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Chapter Text

With more thought, it was probably very naive to believe that ending his reason for remaining would end him. He Xuan was intelligent and deliberate enough to understand that being a Devastation meant more than being forged in the Kiln, although Mount Tonglu made that process faster and neater, compressing the natural rage at their core and turning it into a perfect shining diamond of pure, seething resentment. 

That process was more than just an increase of their power, it made them almost a force of nature unto themselves, integrating them with the fabric of the universe in a way that would be hard to describe or easily undo. 

Crimson Rain, for example, was now the oldest living Devastation and was most known, apart from his saber and the silver butterflies, for his great fortune. But Hua Cheng was not merely fortunate, he was the fortune. His luck was so good and so boundless because Crimson Rain himself was the luck that he drew from. For him, the dice would always roll double-sixes because to gamble was to ask fortune a question, and Crimson Rain was the only one with the authority to answer. When he lost at his own gambling tables, it was only on the rare occasion that he chose to favor the player over himself. 

“We have a visitor at Puqi.”

Speak of the devil. 

He Xuan did not respond to that because they both knew exactly what Crimson Rain was attempting to bait him with and he refused to give him the satisfaction of admitting to it. Particularly admitting that he was currently in the Imperial City and this piece of information helped to explain why He Xuan hadn’t been able to locate what he’d been seeking for the past several days. 

Crimson Rain, of course, would never quit until he’d gotten a reaction. He Xuan was not convinced Hua Cheng was a mortal before death - he’s spent centuries with the theory that the man was some kind of demonic trickster fox spirit before his time in the Kiln. 

“Naturally, Gege insisted that she stay and allow someone to care for her when he realized how ill she was. She has a fever and it’s made her delirious.” 

He Xuan was used to the haunting pangs of ravenous hunger from deep in his gut, even in death, but the tight clench of something like anxiety in the same place was foreign and troubling. He did not allow himself to respond but instead continued to walk through the bustling crowd, pretending he was not wandering aimlessly, uselessly, now that he was certain what he was looking for couldn’t be found here. 

He knew Crimson Rain wasn’t finished with him but even still, he was thrown off his guard. 

“She asks for you.”

It twists inside him like a fisherman’s hook, buried deep and ripping open parts of him He Xuan was barely aware existed most of the time - studiously refusing to acknowledge them. 

Finally goaded into providing a response, he grunted back: “She asks for someone who doesn’t exist. So? It means nothing to me.” 

“I didn’t say she asked for Ming Yi, did I?” He Xuan could almost picture the glow of satisfaction radiating from Crimson Rain. It was nearly as nauseating as his expression when he started waxing poetic about his precious gege, a smug glee that made his face look perfect for punching. “She asks for you.”

His gut boiled, his veins were ice - and like the merciless bastard that he was, Crimson Rain took that moment off-guard to press him further. 

“Shi Qingxuan, please,” His Highness’s voice was as calm and pleasant as it usually was, but hearing that name was a jolt to He Xuan’s system anyway. “Your fever is so high, stay laying down.”

“I’m cold, Your Highness…I’m scared…I’m so scared. I want He-xiong.” He swallowed instinctively against the yawning void that stirred inside him, the insatiable crave to fill his own hollowness. Qingxuan’s voice was wobbling and shaky by the end, but the name she spoke was still unmistakable. “I want He-xiong. I’m so cold, it scares me.”

“You aren’t cold, you’re burning. You need to rest now.” This time, when Xie Lian spoke, He Xuan could hear the frayed thread of anxiety beginning to catch at the edges of his soft, patient tones. Like a phantom limb, He Xuan felt his own body go hot and wondered with a pointless, misplaced jealousy where Xie Lian or Hua Cheng was touching her that they could connect her through the array this way. “Please, please don’t cry. Your body doesn’t have any water left to spare, Qingxuan.” 

He Xuan felt the connection sever as Crimson Rain exited the array just as abruptly as he’d entered. He deeply hated the man - more so, he hated that Crimson Rain knew exactly where and when to place his bets.

A malicious sliver of himself was tempted to force them to wait. To sweat and wonder if he would answer the plea. Unfortunately the person he was actually interested in tormenting would be unaffected. 

He and Crimson Rain both knew that he would come when presented with this request - to wait would only make him look foolish when they both knew he would appear eventually. The person to really suffer would be Qingxuan. The vengeance-fueled monster within himself that used to insist he should want her to suffer was silent. Had been silent for months and months, even as He Xuan tried desperately to revive it. 

Luckily, he liked Crimson Rain’s husband much more than Crimson Rain. 

“Hello, Lord Black Water. I asked Qingxuan to visit me for lunch yesterday.” His Highness went straight into the business without making He Xuan suffer the indignities and grievances of horrors such as small talk or do something truly suicidal like Crimson Rain no doubt would’ve, such as pretending not to know the reason for his presence. “I believe she was already quite ill when she arrived and didn’t want to say anything.” 

He grunted acknowledgment. That seemed likely. 

Xie Lian led him to the bamboo mat behind the privacy screen where they must have finally convinced her to lay down - ah. No, they hadn’t convinced her, he realized with a swooping roll of dread as he looked at her pinched, flushed features. She was simply too weak to struggle with them any longer, lashes resting against the unhealthy glow of her cheeks. 

Somehow, despite regaining her masculine form now that she was mortal, Shi Qingxuan never seemed to grow any stubble on her face but now her upper lip was dotted with droplets of perspiration. A damp cloth had been placed over her forehead to keep her cool and her shiny chestnut hair was wet and almost mahogany from fever-sweat. All of her usual liveliness was drained away and her skin had become sallow and waxy - disturbingly close to corpselike, allowing the vivid blue-green of her veins to trace their way in stark color through the skin on her neck and wrists. 

Almost inaudibly, he said “I cannot be trusted with her.” 

His Highness was watching him with a careful expression. “For her peace of mind, we considered San Lang disguising himself just until she could be convinced to lay down but...” Delicately, he scratched the back of his neck. “Forgive me for saying so, Lord Black Water, I can’t bring myself to present her with any more deceptions, even one that would soothe her in the short term. We’ve done our best to make her comfortable, but there’s only one thing she asks for.”

For a moment, there was a strange shifting of the light in the room, as though the afternoon sunshine was suddenly being viewed from below the waves. Despite whatever emotional turmoil he appeared to be experiencing below the surface, He Xuan’s face was expressionless and his voice without any inflection for Xie Lian to interpret: “Leave.”

“Ah…” He felt it necessary to voice one last concern. “...she may not get better, Lord Black Water.” 

The temperature in the room had sunk several degrees and there was a strong smell of salt-spray in the air. “I will stay until my presence is no longer necessary.” 

“Please tell San Lang or I if you need anything,” His Highness finally said, though not without another moment of silent consideration. 

He Xuan would leave pondering His Highness’ thoughts and moods to Crimson Rain - he was certainly much better at it and pathetically eager to take up the position anyway. That was not his purpose here. 

He waited for several heartbeats before he dared to get any closer and then several more with his hand above her face. Different instincts were at war inside him, thrashing around and tugging at each other. Firstly, he had to resist the urge to simply pump her full of spiritual energy until she was well again - an impulse that he immediately dismissed as ridiculous. For one thing, her meridians could only take so much before it would simply overstress her body, and for another, if it were that easy, His Highness could have cured her already. 

Another instinct was urging He Xuan to pick her up and cradle this fragile mortal body and take her away from this place, telling him that while she was this vulnerable she needed to be kept hidden, protected. Logically, he knew Qingxuan should not be moved - it would not help her recovery to be moved around and being alone with him in a strange place was probably close to her actual nightmares.

