#a bit of monday distraction 😌

[drabbles-mc]

I'm Not Sorry

Bob Floyd x F!Reader

Warnings: 18+, language, dry humping, semi-public hookup

Inspired by This Text Post: i should be riding some nerd's thigh while he gropes all over my body & tells me i'm the girl of his dreams

Word Count: 3.7k

A/N: i've been struggling to finish fics lately but i saw that text post a couple days ago, knew i wanted to write about it for Bob, and then BAM this all fell outta me tonight. unbeta'd to the max but Bob Floyd deserves to fuck so time was of the essence 😌

Top Gun Maverick Taglist: @garbinge @proceduralpassion @justreblogginfics (If you want to be added to any of my taglists, please let me know!)

If you wanted to be dramatic, you could say that you and Bob had been playing a very coy game of cat and mouse for months. It was a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. A majority of the time that you spent with each other was work-related. It was usually work related, and there was almost always other people around. The closest the two of you got to having time alone was when all of you went out together and everyone else got distracted with pool or darts or each other. So while it might’ve been months according to the calendar, it wasn’t really quite that drastic.

Still, though, you tried to make the most out of the time that the two of you got to have.

It was easy, especially at first, to get a rise out of him, to get his cheeks to flush pink, to get him tripping over his words. A seemingly accidental touch, a well-timed innuendo or wink—that’s all it really took. You didn’t say anything about it but you noticed each time his gaze would break, eyes flickering down from yours to your mouth anytime your teeth dragged along your bottom lip. It never took much with him and for a while you just chalked it up to the fact that he was sweet and shy and a little awkward, that anyone flirting with him like that would get that reaction out of him. It wasn’t until you saw him perfectly unfazed at The Hard Deck one night when a girl at the bar was all but falling into his lap that you realized it wasn’t a Bob thing. It was a you thing. Once you realized that, it was all bets off.

There had been more than one occasion when thanks to your subtly wandering hands Bob nearly spat his drink out across the bar or dropped the bottle from his hand completely. You were able to keep a straight face and play it off, and every now and then Bob was able to recover with some grace, but there had been a time or two when he’d caught a few odd looks from the rest of the crew. It was easy enough to wave them off and they’d let it drop, but the second his focus was back on you, you could tell that he was working overtime to stay on the right side of self-control. All you could do was smile and try to carry on like nothing had happened.

Truthfully, it had gotten to a point where you had almost just resigned yourself to this being what it was going to be like with you and Bob. You were trying to accept that this limbo, this knowing that you wanted him and he wanted you but neither of you really found the time to do much of anything about it, was as good as it was going to get. A never-ending chase, a game with no winners.

“Alright,” you said as you hopped off your barstool, “I gotta head out.”

“Why?” Rooster asked, sounding as though he couldn’t fathom why anyone would want or need to be anywhere else on a Friday night.

You laughed as you dug your wallet out, taking out a few bills to close out your tab and then some. “Some of us have shit to do in the morning, Bradshaw.”

He laughed and gave you a mock disbelieving look. “I don’t think so.”

Raising your eyebrows, you turned your head to face him. “You wanna close out my tab, then? Sounds like you might wanna close out my tab.”

He threw his hands up in surrender. “Forget it—see you Monday.”

You laughed a little harder at that. “That’s what I thought.”

It didn’t seem like your departure disturbed the flow too much, everyone falling back into their previous conversations as you made your way to the bar to square up your tab. You didn’t even bother looking back as you made your way to the door of the bar. By the time your feet hit the blacktop of the parking lot, you were already fishing your keys out of your bag.

Once you were a few strides away from the bar and the clamor of noise coming from inside died down, all you heard was the sound of your own footsteps, and the ocean not too far off. It was peaceful until you heard someone else’s footsteps behind you. The sound alone wouldn’t usually have been strange. Someone else deciding to leave the bar at the same time as you wasn’t a weird occurrence. What made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, however, was the fact that the footsteps were getting quicker and closer. You felt your jaw clenching, positioning your keys between your fingers the way you’d always been taught. You were only a few steps away from your car now but you still found yourself taking a deep breath, getting ready to turn around and see whoever it was that was behind you. You were about to turn and brace for impact when you heard Bob’s voice calling out your name, a little breathless, and very rushed.

Turning around and seeing him, some of the tension disappeared. You huffed, shoulders dropping. “Jesus, Bob.”

There was an apologetic smile on his face as he realized what had just happened. “Sorry.”

Shaking your head, you slipped your keys so that you were holding them in your hand normally again. You managed to laugh at the potential worst case scenario versus the reality of the situation. “Another step without saying my name and I think we both would’ve been sorry.”

He stepped in a little closer to you as he nodded towards your car. “Just wanted to walk you to your car.”

You rolled your eyes but smiled as you turned and started the last few steps across the lot with him. “You know, walking me out to my car is much more chivalrous and much less creepy when you tell me you’re going to do it.”

There was a smirk on his face as he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Guess I’ll have to remember that next time.”

Silence took over the space between you, and while it was comfortable enough, you couldn’t help but to feel like there was more to it, something in the air. Hitting the unlock button on your keys, the lights of your car flashed once. You looked at Bob, then at your car, and then back to Bob. “Well,” you chuckled, “thank you for the company on this long, treacherous journey.” You reached for the handle on the driver’s door. “Hope we can do it aga—”

Bob cut your sentence short when he placed one hand on top of yours on the door handle, keeping you from opening it. Before you could jump to another sentence and ask him what he was doing, his other hand was pressing against the small of your back and pulling you into him so that he could press his lips to yours in a kiss that was intense and nervous all at once.

It lasted just long enough for you to realize what was happening and how good it felt and then he pulled away. Going off the way his eyes were wider than you’d ever seen them, he was just as surprised at himself as you were. Despite the shock all over his face, he didn’t take his hand off your back, although the one that was covering yours on the door dropped back to his side.

“Sor—I’m sorry,” he finally forced out. “I’m…” he trailed off as he looked at you, tongue darting out over his bottom lip.

Another second passed in heavy silence, and when you didn’t try to break free of him, didn’t try to push him away, he let the rest of his sentence die on the tip of his tongue as he kissed you again. You could feel the way that he was more confident this time, the warmth of his palm bleeding through the thin fabric of your tank top as he pressed you against him.

You brought your hands up so that they were resting in the crook of where his neck met his shoulder. One slid up, thumb beneath his jaw as he deepened the kiss. It was all you could do to not ball up the cotton of his t-shirt in your fist, put it in a vice grip so that he couldn’t try to get away. However once you felt the way his tongue pushed into your mouth, and the way he used his body to pin you between him and the side of the car, it became clear that he wasn’t planning on going anywhere.

He had one hand still on your back, one hand braced against the side of your car. It was the first time it ever seemed like he was crowding you, like he was trying to make you seem small. You didn’t mind it. With the way he was kissing you, you were fairly certain you wouldn’t mind anything.

The next time the two of you came up for air, he didn’t pull far enough away for you to really see him. You were just far enough apart for your lips not to be touching, but you could still feel the side of his nose pressed against yours. You could still feel his breath against your skin. The two of you were pressed so tight against each other that you could’ve sworn you could feel the way his heart was about to beat clean out of his chest.

“Shit,” the word fell from his lips in a whisper, followed by an equally soft laugh. His lips brushed against yours as he spoke. “I’m…I’m not sorry.”

You laughed at that, couldn’t help yourself do to anything but. “Good.” Your hand slid from his jaw to the back of his head. “You shouldn’t be.” Kissing him again, you let your teeth pull lightly at his bottom lip as you pulled away. “Only thing you need to be sorry for is taking so long.”

He smiled and shook his head. If the lighting had been better you were sure that you would see a blush all across his cheeks and down his neck. You’d have to settle for the mental image of it. “Didn’t see you chasing me down across any parking lots for a kiss before this either,” he rebutted with a chuckle.

“Touché.”

The humor died down out of his voice as he said, “You know how long I’ve been wanting to do that?”

You nodded, noses brushing against each other. The bridge of his glasses bumped against your forehead for a split second in the process. “I’ve got a pretty good idea, yeah.”

Your bodies were pressed together so tightly that you felt it when he sucked in a quick breath. There were a million things that he wanted to say to you and he couldn’t make himself say any of them in that moment. He had his hand on your back and the taste of your kiss on his lips and yet none of the things he’d been thinking over the passing months were making it out.

