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Chapter Text

Taking Liu Xiao down to component parts is generally slow, steady, dangerous. Vein’s voice low and delighted, Liu Xiao’s hands trembling and his knees bare on the pale carpet of Vein’s living room: the strangled sound of his breaths, microexpressions flickering across his face, pupils blown dark and wide. There’s a negotiation and a war of attrition that comes with the game of Liu Xiao’s attempts to keep his composure. Vein wipes it out of him, stepping carefully in the process of prying apart each piece of Liu Xiao’s mask.

It’s not always what sex with Liu Xiao looks like. 

Tonight, though, whispering something cruel at the shell of his ear and letting his breath skate over Liu Xiao’s skin, moving until Liu Xiao’s breaths come out as open-mouthed pants and his voice cracks, there’s the satisfaction that comes with— Liu Xiao looks like his body betrays him.

It’s the fact of the edge of pain-pleasure taken out of him, the targeted words in Vein’s level and indulgent tone, the way his body shakes with the effort of trying to keep still in his perfect posture. 

Vein drags a fingernail down his neck, absently scraping over the imprint of his own teeth coloring a bruise on Liu Xiao’s collarbone. Liu Xiao shudders. Vein makes a noise of amusement, twists his wrist with his hand moving on Liu Xiao’s leaking cock; Liu Xiao’s next exhalation comes out something not quite a moan but a synonym to it.

He takes the hand with a fingernail scraping across his neck to hold his throat, not pressing but a weight on him that holds against the delicate muscles, tangible and self-assured. 

Liu Xiao’s eyes are skittish, half-gone and too-present, but his gaze holds locked on Vein— it’s like the ever-present calculations have fallen out of place in him, emotion clear on his face like it rarely is. The muscles of his legs tense and flex, on-edge.

Vein considers. He smiles, lets his fingers press at the sides of Liu Xiao’s throat just enough for the illusion of restriction of air, just enough to provoke a sound that Liu Xiao doesn’t want to make. When Liu Xiao comes, it’s with a hand laid across his throat, the bite of risk to it and a horrible noise in his mouth, and Vein murmurs a low, “Done already?” into his ear. He’s pinned across him: trapping a butterfly’s wings into place for a study, the same clinical curiosity. Liu Xiao doesn’t respond in words, more a too-open expression.

He allows him a moment to recover, to let his breathing even out slightly, and then—deliberate, hands firm and purposeful—lets his smile go sharper at the corners before he continues.

;

By the time Vein has finished, Liu Xiao looks young and fragile on the ground; he’s gone boneless, naked and sprawled out on the carpet. 

There’s always the shreds of something like childish resentment left over that Vein can do this to him, set him trembling and with his face made odd, wetness not-quite receded yet from his eyes, but Vein sits on the ground next to him and waits for him to come back to himself enough to speak. It’s a routine: the careful reconstruction of whatever maze of filters lives in his brain, repairing itself where Vein has taken it apart. It’s fascinating to watch in progress, Liu Xiao hypersensitive and his voice inevitably coming out strained, drawing control back over each muscle group step-by-step.

When Liu Xiao speaks, it comes out hoarse, staring down the way Vein’s gone cross-legged in still-neat apparel next to him. His head is collapsed against the couch, neck bared, hair a dark mess on the seat as he stares up at the ceiling. “Isn’t it about time for you to start moving?” It’s slow, like he’s controlling each word to make sure it comes out right, as if he’d rehearsed the question in his head before he’d let it escape.

There are planned beats to how Vein treats Liu Xiao in the aftermath, and it makes him glare every time he identifies them. Vein offers an easy shrug, asks with a smile, “Impatient, aren’t we?”

Liu Xiao’s mouth is a thin and flat line. It’s cute. Vein pats his hand, vaguely condescending as Liu Xiao tries to snatch it away, then rises in a seamless motion.

He runs through logistics in his head: his hand is still sticky, so— he’ll wash it first, then fetch a cloth for Liu Xiao. The shower can wait till Liu Xiao can stand. 

There’s a sports drink in his refrigerator that will replenish any fluids lost, sweet and citrusy. The snacks in the kitchen pantry will suffice for now if either of them needs to eat, then take-out for dinner. He’ll have to trap Liu Xiao at his apartment until the the next morning at least; he leaves his own schedule free on nights he intends on playing this game and Liu Xiao tends to be cautious with who sees him like this, so they shouldn’t be disturbed.

Vein hums under his breath as he moves out of the room. Organizes his tasks in order in his head.

;

When he comes back to the living room, it’s with a cold sports drink in one hand and a wet cloth in another, still humming and satisfied. He can hear a noise from the hallway, but: he assumes Liu Xiao is attempting to move, and he assumes it’s not going well. 

He steps in the doorframe of the living room.

Pauses. His voice cuts out.

;

Xia Fei looks vaguely like he’s been shot. His headphones are around his neck, at rest, and there’s a stack of notebooks and papers in his hands. He’s dressed in a blue-striped-yellow jacket, his bag half-off his shoulders as if he’d meant to let it drop off in Vein’s living room out of habit. His hair is wind-tousled, looks touchable. His eyes move back and forth between Vein in the doorframe and Liu Xiao, naked on the ground.

Liu Xiao’s face has gone completely blank, defenses reassembled by quick instinct, and there’s something prey-animal-sharp in the way he looks at Xia Fei. He’s wholly bare, skin shining with sweat, come still drying across his thighs and bite marks bruised in neat ovals across his collarbones.

This wasn’t, Vein thinks distantly and with something like dread, supposed to happen. He waits a beat and then says, smooth as he steps into the room, “Felix. I didn’t expect you tonight.”

Xia Fei says, toneless, “What.” Then, stare still moving between them, “I— What?”

“Does anything in particular bring you here?” acting natural, cocking his head to the side inquisitively.

As if in shock: “I— I normally drop by whenever?”

Liu Xiao’s voice rasps when he interrupts, voice still slow and careful, “Do you normally hand over keys to your— subordinates. And allow them to stop by unannounced to your apartment. Vein?” There’s a flash of something behind his eyes after he says it, as if he didn’t mean to. As if the brief pauses burn him. 

There’s the sense that there are spinning gears behind his hastily-reconstructed mask, something cornered and dangerous spitting out poison.

It’s not that either of them doesn’t know what he does with the other, but: Vein keeps details locked behind a closed door. Xia Fei doesn’t want to know more than he already does, regardless of what Vein would tell him, and offering information to Liu Xiao would be the exposure of something akin to vulnerability.

They’re different for him, even in the aftermaths: Xia Fei yields for him like he’d been made to, ends up in his bed content and soft, warm with affection and clingy in the afterglow; Liu Xiao takes everything Vein does to him as a lapse in judgement and his own body turning traitor, tends to go to ground to lick his wounds before re-emerging with a plan for petty vindication. He wants different things from them; it’s alien to have them in the same room, Liu Xiao cracked open and still unable to stop shaking, gone completely cold, and Xia Fei’s face horrified.

Another beat. Before Xia Fei can say the impulsive thing apparent on his tongue, Vein says, “Occasionally.”

“Professional,” says Liu Xiao, not exactly unreadable but trying for it. He keeps a hand on the floor for leverage as he tries to stand, pretending at the move being casual, muscles trembling with the effort. Partway through the motion, his legs buckle underneath him like an unsteady foal’s. He lets himself stay on the ground as if pretending that were his plan in the first place, face odd and empty.

Vein winces internally, keeps his expression clear of it.