All of those were in direct opposition to the wicked, vicious instinct that told him the moment He Xuan touched Qingxuan with his bare hands, his real hands, every drop of life would flee her body. That was the voice that was currently winning. 

It continued to win. 

He Xuan lowered his hand back down to his side and instead said “Shi Qingxuan.” Perhaps a flicker of the eyes behind her closed lids, but no greater reaction than that. “Qingxuan, you wanted me here and now I am. You need to drink something.”

Her brows puckered together as though with confusion. A small sound stirred in her throat, uncertain and fragile. Qingxuan’s head tilted just slightly on her neck, turning her chin in his direction. The pulse at her throat was fluttering like a bird with broken wings. The dead lump of muscle that used to be He Xuan’s heart ached fiercely. It was trivial to summon just a few drops of fresh cool water to the tip of his finger. 

He couldn’t make her drink without first opening her mouth. He Xuan raised his hand to touch her face again, with only enough courage to touch one finger on her chin to open her mouth and no one was there to see his hand shaking.

Liquid pooled at her lips, and no one was there to hear his desperate plea into her ear: “Drink the water, Qingxuan.” 

—

Drink the water, Qingxuan. 

Shi Qingxuan’s memories of her illness were mostly hazy, mostly unclear and sometimes disturbing moments of loneliness and overwhelming fear. Other moments as well - moments where she felt comforted and grounded by a familiar presence. Cool, fresh water and dead, heavy limbs. 

“You want me to touch you? You really are out of your mind. No, stay still, Qingxuan. A fucking toddler has more strength than you, you can’t even lift your own head.”

The sensation, stark but deeply surreal, of a cool, heavy forearm draped just above her waist. His presence at her back, which should terrify or at least worry her but only brings a sense of caged-in safety. A sense of, not being tied down but of being held, anchored to the earth. 

“Aaa, He-Xiong, you're heavy. It’s so nice, I feel like I’m going to float away sometimes…”

The chill touch of his hand, shocking in both temperature but also for reasons somewhere in her mind past the deep hazy fog in her brain. Between her breasts and placed possessively over her heart. 

She felt her cheeks heat. Qingxuan was truly hoping that particular memory was part of a fever dream she’d had and not because she’d really made demands of a Devastation to soothe her and hold her and cuddle her. Haha, even if it had worked really well!

Not that she would’ve known that she’d really been visited by Lord Black Water without His Highness’s honesty. When the fever finally broke, Qingxuan awoke by herself in Puqi shrine. She’d been awake less than an incense time when Xie Lian popped his head past the privacy screen, his thin shoulders drooping slightly with relief at the sight of her face, absent of the haze and fever-flush that had overtaken for the past several days. 

It was not the first time she’d woken from a strange, painful haze after days of being nursed by His Highness but unlike the injuries to her arm and leg, Qingxuan was not quite certain why or what had led her to the situation. Quietly, His Highness had explained her rapid fall into illness and the slow uncertain recovery until that very day. 

All of her attempts to thank him were immediately, gently rebuffed but without any of Xie Lian’s characteristic modesty. “I’m afraid I was able to do very little for you. How much do you remember during the fever?” 

“Ahahaha, I had a lot of very strange dreams, Your Highness!” Often she missed her fan simply for the convenience of hiding her expression. Her face simply wasn’t thick enough for the delirious thoughts her mind had conjured, not even in front of His Highness.

Xie Lian’s expression was sympathetic. “Not all of them were just dreams, Qingxuan. Ah…the strangest ones were probably real.” Her jaw dropped open and he watched some of the blood drain away from her face. “I think he left less than half a sichen before you woke up.”

The whole thing had left her with dozens of questions and no answers - questions that she tried very hard to leave in the dark where she wouldn’t be able to clearly see the sharp, pale contours or the haunting yellow glare of them.

But Shi Qingxuan didn’t like to allow herself to ignore obvious truths that made her uncomfortable any longer and she couldn’t fully suppress the shivery, frightened anticipation that any face she looked at or even passed on the street could have He Xuan’s hidden beneath it. 

When she was at her most injured, Qingxuan hadn’t failed to notice that the characters who would normally take advantage of such weakness steered very clear of her.

There was only one person readily at hand who could help her gain answers, it was more a question of whether he would agree to give them to her. 

Lord Crimson Rain was in his Xiao Hua form the next time she was able to return for a visit. For the villagers he was a very handsome and charming youth in Puqi, but this appearance did nothing to make him less intimidating to Shi Qingxuan. If anything, his flippant posture and wide, insincere smiles just made her more nervous. His true form, with the leather eye patch and the silver chains dangling from his clothes, gave him the air of a satisfied predator that had already been well-glutted on a kill. But those two dark, bright eyes flitting around in that sly face gave the impression of one who was searching for its latest meal. 

She was happy for her friend, but she wasn’t sure she would ever be truly comfortable in the presence of Xie Lian’s husband. For today, she would have to endure it if she wanted even the smallest hope of getting insight into the murky depths of Black Water Sinking Ships. 

While Qingxuan wasn’t quite as unsubtle as someone like Lang Qianqiu or Quan Yizhen, she was also not the political animal that her brother had been and there was no real sensible transition to ask the kind of things that she wanted to know. Nevertheless, she at least made an attempt not to go directly into attempting to interrogate a Devastation. 

“Ah, Your Highness…Lord Crimson Rain…” Qingxuan’s face wasn’t thick enough to look him directly in the eye, her gaze straying to watch his fingers curve over the top of his cup like talons. He didn’t have claws in this form, but the nails were still coated in black lacquer. “The nature of your existence means that something happening to His Highness would permanently damage you, right? Or…more than damage…?”

There was such a sudden, powerful surge of resentful energy that Qingxuan was forced to clutch the table so that she didn’t collapse forward in a full kowtow just from the force of Hua Cheng’s spike of rage folding her spine. 

Xie Lian reached a hand over, his palm gently resting at his husband’s forearm. Soothing and unruffled, he said “I don’t think Shi Qingxuan meant that the way it sounded, San Lang. She can’t breathe when you’re this angry, why don’t we let her explain?”

Oh, the phrasing of that question had almost sounded like a veil threat toward His Highness, didn't it? 

It wasn’t until His Highness said it that she realized she truly couldn’t breathe, her chest too tight to allow her lungs to expand and before the panic could entirely consume her, the energy was carefully folded away. Qingxuan gasped and a few tears slipped from the corners of her eyes, clutching the table even harder as a wave of oxygen-deprived dizziness swept over her. 

Nearly folded to the floor again, she tried to explain in a painful wheeze: “Black Water-!” 

Hua Cheng raised a brow, now examining her with the cool air of a cat watching a half-dead mouse flail around. 

“I wanted to ask Lord Crimson Rain…if he believes-believes that Lord Black Water may have…to me…if Lord Black Water feels the way that you feel for His Highness…and the conditions of Lord Black Water’s…existence.” 

Looking almost mildly intrigued now, Hua Cheng leaned back lazily, elbow propped on the table and his chin in his hand. “And if it is, what are you going to do? Kill yourself to get rid of him?”

“I don’t know,” she gasped, still trying to breathe normally. Then corrected: “I mean I don’t know…what I’m going to do. Not kill myself. Won’t do that.” She finally brought herself to look at Hua Cheng directly. “I just need to…know.”

Xie Lian gently squeezed his husband’s arm. It was not a command, it was a request - but for a man like Hua Cheng, there was no difference. What his god, his beloved, asked for he would give. However…

“What I tell you will be observations and guesses, not certainties.” Hua Cheng warned.

“Your guess is probably better than my certainty,” Qingxuan muttered glumly, rubbing her arm as though she felt chilled.