The feeling of your fingers toying with the longer strands of his hair centered him enough for him to smile as he said, “At least you know that. I—oh—” He fumbled his way out of the sentence when he felt your lips on his neck.

“Bob?” you said, lips brushing against the column of his throat as you spoke.

“Y-yeah?” he stammered out, and you could feel the vibrations against your lips as he talked.

Taking one hand off of him, you reached and pulled on the handle to the back door of your car. You kissed him again, pushing both of you off the side of the car in the process. “Get in the car.”

He was far enough away that you could see the shocked look on his face. “What?”

You placed your hands on his sides, switching your positions so that he was closer to the car than you. “Car.” You kissed him. “Back seat.” Another kiss. “Now.”

“Now?” He looked around the parking lot. Full of cars but completely devoid of people. “Here?”

You laughed as you pushed him farther back, causing him to duck slightly as he went backwards into the car. “Preferably, yeah.”

“I don’t—whoa,” he fell back across your back seat, managing to brace himself on his forearms.

You shimmied in after him. Pulling the door shut behind you, you climbed on top of him, one leg between his, the other pinned between the outside of his leg and the back seat. It was close quarters, but you weren’t exactly looking to put any distance between the two of you.

Your hands landed on his shoulders, fingers curling over the curve of them as you leaned in and kissed him on the lips. Whatever reservations he’d had about your current location disappeared almost immediately once your lips caught his. His hands were on your hips for a moment. You could feel the way he tightened his grip even through the denim of your shorts. Your lips and his met over and over, each reconnection making him a little bolder.

He managed to get his thoughts together just enough to pry one hand from your hip so that he could reach up and take his glasses off. He all but tossed them up and onto the center console between the driver and passenger seats. You were smiling and about to make a comment about the action but you didn’t get the chance. He brought his hand back to you, starting off on the soft, exposed skin of your thigh. His touch was soft at first, but quickly started to change. His fingers dragged up your leg before slipping past the bottom hem of your shorts.

Your pleased gasp of surprise when you felt the pads of his fingertips over the lace of your panties was quickly smothered as he pulled your lips back to his again. His grip on your ass tightened, pushing you down harder onto his thigh and causing you to moan into his mouth.

For a split second you couldn’t believe it. All this time and Bob hadn’t been able to make a move, couldn’t believe that you wanted to fool around in the back seat of your car—that same man was now grinding you down against his thigh in a way that had you wet and clenching around nothing.

You broke the kiss to catch your breath, muttering out a quiet, needy, “Fuck,” as you continued to move along the top of his leg.

When you pulled back enough to see him, you saw the way that he was watching the movement of your hips. He didn’t take his eyes off of you, felt like he physically couldn’t tear himself away from the sight. His hold on you loosened as you found your own rhythm. A tiny whimper slipped past your lips, the sound involuntary as you savored the friction. The sound made his gaze snap back up to your face, and when he saw the want and desperation etched into your expression he thought that he was going to melt into a puddle right there on your back seat. What a way to go.

He pulled you back down into another kiss, your bodies flush practically from head to toe. Even as you continued to move against his thigh, you could feel the way he was shifting slightly, trying to get in the most comfortable position as he felt himself growing more and more aroused with each passing second. He didn’t let you pull away, though, didn’t let you put any distance between you. With you pinning his leg to the seat, Bob let his hands wander up underneath he fabric of your shirt. Suddenly it was like you felt his hands everywhere—your back, your sides, your chest. He slipped them down past the waistband of your shorts and underwear, fingers kneading the flesh of your ass in a way that with everything else had your legs starting to shake.

Bob could feel it, too. He could feel the increased sense of urgency in your movements, the way you were chasing after something and you almost had it. He was half-expecting to be woken up and find out that this was all just a dream. But not even his dreams had been this good, felt this good.

He dragged his lips off of yours, trailing them along your jaw instead. He left a string of sloppy, desperate kisses in his wake until his lips were beside your ear. One of his hands crept up your back, palm and fingertips scorching your skin in the best way.

“I meant it, you know,” his whisper came out lower than you’d ever heard, a tiny hint of a tremor to it, “when I said I’ve been wanting this—you.” He kissed below your ear, feeling the shaky breath you let out at that, at his words. “But even when I thought about it,” he kissed your jaw, “or dreamed about you,” he kissed your neck, “it wasn’t—shit—it wasn’t anything compared to this.”

Fighting the urge to bury yourself into the crook of his neck at his words, you pulled your head back. You cupped his jaw roughly in one hand and crashed your lips against his. His arms slithered around you and wrapped you tightly against him. He could still feel the slight shake in your legs.

“Bob—”

He stole another quick kiss. “I’d wait all over again for this.”

You could hear it in his voice how genuine he was being. You tried not to let yourself get distracted by his still-wandering hands, or his erection that you could still feel through his jeans. You tried to start your sentence again. “Bob, I—”

“Let me—”

“Come home with me,” you cut him off right back this time, deciding to just get to the point of what you were trying to say.

Confusion flashed across his face for a quick moment. “What?”

“Come back to my place.”

“I thought—”

“I wanna do this.” You sat up enough so that you could drag your fingertips down over his chest and stomach, even doing it over the fabric of his shirt had him starting to squirm with want. “But I’d rather do it somewhere where I don’t have to worry about smacking my head off the ceiling if I sit up all the way.”

The statement got both of you to laugh. “That’s fair.” He paused, a smirk on his face as he said, “Car was your idea, though.”

You rolled your eyes. “I’m feeling a little impatient. Sue me.”

He pulled you into another kiss, one that every time you thought it was over he’d pull you back in all over again. As much as you wanted to get him back to your apartment and laid out on your bed, you also knew that you’d spend as much time as he wanted to doing exactly what you were doing right now. Anything to keep him this close now that you had him there.

When he released you from the kiss, he looked up at you with that same smile, that same slightly dazed look to in his eyes. Like he couldn’t believe this was happening. You couldn’t really believe it either. You couldn’t believe that any of it was happening at all, but you were also having a hard time wrapping your head around the fact that Bob Floyd, the same man who could barely make eye contact with you at the bar the first time you all went out together, was the same man who looked like he was about to try and strategize how to best make use of your back seat so he wouldn’t have to wait to get back to your apartment.

“I live less than ten minutes from here,” you said, already knowing what he was going to say.

His hands moved around to the front of you, fingers just barely curled over into the front of your waistband. You pretended not to notice the way he was toying with the button of your shorts. “Thought you had things to do tomorrow?”

You laughed, leaning in and kissing him. “I still do. Now they’re just,” you ran your hand lightly over the crotch of his jeans, enough pressure to get him to buck into you, “different things.” You giggled quietly at the purposeful breath he sucked in. Reaching over, you grabbed his glasses for him. “C’mon. You can ride shotgun.”

He propped himself up by his forearms again as you untangled yourself from him. “What if—”

You couldn’t help but to laugh as you stopped his sentence short. “Little late to get shy now.”

He smiled, face starting to turn red. “Right.”

The only thing that passed between the two of you were knowing looks and soft laughter as you scrambled out and into the front seats of the car. It wasn’t until you were pulling out of the parking lot and onto the road that you spoke up again, trying not to be too distracted by Bob’s hand creeping higher and higher up on your thigh.

“So,” you looked over at him for a second before returning your attention to the road, “you dreamt about me?”

His head dropped back against the headrest and you couldn’t help but to laugh at his faux exasperation. He gave your thigh a squeeze. You were expecting a joke, one of the witty little comebacks that he had a way of finding in the right moments, but instead he let himself be serious as he said, “Yeah, I did.”

The three words hung in the air between you, and you felt the butterflies that you’d been too busy to feel before in the heat and the rush of everything else. You could feel the way that Bob was looking at you while you looked at the road.

“How much longer?” he asked.

You laughed, sparing him a glance. “Six minutes, tops.”

He nodded, fingertips grazing up and down your thigh, goosebumps breaking out over your skin despite how warm your car was with its still-fogged-up windows. “Six minutes.”

