Archive of Our Own ^beta

1. 

The first time, it’s just after the Mid-Autumn banquet, so early in the evening that the lantern glow is still fading out of the sky. 

Xuan Zhen placed passingly well in the lantern competition this year, for having ascended such a short time ago— he’s no Crown Prince of Xianle, but then nobody is. The people of Xianle’s capital, it seems, are as grateful as their crown prince had once been for his skill in sweeping up; he’s well on track to make the top ten in the next few decades. Nobody congratulates him, Jun Wu notes, but if you look closely you can see his eyes shining with pride at it all the same. 

If he’s asking the questions he should be about being invited to the Palace of Divine Might after the banquet, about where the tradition of the lanterns might have come from in the first place, he doesn’t show it. Only the flattered nervousness, the tension in him, the way he flickers between keeping his eyes respectfully downcast and looking around like he can’t help but be awed. It isn’t his first time seeing such a building, Jun Wu knows— isn’t even his first time seeing this palace, and surely he remembers the long hours his emperor spent with his prince— but it is the first time he’s been invited since his own ascension, not shadowing Xianle. 

He bows, deep and fluid, and sits when invited to, still so very careful. He knows the pleasantries, he knows how to lose gracefully at weiqi— Jun Wu supposes Xianle’s servant must have encountered plenty of opportunity to practice. 

So Jun Wu has a servant bring out the wine, just for the pleasure of watching him go pale. 

“Your majesty,” says Xuan Zhen, looking at the bottle like a mortal might at a hanging sword. “I— that is to say, this one’s cultivation—” 

Jun Wu smiles, first beneficent and then sharper like a private indulgence. “So long as one isn’t too moved, wasn’t it?” 

Xuan Zhen looks at the wine; he looks at Jun Wu. You can see him thinking through whether he could afford to push. You can almost hear him deciding: no, he can’t. 

He takes the glass, holds it a moment. He drinks. 

2. 

It’s the height of spring, and the cherry trees in Xuan Zhen Palace’s central courtyard are in full bloom. They’d been a gift from the emperor— Mu Qing had thanked him graciously, had planted them well, will eat the fruit when summer comes. They’re beautiful, tall in frothy pink. They’re an honor. It’s nobody’s fault. 

3. 

The cultivation path taught at Taicang Mountain— the cultivation path Xianle still follows, the one that his servant had a rare chance to learn at his side— forbids drinking, but only to excess. General Xuan Zhen drinks these days with a cautious slowness that speaks of deliberate practice. Smart of him; cultivation or no, no lush has ever lasted long in the heavenly court. 

Jun Wu wasn’t intending to break General Xuan Zhen’s cultivation, when he started out. Only damage it a little. Make him squirm. 

Xuan Zhen’s eyelashes flutter, long and dark against his cheeks. Some time around the second drink a lovely pink flush had begun to settle in, high on his cheekbones. Xianle, Jun Wu recalls, had liked its men beautiful. Xianle, it seems, had liked his men beautiful. A pale and grasping imitation of a more worthy man: but beautiful. 

Jun Wu says come and he does. Jun Wu says sit, and he does. He must know how he looks, like this, eyes downcast. Jun Wu says, Xuan Zhen, won’t you read— and he does. It’s always a pleasure to hear you recite, and he drinks up the praise like water, like wine; you can see it intoxicating him, that pretty flush darkening. His tone is low, soft around the edges; Xuan Zhen’s voice goes sweet and subservient so very naturally. You can hear him doing it, and you can hear him hearing himself doing it, and hating that he’s doing it, and being unable to stop. 

“Xuan Zhen,” Jun Wu says, and Xuan Zhen looks up. 

“My lord?” he says. His eyes are dark, darting, a little bit frantic. 

“It’s the anniversary, isn’t it?” says Jun Wu. Though he doesn’t know what exactly it would be the anniversary of, it’s a safe enough bet— the Southern Generals have been fighting more than usual, and their spats are always the worst when something’s reminded them of their shared past. Anniversaries, birthdays. The fiftieth year after Xianle’s second banishment an argument between them had blown up so badly it destroyed several buildings. 

“...It is,” Xuan Zhen says. Hesitant. He always is, when you manage to catch him without a script. “I—” And then he stops himself, as he so often does.

Jun Wu smiles, kindly, encouraging. “Hm?” 

“I— this one hadn’t realized that his Majesty—” Somehow the flush deepens. “—Please, your Majesty, forgive this one.” 

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” says Jun Wu, watches as Xuan Zhen’s black eyes refuse again to settle. 

Jun Wu wonders how much wine it would take before Xuan Zhen stumbled without realizing that he was stumbling, before he stopped shuttering himself off. How many nights of coaxing it would take, before he would drink it. He doesn’t know but he wants to find out— the Heavenly Court is so boring, all these petty gods with their petty squabbles. 

So a little more coaxing it is, then. "After all," he says, “your shidi...” 

He lets himself trail off, as if he’s thinking— he looks down and Xuan Zhen’s staring, wide eyed, a little desperate. He’s gone so still. Charming. 

“He’s not my shidi,” says Xuan Zhen, too quickly. 

“Wasn’t he younger than you?” says Jun Wu, and smiles again. Kind, generous, beneficent. Xuan Zhen’s watching him so carefully. 

“He— entered the sect before I did,” says Xuan Zhen, still careful. Reaching only for what he can defend. But you can nearly see something under his skin going wild, can nearly hear his heartbeat racing; he’s doing his very best to imitate a statue, kneeling here, but he’s trembling. 