“Firstly, whatever you are to him would not be quite the same as my connection with Gege, simply because I held His Highness in great esteem even when I was still alive. Before anything, he was my prince and my god and I had pledged myself to him in that capacity. In a way, death was the best thing that could’ve happened to me because it gave me a greater ability to fulfill the ambitions I held in life, which isn’t true for Black Water.”

“No, it isn’t, is it?” she said in miserable agreement, shoulders rounding with this reminder of He Xuan’s bloody, desperate demise. 

Hua Cheng eyed her, a tilt to his head she couldn’t quite decipher. “Ghosts are creatures of passion and strong emotion. Rage, contempt, guilt, lust, adoration, longing, vengeance, grief. I never thought much of it because I was very much like that in life as well - whatever I hated, I loathed with every inch of myself and whatever I loved, I loved forever. The transition meant very little to me. I was simply alive once, and now I am dead.” He traced a black fingernail over the rim of his cup. “I was never a man of books and reasoned logic - I don’t think the process would be comfortable or easy for a man like that.”

Qingxuan understood the implication. A man like He Sheng was. Her chin wobbled for a second before she determinedly stiffened it. “Are you trying to tell me that he can’t - what? Can’t lo-”

Her throat closed up tight, tears welling up in her eyes. It simply hurt too much for her to say, and from the way he studied her, Hua Cheng knew it.

No part of his expression or body language softened, but his voice lowered and gentled a mere fraction. “Black Water is as capable as any other man. But he does not feel about you the way that I feel about Gege. From the moment I saw Taizi Dianxia, I loved him and knew I always would.” Xie Lian smiled bashfully, ducking his head with a little blush on his face. “To you… I believe Black Water feels about you the way a man lost in the desert feels about food and water.” 

“...he…misses me?” she asked tentatively. With a nervous little giggle, Qingxuan added “Lord Black Water does have quite an appetite.” 

“Not just miss.” Hua Cheng tilted his head again, more intense than she’d seen him with anyone but His Highness. Something like dark amusement played around the shape of his mouth. “I know you’ve now experienced hunger but…do you know what it’s like to need something so much that you begin to despise it for how much power it holds over you, Shi Qingxuan? To suffer the absence of something so much that you despise yourself for how desperately you want it?” 

He watched Shi Qingxuan shake her head, frantically - and Hua Cheng was perceptive enough to understand it was not as an answer to his question, it was a wide-eyed denial of this implication. 

Just like the way he’d tortured He Xuan, Crimson Rain Sought Flower always preferred to play with his food. With satisfaction, he grinned with all his teeth and confirmed, “This is the way that He Xuan feels for you.”

“That’s horrible,” she croaked. “I don’t want to make him miserable!”

Hua Cheng shrugged carelessly. “He makes himself miserable, I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” 

Xie Lian was more merciful than his husband and served Shi Qingxuan more tea, sliding the plate of lotus buns in her direction as an unsubtle hint to refresh herself and regain her spirits. Her temperament wasn’t made for holding onto her unhappiness so they managed to have a nice visit together anyway and Qingxuan held onto her worries for another moment. They’d be waiting whenever she was willing to pick them up again.

Chapter Text

Shi Qingxuan didn’t know what to do. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Qingxuan knew what she wanted to do, but she didn’t know how she could achieve that or what the outcome would be. 

She was…she was lonely, so terribly lonely despite being surrounded by people all the time. Even three years later, Qingxuan felt like a stranger in a foreign land, despite her ability to chatter with people and make small talk to anyone. It just wasn’t the same as speaking with someone who knew her - and nobody could know her when they wouldn’t believe anything she told them about herself. 

More than anything, Qingxuan wanted to tell her old friend that she never wished for an accounting of rights and wrongs between them. For herself, she was tired of blaming and being blamed. If he demanded it, Qingxuan herself was still willing to give Lord Black Water whatever satisfaction he could get from her, but she had very little she could offer him. 

Before her illness, His Highness had seemed so worried about her safety if she encountered Lord Black Water again and Qingxuan couldn’t bring herself to admit aloud to someone else that her most terrifying memory of that day at Nether Water Manor - apart from Brother’s actual death - was the sensation of her own brother’s hands wrapped around her neck. 

The terror of this person she’d known her whole life and blindly followed and trusted trying to murder her with his own two hands. The parallels had not escaped Qingxuan’s notice, but whatever could be said about Black Water, whatever frustrations he could vent at her, he’d managed to stop short of truly doing her any lasting harm, had told her directly that he would never kill her.

Now in quiet mornings and sleepless nights she silently wondered, knowing that there would be no response even if she gave it voice, why Brother’s hands squeezing around her neck had been the first moment Lord Black Water had truly lost control of his temper. Wondered if Brother had known…something…when he started saying those horrible things directly to He Xuan’s face. If it was simply the cruel arrogance of Brother’s tongue or if he had made the shrewd calculation that He Xuan would never allow Qingxuan to die, no matter what else happened.

He had tried - Ming-xiong at the time - had tried to stop her from following Brother that day. To stop Qingxuan from even going to Black Water Isle. When she’d followed anyway, despite his own efforts, He Xuan then refused to leave her side. 

Qingxuan burned with shame, throwing an arm over her face to hide from the world as her stomach twisted itself into knots, feeling sick and sour as the weight of their last real interaction pressed down on her. 

The way she’d repeatedly called him Ming Yi’s name even when she knew about the lies, as though by deliberately refusing to acknowledge it she could make reality suit her own needs, like a spoiled child. 

The rage and utter contempt in his stare, the deep dark sinkholes of his gaze flashing and becoming a fierce yellow lamplight that pinned her frozen body in place just as effectively as the shackles around her as Qingxuan begged for his help by calling another man’s name. 

He Xuan’s bitter accusation that no matter how many chances he gave her, Qingxuan always chose Shi Wudu instead. 

Six hundred years they’d been together and he’d stayed faithfully at her side, even in moments when it wouldn’t objectively have served any purpose for him other than giving her a comforting presence. 

He Xuan had betrayed her trust, but in light of the things Hua Cheng had told her, it now occurred to Shi Qingxuan that in return, she’d ignorantly wounded someone very dear to her, throwing the friendship she claimed was so strong back in his face even as He Xuan had stripped it down and forced her to see its ugly truth. 

And now, she thought with despair. Now there was no way left for her to even properly apologize. No way to beg He Xuan for the chance to say that she had really cared for him, she had and she did! Qingxuan’s nature might be exactly like the wind but her affections were not empty, her friendship was not hollow. 

Qingxuan had loved him. She still loved him. And He Xuan loved(?) her - and hated it. 

—

It wasn’t as though he didn’t know that he was obsessed with her - the very nature of his existence meant that his obsession with her had been at the forefront of his mind for the past six centuries. Unfortunately, He Xuan appeared to have misinterpreted the exact shape of that obsession. 

No. He hadn’t misinterpreted it, had he? He simply didn’t WANT to see it for what it really was. 

“Never appear in front of me again - that way, I can pretend that you don’t exist.”

What a fucking fool he was, running his mouth like his head wasn’t an empty box with her face engraved on it, like he hadn’t spent six hundred years making excuses for why he coudn’t bring himself to leave Qingxuan alone. 

He’d meant what he’d said to His Highness when Crimson Rain had summoned him to Puqi. He Xuan could not - should not - be trusted with Qingxuan, it was absolute madness that they would. 

He wanted to devour her. 

Slowly, savoring every taste and swallow, He Xuan wanted to consume every part of her down to the marrow. Wanted the flavor of the sweat at the hollow of Qingxuan’s throat and the skin at her inner thighs to last for months, years, centuries on his tongue. 