If they had been alone, he would’ve laughed in a low and easy note, settled himself back down next to Liu Xiao with a patronizing comment. As is, he sticks to ignoring the action, crossing the room to bend and place the plastic bottle on the ground next to Liu Xiao with a simple, faux-innocent, “Mm. I’m not sure what you’re implying; I’m very good at maintaining professional relationships with my employees. And business partners.”

Liu Xiao doesn’t touch the bottle, but there’s a tendril of something looser that curls into the tense set of his shoulders, the way he’s straightened himself up from where he’d been collapsed earlier. “Is that— is that what you’d call all of this?” he asks, attempting to feign amusement, looking like he hates the stumble in his voice.

“Am I going fucking insane,” Xia Fei interrupts, this time before Vein can respond, mildly hysterical. Then, abrupt, “And I really didn’t want to know what Xavier’s dick looks like. By the way.”

Liu Xiao’s smile is flat when he answers, made of sharp angles. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“Now, now,” Vein says on autopilot, considering if it would serve to reach out to Xia Fei to flick his forehead with steady confidence, “play nice.”

The incredulous looks they offer him are semi-identical: Xia Fei’s looks betrayed, disbelieving, Liu Xiao’s looks half-absent and as though he’s asking if Vein’s stupid. There’s something calculating underneath Liu Xiao’s skin, clockwork traps, and the emotion has disappeared-but-wrong into himself.

“Laoban,” Xia Fei says, and then leaves the sentence there.

Vein asssesses: Xia Fei has the straps of his bags nestled at the crook of his elbows, unmoving, keeps looking around the room with his notes frozen in his hands. There’s lack of comprehension, upset, in the way he looks at Vein; he’s unhappy in this situation, and he half-flinches every time his gaze passes over Liu Xiao.

His classes finished less than hour ago, so he probably left his university campus directly when they ended, intending to spend the evening with Vein and be escorted to the photoshoot he has later tonight by him.

 Vein would likely have rescheduled with Liu Xiao if he’d expected Xia Fei. This had been a business meeting turned into something else, partly planned and partly not, like it often is between them. It would’ve stayed mostly professional, tension taut and deliberate between them. By the time Xia Fei had arrived, Liu Xiao would’ve been gone and Vein would’ve been buried in his own tasks, would’ve blinked lazily at Xia Fei placing his things across the room and returned to assessing a stack of paperwork, almost domestic. It would’ve been a nice evening.

Regardless: Liu Xiao is here now.

It’s not an option to have Liu Xiao leave tonight. 

Liu Xia would go without hesitation, but the wrong press on the right, carefully-placed crack would lead to him fractured in a way Vein hadn’t been intending: ugly, hollowed-out, half-destroyed. Vein wants to keep him too-present inside his body, to take him down to base parts and strip off the control, leave him helpless until he’s picked himself back off the ground— not obliteration, nor the cold and terrified violence of a prey animal about to lash out visible on on his face.

There’s still a damp cloth in Vein’s hands, and Liu Xiao doesn’t touch the sports drink, breathes fast and quick like he’s not quite here, not quite processing. The straps of Xia Fei’s bag fall another inch down his arms.

Vein allows it a moment, and then says, low, with regret, “Felix.” Xia Fei, torn away from studying the marks on Liu Xiao’s chest, looks at him. “You shouldn’t be here right now.”

He freezes for a heartbeat, something open and wounded on his face. Says, “Right,” and turns where he’s standing, shrugging his bag’s straps up his shoulders as he goes. His notes are still in his hands, and his headphones still around his neck.

;

Any damage control with Xia Fei will have to wait for morning, when Liu Xiao is absent, which is how Vein ends up running the cloth over Liu Xiao’s thighs while Liu Xiao looks blankly back at him. There’s something indecipherable running behind his eyes. He hasn’t stopped trembling.

There’s a logical endpoint to reach— Vein had constructed his own shields with as much care and intricacy as Liu Xiao had, and he’d destroy anyone who stumbled in on them dissembled on the ground. It would be violent, vicious and swift, scorched earth. Liu Xiao, on the other hand, is a venomous spider who spins webs and schemes like he can’t stop himself from it. Liu Xiao is a cornered thing in an alleyway with one way out visible.

The only problem is that Xia Fei isn’t expendable.

“That was unfortunate,” Vein says, as if casual. When Liu Xiao doesn’t respond, he allows the hint of a threat to slip into his voice and says, elegant and dangerous, “Of course, should anything else unfortunate happen to Felix after this, I’ll have my suspicions for who’s responsible.”

Liu Xiao pauses, as if the gears in his head are grinding to a halt. 

Vein keeps scrubbing at a spot over his skin, allows him the dignity of not looking too closely. Liu Xiao says, with the steady slowness that means he’s played the words over in his head multiple times to avoid tripping over them, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Of course not,” smiling mildly. Then, he takes the plastic bottle almost at room temperature next to them, uncaps it in a smooth twist and offers it to Liu Xiao.

;

He calls Xia Fei the next day, Liu Xiao still unconscious in his bed. Xia Fei picks up just long enough to give an excuse for why he can’t talk, then hangs up.

Chapter Text

It’s routine, at this point: wake up, pay more attention to his appearance than usual, struggle through a day of classes—maybe disappear for a photoshoot for half the day—and if Vein is in Bridon, drop by his apartment.

No specific activity—it’s usually a fuck-around-and-find-out kind of situation. More often than not Vein takes him apart with a strangely fond look edging his delight in drawing every sound he can manage to get out of Xia Fei. Sometimes he just crashes on the couch and complains loudly about anything and everything before he passes out, waking up with a blanket snug around his shoulders and a pillow tucked under his neck.

Which is why this —this being Liu Xiao, looking oddly half-broken, fully-bare on Vein’s living room floor—throws him for such a loop and the only thing he can do is stare.

The quiet, tinny music coming from his headphones, resting around his neck, fades away. He hadn’t paused his music in his rush to get upstairs quickly enough.

Fact: what Xia Fei and Vein have between them, whatever it is, is not by any means professional. It’s not as if Xia Fei doesn’t know the position he holds: a mere part-timer, struggling for money, struggling through college, an all-round wreck, in general, versus Vein, his superior. Not just his immediate superior, but so much more weighted than that.

Fact: What keeps them going the way they do is Vein’s inexplicable fondness for him, Xia Fei’s helplessness when faced with Vein.

And another fact: it is no secret that Vein and Liu Xiao have been. Sleeping together (he doesn’t even think this is the right word for it anymore), and that Vein keeps those aspects of his life far apart from each other. Prefers it that way. Xia Fei does, too; he would rather not know, but.

He hadn’t made his way up the stairs, forgoing the elevator in favor of speed, keyed open the door, and stepped in through with the same eager carelessness as he has always allowed himself to have around Vein to be met with this. His bag, meant to be tossed on the floor with little afterthought, slips from his shoulders and hangs at his elbows.

His fingers threaten to become numb enough that his notebooks and papers fall, and Vein, standing in the doorframe of the kitchen, stares at him with something Xia Fei had not thought he’d see on Vein’s face. His eyes cut to Liu Xiao. Naked and trembling with a terrifyingly blank expression that almost certainly spells murder.

Xia Fei doesn’t doubt he would. His gaze skitters back to Vein without quite registering Liu Xiao’s general state, lips parting. The stack in his hands slip a bit more. A beat, and Vein smooths out the widened eyes and tense posture and says, “Felix, I didn’t expect you tonight,” as he steps further into the living room. In his hands are one of the sports drinks Xia Fei likes and Vein stocks without much thought— what the fuck? —and a damp cloth.