[eoieopda]

Oo we doing horny headcanons at jade hq??? Okkkkk

Your thoughts on bts as needy/horny boyfriends while you’re a busy working independent woman lmao 👀

JADE HQ ☠️ omfg. love that, love you. let’s fuckin gooooo

namjoon is sending you the horniest poetry known to man. it’s all deep cuts that only he knows about. the authors he’s quoting have mostly been dead forever (and half of them were sapphic), but he’s got their eroticism locked and loaded. you ever receive audre lorde’s recreation as a sext? now you have! you’re rolling your eyes at that big-brained motherfucker, but you’ve also never been wetter, reading pablo neruda talk about… a whole almond??

seokjin commits to the bit. you’re in a meeting, receiving a photo series that tells a story. oh, there’s his lil smirking selca. then, his neck and — what’s this? bare collarbones? a photo of clothing left in a trail down the hallway in his apartment. an empty shower, water running. most maddening is the photo of a steamed up mirror where he’s written “you done yet?” in condensation because he knows 1) you’re not done, and 2) that you can just barely make out his reflection in the fog. bastard.

yoongi is subtle. he’s sending you context-free pics of him doing shit with his hands because he 👏🏻 knows 👏🏻. he absolutely did not need to show you the iced americano he’s holding, but he does need you to see how his hand wraps around it and makes the veins in his forearm stand out. in case you weren’t picking up the hints, he gets a little more blatant. it’s game over when you get the tangerine slice leaking juice all over his fingers. RIP to you, bestie.

hoseok is thankful you work from home because you’re both accessible and distractible. he knows you’re on a Teams meeting, and that he’s not visible on webcam from the other side of your laptop. you know that you have to control your expression when he’s walking around your apartment naked with a semi, like it’s just a normal monday afternoon for him. your coworkers wonder what tf is wrong with you when your pupils visibly dilate during a boring presentation, which you haven’t glanced down at for the duration.

jimin got tired of his whining going straight to voicemail, so he’s going straight to your office. security at the front desk doesn’t recognize him, but he walks with such confidence and determination that they don’t even question that he belongs there. and your secretary? well, they’re easily charmed — and jimin’s easily charming. he’ll be waiting for you to get back from whatever’s on your schedule. try and ignore him in person — see what happens 😌 rest assured, you’ll be cancelling your next appointment. something came up.

taehyung is the king of whimsical daytime nudes. he knows you hate unsolicited dick pics as a concept, so he’s going to find the stupidest, most creative ways to let you know what’s waiting for you when you come home from work. we’re talking shit taken on a self-timer, standing naked behind a potted plant, thick dick™️ peaking through the leaves. is it ridiculous, cracked, and kinda cringey? yup. is it effective? in a way that makes you question what’s wrong with you ✨

jungkook is impatient. you’re hard at work, typing furiously to meet a project deadline. meanwhile, he’s closing your laptop, ignoring your complaints, lifting your whole body out of your desk chair, and carrying you off to the nearest fuckable surface — couch, bed, counter, whatever. you can finish your shit when he takes a post-nut nap 💕

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

The Waves are Rising and Rising

|Beginning| |Previous|

Chapter 10

They're just sooo dedicated to their education 😌 Chapter 11 will post on Monday!

--//--

“I hope da-ge will be alright,” Lan Xichen frets with an embarrassed sort of glance over his shoulder back down the hallway. Before this whole… endeavour, Jin Guangyao would have thought it impossible for Lan Xichen to feel embarrassed about anything (less because he’s incapable of feeling it and more because he simply couldn’t have imagined Lan Xichen doing anything to be embarrassed about) and yet here they are, sheepishly making their escape from Nie Mingjue’s quarters after leaving their sworn brother quite literally passed out butt-naked in his bed, not even under the covers.

Apparently, when one dual cultivates quite successfully and has a very nice orgasm to go with it in the relaxing heat of a hot spring bath, one becomes so content and drowsy that one collapses straight into bed and promptly begins snoring, leaving one’s companions with no questions as to whether or not there will be the usual second round. Who knew?

Jin Guangyao is just glad for all his layers he can don like armour to hide both all his tender bits (emotionally speaking) and the fact that he’s a man of well-ingrained habits, which means his dick would very much like the usual reward for enduring these dual cultivation sessions.

Alright, enduring is a bit too harsh of a word even under their typical circumstances, but he is absolutely enduring the effects of not fucking his sworn brother in the ass for purely medical reasons. He only considers himself lucky that he’d been able to exit the bath first and dress with his back to the pair still lingering in the water in order to better hide his enduring erection that simply refuses to soften whilst still in the presence of the only men he trusts to do anything about it.

Hm. Using ‘trust’ and ‘Nie Mingjue’ in the same thought is something he absolutely will not be examining at such a dire moment. Perhaps he will later.

Much later.

“He’ll be fine,” Jin Guangyao soothes Lan Xichen in order to distract himself from both his unwelcome thoughts and the persistent aching between his legs. “If anything, I would suggest that he is feeling better than any other time we’ve left him to recover.”

“It was the most successful session yet, I will agree,” Lan Xichen says with one of his happy little sparkling smiles that Jin Guangyao always wants to hoard like the glittering contents of the secret Jin treasure rooms. “It clearly made a difference to have you participating simultaneously.”

Jin Guangyao — who feels very much like he didn’t participate nearly enough and who is also very conscious of the fact that they’re currently not exactly in private — smiles his most dimpling smile up at Lan Xichen and lowers his voice slightly to say, “Perhaps this is a discussion that should be held when we next meet with da-ge in his quarters.”

Ever attuned to everything Jin Guangyao could ever want or need, Lan Xichen simply inclines his head and clearly fights off a wider smile than the one currently tipping up just the corners of his kiss-pink lips.

“Could you perhaps be tempted into having this discussion over tea? I’ve brought a new blend from Caiyi, I was told it is meant to be restorative.”

Restore what? Jin Guangyao thinks somewhat churlishly. He certainly hadn’t lost anything during the last session except perhaps another slice of his pride, and he doesn’t think there’s a tea in the entire world blended so masterfully as to restore that. They reach the door to Lan Xichen’s guest quarters a mere few steps later and stop at the same time, the door framed between them as Jin Guangyao turns to look up at Lan Xichen’s open, gently expectant expression.

He knows he could say no, and his beloved er-ge wouldn’t hold it against him for even a moment. He could say no and go sulk in his own guest quarters until dinner, which he’s assuming Nie Mingjue will not be present for considering it’s in half a shichen and he’s sleeping like the dead. Without the Sect Leader in attendance no one would think it amiss for Jin Guangyao to request a meal be sent to his quarters, and he’d assumed Lan Xichen would likely want the same, though he remembers somewhat belatedly (he’s far too out of sorts if he’s forgetting things like this so easily) that Lan Xichen’s stamina needs absolutely no recovery after a single session and he likely feels perfectly fine.

Lans, Jin Guangyao thinks, though he abruptly realises he has no idea if the slightly terrifying lack-of-a-refractory-period business is actually a generalised Lan thing or simply a Lan Xichen thing.

Either way, Lan Xichen is very likely in no need of a restorative tea for anything at all, which means he purchased it on his way here specifically for Jin Guangyao, and he’s looking at him so hopefully, and Jin Guangyao is maybe still a little bit wound up and absolutely not at all interested in the very faint possibility of finding out if his realisation back in the bath has any veracity to it after the heat of the moment has mostly passed —

“This one would be happy to join you, er-ge,” he says and basks in the reward of Lan Xichen’s pleasure at having successfully talked him into being doted on.

“Wonderful,” his sworn brother enthuses and opens the door to his quarters, hardly touched except for his few personal effects set carefully aside.

Watching Lan Xichen make tea is a distinct pleasure in and of itself. Jin Guangyao sits carefully on his knees, hands folded demurely in his lap, and happily watches his favourite unparalleled gentleman elevate the practice to an art form, as Jin Guangyao knows he’d been taught all his life. It’s beautiful and refined and the tea when he pours it is, of course, brewed to absolute perfection, and Jin Guangyao, cock still aching under the thick layers of his robes, tries very very hard not to think of it as the same sort of show the ladies in the brothel would put on when performing for cultivators or local officials or anyone else of high enough rank to appreciate a bit of ceremony with their purchased pleasures.

It’s not a seduction here, it’s perfectly in keeping with the behaviour expected of a gentleman of Lan Xichen’s calibre, and yet all Jin Guangyao can think of as they sip at their delicate brew is the graceful arch of Lan Xichen’s wrists, the easy surety in his fingers that are apparently remarkably good at so many other (far less innocent) things.