Just holding her in his arms had brought him to fantasies of nipping at her earlobes, her jaw, the rounded curve of her shoulder. Having to bathe her had been unspeakable, and he’d only summoned the fortitude to force himself through it once.

Although he wasn’t certain how, despite being masculine now in both face and frame, there was no longer a cock resting between Qingxuan’s legs. Instead, the innocent thatch of dark curls hid her genitalia from view and He Xuan took that merciful opportunity to avoid having to acknowledge the area at all. The real torture were her breasts. They were no longer simple pectoral muscles, but not quite as full and heavy as another woman’s.

They couldn’t even be called a handful, they were barely more than a mouthful and He Xuan had immediately locked his jaws shut to keep himself from openly salivating or…doing anything else. Her nipples were large, pink and puffy in a way that drew his eye, as though calling for his attention and the sight filled him with aching hunger like nothing else.

He could almost feel the soft give of that tender flesh pressed against his fangs, could imagine biting and suckling them until Qingxuan was teary and pleaded for other things with a red, wanton mouth. He Xuan thought she would be quite loud about it too - she’d always had trouble controlling her volume, especially when she was emotional. Would she be emotional? 

He never pictured her scared when these fantasies came on, rolling over his mind like an undertow, out of control and strong enough to rip him apart. Even when He Xuan pictured her desperate and weepy, he’d never wanted her terrified. But what he wanted and the reality of the world were not united. And she would be terrified, she was well justified to be, he wouldn’t make excuses for himself no matter how much he now wished he’d done things in a different way, how much he wished he understood then what he does now. 

Even now, with only the empty halls of the manor around him, He Xuan could feel the insistant pull. The want. 

Need her, his blood called. Need her, from his aching belly, drooling with the hunger to consume her from gasping mouth to delicate ankles. Inside his bones, need her. It was a constant chorus within him, the screams of a hundred drowned souls but they all cried: need her.

He glutted himself on noodles, on hapless fish, on an arrogant group of merchants on a pleasure-trip through his forbidden waters. It wasn’t enough. It couldn’t be enough. He could still feel the ache of her absence in every moment. 

For almost six hundred years, he was at her side - “my best friend in the whole world!” - and like the absolute cretin that he was, He Xuan only realized now how strong the pull to be there with her had been. 

The small part of him that was once a mortal man, the fragment that remained of Scholar He, was aggravated with himself. Viewing He Xuan’s inability to quell these urges and impulses with frustrated disgust. 

But He Xuan couldn’t quiet the desperate call of longing that rang through him like tolling bells and he refused to visit her again. He knew every expression of that guileless face and could picture the flash of horror and fear in her eyes with the same clarity that Crimson Rain carved every fold of His Highness’ robes. He couldn’t bring himself to taint the last memory of her that he now held so dear, settled sweet somewhere deep inside the ache of him - Qingxuan, delirious and content in his arms, her soft breaths on his shoulder and her heartbeat fluttering into the palm of his hand. 

Instead he made himself a menace on his own isle, ripping down walls of the manor and heaving up sections of shoreline with his own furious discontent. It was just a location, just a place and none of it mattered to him anyway. He was starving, but unable to sate his appetite with what he desired and the destruction could only cool that thirst in the moment but it wouldn’t satisfy, either. Need her, need her, NEED HER. 

No, He Xuan could not be trusted with her at all. 

He caved just three months later.

Chapter Text

He Xuan didn’t let himself get too close. It was harder than he’d like to keep his distance but just being able to see Shi Qingxuan with his own eyes quieted the howling need in him. 

The days were still very chilly and so her gait was not quite as steady as it usually was. Once the danger from Jun Wu had been quelled, His Highness, on General Xuan Zhen’s advice, had rebroken and then - correctly - reset her injured limbs. Even with the assistance of some judicious use of spiritual energy, rehealing the breaks was painful and took time. 

Since Qingxuan was now a mortal it wasn’t a fix that could bring them back perfectly whole, merely increase her mobility and reduce the constant state of pain she was left in. As a result, when she stood in the cold this way it caused an ache in the repaired limbs that was hard for her to conceal, no matter how wide her smile was or how bright her eyes. 

And her eyes were so bright. Always, always so beautiful and bright. 

There could never be any amount of indulgence that would satisfy He Xuan - short of dragging Qingxuan into the back of her abandoned temple and using the most carnal means at his disposal to warm her up again - so he was strict in limiting how much he could see her, rationing it like a miser who counted every coin. 

Now and then her ringing laughter floated across the square and He Xuan would have to close his eyes, for a moment drifting and lost in centuries of memories past. 

No matter how engaging and friendly her demeanor was, he knew that she was not completely comfortable there, though. Even in her male form, when Qingxuan was truly relaxed with someone, she would speak in a slightly faster, higher register. It used to infuriate Shi Wudu, but He Xuan had long ago realized that she had no conscious control over it and had no idea when she was doing it. 

She’d still done it, alone and vulnerable and barely conscious with him during her illness, high and breathy as she complained that He Xuan was too far away and “- won’t you please keep me company, He-xiong? Don’t you know I’ve missed you?”

Don’t you know I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you. Now it was carved into his bones where all the sweetest memories of her lived. It was nonsense obviously, Qingxuan was delirious with fever and couldn’t really be trusted to even understand what she was saying in the state she was in. But no amount of logic could keep him from latching onto it desperately. 

“Little fool. Mmm…I’ve missed you, Xiao Xuan.” 

The words had been pulled from him like a thorn but were nevertheless true. He Xuan had grudgingly reasoned with himself that Qingxuan was so beyond the current moment at the time she wouldn’t remember anyway. This reasoning managed to excuse the indulgence of all manner of sins he’d committed while he was her caretaker - laying beside her at her own urging and drawing her into his arms. Washing and combing out those chestnut waves, petting the silky strands. Smoothing his hands over her body, rubbing down the long line of her spine until she could be soothed to sleep. 

Simple things when taken at face value, but things He Xuan should not do in the rational waking world. In moments of tiredness or when he allowed idle thoughts to rule him, though, he could almost feel that feather-light weight in his arms again. The soft, gentle pants of breath and the curve of her cheekbone resting against his silent chest. Serene and lovely. 

Another one of those laughs recalled him sharply to the present moment, glittering brightly across the square and bracing He Xuan like a brisk autumn morning. At this rate, I’m going to go as completely mad as Crimson Rain already thinks I am.

For a less meticulous person than him, the thought might carry a humorous tone. From him, it was merely grimly certain. 

He Xuan had to limit his indulgence of her physical presence and find a new project to occupy himself with immediately or he truly would be driven absolutely past his sanity. He’d spent centuries wholly driven by the end of Shi Wudu, the focus on Shi Qingxuan shouldn’t wear his mind down to the very last threads this way - but aside from the fact that he no longer had the presence of her accursed brother to distract him, this yearning was more acute and harder to ignore when he had no plan in sight to end it. He felt it, sharp and painful, but his only solution was to continue on with it. 

He couldn’t help but feel that endurance until further notice was not the best strategy he’d ever put into action but had no idea how else to go forward. He Xuan would not inflict his monstrous presence upon her, would not have Qingxuan feel that she was being hunted, haunted by him, which left no better options beyond white-knuckling his way through his own helpless lovesickness. 

Ghosts were not good at denying themselves their desires. It was not in their nature and went directly contrary not only to their most basic motivations but to their very survival. As deeply as he tried to cling to his logical, methodical mortal psyche, He Xuan was not immune to this. 

Within weeks, he had gone from seeing her once a month to having multiple personas that he exchanged to essentially be inside her orbit at almost every part of the day. The only line he still refused to cross was touching or speaking to Qingxuan in any way - he slipped in and out of her peripheral vision but he wouldn’t allow himself the comfort or luxury of holding her direct notice. 