“What.” It comes out lacking anything, what is he supposed to say, and he looks at Liu Xiao, shaking and covered with sweat on the floor with detached rage flickering behind his eyes and come drying on his thighs, unmade in a way Xia Fei could never have dreamed of. “I—what?”

“Does anything in particular bring you here?” Vein tilts his head to a side. Natural. Smooth. As if nothing’s out of place, as if this is normal, which—

“I—I normally drop by whenever?” he says, something adjacent to hysteria rising in his throat.

He’s about to ask, laoban, what—? when Liu Xiao cuts in, tone tempered and purposefully slow, “do you normally hand over your keys to your—subordinates.” His voice catches and his brow twists as if infuriated by this. It’s unlike any sound Xia Fei has ever heard him make before. “And allow them to stop by unannounced to your apartment. Vein?”

Xia Fei suspects his face is doing something involuntarily horrified. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to feel. He hasn’t even opened his mouth to say, what does that make you, when Vein beats him to it. “Occasionally.” Just like that. Like he’d known Xia Fei would say something, and of course he did.

“Professional,” Liu Xiao says. It falls short of flat or derisive. He looks like a shattered mirror of who he presents himself to be. If Xia Fei tries to touch, his hands will come away bloodied and torn.

He watches, then, thinking near-hysterically, what the fuck , what the fuck happened, why is he like this, as Liu Xiao braces a hand on the floor and rises to his feet—or a close approximation of an attempt. It’s as if his body’s listening to someone else, muscles shaking and giving out on him the moment before he puts his full weight on them.

He doesn’t move again. His expression doesn’t change. Neither does Vein’s.

Vein moves across the room and Xia Fei wonders: what the hell is happening here? Clearly, if Liu Xiao looks like that. It can’t have been good. Liu Xiao doesn’t look okay, but.

Vein places the drink on the floor beside Liu Xiao. Casual as ever, “mm. I’m not sure what you’re implying; I’m very good at maintaining professional relationships with my employees. And business partners.”

But. There is some familiarity to the way Liu Xiao returns, “is that—is that what you’d call this,” as wrong as it sounds that his voice cracks, and he has to recalibrate, ignoring the bottle entirely. Okay, so—

“Am I going fucking insane,” Xia Fei bursts out, and this time he does sound hysterical to his own ears. Vein blinks. He doesn’t quite mean to say it, but: “And I really didn’t want to know what Xavier’s dick looks like. By the way.”

Liu Xiao smiles up at him, a sharp thing he’d call dangerously calm if not for the broken mirror of a person wearing it. “I was thinking the same thing.” His breaths are not quite regular.

“Now, now,” Vein cuts in, like mediating between two angry kittens, “play nice.”

Xia Fei stares at him. Why —how—?

“Laoban,” he starts. Doesn’t know what else to continue on with. None of the questions in his head come out as fully-formed words. He can’t quite look at Vein, now. He wants the earth to swallow him up whole at the physical reminder of what Vein had been doing just minutes before, sitting in a horrible attempt at perfectly serene.

There are perfect circles of teeth marks across Liu Xiao’s collarbones, one over his jugular. Xia Fei recognizes those sharp imprints; he sees those reflected back at him when he wakes often enough. He knows exactly how hard Vein bites. Or is it different, with Liu Xiao. Is it—?

“Felix.” His gaze snaps back to Vein, something like humiliation coloring his ears. “You shouldn’t be here right now.”

The stack very nearly fall out of his hands.

“Right,” is all he can manage, sharp hurt stabbing his stomach.  Something in Vein’s expression shifts, minute, but Xia Fei doesn’t stick around to watch what it becomes; he pivots on his heels and reaches with a shaking, yet still-numb, hand to yank the door open, pushing through the opening with no grace.

Vein doesn’t call after him, as Xia Fei half-expects, more than hopes, he would.

:::

He’s not sure how far he’s walked before he realizes he’s completely missed the bus he meant to take back to his dorm. At that point, he just commits to walking all the way back.

Normally, Vein drives him. That had been the plan today. Bother Vein for a bit before his photoshoot tonight, to which he’d figured Vein would drive him to, content and warm. Before. Well.

He presses the notebook and papers in his arms to his chest and walks faster, roughly maneuvering his headphones back into place over his ears with one arm. Aggressively turns up the volume and doesn’t think about his breaths coming faster, not just a result of exertion.

Vein and his casual attitude. Liu Xiao unmade and bare on the floor, a shell of his usual self. Was that—was that normal for them?

He had almost asked if Liu Xiao was okay, but what the hell.

When it’s Xia Fei, the aftermath is always so different. Vein laughs, doesn’t mind Xia Fei clinging to him, snuggling into his side. Sneaking kisses. Doesn’t mind him falling asleep and waking up the next morning and going to classes from there.

With Liu Xiao, it looked like something you couldn’t pay Xia Fei to touch.

The sky continues to darken overhead with the onset of night, and he weighs the pros and cons of grabbing a taxi from here to the dorm, and then again to the photoshoot later. He hasn’t gotten paid this month yet. The numbers won’t quite form in his mind.

Felix, you shouldn’t be here right now. It’s not a rejection. It’s not. It couldn’t be, because Vein is not that cruel, but more than that, he and Xia Fei were never—

He raises a hand and hails a cab. It’s  a long ride in the stream of traffic.

::

Xia Fei finds it a bit soul-crushing to realize that avoiding Vein is easier than he’d thought it’d be.

It’s not entirely intentional: he—or. Maybe it is intentional. There’s radio silence from Vein all night, and then a call as Xia Fei is leaving his first class the next day. He watches it ring for a long minute, students bypassing him and streaming out through the doors. Ponders if he should.

“Felix,” Vein says when he takes the leap and answers, the same as ever. Xia Fei’s eyes slip shut.

“Sorry, laoban, I’m in class,” he responds, hoping his tone is even, as if he doesn’t text Vein joyfully during lectures. “I’ll talk to you later if it’s something important.”

He hangs up, and Vein doesn’t call back as the day wears on. He goes on his lunch break, picks halfheartedly at his food, thinking of all the times Vein would tell him he shouldn’t eat so many snacks.

He wishes he had a snack on hand right now. Wishes he could talk to Vein and be scolded, as always.

::

Regardless, considering Vein is in Bridon, Xia Fei can’t avoid him forever, exactly. When Vein makes up his mind, he sticks to it—this, he knew, and rediscovers very quickly via Vein’s constant texts.

They’re not frequent enough to properly annoy Xia Fei (if such a thing could happen) but rather spaced out over the day with hours of time in between. When his classes start and end for the day, asking how he is, if he wants to meet up soon, in between business-related texts that Xia Fei’s manager can technically handle. (They do not usually bother communicating much through his manager.)

He answers the work-related questions and reminders, and ignores the rest. Turns off his phone and attacks an assignment with renewed vigor when Vein suggests Xia Fei come over.

He thinks of Liu Xiao, of his bare, trembling form and the intent of murder shining from eyes not protected by glass lenses. Of Vein and his offhanded casualness, the sports drink so carelessly and easily offered—the not-quite-banter they’d exchanged. Something like rage simmers in his lungs.

The misery and anger persist well into the next few days, and it’s only by a small miracle that Vein chooses to not attend the only other photoshoot he’s scheduled for the week. The other night, he’d found that the client had been eager to meet Vein. He’d lied through his teeth about Vein’s other work obligations. Some work obligations.