Jun Wu only hums. “I see,” he says, and gestures for a servant to pour again. 

4. 

Mu Qing knows what they say about him— that he’s twisted like a concubine, sensitive like a girl; that he thinks too much, or doesn’t think as men should. Mu Qing has had dreams his whole life, of laughing eyes that wanted him, of men wilful as princes are. Mu Qing knows what he can’t touch. 

They say he’s scheming. They say he vanishes for long hours, and not even his deputies know where. They say he must have done something underhanded, to get where he is; that no servant could rise so high and be honorable. They say he’s twisted, that he’s wrong, that no real man acts the way he does. 

Even when he was a child, other boys had always been able to tell. 

5. 

That first night, in the receiving room of the Palace of Divine Might, barely a general and barely a heavenly official, Xuan Zhen had looked so afraid of him. Not of what Jun Wu had done— Xuan Zhen was far too off-balance to realize that— but rather of what he might do. Jun Wu smiled down at him and ran the backs of his fingers along Xuan Zhen’s cheekbone, just to watch him be afraid of it. 

His eyes were dark and glazed and very wide, stark against his pale skin, his flushed cheeks. A few strands of hair had fallen out of his high, severe ponytail and were stuck to his forehead. Jun Wu could feel his heartbeat, jackrabbit quick. 

Jun Wu did consider it, then. Going further. He could, certainly— who would believe Xuan Zhen, sharp-tongued and with few friends, over Jun Wu? But it would tip his hand. He wanted Xuan Zhen cursing his own name tomorrow, not his emperor’s. He had let him go. 

It’s been years since then, decades, centuries. Xuan Zhen’s palace courtyard overflows pink and flower-crowned with cherry trees, gifted by Jun Wu— he fights with a zhanmadao sabre, gifted by Jun Wu— he spends hours each week in Shen Wu Palace, vanishing so thoroughly not even his own deputies can find him. 

He’s so sweet. So hungry for it— touch, praise, everything. He’ll lean right into your hands. When Jun Wu removes his robes he looks as if he's going to melt. Jun Wu wonders whether he lets attendants dress him— suspects that he doesn’t, that he does it himself like he used to for Xianle. Surely even after this much wine, if he was used to it, he wouldn’t shiver like this. 

In Xianle they liked their men beautiful, liked their men lithe and strong. Xuan Zhen is, in this as in all things, lovely. Either he’d had no scars when he ascended or he was vain enough to erase them; Jun Wu would believe it, either way. 

He’s bright red. So thin faced, Jun Wu thinks, nearly fondly, so unlike shameless Xianle. “My lord,” he keeps saying, and “Your majesty,” struggling to form an objection but knowing that he should. “My cultivation—” 

But Jun Wu lays a hand on his cheek, and he leans in. Hungry for it. 

Like this you can see how his flush spreads down his chest, across his shoulders. “Like this,” Jun Wu murmurs, and takes Xuan Zhen’s hand at the wrist. Guides it down Xuan Zhen’s body, letting him feel the sweep of it. He lets go, and watches— watches as Xuan Zhen swallows, the bob of his throat, watches him close his eyes as if he expects it to make him invisible. Watches as Xuan Zhen mimics the motion, gentler this time, barely skimming over his own skin; it pebbles at the too-light touch. 

Jun Wu, sitting fully clothed, barely has to guide him. There, he says, and there, and Xuan Zhen’s voice is high and sweet at the touch to his chest, desperate when he runs his fingertips over his own thighs. There, and Xuan Zhen does, brings his own wrist to his lips. There, and Xuan Zhen reaches down. There, Jun Wu says, and yes, like that, and faster— 

A vow of purity, a vow of something deeper, breaking before his eyes. And Xuan Zhen allows it— and allows it— and allows it. 

1. 

It’s dark at Puqi Shrine. A summer night, warm and nearly sticky; the sort of air where your body heat extends past your skin. 

Mu Qing thinks that maybe by this point he should hate alcohol. That maybe he should push it away, a reminder of things best left forgotten. He doesn’t. He’d brought pear wine, sweet and cold, and over the course of the evening both he and Xie Lian had gotten pleasantly drunk on it, their conversation turning giggly and loud as the light went golden and serious again as it faded; at some point they had moved to the bed, lying on their sides. Face to face. 

“Did he ever,” Mu Qing begins, and stops, and starts again. “We— we left you alone with him so many times.” 

There’s only one him who they could be speaking of now. They have not spoken of him often. 

“You didn’t,” says Xie Lian. He’s being gentle and it’s awful. “It was as much my fault as yours back then, I’ve told you—” 

“Not like that,” Mu Qing says. “When he was— when he was being the emperor. I don’t know if he...” 

They have not, in fact, spoken of him like this before at all. Mu Qing trails off: not knowing how to ask, not knowing if he should ask. Not knowing what he’ll do, if the answer is no. Not knowing what he’ll do, if the answer is yes. 

“Oh,” says Xie Lian. He looks away; his fingers twist in the dark. “It wasn’t— like that, really. He didn’t touch me at all. But— even when he didn’t—”

“But like even when he didn’t, he always could.” Mu Qing swallows. “Or like— like he didn’t have to touch you, to touch you.” 

“And like he liked that he didn’t have to,” says Xie Lian, softly. 

“Like he knew you’d jump for it whether he did anything or not.” There’s something thick still in Mu Qing’s throat, like his voice is trying to stop itself. 

“Like he liked watching you jump,” Xie Lian agrees. “En. That’s exactly how it was.”