Fueling this urge to keep a constant view of her was He Xuan’s rapid realization that whenever she believed nobody was watching her, a look of distress would come over her features. Almost lost, like a child who’d become separated from their mother in a crowded market. 

This slowly progressed through the weeks, Qingxuan’s features became more tired whenever she was not engaging with another person, when she thought no one could see the veil of sadness that pulled over her eyes.

The sudden swelling of sorrow couldn’t be a coincidence, immediately following the shadow of He Xuan’s presence briefly darkening her life again. This sadness only steeled his certainty that he did not deserve the reward of direct contact. He would do everything to make sure that she was safe and protected, that she had adequate food and shelter for herself and the other beggars who (unbeknownst to themselves) relied on the shelter of her temple, but he allowed himself no more indulgences. 

—

At first, Qingxuan couldn’t be totally certain - after all, He Xuan was an absolute master of new faces. Logically, she didn’t have any proof beyond a certain…feeling. 

But nobody watched her the way he did. Nobody else was so completely focused on her the way that He Xuan was. 

The young woman had dark, hooded eyes and her hair was unkempt and a bit wild down her back. She wore roughspun grey robes that showed a bit too much of her cleavage and combined with that heavy-lidded stare, made Qingxuan abruptly remember, with a flood of heat pouring through her face, a cool palm sliding between her own breasts - capturing her fragile mortal heart in dead fingers. 

For a moment she chewed her bottom lip and seriously considered approaching this young woman. He-xiong, is that you? 

In the end, she didn’t have enough confidence in her certainty to confront him…her? If she was wrong, Qingxuan would risk publicly looking like a lunatic in one of the safest places she’d found, assuming He Xuan would tell her the truth to begin with, which she was also uncertain of. 

Some of the regulars around the temple had begun remarking on her increasingly sleepless appearance, something slightly sickly still clinging to the shadows of her face. Qingxuan couldn’t help it - during the day, she found herself anxiously looking for him despite knowing he wouldn’t be there. She felt like a sailor’s wife waiting for her husband to return home from the sea, until she went to bed feeling still anxious and abandoned. Which was unfair - how could Lord Black Water possibly abandon her when he hadn’t wanted her to begin with? 

This would continue on inside her dreams, which were panic-ridden terrors of wandering alone around a place that was not quite Nether Water Manor, up to her knees in inky water and never able to catch the swift figure in dark robes ahead of her, no matter how she begged and pleaded with him to slow down, come back, He-xiong stay here, stay, please stay! 

Almost worse than that were the glimmers Qingxuan had of - she believed - real memories that were slowly dragged up from the fog of her illness. Hazy but so very powerful. A gentle hand running soothingly across her back. Her body, a burden of slack weight cradled carefully against dead flesh. Long fingers combing through her hair with the scent of sweet oils. A mouth pressed to her temple. His voice was always so deep and smooth, like still night waters…

“I’ve missed you, Xiao Xuan.” 

Qingxuan jerked herself awake, immediately pulling herself up to sitting, breath coming to her in rough ragged pants. She threw aside the thin patchwork of her blanket and fled outside - she was either going to throw up or break out into tears and preferred not to have a witness for either. 

In the end, it was tears.

She stumbled out randomly, wandering the rear of the temple where the broken remnants of her and Brother’s statues had been disposed of and kneeling amidst the pieces of marble, supporting herself with one arm braced on the building. She felt foolish, lost, and heartsick. She never…oh, she’d never known that this was the way she loved him. 

I’ve missed you, Xiao Xuan. 

She sobbed, her other hand pressed tightly to her stomach as though she could physically push down the emotion that was trying to swallow her whole. She longed for him to hold her again, a yearning immediately accompanied by the grief-stricken knowledge that he would not. 

“Meimei - hey meimei? Are you okay back here?” 

With a futile effort to quickly swallow down the tears spilling down her face, Qingxuan turned her head and went wide-eyed.

The lovely young woman with rough grey robes and the dark hooded eyes was carefully looking her up and down from several feet away. In perhaps any other state, she would have found a way to laugh. At the very least, she wouldn’t have choked: “Lord Black Water.” 

A hesitant uncertainty in her expression, and then there was a shimmer in the air almost like a heat-haze. His real eyes were still heavy-lidded and full of secrets. “Shi Qingxuan.” 

She gulped and hiccuped with the effort not to weep even more hysterically, her heart frantically lurching below her breastbone. Perhaps in remembrance of when it was in his care. Pathetic and past caring about it, Shi Qingxuan reached out for him with one hand, still using the building to keep herself from fully succumbing to the urge to lay in the dirt. “...Lord Black Water…please…” 

He didn’t reach back for her, which was disappointing but not unexpected. Unexpected was that he did walk nearer, crouching just a little more than an arm’s length away from her. His voice was deep and smooth, like still night waters, and it caused a pair of fresh tears to make their way down her face. “Are you hurt?” 

She shook her head, nodded, and shook it again. Slowly, like he might disappear into the night if she startled him, Qingxuan’s hand touched his sleeve, pulling to drag herself closer, until she could curl herself desperately against him. 

He Xuan was rigid but she was too selfish to release her hold on him, needy and yearning and lonely. 

“Please…please don’t leave again,” she begged. “Please, I can’t-” 

His hand slowly lifted, resting at the back of her neck, so large that it splayed over the top of her spine and cradled her skull. His lips were beside her ear, his voice was pitched so low that she still barely heard him but almost felt them somewhere low in her belly: “You don’t understand what you ask for, Qingxuan.” 

She had no hesitation: “I understand that I want you to stay.”

Chapter Text

She felt so awkward about asking him to lay down on the mat with her - but not awkward enough to stop her from tugging at his sleeve to coax him down with her. The end result was not particularly comfortable, Qingxuan’s face hidden in He Xuan's shoulder and her arm locked around him. 

He huffed, the stillness of his chest giving way to a sigh. “You’re going to give yourself a muscle cramp.”

She mumbled unintelligibly into his collarbone, unwilling to relinquish the hold on him that would be frankly brutal if He Xuan were also a mortal.

“Qingxuan.”

Stubbornly, she pressed her forehead to his shoulder. 

He scoffed, ignoring her distressed whimpers when he broke out of her arms without the smallest amount of effort. He pulled and pushed at her like a life-sized doll while she willingly went here-and-there, until Qingxuan was arranged on her side with He Xuan laying behind her. A thrill went up her spine as his hand slid across her body, until she was fully caged in by him, his larger hands cupped over hers in a mirror of their bodies. “Better?”

Her heart stuttered and stumbled at his cool breath washing over the back of her neck. Qingxuan shivered pleasantly and shifted their joined hands, sliding her fingers through his to lace them together. The friction of their fingers against each other was a strange, delicious intimacy and she just barely stopped herself from wriggling against him with the resulting bubbles of delight fizzing in her blood. “Yes, much better, He-xiong!” 

“I am not any brother of yours,” he said crisply, though not with the razor-blade edge that it could have had. “He Xuan is fine.”

She squeezed their joined fingers, tracing her thumb up his index finger. “Hm…Da Xuan?” she teased playfully. “A-Xuan? Xuan’er?”

“Qingxuan.”

“Mm?” This was so much nicer - he didn’t have his own body heat but reflected her own back very nicely and it was indescribably lovely to have the weight of him keeping her pressed down to the mat. His scent was subtle but Qingxuan would know it anywhere. Driftwood, sand, and salt. 

He heaved another sigh and it was so typical of him she bit down on the corner of her lip as it curved into a smile, even if he couldn’t see her. “Stop squirming and go to sleep.” 