This one isn’t any easier, somehow. His phone sits in the break room with a manager, a single unread message from Vein asking for an update on a document. Nothing else, as if he’s finally letting Xia Fei have his space. (Shouldn’t he be prodding more?)

“Felix, turn this way,” the photographer calls. The angle sears the lights into his eyes, but he smiles his picture-perfect model smile, a touch of otherworldly coldness seeping into it as intended, and does as is told.

::

A little under a week after the inciting incident, Xia Fei is at the library and cursing whoever let him think that he’d do fine studying applied physics (himself, and he is doing well). He’s so focused that when he looks up from his books an hour or so later, he almost drops his calculator.

Sitting at the table right in front of Xia Fei’s own lone table completely covered with papers and books, is Liu Xiao, with a few people. Probably classmates. The aborted squeak-gasp that slips out of him catches Liu Xiao’s attention, of course—or perhaps he was already paying attention, waiting for Xia Fei to notice—and he looks up, glass smile smooth and polished.

It looks slightly skewed in the way his eyes still flash with something he would not normally let Xia Fei see. He tilts his head, and his glasses reflect light, hides his eyes. Dangerous.

It’s not even trepidation that hits Xia Fei; sure, it’s there, he knows without a doubt that Liu Xiao is more dangerous than he has assessed him to be initially, but he’s mostly—pissed off. There’s regret, somewhere, but he’s never liked Liu Xiao, never felt the need to give him anything he doesn’t deserve.

Scowling, he gathers his things up and makes to get up, shoving everything into his bag. Liu Xiao watches him the entire time even as he inserts comments to the hushed discussion his classmates are having, scribbling across their notebooks; the smile tugging at his mouth not-quite-right.

Xia Fei thinks of the text messages from Vein he hadn’t replied to, and he clenches his jaw. None of this is fair.

(If Liu Xiao hadn’t wanted anyone to walk in, he damn well shouldn’t have been at Vein’s apartment.)

He hoists his bag onto his shoulder, picks up his laptop case, and throws Liu Xiao a baleful look as he makes to pass by their table, but then Liu Xiao says, “Felix, nice to see you here,” in his perfect English.

Xia Fei pauses. Reminds himself that as upset as he is, Vein is right, and he should hold his tongue. As easy as Liu Xiao makes it to want to tell him exactly where he can shove it, it wouldn’t end well. He knows that much. He wishes he didn’t.

Flat, he looks down at Liu Xiao, and says, “is it,” noting the bare column of his throat. Free of even a hint that Vein’s sharp teeth had marked him down; the skin just as smooth and blemished as ever. It’s disorienting to see his skin all covered up.

(Not that Xia Fei’s been thinking of his naked form voluntarily. He sucks in a breath. Calm. Calm. )

Liu Xiao’s friends glance their way. “Studying for midterms?” is what Liu Xiao returns with. Xia Fei hums, spine stiff. “You’re studious; it isn’t for a few weeks yet.” He gestures to the table at large. “I’m finishing up a group project. Unfortunately, my group mates here aren’t very good at getting things done ahead of time.”

“Some of us have jobs to work, you ass,” one girl calls out from the end of the table, not looking up from her scribbling. There’s no heat to it. “Forgive us for having multiple things to work on.”

“Not that nepo-baby rich kids like you would understand,” another says to Liu Xiao, who simply laughs.

“Right,” Xia Fei says, pursing his lips. He wonders if any of these people have any idea of what the rumors say about the Quede Games, and their younger heir. “Cool. So I’ll just—”

“I haven’t seen you in a bit,” Liu Xiao continues. He’s speaking the same as ever, hat and glasses in place, but the way he looks at Xia Fei—it’s unfamiliar in the broad strokes. It’s more predatory than anything he’s offered to Xia Fei. “Not upset with me, I hope? We still have matters to discuss.”

“It can wait,” Xia Fei counters. “Seriously, I’m leaving now, I’m already going to be late.”

Liu Xiao’s smile sharpens at all the wrong angles. Smooth, flawless, with no shift in tone or volume, he switches to Mandarin: “I expect you’ll be discrete about your laoban’s…affairs, Xia Fei. For his sake.”

Liu Xiao using his birth name is nothing like the butterflies it had once given him when Vein used it. He stiffens, and forces out around the hundred other things he wants to say, “of course, I wouldn’t inconvenience laoban that way,” the Mandarin syllables as familiar on his tongue as it is foreign.

He'd say more, but he can see under the veil: if anyone else is privy to what happened that day, Liu Xiao is promising more than just ruin and destruction. And Xia Fei will be the first in the line of fire.

“Good,” Liu Xiao says, charming as ever. “Let’s meet up soon to discuss what you have for me, then.”

“Text me with the information, then,” Xia Fei bites out, and turns away to leave, knuckles white on his laptop case. He will never understand what makes someone like Liu Xiao tick.

As he leaves, he hears one girl whisper, “woah, Xavier, was that an ex of yours? He looked pissed. ”

Liu Xiao simply chuckles and says no, just a business acquaintance, and Xia Fei considers feeding him false information the next time they meet as an alternative to the violence and blood running through his head.

He'd do it, too, if he thought he could get away with it.

::

What Xia Fei wasn’t expecting was to receive a message from Liu Xiao, enclosing a time and place to meet up, a few days later. He stares at the short, impersonal text, debating whether it’s worth it to show up or not; it’s the reminder that he’s getting paid for what he does for Liu Xiao that has him giving in and sending back an affirmative.

He does show up fifteen minutes late to spite him, though.

Liu Xiao doesn’t mention this; he simply smiles the same as ever as Xia Fei slides into the seat beside him in his car. It’s customary for them to meet up this way, a short drive through the streets of Bridon as they talk. It’s akin to a spider entrapping prey in its web—just the two of them, Liu Xiao at the steering wheel. If Xia Fei wanted to get out, he’d have to risk serious injury.

“Anything new?” is what Liu Xiao asks, right off the bat. He makes no mention of the library.

“No,” he answers, and waits for Liu Xiao to continue. If he’d felt bad about spying on Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi before—he does genuinely like them, he likes them a lot, especially Xiaoshi—he feels worse about it now. His dislike of Liu Xiao does not help matters in the slightest.

“I see. That’s disappointing.”

Xia Fei bites his tongue to stop himself from saying anything stupid. Calm. Meaningless anger will do him no good here. Even then, it slips out, “I’ve been occupied with other things this week. Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.” He doesn’t look at Liu Xiao, staring out the windshield. Only throwing side glances.

“Don’t stress yourself,” Liu Xiao returns. Xia Fei purses his lips. It’s exactly as condescending as Liu Xiao intends it to be. Xia Fei still feels as if he’s running his finger feather-light along the edge of a razor blade, at the risk of harm if he isn’t careful.

He reminds himself of Vein: don’t behave so impulsively. Don’t bother with things that don’t concern you.

Does this concern Xia Fei?

Obvious answer: no. Truly, it’s none of his business what Vein and Liu Xiao get up to in their (debatably) free time, and he has no desire to know. Whatever it is that he saw that day—Liu Xiao trembling and in pieces, Vein and his easy handling of the situation—he has little to no context. He does not want that context.

Except: Vein telling him to leave. Except: the casual way he’d turned to Liu Xiao.

“Has Vein told you what I need you to find out from those two today?” Liu Xiao asks. He never gets to the point; always plays his fucking games, sidestepping every barbed retort with the ease of a spider spinning silk from one wall to the next.