“A-Yao, are you alright?” Lan Xichen asks when the first small cups have been drained and Jin Guangyao takes a turn to pour fresh servings for the both of them, focusing hard on making sure his own pouring is just as delicate and refined as Lan Xichen’s.

“Of course,” is the instinctive answer that springs to his smiling lips. He flicks a glance up at Lan Xichen through his lashes as he returns the teapot to its tray and, rather unnecessarily, picks up Lan Xichen’s cup to pass it to him directly. The table is small and Jin Guangyao had leaned further up onto his knees to pour Lan Xichen’s serving, it isn’t as if he has to reach far to pick the cup up himself. But his er-ge is so indulgent; he says nothing as he brushes their hands together around tea-warmed stoneware and lingers there, fingertips between fingertips and an almost mischievous smile tugging one corner of his mouth a little higher than the other.

“You seem distracted. Is there anything I can help with?”

Jin Guangyao, who would very much like it if Lan Xichen helped with the distraction still sitting heavily in the front of his trousers, plucks a suitable answer from somewhere in his brain that’s marginally less horny.

“I was wondering if er-ge could answer this one’s questions about dual cultivation now.”

Okay so maybe that part of his brain is just as horny as the rest of it.

“Of course I’m happy to answer any questions A-Yao may have,” Lan Xichen replies gracefully, only the faintest hint of pink in the tip of his ears the first sign that he’s embarrassed again for some reason. “Though… this er-ge thought he might offer more practical information.”

Jin Guangyao blinks, both hands cradling his tea cup just below his mouth that’s maybe hanging open, just a tiny little bit. Not gawking, but definitely in the vicinity of ‘shocked’.

‘Shocked’ because that’s Lan Xichen’s I-want-sex face. Slightly embarrassed, a little anticipatory, and absolutely horny under all that stoic Lan repression. Lan Xichen takes a sip of his tea and maintains valiant eye contact over the rim of his cup, unflinching despite the blush darkening to true red at the tips of his jade-pale ears.

“Practical information?”

“It has occurred to me that dual cultivation theory is not something easily understood strictly in written form.” That is quite the understatement considering Jin Guangyao was there at the beginning when literally none of them understood how to do this, but he doesn’t interrupt to remind Lan Xichen of that. “It has also occurred to me, fairly recently in fact, that perhaps some of the difficulties that lie between you and da-ge and your ability to cultivate together is an unfamiliarity with how it should feel to share your qi with another in the first place, let alone through dual cultivation. Giving or receiving, I mean.”

Lan Xichen is so delicate about it it takes an extra beat for the meaning to sink in, and when it does the sting is inevitable even when delivered with his er-ge’s gentle understanding.

Because no. Jin Guangyao doesn’t understand how to share his qi. He’s cultivated it to hoard it, to cling to that small little fire in his lower dantian and stoke it whenever he possibly can in the hopes that he can continue to find his place amongst the society he so desperately longs to truly be a part of. Cultivators like Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue — strong, powerful leaders since they were young — have had years of practice sharing their qi with their disciples, with each other, with anyone and everyone in need of healing or extra strength lended to them. Cultivators like Jin Guangyao — half-trained at best and struggling well into adulthood to form a core that a 10 year old would envy — have not had that luxury.

As for receiving qi…it seems like it should be easy, and it seems like he should have had some sort of practice with it, but no example springs immediately to mind. There was whatever Lan Xichen had been doing while he’d been only half-conscious the time he’d passed out, followed by whatever strange pressure Nie Mingjue’s doctor had subjected his core to when she’d examined him, but as far as actually receiving another’s qi into his core and integrating the energy with his own? No. No one has ever offered, that he can remember.

The reminder of their insurmountable differences in station and life experience burns.

“I see.”

Lan Xichen looks on the verge of apologising but Jin Guangyao offers him a smile, a genuine one, and sips at his tea again to buy himself time to tuck the little raw bits of his heart back under much less useless emotions, where they belong.

“I thought… seeing as I require very little recovery, and you would not necessarily have to reach an orgasm to experience dual cultivation —” Jin Guangyao’s dick twitches just hearing Lan Xichen say the word ‘orgasm’ so whatever it is he’s thinking, orgasms are definitely on the table “— I thought perhaps we might try dual cultivation together. Just us.”

Jin Guangyao blinks a few times slowly, attempting to let those thoughts percolate through the horny fog currently forming the top layer of his thoughts into somewhere he can approach them more logically. He almost succeeds, too, but then he thinks about Lan Xichen between his legs, kissing him desperately the way that he does while also doing dual cultivation things to him and the hope for any logical arguments as to why this might not be a good idea happily fling themselves out of the window.

Jin Guangyao would very much like it if his brain would stop disobeying the usual orders simply because his sworn brothers are hot. It’s terribly inconvenient and has landed him nowhere particularly great so far.

(Well that’s a lie and he knows it, but he’s also currently hot and unsatisfied and would very much like to be uncharitable about it for a little while longer, so. There’s that.)

“And you want to… do the penetrating?” is the best question Jin Guangyao can come up with; thankfully Lan Xichen simply smiles, somehow both bashful and utterly unrepentant at once, and nods.

“It will be easier to explain what I do to da-ge if I am doing it to you, don’t you think?”

Yes he does think. He absolutely does in fact think.

Hidden behind his cup raised to take another sip of his very nice and delicate ‘restorative’ tea, Jin Guangyao concedes, “That makes sense.”

Lan Xichen doesn’t even bother pretending like he wants them to finish the pot of tea first, which Jin Guangyao realises perhaps belatedly was a very obvious ploy to get him to come in and sit down long enough to be propositioned; a ploy which he’d walked right into quite eagerly and very much hoping he’d get something more than a pleasant beverage out of, though he hadn’t quite expected sex.

Not that he’s complaining.

Not when Lan Xichen stands up to hold a hand out to help coax him up and away from the table, and not when Lan Xichen reels him in for a relatively chaste kiss that nonetheless leaves Jin Guangyao with his breath hitching in his chest and his weight tipping, without his permission, up onto the balls of his feet so he can try to get a little bit closer, try to narrow the gap between them and make it easier for Lan Xichen to be with him like this.

He hardly even notices the hands on his waist gently unfastening his belt, though when he feels the band of it loosen he does have a moment of panic in which he covers Lan Xichen’s hand with his own, wary of Hensheng falling to the floor before he remembers his sword is in his room with the rest of his things, considering he knows for a fact Nie Mingjue wouldn’t ever trust him to show up in his rooms armed, and there’d be no hiding it considering what he’s in Nie Mingjue’s quarters to actually do.

“It’s alright,” Lan Xichen murmurs into the scant space between their mouths, apparently misinterpreting his grip on his hand as… nerves, perhaps? Which would be absolutely ridiculous, this is his er-ge, everyone in the Jianghu knows how much they favour each other even if they willfully blind themselves to the exact nature of that favour. Still, the soft pattering of kisses Lan Xichen’ trails down his jaw and the side of his neck to reassure him are lovely on their own even without the need for comfort, so Jin Guangyao simply makes a noise of acknowledgement in the back of his throat and tips his head back to encourage more.

Jin Guangyao is half-expecting Lan Xichen to simply drop his clothes right there on the floor considering he has a shocking lack of care for his own when they undress to have sex with Nie Mingjue (it must be nice to have an entire wardrobe full of embroidered cleaning talismans to take care of all minor stains and wrinkles, he thinks with absolutely no envy clawing up his throat). He’s partially expecting for Lan Xichen to take his clothes and toss them haphazardly over the nearest available surface to at least keep them off the floor.

What he isn’t expecting is for Lan Xichen to take a half-step back, breaking their kiss with obvious reluctance, strictly so that he can fold the belt neatly and step away to lay it over the privacy screen tucked in an unobtrusive corner with the usual simple bathing supplies.

Jin Guangyao blinks as he shrugs out of his outermost robe and hands it over, only to watch Lan Xichen give it the same careful treatment. His hands absolutely do not tremble when he unpicks the knots on the ties of the robe beneath that, or the next under it as well to hand them both over to Lan Xichen one at a time to fold carefully in half so he can hang them up out of the way.

Is this foreplay? Can this count as foreplay? It should definitely count as something anyway because Jin Guangyao, having already been on edge, is ready to climb Lan Xichen like a tree and all they’ve done is kiss and fold clothes.