Her grip on his fingers tightened, drawing their hands to her own chest like he could be stolen away from her. “...promise you won’t leave.” 

“And I’ve already told you, you don’t understand what you ask for.”

She stroked her fingers through his again. “I ask for…Rule 1, He Xuan stays with Qingxuan. Rule 2, He Xuan tells Qingxuan the truth, even if it will hurt her…” Then she frowned, thinking of her last interactions with Brother, with Pei Ming, with Ling Wen. If becoming mortal again was good for anything it made her sick to death of the people in her life treating her like a child. Xie Lian understood how exhausting that could be and he never treated her like a naive, incapable fool. She appreciated it more than she could express. “...maybe especially if he thinks it will hurt her. Rule 3…”

She trailed off.

“Rule 3?” He Xuan’s voice was so dry, she could picture his arch expression and cool eyes. It made her bite down another smile.

“...just those two,” she said finally. That was all she wanted, all she would ever ask of him. No lying, and no leaving. “Is that a yes?” 

In spite of herself, she really was feeling her eyelids droop but if he was going to disappear with the morning, she was determined to soak up as much of his attention as she could. 

He Xuan was silent for so long that she had simply assumed he wouldn’t answer. She felt his cheekbone at the top of her head. His own thumb traced a path up the delicate veins of her wrists and Qingxuan shivered again. “You really want this, Qingxuan?”

The timber of his voice so close to her ear made a lazy warmth bloom at the bottom of her stomach. It was an odd but very pleasant feeling and she hummed happily, squeezing their hands together against her belly. He Xuan’s thumb stroking against it, as though he could sense it, made it linger with a delicious tingle. Drowsy and comforted at last, she could only tell the complete truth: “This is what I always want.” 

—

He really was going to lose his fucking mind. Or maybe he already had and that was why Qingxuan laid beside him, clinging to him even in her sleep. He Xuan was still trying to swallow down his saliva, still trying to ignore his awareness of each ridge and tooth in his mouth, and he was finding it incredibly difficult while the length of her body was stretched out against him. Her squirming, the smell of her hair, the dainty fingers tracing over his hands had all made his mouth water.

The hollow in his belly demanded the flavor of Qingxuan’s skin to be properly sated. Licked up the nape of her neck, it snarled, sucked from each little finger. Tasted from the vivid buds of both flushed, aching nipples. Bites taken out of all the thin fragile skin where she would bruise the most easily - around her belly, her hips, the insides of both thighs, and especially from the delicious, melting center of her-

Qingxuan’s legs twitched and shifted slightly and He Xuan choked, partly as he’d begun salivating anew and partly because the change in position presented a new temptation, his erection now nestled into the welcoming warmth of her ass. Before he could fully stop himself, He Xuan jerked his body against hers, his arm tightening and holding her firmly in place as his cock rubbed against her, salivating for her just like his mouth did and he smothered a moan by digging his fangs down into his lip. 

“Hnngh.” Qingxuan did moan, but her eyes were still firmly closed, flexing her fingers between his. He froze. 

A movement of her arm dragged their joined hands further down until he could feel the gentle heat radiating from between the cradle of her legs, and He Xuan wondered if he was actively dying for a final time and this was some kind of delusion to usher his soul through dispersal. If so, the choice was superb. 

She shifted her hips restlessly, a movement into and against him that would probably be something closer to a subtle squirming if she were awake but without the reins of her conscious mind it was a primal, sensual motion with an origin as old as time. Rolling and rhythmic as the waves.

This needed to stop - He Xuan was either going to pull all of Qingxuan’s clothes off and lick every inch of her skin he could access or he was going to die for the second time. He would rather attempt to go through the Kiln again then discover the end result of either outcome.

“Qingxuan.” He tucked his face into her neck where the scent of her skin and her sweat were heady and concentrated, mouth open and nostrils flared to drink it all in. Need it, need her, it’s just one taste-

Perhaps she heard his plea for mercy, because Qingxuan’s restlessness settled back into peaceful sleep. 

Slowly, he managed to calm himself into the semi-hibernation state that he preferred when Mount Tonglu was driving the rest of ghost-kind mad. Frankly, the frenzy that the mountain induced didn’t feel dissimilar to this.

Morning woke him slow and hungry, but feeling more clear-headed than the night before. And his reward for this was wonderful indeed. 

Qingxuan had shifted to her back and was smiling up at him, beaming in the weak sunlight that poured through the temple this early. Her green eyes were almost luminous with light and warmth. He felt his heart nearly beat again at the sight. “You stayed.” 

“Rule 1,” he mumbled, face down on the mat. His arm was still draped across her waist, because he couldn’t bear the idea that he wouldn’t be touching her at the moment. 

The hand closest to him shifted so that she could bury her fingers into the thick black strands of He Xuan’s hair, cupped around his cheek to scratch gently at his scalp. Her other hand cupped his elbow across her stomach, helping to keep her firmly pinned underneath him. 

He Xuan wondered if he should ask Crimson Rain what it felt like for a ghost to ascend to godhood, because it had to be close to this. If it wasn’t then ascension truly was as pointless as Crimson Rain said. 

“Ah…are we…can we be…? I wanted to know…”

“Just say it, Qingxuan.”

Shi Qingxuan whispered, as though it were a secret to be kept between them, “Can we-can we be the kind of friends who kiss, A-Xuan? Or-or would that be too much?” His stunned silence clearly made her nervous and when Qingxuan was nervous, she talked. A lot. “Because I wasn’t really sure that you’d want to, especially since I sort of um, hahaha, changed myself a little bit before the last of my powers faded and I’m worried the way it is now might be a bit weird for you since it’s not the way I was when I was the Wind Master anymore, but I would really like for us to be the kind of friends who kiss - like Lord Crimson Rain and His Highness.” 

Mind spinning wildly at this rapidly delivered statement, He Xuan managed to respond with: “Qingxuan, they’re married.” 

Guileless and so utterly sweet that it pained him, she blinked at He Xuan and said “Yes, I know! That’s what I’m telling you: we could be like them, if you wanted to.” 

If I wanted to, he repeated to himself in an incredulous daze.

He slipped away from her, sitting up to see the tight pinch of disappointment and confusion on Qingxuan’s face - it was only long enough to lean over her and drag his tongue along the seam of her mouth. Gently cupping her ribs, he could feel the hitch as she gasped and one of her hands fluttered up to clutch at his shoulder. 

He didn’t ravage her, He Xuan savored Qingxuan one little bite at a time - nipping her lower lip with just the smallest pressure and going back to her mouth with soft, greedy sucks. He moved his tongue across hers with a sensual little flick before he let himself draw away from her again. Unlike himself, a mortal did have to breathe. Anyway, the view was incredibly worth it.

Her green eyes were glassy, lashes fluttering, and her rosy red lips were shiny with spit. She touched her knuckles to her mouth, looking as dazed as he felt. “Is that…A-Xuan is that really how you do it?” 

He laughed quietly, a low rolling sound that he didn’t yet realize was making her squirm again. “How did you think I would be kissing you?” 

“W-well, I didn’t really- I wasn’t-I didn’t have anything to compare it to, you know!” she stuttered, her cheeks matching her lips now. She usually looked windswept anyway, it was simply part of her appearance, but now she was also breathless. Curious. Aroused. Completely trusting.

“Qingxuan,” he said quietly, pulling at her lower lip with the claw on his thumb. His eyes darkened at her teeth gently closing over the digit just above the knuckle, wide-eyed as she stared up at him. “You can’t show anyone else this face, Xiao Xuan, I’m too cruel and jealous.”