“Laoban doesn’t tell me the obvious,” Xia Fei means to aim for dry. It comes out ticked off, emphasis placed at all the wrong points.

Liu Xiao simply raises an eyebrow at him. It feels as if he’s angling for something, aiming to get Xia Fei to say—something. The bait, though, is practically nonexistent; Xia Fei’s about to bite into something he can only sense.

“I haven’t seen laoban in a few days,” he bites out. If you want to tell me something, tell me yourself, asshole, he restrains.

“Is that so?” Polished, casual, slotting itself into the conversation naturally.

“I’ve been busy. He’s been busy.”

“I don’t doubt that—it’s just, you’re normally so…” he seems to consider his words for a second there, “…enthusiastic, to see him.”

“Am I.”

Liu Xiao simply smiles, unflinching at the flat tone: “A little bit like a pet waiting for its owner,” he says, sharper, meaner. Vindictive in a way he normally wouldn’t be. The car turns a corner.

Xia Fei’s next breath enters his lungs too fast. “Better his pet than a mess on his floor to be mopped up,” he fires back, anger gripping his sense of sensibility for a second. It’s the wrong thing to say entirely.

He sees the moment Liu Xiao’s smile slips, revealing something—visceral, like fury and hell and shattered glass. Xia Fei’s heart hammers against his cage. It’s not fear, exactly, but in this moment he’s struck with a sense of danger. Danger that borders on—

He sees Xia Fei looking, and his smile sharpens. It’s a dagger to the throat.

“Vein generally intends to make the messes he does,” is what he tells Xia Fei, oh-so-casual without so much as a single misstep in his words, “but I’m sure his pet making them for him isn’t what he’d appreciate.”

The intention: make Xia Fei back down, call him to heel and submission. What it actually achieves: “Yeah?” he snaps back, straightening up in his seat. There’s violence aching to reach out and seize under his skin. How dare he— “You—”

“And besides,” Liu Xiao continues as if he hadn’t heard him, “a known model getting into trouble would attract too much attention, don’t you think?”

The air stills between them for a moment, and Liu Xiao meets his eyes directly. Xia Fei wonders: what kind of danger exactly is Liu Xiao promising?

It’s a threat with an attempt at disguise hardly made. Xia Fei stares at him and his serrated smile for a few seconds longer, and then he slumps back against his seat. Is this a fight worth picking? No. He wouldn’t win. Not against Liu Xiao. Regardless of whether he wants to reach out and ruin that pretty face of his, he knows one thing for certain: Liu Xiao doesn’t make idle threats.

“Sure, whatever,” he mutters, turning his head to stare out the window.

“I’m glad you understand. Now then, I believe you have something for me?”

Chapter Text

Xia Fei’s heartbeat is hummingbird-quick, rapid, when he pauses as Liu Xiao says, “Felix— nice to see you.”

Liu Xiao had noticed him earlier and left him be; it’s background noise to assess relevant persons and actions in any given room, note it in his head and twist it to his service. The cloistered nook of the university library is lit with hanging lamps and dusty with untouched shelves— he’d dragged himself out of bed for the sake of a group project, made himself move through the motions of classwork.

It would be more of a liability to not know what it does to himself than to monitor his state after Vein has his fun: clockwork mechanisms and lethality left too-apparent, skinned-open and off-balance days after. 

His acquaintances at university occasionally notice something off (a project partner playfully saying, poking at him, it’s kind of creepy, Xavier), but it’s easy to pass off with the excuse of feeling under the weather and a placid smile. His extracurricular activities either come to a standstill or are simple enough he doesn’t require the pretense of being less exposed than he is. He does his classwork on autopilot, penciled in carefully to his schedule, and pieces himself back together.

Which is to say: he hadn’t expected to see Xia Fei before an engineered meeting.

It’s useful, on a split-second calculation; there’s been enough time he’s on steady enough ground to not slip a knife under Xia Fei’s skin without having considered the consequences.

It had been embarrassing that Vein had needed to interrupt his original plans—the instinctive, destructive, animal panic of them—and even more humiliating given the careful, impersonal way that Vein had done it. Liu Xiao wants to keep hold of the plots in question regardless, spinning webs and traps and smiling, calm and unreadable, as he leaves Xia Fei buckled on the ground. It would be stupid to do. A corner of his brain ticks away, steady and on-time, and he ignores it. Speaks up only when Xia Fei passes his table on the way to the exit, having clearly noticed him and subsequently, belligerently, packing up his spread-out course materials.

His group mates are watching Xia Fei with curiousity.

Liu Xiao’s mouth stays tilted up at the corner, too-sharp, and Xia Fei says flatly as he stares down Liu Xiao: “Is it.” His eyes have dropped to the exposed skin of Liu Xiao’s neck, as if searching for something left absent.

Easy, “Studying for midterms?” he returns. At Xia Fei’s uncomfortable noise of acqueisance, he continues with a pointed glance around the rectangular table he’s seated at and a gesture of his hands, “You’re studious; it isn’t for a few weeks yet. I’m finishing up a group project. Unfortunately, my group mates here aren’t very good at getting things done ahead of time.”

One of his classmates, a girl who always comes to lectures with a pack of sticky notes to fold into origami shapes when she gets bored, says without looking at him and without heat, “Some of us have jobs to work, you ass.” She keeps her head tucked down, focused on handwriting the last pieces of her assignment as she says distractedly, “Forgive us for having multiple things to work on.”

Another, a boy who tends to sketch out hyperrealistic portraits during the same lectures (and seems to have established an elaborate bartering system with her for drawings-vs-origami-constructs), says in the same tone, “Not that nepo-baby rich kids like you would understand.” 

They trade a glance, the same something-like-fond exasperation.

Liu Xiao considers the various extracurricular tasks at dubious levels of legality and morality he has pending. Laughs, half under his breath, and observes the emotions flicker on Xia Fei’s face.

Xia Fei says, pursing his lips, “Right.” A beat. “Cool. So, I’ll just— ”

Liu Xiao cuts in to the attempted sentence, effortless. “I haven’t seen you in a bit.” Allows his posture to shift, something like a blade sliding into it, half-unconscious with the motion. Considers what it would take to ruin Xia Fei’s life and to walk out with his own. The words he picks are deliberate in how they obscure details. “Not upset with me, I hope? We still have matters to discuss.”

There are less diplomatic ways to say, You saw something you weren’t meant to. There are less diplomatic ways to make himself a viper with fangs posed over a vein.

“It can wait,” Xia Fei counters. His face is open with discomfort, annoyance; Liu Xiao wonders occasionally how someone can wear their heart so clearly on their sleeve without needing to flinch from it. He notes the pace of Xia Fei’s pulse. “Seriously.” A glance at the doors leading to the stairwell out of the library. “I’m leaving now, I’m already going to be late.”

Liu Xiao’s mouth goes sharp, slipping at the edges into a lurking threat, dangerous if touched. It’s not the game he plays with Xia Fei, usually—rich, laconic, polished, every move intentional—but his face shifts without command. 

It’s seamless, even and without a change in tone, when his voice switches into a low and predatory Mandarin: “I expect you’ll be discrete about your laoban’s… affairs, Xia Fei.” It means, my affairs, though the reminder is meant to sting. A pause, the soundlessness loaded with purpose. “For his sake.”

Xia Fei’s spine straightens. There’s something furious on his face, hissing rage, and then he says, “Of course.” Like the edge of a weapon in return, “I wouldn’t inconvenience laoban that way.”