He can practically hear Nie Mingjue laughing at them in the back of his head but he’s not actually here right now, is he, which means Jin Guangyao is perfectly free to get turned on by whatever works for him, thank you very much.

His shirt is next, and as he watches Lan Xichen fold it just as gently as everything else he kicks off his shoes with his loose socks (and the slightly more fitted pair beneath them, Qinghe is chilly with all its stone floors even in the summer). By the time Lan Xichen turns back to him standing there only in his trousers there’s no hiding the fact that he’s definitely hard, and Lan Xichen isn’t so polite that he doesn’t glance down once very quickly, almost perfunctory — and then does a double take to openly stare.

“A-Yao-” he starts, confusion in his voice and the shadow of a line between his brows, “-I thought you needed...”

Jin Guangyao takes a deep, quick breath in and ignores the familiar twinge in his ribs for it in favour of starting to unpick the tie in the waistband of the trousers, looking down at what he’s doing so he doesn’t have to see Lan Xichen’s face when he replies, “Well I didn’t actually… finish in the bath, so you’re right, I can’t bounce right back, not like you can–”

“A-Yao,” Lan Xichen says and at least he sounds properly appalled. The stupid whining thing in Jin Guangyao’s chest is soothed by the clear evidence that at least Lan Xichen hadn’t knowingly neglected to take care of him, it was just a simple mistake, an oversight.

Whatever other stupid whining thing that tries to argue that he still could have at least checked before they’d all cleaned up and gotten dressed is abruptly silenced by Lan Xichen grabbing him (carefully, though not without some urgency) by the face to pull him in for a kiss that is absolutely not chaste at all, not even a little bit.

As it turns out, the lapels of Lan Xichen’s robes make for excellent handholds while Jin Guangyao tries not to get bowled over by his apologetic enthusiasm, though a few nipping, bruising kisses later Lan Xichen solves the issue of his uncertain footing by simply hoisting him up with broad hands under his thighs to carry him the few steps to the bed. The journey is hardly long enough for Jin Guangyao’s vertigo from the sudden lift to really settle in before Lan Xichen is laying him down oh-so-gently on the densely embroidered silk bedcover and he has approximately two seconds to appreciate how nice it feels against his skin, soft and cool, before Lan Xichen is on him, skin-warmed silk and curtains of dark hair on either side broken with a shock of white that he suddenly, desperately wants to brush his fingers over.

He won’t, of course, and he pushes the thought from his mind with the help of Lan Xichen’s over-eager mouth pressed over and over into all the spots on his neck that make him shiver, including a bunch of places he had no idea were so sensitive until Lan Xichen is suddenly sucking on them to worry them between his teeth.

Rather than burying his hands in Lan Xichen’s hair, which is a treacherous terrain he doesn’t actually want to attempt to navigate for fear of disrespecting his clan’s most dearly-held tradition, he busies himself with attempting to undress him from beneath him instead, his entire body aching for the press of warm, soft skin simply for the pleasure, the intimacy of it. Lan Xichen doesn’t exactly make it easy for him, but he does at least keep his weight up on his knees and forearms to leave enough space between their bodies for Jin Guangyao’s hands to work at the many layers of his ensemble, though he wears significantly fewer layers in Qinghe than he does anywhere else (a mere three outer layers, rather than the traditional six he wears within Gusu).

For all that it had meant to him to see Lan Xichen treat his clothing with so much careful respect (except his trousers, which had fallen around his ankles when Lan Xichen had kissed him and there they’re going to stay because the time for laundry foreplay is absolutely over) he has no compunctions about shoving Lan Xichen’s layers off him as unceremoniously as necessary to get him naked as soon as possible, and it’s clearly the correct move as Lan Xichen hurries to help him kick and shove the offending yards and yards of silk well away from where they’re laying together.

“I believe I owe you an orgasm,” Lan Xichen finally breathes when there’s nothing but miles of warm skin for Jin Guangyao to run greedy hands over, which he promptly does with relish, as if he hadn’t just sat in Lan Xichen’s lap within the last shichen when he was not only naked but wet as well, which was certainly its own pleasure.

“Technically speaking, da-ge owes me an orgasm.”

Making Lan Xichen laugh into the crook of his neck when their bodies are tangled together from shoulder to ankles is an experience, one that Jin Guangyao would very much like to repeat as many times as humanly possible.

“Da-ge is indisposed, and we’re already so conveniently in my bed,” Lan Xichen hums, sounding thoroughly smug if Jin Guangyao is any judge of his moods. “Will you allow your er-ge to settle da-ge’s debts for him?”

“I suppose,” he attempts to say with some degree of coy teasing, but Lan Xichen happens to time it with a pinch of his fingertips around one of Jin Guangyao’s heretofore underappreciated nipples, so it comes out much closer to a gasp as his entire body lights up with the sensation in a way he would never have expected in a thousand years.

Lan Xichen, secret menace that he is, has the nerve to offer him a blithe, “Thank you, A-Yao,” in the moment before he abruptly slides off the edge of the bed — so quickly that Jin Guangyao hears his knees hit the floor sharply enough that his own ache in sympathy — and then there’s something wet and hot wrapped around his painfully hard cock. There’s absolutely no stopping the startled squeak that escapes him as he claps his hands over his mouth too late to muffle it.

He spends several endless moments gaping up at the ceiling, eyes wide and his mouth hanging open behind the shield of his hands as Lan Xichen wastes no time setting up camp right there, Jin Guangyao’s legs dangling off the side of the bed — well, within moments they’re thrown over Lan Xichen’s shoulders instead — and his chest already flushed with both pleasure and embarrassment on Lan Xichen’s behalf.

Does this count towards dual cultivation?? He’d thought he was supposed to feel what Nie Mingjue feels, he’d thought he’d get on his hands and knees and let Lan Xichen finger him open, fuck him in that deceptively simple rhythm he tends to like until they both came. Why is Lan Xichen running his parted lips up and down the length of his shaft in a sort-of-kiss? Why is he taking the tip in his mouth like he wants to savour it? Why is he petting Jin Guangyao’s thighs with those beautiful, elegant hands of his like he’s trying to soothe a spooked horse while Jin Guangyao does his level best to stay still and not buck up into the tight wet heat of his mouth and accidentally choke him?

What the hell is this?! (In the best way possible, mind.)

“Er-ge,” he manages to get out some indeterminate amount of time later. (It couldn’t have been more than moments, some logical part of him thinks, but everything feels as if it’s moving both slower and faster than normal, time is a little fluid at the moment.) “Are you sure -?”

“Quite,” Lan Xichen pops off him long enough to say, and Jin Guangyao risks a glance down at him that he absolutely cannot maintain if he wants to last longer than… well… he’s already lasted longer than Lan Xichen’s first time inside Nie Mingjue, but that’s not exactly the most impressive benchmark to measure himself against, and at least Lan Xichen had been good to resume immediately; Jin Guangyao definitely can’t make the same promise if he loses control of himself so soon.

“But I thought -”

Lan Xichen waits an extra beat, likely waiting to hear if Jin Guangyao will actually tell him what he thought (he won’t, his thoughts are too scrambled to put the right ones in the correct order), but when it’s clear nothing else is forthcoming he replaces his mouth with the almost-lazy stroking of his hand which is somehow nearly as good.

“As I said before, you won’t actually need to orgasm to cultivate with me, and I’ve noticed that da-ge is more relaxed and easier for you to enter after he’s already come for me once. I’d like to make sure this is a good experience for you beyond the cultivation instruction; an orgasm first to ease the way doesn’t seem amiss, does it?”

Jin Guangyao laughs weakly up at the ceiling and shakes his head clumsily from side to side. “No, er-ge. Not at all.”

“Wonderful,” he practically chirps before he reapplies himself to the task at hand (task at mouth?) and Jin Guangyao covers his entire face with both hands for a long moment, fighting the urge to laugh a little harder with something bordering on hysteria.

Wonderful! Jin Guangyao repeats in the safety of his own mind, suddenly kind of wishing that Nie Mingjue was here just so they could share one of their rare looks of perfect mutual understanding. He would get what’s so ridiculous about their lover and he would sympathise with Jin Guangyao’s plight, of that he’s certain.