Chapter Text

He wasn’t entirely sure how he ended up being dragged through the city following Shi Qingxuan around - beyond the whole Qingxuan-ness of this situation being completely in-character for both of them. 

She insisted that they see all her favorite parts of the city. It could almost irritate him, if He Xuan truly allowed it to. Ostensibly, she now had the fate to which she had been born but he couldn’t help but notice that she’d managed to handle her situation much better than he had when put in a similar position. That thought was very quickly throttled by the gruesome reminder that by the time Qingxuan had ended up here, she’d literally had nothing more left to lose, apart from maybe her sanity. 

And it was simply her disposition as well, he supposed. Qingxuan wasn’t a creature able to long dwell on her own hurts. In the night with a wolf breathing against her throat, she would rather close her eyes and tell herself that the breeze was warm tonight than face looking right into its maw. 

It was who she was - to hate it would be to hate her, and He Xuan already knew he couldn’t do that. Anyway, it felt hypocritical to criticize such a flaw when that was the reason he was now able to stand right beside her in broad daylight, her fingers firmly held around his wrist. And…if he were being perfectly honest, a small part of himself wanted to protect that innocence of hers, as tattered and faded as it was by his own hand. 

“And this is the canal - it’s so lovely at sunset, don’t you think?” They looked out over the canal bridge, and her forward lean against the rail shifted Qingxuan’s hair over her shoulder, the messy waves pulled by the wind. 

“Mm.” Distantly, his senses were pulled by the many souls waiting in these deceptively slow-moving waters. Closing his eyes, He Xuan murmured “The previous emperor used to throw prisoners into this canal.” 

“How do you know that?” She looked genuinely curious. 

His response took him a moment to formulate - He Xuan was not in the habit of exerting himself in conversation these past centuries, since during most of that he wasn’t really free to speak anything true about his real self. “...the water tells me.” 

Her mouth opened in surprise, that curiosity only shining brighter in her eyes. “The water speaks to you?”

He Xuan shrugged. “Not the way you’re speaking to me right now, but within a certain range of me, I can sense its history. Its…character.” 

Sounding entertained with him, or maybe just with herself, Shi Qingxuan asked “What’s the character of an Imperial City canal?” 

“Slow. Banal. Bloated with frogs and insects and the memory of drowned bodies,” he informed her bluntly. He’d missed this too, though he’d rather let Crimson Rain double his debt than ever admit it. 

“What about your mighty South Seas, Lord Black Water? What’s the character of them?” She was teasing him, but gods help him, he did enjoy it. He enjoyed the flirtatious way her lips curved and she slanted him coy looks through her lashes, unconscious or not.

“Don’t make those eyes at me - even if we are in public, I doubt you’re ready for the consequences.” He only said it because she’d made him promise that he would be honest with what was on his mind now, even if she didn’t like it. And that was what he was honestly thinking. “The sea is…greedy. Cold. Restless. Impatient, and yet endlessly waiting. It has neither cruelty nor pity. It hungers but cannot be satisfied. Does that answer your question?” 

He turned his head to look at her again only to see her gaping at him with a mildly harassed air. “...t-those eyes!” she finally spluttered. “What do you even-”

Dropping his voice to keep from being overheard, he murmured “If you’re trying to seduce a hungry ghost, then carry on, Qingxuan.” 

“You’re-you’re just teasing me,” she protested, voice ending on a flustered little squeak.

“I am,” he agreed calmly. Then partly to watch her blush and squeak some more, and partly because he found himself in the novel position of wanting and able to give into his urges, he trapped a wild lock of her hair between two fingers and added “But you're still seducing a hungry ghost.”

“Lord Black Water is flirting with me?” she said, with an audible gulp. It was half a question, nervously eyeing him beside her with teeth that nibbled compulsively at her lower lip - a gesture that made the part of the ghost king that he was trying to keep hushed absolutely ravenous.  

He Xuan tilted his head forward in agreement, still looking at her from the corner of his eye.

“O-o-oh,” she processed quietly, with another gulp. Her cheeks had bloomed to a shade of wedding red. He Xuan found he liked that shade on Qingxuan very much. 

“Should I stop?” He did mean the question sincerely - her reactions were almost irresistibly cute to him, but if it was really making her this uncomfortable he wouldn’t hesitate to cease. Alarmingly, he realized that her hands were holding the railing in a fierce grip and when she tried to let go, her knees shook. “Qingxuan, are you going to faint?” 

“Haha, A-A-Xuan makes my legs go funny when he talks that way,” she mumbled, unable to look him in the eye. 

“You really…mm…can I show you something?”

“Is this a something that’s like…kissing?” 

He nearly smiled. As innocent as she was, Qingxuan’s own natural instincts were quite good. So that they could not be overheard by some outraged auntie passing by, he leaned in next to her ear and murmured “Would you like me to show you more than kissing?” 

This time, He Xuan was acutely aware of the way his voice made Qingxuan shudder, her eyes glazing over slightly as her cheeks once more took on the most perfect shade of wedding red as he began leading her back through the streets to his nearest array. He was simultaneously gratified and on the edge of his sanity when this reaction was combined with the eagerness of her nod. “E-en!” Her hand delicately curled over his forearm. “Ahaha- aaa- this Xiao Xuan is- what I mean is- He Xuan…no, this He-lang shouldn’t hesitate to-to…um…do as he likes. Um…his Xiao Xuan would like for He-lang to do what he pleases. You know?” 

He-lang. A burning throbbed through his dead veins like poison, and he turned his head sharply to look at her, now almost dragging her along with him. She gazed back up at him with her blazing cheeks, already looking so thoroughly bullied and teary-eyed that people were giving them scandalized looks in the street as they rushed past. Though he was making his best effort not to scare her, his voice emerged as a growl: “This He-lang will take Xiao Xuan at her word.” 

They turned into the correct alley at last and He Xuan hauled her up with a lift beneath the knees, ignoring her startled little yelp to get them through the distance-shortening array. 

—

The wind greeted them immediately, blinding Qingxuan with locks of her own hair, which she dragged impatiently from her eyes and mouth, amazed at the view of the sun setting into the trees around them. He Xuan was standing with her in the middle of a large lake, willows bending toward them on the bank behind him and a beautiful open pavilion in front of them. “Oh, it’s so pretty! Where are we now, A-Xuan?” 

A moment of hesitation and Qingxuan did not think she imagined the tension in his shoulders, the line of his jaw. “This is my domain. We are on Black Water Isle.” 

Ah. Thus, the tension. 

“It looks - haha - you’ve changed some things,” she said, a bit stupidly. It really did look like a completely different place. A blazing sunset the color of persimmon was sinking down into the woods that ringed the entirety of the distant shoreline that seemed to completely surround them. Wind rushed across the lake like a lover’s caress, making ripples shift throughout the smooth glass waters.

If he wanted to, Shi Qingxuan had no doubt that He Xuan could have hidden that tenseness, that anxiety. He chose not to, which meant he was choosing to let her see that he was afraid of her reaction. Her arms tightened around his shoulders, feeling oldly protective. 

“...I wanted something different,” he finally said, after a moment’s silence. 

Emboldened, she kissed He Xuan’s cheek. “It’s lovely. I bet you can see all around the lake from the inside.”

“Mm.”

Although fully prepared to be set down and led into the pavilion, He Xuan would not let her go, carrying her up the stairs with ease. Qingxuan resisted the urge to tease him again - she’d thought she knew what she was doing when she flirted with him back in the Imperial City, attempting to receive another of those heart-stopping kisses. 

When he’d turned it around on her, bluntly accusing her of seduction, she’d meanly assumed that he was mocking her. When she’d finally realized that he was sincerely and gracelessly flirting back with her, burning her with his intense eyes and purring in her ear, both of Qingxuan’s knees had immediately turned into soft tofu. It was so embarrassing. 