There are threads drawn over him like a marionette, when Liu Xiao wants to see them. Ways to maneuver him into ruin, wreckage. It would be a stupid choice to make— Xia Fei is useful as a tool, and Vein would make it more trouble than it was worth, would notice it instantly. Liu Xiao, covered and in public, wants to make it anyway, regardless of the collateral damage, wants to render him powerless enough that he can never approach a threat again. There’s something like a trapped animal gnawing at its own leg in his head.

He moves the instinct back behind a layer of glass, keeps his expression the same.

“Good,” he says, smooth and elegant. ““Let’s meet up soon to discuss what you have for me, then.”

Xia Fei’s knuckles are white on his laptop case. His posture is transparent in the urge to flee, to bite, to ruin Liu Xiao in exchange. He says as he turns around, gritted out, “Text me with the information, then.”

Liu Xiao watches as he goes, dismisses it with a faux-amused response when another of his groupmates (one of the girls who does, studiously, take her notes in lectures; the one who offers the neat collection of them to him whenever he’s absent and asks for his in return), asks in a whisper, “Woah, Xavier, was that was that an ex of yours? He looked pissed.”

The girl who had called him an ass with almost-affection—Anna, another international student and the single other Mandarin speaker in the group, an acceptable risk for the time being—watches him as Xia Fei goes.

;

Vein texts at scheduled, pre-planned times when Liu Xiao avoids him in the aftermaths. It’s less concern than the same nonchalant sense of obligation with which Vein manhandles him into a shower, he assumes. The messages are always professional and about shared business interests, carefully spaced out.

It’s not exactly a sense of vindictiveness that has him call Vein in the hours after the unplanned meeting, has him respond fluently to each text over the phone as he stares out a window; it’s not something else either, though. Vein’s voice is cautious in return, playing casual and yet more tentative than it generally is. Liu Xiao says, as if off-handed at the tail-end of the conversation, “By the way— I saw your Felix, earlier. He’s very diligent, isn’t he? Busy at the library when we crossed paths.”

A pause. Vein says, not-quite-indecipherable, “Is that so.”

“Mm,” says Liu Xiao, smiling at the glass in front of him. “You might want to check in on him. He didn’t look too well.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” says Vein. There’s something foreign in his voice.

Liu Xiao hums in acknowledgement, then ends the call, lets his mouth edge up at the corners.

;

It would be irresponsible to avoid everything he needs done. He texts Xia Fei a time and place to meet up a few days after encountering him in the library; it’s brief and impersonal, expectant.

It’s mildly amusing when Xia Fei comes fifteen minutes late. The delay feels intentional, hostile, when Xia Fei enters his car, slides into the passenger seat wordlessly. Liu Xiao doesn’t allow any response to show on his face— it wouldn’t be important to him, normally. It isn’t now. Easy as he looks to the road in front of him, he asks, “Anything new?”

Xia Fei’s voice is reluctant. “No.”

Expected, but: “I see. That’s disappointing.”

“I’ve been occupied with other things this week. Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

He thinks again of the more dangerous plots at a hindquarter part of his brain, lets them sit there.

The pair won’t be leaving Bridon soon, but it would be more convenient to Liu Xiao as Xia Fei’s priority, and the timing will be important. There are a thousand pieces moving around on a chessboard that he can see, lines and boxes overlaying the world when he looks for them. Regardless, it’s another feature of the landscape that Xia Fei feels odd about working against Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang, therefore navigable whether he wants it to be or not. 

Liu Xiao says, keeping his attention half on the traffic in front of them, “Don’t stress yourself.” Xia Fei tries not to look at him; he keeps his face turned to the window by his side, sullen in the reflection. “Has Vein told you what I need you to find out from those two today?”

Frustrated and too-harsh, tellingly, “Laoban doesn’t tell me the obvious.”

Ah. Liu Xiao considers. Waits; a background part of his brain spins quickly.

“I haven’t seen laoban in a few days,” Xia Fei says, as if it’s sour on his tongue to confess to. There are easy ways to read into it. His displeasure is transparent.

“Is that so?”

“I’ve been busy. He’s been busy,” like either facet would play a role if uninvited to; Liu Xiao is familiar with the eagerness with which Xia Fei approaches Vein, and he’s familiar with Vein slotting time into his schedule to make room for Xia Fei. He thinks of Xia Fei’s hurt expression entering Vein’s living room, drops values into variables in his mind. There’s something serrated in his mouth.

“I don’t doubt that—it’s just, you’re normally so…” a pause, weighing his words, “…enthusiastic, to see him.”

Clipped, “Am I.”

A smile. Liu Xiao says, like the words are bladed, polished and sharp-edged, as he turns the car a corner, “A little bit like a pet waiting for its owner.”

Xia Fei’s voice is furious, impulsive. He always does reveal too much of himself, bite without thinking: “Better his pet than a mess on his floor to be mopped up.”

Liu Xiao’s face does something out of his control, split-second before it’s reigned in. 

Not-quite wrathful so much as cold and deliberating. Beyond emotion and not. The cornered thing at the back of his mind rears its head with bared teeth, considers.

It’s an error in his plotting, humiliating and the loss of a game and a glaring vulnerability, every time Vein renders him into something raw and out of control— worse that Vein expects it, worse that he factors it into his planning and sits beside him each time while he brings himself back together piece-by-piece. Worse that Liu Xiao ever, ever needs him to. Xia Fei shouldn’t have been at Vein’s apartment that night. It makes him a liability to have walking around still-intact, and it makes Liu Xiao want to cut his knees out from underneath him and leave him open-wounded bleeding out on the ground.

There are ways to deal with that urge. The schematics map themselves out in Liu Xiao’s head, half-assembled.

Xia Fei is looking at him, having fallen back from the defensive anger into— something else. Liu Xiao’s mouth goes dangerous at the corners, not concealed enough. 

“Vein generally intends to make the messes he does,” he says with his voice held level, purposefully even, “but I’m sure his pet making them for him isn’t what he’d appreciate.” Meaning, choose wisely.

A flare of fury back into Xia Fei’s expression: “Yeah? You—”

“And besides,” soft and dark over his speech, words loaded with implication, “a known model getting into trouble would attract too much attention, don’t you think?”

Xia Fei is silent. Liu Xiao allows the half-threat, half-promise to hang in the air, meets his eyes unwaveringly. Spins out a web in his head and then unravels it.

Some of the fight drains out of Xia Fei’s posture. 

His shoulders fall back against his seat as he turns away from Liu Xiao’s stare, mutters, “Sure, whatever.”

A moment. The reminder to himself that it would be irrational to deliver on a threat without further provocation, the reminder of why, and then Liu Xiao says: “I’m glad you understand. Now then, I believe you have something for me?”

When he drops Xia Fei off at his photoshoot, it takes less than an hour before a handful of less-spaced-out texts roll in from Vein, alongside two mildly alarmed missed calls. Allegedly for business purposes. Liu Xiao considers his phone, then the way Xia Fei had said, he’s busy and considers: not that busy, apparently. Had Xia Fei gone running to him so quickly, bridged the implied distance between the two for it?

Liu Xiao had expected— some sort of response later, but not so immediately. He lets his mouth curl into something like a frown, unobserved, and drops his silenced phone into his glove compartment.