Thinking of Nie Mingjue at least has the effect of slicing through some of his amusement, relief that he… isn’t here cutting through it with a bit of guilt on the backend. The sex they have with Nie Mingjue is getting better, he could almost call it fun if he were really pressed to after today, but there’s no escaping the fact still that it’s… well, medicinal. There’s the constant undercurrent, impossible to escape, of needing to fuck him in the hopes that by doing so they’ll prevent him dying a horrible death. It’s not exactly the most fun motive in the world, no matter how necessary it is. No matter how they’re managing to find ways to enjoy the process in spite of it.

But this is fun, plain and simple. Jin Guangyao doesn’t have to focus on his qi, or on Lan Xichen’s; he doesn’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing and accidentally souring Nie Mingjue’s mood, which would need Lan Xichen’s mediating influence to save; he doesn’t even have to do anything, mostly because Lan Xichen isn’t letting him. He’s got Jin Guangyao’s legs thrown over his shoulders and his enormous hands holding his hips still so he can work his mouth up and down him like he’s figuring out how to do it as he goes, the world’s most diligent student in the art of fellatio, and Jin Guangyao has been expressly instructed to simply enjoy it.

That’s certainly proving to not be a problem at all.

Not nearly as quickly as Lan Xichen’s first time, but certainly faster than Jin Guangyao would have liked (if for no other reason than he’s not really prepared for this part to end so soon), Jin Guangyao feels himself very abruptly teetering on the knife’s edge he’s now so familiar with. He gasps and chokes on some approximation of, “Er-ge!” in warning, attempting to pair it with a hand in Lan Xichen’s hair though he finds one of his sworn brother’s hands instead, their fingers locking together tightly as Lan Xichen refuses to stop sucking at him to let him come anywhere besides right in his mouth, which leaves him no choice but to… do that. Right in his mouth.

Jin Guangyao attempts to catch his breath in the aftermath and just barely hears a soft, definitely undignified and utterly un-Lan-like, “blegh,” that he does not, in any way shape or form, have the mental capacity to either apologise for or laugh about at the moment.

“I must admit, that texture is not… quite what I had anticipated, somehow,” Lan Xichen says as he stands to readjust Jin Guangyao’s limp form to lay him in more towards the centre of the bed, once again seeming to expend no effort at all in arranging Jin Guangyao’s wayward limbs into whatever configuration he deems most pleasing.

“I did try to warn you; you didn’t have to swallow it,” Jin Guangyao mumbles; higher brain functions still feel like a bit of a far-off dream, but if Lan Xichen wants to discuss what just happened Jin Guangyao can at least attempt to be a decent conversational partner. Maybe. He’s feeling dangerously unfiltered at the moment, but that’s secondary to how floaty he feels after an orgasm that was absolutely better than anything he’s ever had with Nie Mingjue, hands down. (He’s very determinedly not feeling anything about that particular fact at this moment in time, please try again later.)

Lan Xichen hums and lies down beside him to curl up around him, so much warm, slightly-tacky skin and steady grounding pressure punctuated with close-mouthed kisses peppered over the curve of his shoulder that Jin Guangyao is suddenly swallowing down completely irrational tears.

“Call it opportunistic curiosity,” Lan Xichen murmurs with a smile in his voice. “I wanted to try it; it was fine. I would do it again, if you liked it.”

Jin Guangyao absolutely does not whimper; Lan Xichen promises it so easily, like the unpleasantness of what he’d just done is no price at all to pay again if Jin Guangyao will be the one to ask it of him. That’s just not fair, why does Lan Xichen have to be so good to him all the time? How is his heart supposed to bear it all?

Rather than ask when another such opportunity might arise or anything else foolish guaranteed to end in more disappointed heartache, Jin Guangyao simply rolls onto his side to flop more of his weight on Lan Xichen’s chest with a tired grumbling. It only feels a little bit like laying on the stone floor, if the stone floor breathed and had a heartbeat and buried kisses in his hair as a warm hand strokes down his arm, his waist, to massage slow circles into his bad hip just in case it’s tense. It isn’t. Jin Guangyao hides in Lan Xichen’s neck and lets him do it anyway.

“Dual cultivation?” he eventually mumbles when he feels like maybe he won’t explode if anyone tries to touch his dick again.

Lan Xichen’s reply is immediate and relaxed. “Whenever you’re ready, A-Yao.”

Jin Guangyao makes a vaguely affirmative sound in his throat but makes no move to get up and onto his hands and knees — which he abruptly realises he… probably can’t even do in the first place, not if they’re going to take longer than a few minutes. (He really wants to take longer than a few minutes.)

“Ah-“ he starts, his chest tight. “How do you… want me?”

Lan Xichen kisses his cheek and tucks the arm pinned underneath him more firmly around his shoulders, his other hand slipping down from his hip to instead rub wide, slow ovals up and down the outside of his thigh, almost meditative in its steady, soothing rhythm.

“We could start just like this, and take things nice and slow,” Lan Xichen muses, hand drifting further down, brushing delicate fingertips along the sensitive crease where thigh meets cheek, “though I regret to inform you that the oil is in my sleeve and I must dislodge you to retrieve it.”

Jin Guangyao hums a short discontented note and lifts his head out of the very inviting crook of Lan Xichen’s neck to attempt to spot the offending sleeve in question, as if glaring at it will magically bring it close enough for no one to need to move at all.

He can’t quite see it from his vantage point and turns his glare (changed swiftly to a pout halfway through) on Lan Xichen, whose tiny adoring smile promptly steals his mostly-teasing protest right off the tip of his tongue.

“Hello,” Lan Xichen hums, warm and close like the finest silk left to warm in the sun. “You may pout at me as much as you like, but the fact remains that I refuse to hurt you, and you’ve always been the keenest on proper preparation.”

“Past me was working under vastly different circumstances. He didn’t have all the facts,” Jin Guangyao argues without any true intention to take Lan Xichen with no preparation at all, and whatever relaxation his orgasm has already provided most certainly does not count. It wouldn’t even if Lan Xichen weren’t almost as intimidating of a prospect as Nie Mingjue, but since he is then the oil is an absolute must.

Damn it.

Lan Xichen huffs a little laugh, eyes crinkled up at the corners in the way Jin Guangyao loves best. “And what are these new facts that would have led you to make different choices?”

Jin Guangyao can’t bear that smile any longer, it’s too soft, it’s too lovely, so he buries himself safely in Lan Xichen’s throat again to mumble, too vulnerable, too honest, “That I want you right here, and nowhere else.”

Leaning into the slow kisses Lan Xichen presses to his cooling cheek is as easy as breathing, as is allowing the other man to shift their weight, to readjust limbs in order to tumble him gently onto his back amongst the covers and press down to join him. Jin Guangyao tips his head back to let Lan Xichen slot their mouths together again and somehow, mysteriously, Jin Guangyao cares a lot less about Nie Mingjue not kissing him after they finished earlier. It’s very difficult to be grumpy about what might as well be ancient history with Lan Xichen pressing him down into the mattress with his entire body in a way that should probably feel suffocating but really just feels… incredible.

It’s like a full-body hug. Lan Xichen slides his arms under Jin Guangyao’s waist and shoulders, Jin Guangyao throws his legs around Lan Xichen’s thighs, and like magic all the bruised bits of his heart are suddenly much easier to ignore. Is this what people are chasing when they visit brothels? Because this he could sort of maybe understand, a little bit.

They kiss for long enough that Jin Guangyao sort of… forgets that this isn’t the end goal; clearly kissing Lan Xichen like this is dangerous if it’s capable of making him forget such important things, but this whole thing is an exercise in doing things that are borderline dangerous for one reason or another. What’s one more danger to add to the list?

“A-Yao, I need to get the oil,” Lan Xichen mumbles eventually between heated drags of his mouth along the crest of Jin Guangyao’s collarbone. Jin Guangyao swallows thickly, staring up at the ceiling, and repeats the words to himself mentally to try to parse the meaning of them when he’s so thoroughly distracted.

“Oil. Right,” is all he can manage. Lan Xichen’s indulgent chuckle against his skin isn’t helping him unscramble his thoughts in the least.

“Which means you need to let go of me.”

“Out of the question.”

Jin Guangyao smirks up at the ceiling as Lan Xichen devolves, very briefly, into giggles. He hadn’t even known that was possible, let alone that he could be someone who could make it happen. He’d thought he knew his er-ge so well prior to all of this dual cultivation mess, but it seems there are still new things to learn; good things, fun things. How absolutely delightful.

