of your tongues. You kissed her neck, biting it while trailing down bruises and bitemarks. Reaching her breasts, placing a hickey right at the birthmark near the top of her left tit, moans flowing out like the aroma of coffee beans hitting your nose. Finding her nipple, you suckle and lick at it, taking more of her breast in your mouth and the other mound of flesh being twisted and pulled lightly as her whimpers increased. So eager to take in some of her milk to make her brew even more exquisite. Will you ever get that milk? Probably, probably not. her moans and whimpers are another delicious alternative anyway. Your hands ripped away her dress, to you it looked like a magnificent species of a Koi fish, how frilly and long the dress was… now its on the floor like a rug as you pinned her down on her own soft bed, fingertips at her stomach slowly making its way near her hips and finally, her clit. You place slow, tantalizing circles on her clit, making her whine as to why you can't go faster.. “We haven't even started, and yet you want more? My, my, Hime..~” you tease, as you slowly got faster “Ah…~ is it s-so bad that I need you?” she pants, her hips rolling to stimulate herself more, you hold her hips steady and rubbed her clit in a slow pace again, making her gasp and whine at the sudden decrease. “if you behaved nicely.. Maybe i would go faster..” it didn't take long for your fingers to be covered in her slick as you only made her cum from rubbing her clit. One finger made its way into her cunt, as you slowly added another, and another.. Making it three. himeko already feeling full as you pump them in her needy hole. Moans fill her room as you pumped them in deeper, the astral express crew probably hearing how much of a needy whore himeko really is for you. you deprive her from her release everytime her face scrunched up the slightest or if she moved her body to pleasure herself while you fucked the living out of her, making her beg and whine from overstimulation as she's so desperate to cum.. “P-please.. y/n…~ c-can i cum..? mmh- please, love.. hnngh..~” “Hmm.. since you behaved so nicely.. let go for me..” Your words were like candy to her ears. she let out a loud moan as she came hard, your fingertip pressing her clit, covering your fingers in her overflowing juices, panting like a dog and her legs trembling and seemingly giving out. you pull out your digits, himeko letting out a small whine from the emptiness. You clean your fingers, tasting her sweet cum as if its coffee creamer and kissing her forehead tenderly, making himeko wrap her arms around your waist and nuzzle her face near the crook of your neck.. “i am one lucky young lady am I?” you chuckle "don't worry my love, we aren't stopping tonight.."

Clear Skies, Starry Eyes

[Dom!Fem!reader x Sub!Yukong]

[NSFW warning ;P kinda sucks but eh I was bored.]  Imagine a tall foxian in heat who is a single mother of one, and also helm master of the sky-faring commission of the Xianzhou Alliance, getting off by grinding her clit on your lap in her office while her head was buried deeply into your shoulder because poor little thing can't hold back at all because of your scent.. Well… there's no need to imagine that because that's what's happening right now. Moans and whines seep out of her mouth like the wind, soft and shallow, indicating that she's getting close. It was obvious by the way your lover looked at you that made you think she was in heat. her gentle eyes always had a lustful spark in them like no other. You grip her hips to a halt and deny her release, as she whimpers softly in defeat, as she was so.. so close…  she lift her head up, looking at you with a sex drunk expression. “getting off by just my lap, Yukong?.. tsk, tsk… you know better than that..'' you leaned and whispered in a hushed tone in her ear, making her shiver. “I know just the thing to help you…” you get out her favorite strap from a compartment in one of her drawers and put it on.. Incase you had moments like this. “Since you refuse to ride the skies.. Why don't you ride me instead?…” you smirk earning a soft whimper from her as she quickly positioned her entrance on the tip of the toy, slowly lowering herself down, but you pull her down immediately, letting her take all of you in one sharp pull as she gasped and bit her now bleeding lip, holding a blood curdling moan. "Mmhgn!~ Y-Y/n!..~” “Shh.. be quiet dear.. You dont want your daughter or one of your co-workers and helpers seeing your fucked out face now do we..?” her walls tighten around your fake cock as you slowly thrusted up, making her even more turned on than she was.  “Unless.. You're into that? Letting someone see just how much of a needy slut you can be while you're in heat?~” she bit your shoulder in an attempt to hold back a moan, you grunted at the contact as she lifted her body up and down rhythmically, thrusting up into her hole until it hit her cervix. She digs her nails at your back, leaving red bloody scratches, whimpers and needy moans filling the office as she can no longer hold back even if she tried. Her teary eyed, fucked out expression left your stomach with butterflies, her tongue sticking out just a bit, and her ears placed back. That image of her forever burned in your brain. You fucked her dumb in different kinds of positions. Missionary, doggy style, (etc..) until her holes were filled up with her own slick and cum, breeding her almost like your cock wasnt fake. You lead her to her 9th orgasm as you thrust deeply into her cunt while she's laying down on her desk faced up, objects and paperwork smeared in her juices, falling to the ground like it didn't matter but only you inside of her, fake veins hitting spots that she never knew were there. She came immediately after your last thrust to her cunt, leaving a pool of her own cum on the desk. She stays layed down as she pants harshly. You pull out of her easily,  noticing that she made quite the mess. “I take it that you enjoyed the ride?” you chuckle and pant. Ignoring the fact that you just made Yukong see stars instead of bright blue skies.