Chapter Text

It’s not worry, exactly, nor concern. It’s something else. It’s just. Vein sends parallel texts to Xia Fei and Liu Xiao, an identical kind of professional at a time they should both be done with classes, receives a mute lack of response in return from them both. It strikes him sometimes how young they both are. He has his own work to do and runs busy in Bridon, but: he doesn’t know what either of them is doing, right now.

He has Xia Fei’s schedule, technically, and records of instructions his team gives him. It’s different without having the minute, mundane details of his day offered with ease, spilling loose like they already belong to Vein. It’s different knowing he’s hurt, somewhere.

Liu Xiao always buries himself away like a wounded animal in the aftermaths, comes back only with his masks put back in place; it nudges at a corner of Vein’s mind like a task left undone.

;

Xia Fei and a rare picked up call— Vein’s pen doesn’t stop scratching at paper, mindless over mundane paperwork. His words come out cautious, and he thinks: it should be around the time Xia Fei should be eating lunch, by now. He could look at Xia Fei’s prescribed diet if he wanted to know more precise details even now, would usually ask with easy authority if Xia Fei had been following it; could usually slot space in his schedule to sit besides Xia Fei for the meal or to allow a phonecall of rambling dialogue, discretely and smoothly shuffling meetings to make time.

Vein doesn’t entirely intend to when he asks softly, “Have you been eating well?”

Xia Fei is quiet on the other end of the phone. Then, reluctant and with something too-easily readable in his voice, “Yes, laoban,” before he finds an excuse to end the the call. Vein doesn’t ask again.

Xia Fei attends classes, goes to his scheduled photoshoots, dodges calls. Vein reviews photos from Xia Fei’s shoots, watches him through live feeds of cameras occasionally. Texts questions he could find the answers to easier, leaves a door open for when Xia Fei is ready to walk through it. Allows the distance. Wants something he doesn’t quite pin down the words for.

;

A text, responded to hours later. Another, a day late.

;

He thinks of it in terms of negatives and in terms of tasks on a checklist, action rather than thought. Gives himself a framework for when and how often to reach out, carefully timed, occupied by his other business, and doesn’t look at his reasoning behind doing so. Xia Fei’s replies come tellingly delayed and impersonal, ignoring anything not business-related; Liu Xiao answers similarly. He doesn’t necessarily expect otherwise. 

He continues sending messages.

;

Violence is often simpler and more efficient.

Vein kicks at a man’s jaw brutally, listening for the crack of bone beneath his boot and the sick gasping that comes in return. It feels easy, like the thing forever simmering underneath his skin is loose and wild tonight, playing free and untamed. His mouth is curved into something wicked and taunting, the points of his teeth showing, and the man curls into himself on the floor.

When there’s a characteristic noise from his phone, he shifts the gun in his hand to point straight at the man’s skull, keeps his boot pressed on his face, grinds the heel into skin and cartilage. Says, “Stay still, now, or I’ll be very annoyed,” in a lilting tone; then, lower, “and I doubt you would appreciate that, no?” The man lets out a muffled moan of pain, which is an answer of sorts.

He lifts the phone up, unlocks it with a thumbprint. A reply to the text he’d sent this morning— one hand still pointing the gun with fluency, he uses the other to peck out on the touchscreen. Good. When should your classes end for the evening?

A read receipt filling out with color, instant. No response. 

He waits a beat, then slips the phone back into his pocket.

“Where were we, now?” he asks, pulling his boot away just long enough to kick the man again, this time solidly in the gut.

;

Liu Xiao would only be quicker to respond and pretend at being in a better state, curve of his mouth fit perfectly in place, if he’d mentally broken ties with Vein and was coiling up to strike. The pattern of sharpness and avoidance—followed each time by a half-hearted ploy for petty vengeance, then a familiar smoothness yielding the next time he sinks to his knees—is expected; the fact of it being so visible on the surface is as much communication as Liu Xiao offers. It would come unwelcome if Vein pressed closer.

The half-silence always reminds him of the feeling of having left a faucet open in his apartment, unattended behind his back.

He doesn’t expect the call back from Liu Xiao so early. 

He expects less the faux-casual, “By the way— I saw your Felix, earlier. He’s very diligent, isn’t he? Busy at the library when we crossed paths,” that Liu Xiao tacks on to the end of the call, as if an afterthought and as if it hadn’t been his aim all along.

Vein pauses. Thinks for a heartbeat of the open expression on Xia Fei’s face and the tone of his voice, held at a standstill with his eyes fixed on the marks from his teeth on Liu Xiao’s bare skin. The walls drawn up in the way Liu Xiao held himself, twisted into something not-quite-right, turning himself into a weapon in the absence of his usual armor. That could— 

He considers, weighs possibilities. Considers what they each look like, lashing out, and the gaps in their respective defenses at the moment. Well. Go very badly. “Is that so.”

Liu Xiao hums in acknowledgement. The mild smile is audible in his voice, but it’s never much of a cue on him, given the right mood. “You might want to check in on him. He didn’t look too well.”

Vein doesn’t know what that means. Liu Xiao won’t answer further even if pushed, he knows. His grip is tight on the phone.

“I’ll take that under advisement,” he says, attempting evenness.

When Liu Xiao hangs up, Vein attempts to contact Xia Fei. It doesn’t work, at least not instantly. 

He leaves a note with Xia Fei’s manager to check in, pinches the bridge of his nose and considers. Again, it would be easier to hit something and it would be easier if they weren’t both so young (had he ever been so breakable? He can’t quite imagine it). His mouth does something flat and displeased, not exactly worried, but. Something alien. He opens his inbox to draft an email towards the director of the photoshoot Xia Fei has tomorrow, lacking anything easier at his hands.

;

A game of mahjong, gun at his thigh the entire time, allies-and-enemies tracking each other across the table. Deals brokered out over gambles and deals— Liu Xiao usually shows his face at the oddest of moments; he stays absent this week. Threats made, orders followed through, responsibilities to take command over. Blood on Vein’s hands, a bullet shattering a skull, the feeling of his fist easy breaking something apart. He completes stacks of nondescript, tiresome paperwork. He goes to professional meetings, schedule loaded with them, plays semi-harmless in negotiations till it’s necessary to let himself show through. Braids in the bids-for-contact to his days and doesn’t think about it beyond in the movement of action-reaction. Waits.

;

Vein—emerging from a meeting days after Liu Xiao had called—doesn’t expect Xia Fei in the hallway of one of the buildings the modeling agency uses for photoshoots. 

Or: he did, but— “Felix. You’re here earlier than scheduled,” Vein settles on, slow and careful. The shoot Xia Fei has planned won’t begin for another thirty minutes or so; Xia Fei usually cuts the timing closer, hindered by the speed of public transportation. He’s bare-faced and without makeup now, dressed down and with his expression a tight kind of wary. He’d come to a halt when he first saw Vein, eyes moving rapidly over the corridor as if seeking an escape route. Something still open-wounded in the way he carries himself.

Xia Fei gives off the demeanor of something trapped in a snare, paused where he stands upon hearing Vein’s voice.

Another unsubtle glance around, before he says, reluctantly, “Well, yeah.” When Vein doesn’t look away from him, he offers as an unhappy explanation, “Xavier gave me a ride.”

A blink. “Ah. Did he?” To pass information, Vein assumes, but— unanticipated. "He didn't mention intending to."

A flare of something on Xia Fei's face for a split-second, an expression as though Vein has closed another bear trap around his foot. A beat. “Yeah,” he says, moving past the words. Somewhere between uncomfortable and annoyed, he continues, “He’s been bitchier than usual.” There’s the edge of a complaint in the words, as if he’s holding his tongue to not say more and to keep his tone as close to even as he can. He stares at the ground to avoid eye contact.