“A-Yao,” Lan Xichen chuckles, “I’ll only be a moment, and then I promise I won’t go anywhere else. You have my word.”

Jin Guangyao sucks in a deep breath and releases it again a moment later, a sigh that he drags all the way up from the depths of his soul, before he relents with an undignified little oof as he lets all his limbs fall to the bed at once. Lan Xichen gives him one more peck of a kiss before he slides off him and out of bed, long graceful lines of him gone a little lanky and coltish as he imagines Lan Xichen was during his teenage years in his hurry to fetch the correct robe and fish around in the voluminous sleeves for their ubiquitous little ceramic pot of oil.

Jin Guangyao ignores a deep pop in his shoulder to prop himself up on his elbow when Lan Xichen frowns and digs a little deeper into the sleeve, the familiar line of a slightly worried furrow popping up between his brows, just below his ribbon.

“If you left it in da-ge’s rooms it’s fine —” It is absolutely not fine but Jin Guangyao can smile through it —

“No, I have it!” Lan Xichen is quick to protest, his own smile a little too tight at the corners to fully reassure. “I know that I do, I didn’t even need it for him today, what with the bath and everything.”

Jin Guangyao wrinkles his nose a little; water is a very different texture than oil, that doesn’t sound like it would have been… entirely pleasant. Though he supposes he didn’t notice either, too wrapped up in the newness of Nie Mingjue apparently wanting him to be an active participant in the proceedings, even when not strictly necessary, to have paid much attention to the usual preparation process.

“Well if water worked for him we could try it –”

“I used soap,” Lan Xichen admits with perhaps a bit of sheepishness, which somehow feels silly when he’s standing in the middle of the room stark naked (save for where he’s got one arm buried up to the bicep in his sleeve to root around in the folds of silk). “Oil wouldn’t be very effective underwater anyway, I thought, and there was a lump of goat milk soap that seemed like it would be more visc–”

“Stop,” Jin Guangyao huffs and pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, unsure whether he should laugh or be horrified. It’s really no less than he should have expected anyway; as meticulous as Lan Xichen is as an individual, his impulse control when horny leaves a lot to be desired. As far as flaws go, though, Jin Guangyao supposes this one isn’t really that bad. Although he’s not the one who got fucked with soap to ease the way, so perhaps he’s not in a position to make that call.

Lan Xichen grimaces (it’s a very genteel sort of grimace but it’s definitely a grimace all the same) with an apologetic shrug. “Well I definitely have the oil anyway, and I promise to only use that for the rest of the night.”

“Yes, thank you, er-ge.”

Jin Guangyao keeps his eyes shut to lament Horny Lan Xichen’s decision making process a moment or two longer before forcing himself to bow to the inevitable, which is that he doesn’t actually mind it that much considering the pros of having a Horny Lan Xichen in his life far outweigh the cons, not to mention being infinitely better than no Horny Lan Xichen at all. He doesn’t want to go back to knowing what that’s like, so he supposes soap-fucking will just have to be something he lives with. Not actively, he’s not letting that happen again, but just knowing that it already did is… fine.

“Ah! Found it,” Lan Xichen announces with a triumphant smile, thoroughly pleased with himself, and Jin Guangyao finds himself incapable of not smiling back. “I was also wondering if you wouldn’t mind if I try something I only thought of earlier. I was a bit too… distracted to attempt it properly with da-ge, but I think it could help with learning how to share your qi.”

Jin Guangyao raises an eyebrow at Lan Xichen as the man crosses the few steps to the bed and coaxes him into lying down flat again with a gentle hand on his shoulder. Some sort of quip about Lan Xichen not being too distracted by him sits sharp and a little mean on the tip of his tongue, but he’d never snap at Lan Xichen like that so he buries it under bemusement instead.

“Our dual cultivation is already so experimental anyway, I suppose I can’t truly be opposed to further experimentation,” he allows. “Perhaps when we successfully recover da-ge’s health we should write a treatise on the methods we used, considering our own research materials were sparse and mostly limited to utterly unrealistic spring books, or dry medical texts with so little detail as to hardly be helpful without actual trial-and-error.”

Lan Xichen smirks ever so slightly as he swings one leg over Jin Guangyao’s thighs to straddle him and suddenly it’s not really so funny anymore, it’s just. Hot. Gods it’s just so unfair the way he can use his face like that.

“If A-Yao would like to begin a career publishing dual cultivation manuals then I would be more than happy to assist him in practical research whenever necessary.”

Any attempt to return the blatant innuendo is promptly made impossible when Lan Xichen, rather than waiting for him to reply, simply slicks his fingers up with practised ease, shifts his weight to let Jin Guangyao free one leg to fall wide, and leans over to distract him with a kiss while he slides the first finger inside him with no other preamble. Jin Guangyao’s entire (extensive) vocabulary instantly narrows down to something along the lines of, ‘Oh fuck’. Thankfully he manages to keep it locked safely in his head rather than blurting it aloud, though he can’t help but gasp as he’s entered for the first time in his life.

His hands fly to grasp Lan Xichen’s bare shoulders and find little purchase on smooth, warm skin stretched taut over hard muscle, but he digs in with his nails without consciously deciding to do so and from here he actually watches Lan Xichen’s eyes darken just a fraction, his lips parting and the tip of his tongue darting out to wet the center of the lower.

“I want to try giving you some of my qi like this,” Lan Xichen tells him after a brush of the tips of their noses in silent acknowledgement of Jin Guangyao’s need to process what just happened for a moment. “I haven’t tried it with da-ge yet, but I think it might be easier for you to focus on feeling it now than when I’m inside you properly.”

Considering Jin Guangyao is already doubting he’ll even be able to take him when this already feels like so much he thinks that’s a pretty fair assessment. Words are still a bit beyond him though so he nods a few too many times and drags Lan Xichen in for another kiss since he knows he likes that and the jury is still out on the other half of the equation.

Lan Xichen kisses him slowly, nothing elaborate, and after a few long moments Jin Guangyao realises it’s because he’s also trying to focus on directing his qi, trying to feed a steady stream of it into Jin Guangyao’s core — that isn’t accepting it.

Lan Xichen’s kiss-warm lips stick to his ever so slightly when he says, “Breathe, A-Yao, you have to let me in.”

You’re definitely in!! Jin Guangyao thinks a little manically, but the urge to laugh isn’t going to help him breathe like he needs to so he forces it away with an effort to try to concentrate and do as Lan Xichen says.

He breathes in deeply through his nose and holds it, pictures it filling every available space in his lungs, and exhales again slowly, measured against Lan Xichen’s steady presence above him rather than his own heartbeat like he would normally try, considering his heart is pounding and can’t be trusted to be a steady measurement at the moment.

Lan Xichen stays still to let him figure it out, patient and utterly nonjudgmental in a way that Jin Guangyao could kiss him for if they weren’t already sort of doing that in between his attempts to breathe in a steady-ish rhythm. As it turns out, the breathing thing is good for both his core and for relaxing his muscles, and as he exhales again a few long moments later some of the trembling in his thighs and knees eases, as does the grounding pressure of his nails in Lan Xichen’s shoulders.

“That’s it, you’re alright,” Lan Xichen hums and kisses the tip of his nose, the seeking pressure of his qi easing a little, but not stopping. “Now line your breathing up with our cores; they want to synchronise, but you have to let them.”

Part of him wants to cry that it’s too many instructions already and they’ve barely even started, he doesn’t really know how to cultivate in practice, mostly just in theory! He learned how to meditate on his own, he built his core on his own, he only received bits and pieces of rudimentary cultivation lessons in Qinghe when his duties took him near the rooms where they were teaching the youngest disciples; he doesn’t know how and Lan Xichen knows this so why is he setting Jin Guangyao up to fail?! Doesn’t he love —

“You’ll get it, A-Yao, just breathe. I’ll help.”

Jin Guangyao has exactly one manic moment to brace himself for a repeat performance of the way Lan Xichen had ‘helped’ him and Nie Mingjue link their qi their first session, but when an earth-shattering orgasm doesn’t seem to be forthcoming he focuses again on what they’re actually doing instead.

His next inhale shivers in his chest and he squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to be a witness to Lan Xichen’s infinite patience and gentle care as his er-ge breathes with him, but just shutting his eyes isn’t enough. They were joking and teasing mere minutes ago, where did all this vulnerability suddenly come from? He can’t bear this.