The pavilion was not large so she was not surprised that it opened directly into a living space. She was a little surprised when he took her directly to the daybed. A little, but not a lot.

“Xiao Xuan should tell me if she doesn’t like it,” he murmured, bending to kiss the underside of her jaw. Qingxuan trembled, barely focusing on his words, the tone of his voice rolling through her body like high tide, leaving her restless and dissatisfied. His mouth kept moving, speaking, but also travelling around to her collarbone, her shoulder- “If she gets scared. If she wants to stop.”

Every time she saw those long canines flash, her pulse throbbed hard in her wrists, her ears, in the veins of her neck. Was this how prey animals usually felt? This strange, intrusive call inside? Open your mouth, show me your tongue, bite down, taste and savor my flesh. Distantly, she heard her own weak, breathy voice: “Don’t stop.” 

“Take this off,” he commanded, pulling at her robes. 

Her senses were unfocused, hazey, and she stumbled through obeying almost as though in a trance or under a spell. Qingxuan was already dropping them to the floor before she realized what she’d done and then immediately tried to cover herself again with her hands. “Ah-”

“Don’t,” he said, and captured her wrists one-handed, forcing her arms above her head. As always, his stare was too intense. She felt a cool, heavy hand at her hip, squeezing at her body with a dark greed in every finger. “You didn’t look like this as a mortal? You made yourself this way?”

Ah, yes she supposed they should talk about that. “Hahaha, yeah, I sort of panicked at the end? At the idea of staying in the male form forever? Probably should have left it alone, I didn’t do a very good job.”

Oh she really did wish he wouldn’t stare that way! “All the correct parts are in the correct places, what else were you hoping for?”

“My body looks like it got stuck at the halfway point,” she said with a pout, grumbling like a child. “My figure used to be the envy of the heavens and now my breasts look like baozi!” 

She wanted to take it back as soon as she said it, even more when He Xuan made a sound of agreement. The embarrassment of her vanity burned her even more than her helplessness and lack of modesty. 

“Makes me want to bite them,” he rumbled, using his fangs to abuse the shell of her ear instead. A shudder traveled through her body and she’d never had more sympathy for a fish wriggling on a fisherman’s hook. The hand at her hip stroked boldly up, up the ladder of her ribs to squeeze hungrily at a breast. Qingxuan’s mouth opened in a silent, shocked cry. “ Tease them, until the poor things go raw from my attention. I want to sink my teeth in and gorge myself on you, Xiao Xuan.” 

Her mouth was so dry, her throat clicked as she repeated “...He-lang should do as he pleases.” 

He buried a groan in her hair and kneaded gently at her flesh, flicking a claw across her nipple to elicit a whine. He finally released Qingxuan’s wrists for the more tempting ability to be able to fondle her with both hands and ducked his head, fangs flashing-

Despite literally watching it happen in front of her, she was still shocked to feel the sensation of his tongue, lashing at her nipple like a whip, gasping sharply at the hard scrape of his teeth. “Don’t-don’t suck them!” she protested in a whine, “It feels so dirty…” 

His tongue licked and swirled and flicked, sucking with an almost desperate hunger. At some point, his hand cupped the other breast to scrape and pinch and knead at that as well, the sensation flaring along her nerve ending with pleasure so sharp it was nearly painful. He Xuan suckled, the hard blunt front of his fangs flush to her skin and then moaned with her nipple in his mouth, and that felt so beyond ‘dirty’ that there was nothing but white noise left inside her head. Even the brief pause as he swiftly switched to the right breast wasn’t enough to clear the cotton inside her brain. Somewhere, she heard someone crying out with a constant low intensity. 

Oh. That’s me, I think.

“Aaaah-” A dull, pleasurable jolt below the waist managed to pull her from her dazed fog and Qingxuan realized that at some point, her hands had become buried in the long black strands of his hair, hopelessly tangling it as she held his eager, greedy mouth against her own body. He Xuan had pushed his knee between her thighs to press against the dark curls below her belly button, nudging with a gentle but deliberate press. 

He blinked lazily, pupils fully rounded out until his eyes were a shimmering black gazing up at her. He drew his mouth back with visible reluctance, giving a last cruel scrape of his teeth that sent a delicious pain straight down her spine. 

Wait, you’re wearing clothes - why are you the only one who gets to touch???

“Still wearing clothes,” was what she actually slurred out. With clumsy fingers, she tugged at the collar of his robes impatiently. 

He echoed this impatience with his own - flicking them away with a pulse of spiritual power before immediately lunging back to her with enough urgency to have Qingxuan flat on the daybed. That definitely was not what she’d actually meant-

“He-lang,” she squeaked, so shocked she wasn’t able to scold him any further beyond that. 

He Xuan was putting his mouth-was using mouth to-

Instinctively, she covered her face with her hands and attempted to shut her legs closed, and he growled “ Keep them open, Qingxuan ,” and his eyes were still dilated black and his large hands kept her thighs pushed apart- 

“Wait-wait-” she pleaded. “I-ahaha-I don’t know if it’s-if I- made…myself…right? I don’t know-” 

A flicker passed over his expression, almost the opposite of a shadow as for a moment, his pupils contracted and the yellow of his irises briefly glowed brighter for that one split second. “Am I hurting you?”

“NO!” she said, and then laughed nervously at her own volume. “No, it’s not that, I just-”

“Then why am I stopping?” he demanded. She forced the long muscles in her thighs to relax, to open. 

“O-okay, yea-yes,” she whimpered and almost immediately had to clutch at the cushions as his tongue laved up and down. She jerked and twitched and cried for his mercy, overwhelmed by his ruthless need to keep taking her apart with his lips and tongue. 

And while she didn’t understand why it did seem to be a need , for him. He sucked bruises into her inner thighs with desperate, inexplicable urgency and pulled her hips up to his mouth, like Qingxuan’s body was both the cup and the wine for him to drink. 

If He Xuan’s deep moaning against her breast was mind-numbing, his sounds of satisfaction here turned her brain into a useless melted jelly, pulsing up from her lower belly until the room blurred around her and all awareness except the places he touched faded away - the room, the daybed beneath her, everything that was not He Xuan’s mouth and hands on her body were meaningless. 

Qingxuan’s hips twisted without her conscious control, her body so shocked by the waves of pleasure crashing through her nervous system that she didn’t know how to process any single sensation before another was immediately flooding through her skin. 

His tongue was-was not the correct length and shape to be human and he did something with it inside her body that caused a string of pitiful sounds to emerge from her throat at a constant, keening pitch, her knees trembling and her hips moving with helpless instinctive urgency. 

Fucking. You were fucking yourself on my tongue, and she would never forget the way He Xuan spoke, as though each of the words were delicious. 

It was an insane combination of feelings and left her frantic and drifting. 

“We need to stop, we need to stop,” she choked out, panicked and euphoric and completely unaware that she had locked her legs around him in a death grip, heels digging into his back, and was holding He Xuan’s mouth to her slick cunt with hands that shook from the force. “Something’s-you’re-I’m going to break, He-lang, you’re going to break me-!” 

Contradictorily, his hands gripped her thighs harder and He Xuan’s head jerked back and forth, making a ravenous, eager sound from deep in his chest. Qingxuan’s abdominals tensed and then spasmed until she ached and her voice built upon itself until it became a wild howl.

It did break her, beautifully, perfectly, separating her into a blur of ecstatic sensation that left her ears ringing and her fingertips buzzing and numb. With hands that had become more gentle, He Xuan eased her legs back down to the daybed. She did not dare think about what he was wiping from his lips and licking from his fingers.