Vein considers tipping Xia Fei’s chin up with a hand taking grasp of it, to catch his gaze with his own, forcing the matter. The contact of skin-on-skin, warm. He keeps his hands restrained where they are and contemplates. “Has he?” Less startling as a concept: Liu Xiao isn’t precisely in a pleasant mood right now. Probing lightly for a response, aware enough of Xia Fei’s temper in return, not quite sure of what to make of the way Xia Fei looks locked-tight and unresponsive: “I don’t imagine you took that well.”

“Well. He did basically threaten to ruin my life.”

Vein holds very still, pausing a beat. Alarm bells at the back of his mind, switching into a state of something more alert, adrenaline usually kickstarted by a fight. “Is that… exactly what Xavier said,” he says, not quite a question. 

Liu Xiao is subtler than that, and (usually) more intelligent than that, would normally not, but he’s— volatile, at the moment. Dangerous. Xia Fei is impulsive with his own words and own fury, often.

Xia Fei doesn’t answer instantly. 

Then, “No.”

A moment. Weighing out options, mapping out what Xia Fei has said and the blank spaces of it: “What did he say.”

“I don’t know,” says Xia Fei reluctantly, still not looking Vein in the eyes. Avoiding a more direct answer, “He was. Mad at me.”

Vein takes a step forward, moving closer to him. 

Sharper and more authoritative, he says, “Felix.”

Xia Fei glances up at Vein’s face before groaning and lowering his head so it bows down, eyes sliding off him, expressive and transparent. Upset in the way he says it, as if anticipating Vein will scold him, “I know I shouldn’t have said anything, I promise I was just irritated and he was getting on my nerves—” and, rushing to get the words out, too-quick, “I might’ve said he was a mess to be mopped up.” 

Several increasingly colorful phrases flit through Vein’s head. Tonelessly: “What.”

Xia Fei makes a rushed escape, muttering something like, I have to go, my shoot’s starting soon, syllables running close together. Vein stays where he is in the hallway, contemplating the abrupt, piercing regret in him for every choice that’s led him to this situation.

;

He calls Liu Xiao multiple times, a kind of damage control. Considers— a balancing act, something sharp enough to offer a warning and pin Liu Xiao in place, but nothing prying enough to drive him to lash out further. He doesn’t expect Liu Xiao had reacted well to Xia Fei’s words, not when Xia Fei had averted his eyes and been unwilling to repeat the response back; doesn’t know, precisely, the shape of the threat Liu Xiao had offered in return nor how sincere the intent to follow through had been. When Liu Xiao picks up, hours later, Vein is half-occupied with something important, but he says, letting the name come out simply, “Xavier.”

Liu Xiao keeps his phone on do not disturb.

;

When he finally picks up one of Vein’s calls, it’s hours after the meeting with Xia Fei. He’s alone in his flat, seated on his bed. It’s without enthusiasm, but unavoidable.

There’s some noise in the background from Vein’s end, nondescript and low, barely caught by the phone’s microphone even as Liu Xiao strains to make out details by reflex. Then, Liu Xiao offers a greeting. It’s cordial, for minutes and seconds ticking by. He sorts out the innocuous parts of the messages Vein sent him, professional, answered in kind by Vein like a jungle predator circling its prey, then takes on a tone that indicates he’s ready to end the call. His hand hovers over the button to hang up.

Almost a simple escape— it’s then, in a pause, that Vein says with an easiness that belies the way his voice is low with command, “I’m not accustomed to being so easily avoided, given the people I generally surround myself with. Or how they see me.” It’s a reminder of who Liu Xiao is speaking to; it means, specifically, the people who are frightened of him. It means the blood that stains the floors Vein walks onto. It’s not discrete, nor meant to be.

Liu Xiao is quiet, jaw set in place. He raises the phone back to his ear.

Vein says, a purposeful type of probing: “You and Felix met earlier, I heard.”

Deliberately playing at ignorance, “At the library?” he asks. He cocks his head to the side as if the visual cue is necessary, as though Vein can see him— the facade will leak into his voice, recognizable. It’s never precisely lying so much as it is becoming, so much as it is smoke and mirrors, but that’s irrelevant right now: he has nothing to lie about, just strategic omissions and careful footsteps. Then, mouth going flat at the corners as he lets the pretense drop off of him, he says, “We did. And?”

A pause over the other side of the phone, as if deciding where to pry. Whether to call out the transparence of the not-quite lie. Permitting it to pass and smooth with something adjacent to a threat, “I’m sure you understand I can be concerned for him.”

“Is that so.” It’s not a question.

Silken, “Yes.”

“Mm,” says Liu Xiao. Brain whirring, moving quick and dangerous. Something he doesn’t want to acknowledge sour on his tongue, at the back of his throat, before he says like a blade half-unsheathed, “Well. He is in a vulnerable situation given his circumstances.”

Vein matches him. “Not precisely.” There’s another sound from behind his voice, muffled quickly and not fully caught by the phone’s microphone (frustrating as a limitation of technology— Liu Xiao’s ears could capture better: what is he doing? How fast is his heartbeat right now? He’s rarely distracted even when he appears it, and even when Liu Xiao would prefer it. Liu Xiao wants to wreck the empire he’s built out of Chinatown, reduce it to rubble before he opens his eyes. Liu Xiao would prefer not to have this conversation), and then he says, soft with implication, “I try to guarantee otherwise, at least.”

“I’m sure,” to fill in the gap between the words, holding something else between his teeth before he swallows it.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t contribute to my need to, though,” Vein says. It’s a promise.

He’s silent for a long beat. Thinks of chessboards.

Vein moves forward, as if moving a piece towards taking king. “I was told you two had a... minor disagreement.”

“Is that what you heard,” again, not a question. Unsurprising that Xia Fei either hadn’t been able to or hadn’t wanted to manage the concept of discretion: “You did warn me he doesn’t know how to disguise when something’s bothering him. Dangerous habit to maintain in the circles we work in, isn’t it?” His voice stays mild, as if unbothered. He is unbothered, just with something serrated slid through the fact of it. The words still come out with something vicious underlying them.

“Not so much of a concern when I’m watching over him,” seamless. Lethal, with an edge of wildness.

Liu Xiao doesn’t exactly want Xia Fei’s life ruined, his name on the news and his career taken to pieces. He does.

It would be impractical; he doesn’t need Vein’s voice over a telephone line offering a warning of why. He says through a net of thoughts otherwise, dark and bitten out, “Of course.”

Vein allows the reminder to sit for a moment. Then, he asks lightly, the danger falling out of his voice, “So. Have you been in good health?”

It’s— 

Liu Xiao almost doesn’t realize it when he lets his phone down from where it’s held to his ear and hangs up.

It’s abrupt. It’s an uncharacteristic lapse in control, embarrassing. A rushing of bitter and cold-blooded movement that wants to bite at a core muscle group, inject slow-moving poison somewhere vital. He tosses his phone to the other side of the bed, careless in absence of anyone to see it, allowing himself the motion and to not listen for the muffled noise of the device making contact with the mattress, then buries his face in his hands to make an incoherently furious sound.

When he picks up his phone again, later, Vein has texted a single question mark.

Vein blinks down at his own phone. The call wasn’t cut on accident, he doesn’t think, but— he types out a question mark, sends it. 

Liu Xiao, unsurprisingly, ignores the message.