A Sinful Symphony

[Dom!Kafka x Sub!Fem!reader]

[Nsfw warning!] Soft violin music sways you with ease as it plays in the background. Kafka is dancing with you, twirling you around and pulling you close and slowly dancing to the soft melody of the orchestra. Moments like this are treasured as sometimes she has no time to be around since she has to follow Elio’s orders in order to find what she pursuits, fear. One day, she was finally off duty and came back to your home seemingly tired as she wrapped her arms around you, flopping herself down on the couch with you. You didn't complain but it saddened you to see Kafka this tired. “How was work, kafu?” you mutter softly. Kafka looked at you with a soft, and loving gaze, as if she was no longer tired. “mm.. It was so boring.. and lonely because i don't get to be with you..” she sighs, placing her face deep against your chest, you chuckle, running your fingers through her velvety locks. “It's a shame, I know. How about we make up for that lost time?”  you smirk, earning a playful glint from Kafka. “fufu.. Who knew you would become so dirty, Y/n.. well.. Not that i'm complaining anyway..”  you both kissed, letting your tongues intertwine with each other, kafka dominating you fairly easily. You let her touch envelop your body, her bite marks covering your upper body perfectly, clothes non existent to the both of you as you both took them off. To her, you were a sight to behold, better than the stars that flood every single planet she has been in. no matter if she has seen your godly figure multiple of times, it makes her want to ravish you in a snap of a finger. Her mouth stumbles upon your hardened nipple, as she suckles it with her mouth and twisted at the other, making you shiver and moan in pleasure. She mumbles praises and soft hums under her breath, not leaving a single part of your body untouched as if she's worshiping your body inch by inch… “oh baby.. You're just so beautiful for mommy.. Mmn.. you make it too hard for me to ever say no..”  she detached her mouth from your breast, licking the hardened bud of flesh teasingly and looking at you, as if she's staring at the most prized and expensive artifact. It only made your heart yearn for more. Kisses make its way home down to your chest, and stomach, leaving smears of her favorite lipstick being shown on your body like a canvas, reapplying the lipstick and kissing your body even more until there's no gaps visible on you. Bites and kisses marking your inner thighs with ease until she finally reached your aching core. She ate you out without any warning, causing you to let out a breathy and shaky moan. Your hand instinctively went to her head, gripping at her hair as you pushed her deeper, a moan leaving out of her causing a small vibration that made you jolt in more pleasure..  Her mouth sucking at your clit and penetrating your needy hole with her two fingers leaving you a moaning mess. you are squeezing her head with your thighs tenderly. As much as she wants her head to be squeezed by you, she wants to focus on you first and opens your legs wide, earning more access in giving you as much pleasure as you could possibly want. You tried to hold on to the best of your ability, wanting to be a good girl for kafka so badly, but your release just seemed to be achingly close… "M-mommy… c-cumming.. Please.. i -i need.. T-to.. aah..” you whimpered as you dug your nails deep into Kafka’s scalp, earning a moan from her again. tug as much as you want, she will only go faster.. “Mnh.. let it all go baby.. You've been such a good girl..” you pant and tremble, letting out one final moan escape from your mouth, your juices being happily swallowed by your girlfriend. She lets out a soft and sultry hum at the taste of your sweet release, licking her lips and licking the rest of your juices from her fingers. “Mn.. you taste so wonderful as always.. care to be mommy's little fuck toy until the only thing you can call me is yours?” She laughs softly and props herself again in between your thighs. She is not stopping anytime soon until she is done worshiping you thoroughly…

Wine Tasting

[Dom!fem!reader x Sub(?)Kafka]

[NSFW warning!]

“My.. What a view.. So pretty even when you’re under me.” Kafka coos; she pulls off her iconic, and beautiful smirk as she drinks her expensive wine and makes a small ‘mm..’ sound at the taste, and in pleasure. Your head was in between her plush, and well built thighs. You left dark bruises and red marks at every inch of her inner thighs as you licked long stripes at her folds, tasting her sweet essence better than any expensive drink that you’ve drank thanks to her. “Mmf.. tastes s’good..” your voice comes out muffled, low vibrations from your voice pleasure her clit and lets out a soft moan. but she seemed to understand anyway. Her hands travel down your velvety locks and caresses your hair, her mischievous but tender looking eyes look at your perfect face that she just can't help but fall in love over, and over again. “Please Kaf.. wanna.. taste you..” you whine, finding it hard to not immediately give in into her. But you know she wouldn't like that. You are her good girl anyway. You can take it. You always do. “Patience, darling.. Surely you can wait a little longer, right?'' she grins, taking some strands of your hair and curling it around her finger. Patience. Oh how you hated it especially since you're in front of such divine beauty. All you want to do is dig your head deeper into her sopping wet cunt and make her cum until she finally feels fear. But then you won't be her good girl anymore, she will overstimulate you. She will fill you up with so much of her strap that your folds will be molded into the shape of the magenta colored faux toy. Insides painted in your own cum and slick as she thrusts deep into your cervix moaning nothing but her name and only her name and feeling her in you until all your holes have been stuffed. Your tears and incoherent whines and moans will be nothing but to her amusement, as a little appetizer to her wine per se.  “You are taking it so well.. You don't really make it this long.. Mh.. well it doesn't matter, it won't be long until i have to go back to the crew,” she hums disappointedly at the lack of time with you. ”well.. It's only natural that i reward you for staying still like a good little dolly.” she grins seductively, swirling the darkish red liquid in her fancy glass. you don't hesitate one bit once you hear her hypnotic words and her consent to proceed. You immediately latch your tongue onto her clit perfectly as she gasps at the sudden motion, almost dropping her glass as she puts it down and gripping the chairs arm rest in extreme satisfaction. “Hhn..! aahn… yes.. Just like that doll..” kafka groans lightly. You spread her legs wider and her legs begin to tremble, her hand that was in your hair now getting tighter by the second you go faster. Your chin dripping of her own slick and cum mixed with your own saliva. Moans leave your mouth as your tongue tastes more of her heavenly essence. “Keep going..” she grunts and moans, pants and breathy moans echoing around the room, deliciously pleasing into your ears like an angels song. “Almost.. There..!” she grips a large handful of your hair and pulls it, bringing you closer to her pulsating folds in complete ecstasy as she lets out a loud moan enough so the crew can hear how much of a good wife you are to her. You ride her through her orgasm as she pants, but you dive in again and she jolts at the overstimulation. “wan’ my fill too…”  you expressed with a lustful gaze. looking up to her and licking your lips that are happily coated in kafka’s cum. “Oh.. fuck it.. I'm sure Wolfie won't mind me being absent for a while.. i won't stop you.”