But he really doesn’t have any other choice at the moment does he? Not unless he’s willing to both hurt Lan Xichen’s feelings and leave himself unsatisfied again, both of which are completely untenable options, so he’ll just have to deal with it. Somehow.

Lan Xichen, naturally, chooses that moment to start moving the finger buried to the last knuckle inside him and Jin Guangyao’s attempts to regulate his breathing are momentarily all for naught as his back arches and he gasps sharply outside of their steady rhythm; because it’s not just physical sensation (which on its own feels slightly strange and not entirely pleasurable, especially considering he’s can’t get hard again so soon), it’s also Lan Xichen’s qi pulsing in his meridians in time with the measured thrusting of his finger and he desperately wants more of that, wants to chase the lightning bolt pleasure from the first (and only other) time he’s really felt Lan Xichen’s qi singing through his entire body.

There’s an agonising moment of sharp resistance in his core that he can suddenly feel like a gate that he can open, a pressure just waiting for him to release, and when Lan Xichen pushes in again with a sharp little hungry nip to his bottom lip Jin Guangyao finally – finally – finds whatever key it is that turns the lock. He wants Lan Xichen to fill every inch of him, he wants to let him in and let Lan Xichen live in him, he doesn’t want to ever stop feeling the way that his er-ge can make him feel —

Jin Guangyao can’t help but whimper as his meridians light up with every bit of qi that Lan Xichen has been trying to pass to him all at once, the rush of it like water poured onto parched earth, a vacuum craving something to fill it and the eager influx of it only curbed by Lan Xichen’s expertise.

It’s much gentler than his attempt to bridge Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue that first time had been, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t overwhelming in its own way to suddenly feel his carefully tended, jealously guarded, almost miserly bit of qi double — triple — between one breath and the next.

It’s like slipping into the bath had been, only better; every discomfort big or small is abruptly washed away in a soothing rush of heat just shy enough of pain to be pleasure, the little bit of fatigue lingering from the orgasm Lan Xichen had started him with is gone like it never was.

If this is only a careful fraction of what Lan Xichen can cultivate then it’s no wonder he never seems to tire!

He doesn’t even have time to be envious of so much power, because as soon as it’s clear he’s gotten it, as soon as he’s sure Lan Xichen can feel that he’s finally figured out how to truly let him in, Lan Xichen is directing the flow of it through his entire body in time with their ragged breathing warming the scant space between them.

“Circulate it with me, when you can.”

It’s gratifying to hear that Lan Xichen sounds as ragged around the edges as Jin Guangyao is sure he would if he could actually form coherent sentences at the moment. He nods and tries to muffle another humiliating whimper as even that somehow feels good, the friction of exertion-warmed silk against the back of his neck, the unintentional brush of Lan Xichen’s mouth against his when he moves. (It’s hardly the first time that Jin Guangyao has been oversensitive to the point of feeling everything at once, but it’s absolutely the first time it’s felt like such bliss.)

It takes a handful of endless moments of growing accustomed enough to the sensation of so much pure, clear qi in his core to start following the way Lan Xichen is directing it through his meridians in a familiar circuit, and with a bit of a start he realises it’s not only familiar because of his own meditations — he’d just felt it in the bath, the steady thrumming of it coursing through Nie Mingjue’s body, pooling in his core, and then flowing back out again without ever really stopping. He tries to pick out the thread of it, follow along on the current until he can catch up —

Lan Xichen laughs breathlessly into the crook of his neck and peppers his chest and throat with eager kisses when he gets it right.

“I’m going to give you more — no extra qi, just another finger,” he says and Jin Guangyao nods again, eager for more, for anything, so long as Lan Xichen is in charge of giving it to him.

There’s absolutely no way to focus on everything that’s happening at once; maybe if he were more familiar with sharing his qi it would be second nature enough that he could focus on all the intricacies of being on the receiving end of penetrative sex, but knowing him that would probably actually be a hindrance rather than a help. Like this there’s no way for him to overthink, there’s no space left in him to panic or to worry, there’s only sensation and Lan Xichen giving it to him, and so some unknown amount of time later when Lan Xichen stops nibbling on his collarbone to tell him that it’s likely Jin Guangyao’s body won’t get more relaxed than this so it’s time to try taking it further, he pretty much just has to trust that by this point Lan Xichen has had enough sex to know what he’s talking about.

The room spins a bit and Jin Guangyao suddenly feels bereft — his thoughts catch up one whined half-protest later and he realises it’s because Lan Xichen has pulled his fingers out and sat up to pull Jin Guangyao up with him.

“Are you alright?” Lan Xichen asks, cradling his cheek in his clean hand to coax Jin Guangyao into meeting his eyes.

Jin Guangyao is pretty sure he’s grinning dopily as he replies, with utter honesty, “I’m so good, er-ge. I’m more than alright.”

Lan Xichen’s answering smile is blinding and Jin Guangyao is still trying to blink himself closer to coherency as Lan Xichen pulls him closer, rearranges him to his liking with as much ease as he’s done everything else. Jin Guangyao finds himself perched on his knees over Lan Xichen’s lap, hands resting on broad shoulders and looking down, just ever so slightly, at Lan Xichen looking up at him through his eyelashes.

Is it that devastating when he does it? Jin Guangyao wonders. If so then he has some apologies to make; he feels utterly blindsided by it, and he’s man enough to admit to himself that he absolutely does it to Lan Xichen as often as he can get away with.

Maybe sitting on his dick will make up for it; since that’s apparently the plan anyway, he can just kill two birds with one stone. Jin Guangyao is a man who loves efficiency after all.

Lan Xichen tips his head back enough to kiss him on the very tip of his chin, a tiny little peck that he smiles all the way through. “What are you laughing about?” he asks softly, still warm and affectionate and like he wants to know, like it truly matters to him to know what’s making Jin Guangyao so happy, so damn giddy, that he can’t help but chuckle a few times in the back of his throat, unable to contain it.

“Nothing! I’m just… happy,” Jin Guangyao shakes his head a little to clear it — easier now that he isn’t distracted by having to deal with Lan Xichen actively pouring qi into him, though he does still feel flush and a little overfull with what extra qi remains in his core, filled to the brim in a way he’s never felt before.

“A-Yao should always be happy,” Lan Xichen replies, as expected (and yet it still makes Jin Guangyao flush a bit more, the apples of his cheeks turning pink; he’s just so earnest, and Jin Guangyao is sure he won’t ever truly get used to it, the way Lan Xichen lo– cares for him). “A-Yao should always feel good.” This statement he punctuates with the return of his fingers inside Jin Guangyao and he falls forward a little with a gasp stuck in the back of his throat. There’s no qi this time, just the mundane presence of his fingers, and Jin Guangyao shivers as this time he feels every millimetre of them as Lan Xichen slides them in.

“Er-ge,” he groans when Lan Xichen has bottomed out, knuckles pressed up snugly against his body, palm cupped beneath him, and Jin Guangyao leans in to press their cheeks together, a warm, clumsy smush of his face against Lan Xichen’s since he doesn’t think he can manage anything so finicky as a kiss at the moment.

“I have you, it’s alright,” Lan Xichen murmurs; Jin Guangyao shivers all over again — how did he have no idea before now that his ears are so sensitive? Lan Xichen nuzzles their cheeks together, adjusting their positions enough to catch Jin Guangyao’s earlobe between his teeth to worry at it, the heat of his exhale adding a delicious counterpoint to the sharp zing of his teeth that goes straight to Jin Guangyao’s cock, which is definitely starting to take interest in the proceedings again.

He needs more.

On some instinct deeper, more raw, than conscious thought, Jin Guangyao chases that desire for more with a single-minded intensity that finds him fumbling to get a hand between them, underneath himself, to hold Lan Xichen’s oiled cock steady and at the right angle that all he’d need to do is settle his weight a little more into the flex of his hips to sink right down onto him. Lan Xichen pulls his fingers back out fast enough that Jin Guangyao hisses a little for the abrupt loss, but in the next moment he can barely remember what it ever felt like to be empty as he’s abruptly so full his entire mind goes blank.

He’s nothing more than sensation for long, agonising moments. He’s nothing but the deep flex of his hips and the pressure of the dragging fullness in his ass and the sweat sticking his chest to Lan Xichen’s. Lan Xichen stops biting his earlobe in favour of simply breathing, clearly doing so consciously and deliberately as his hands tighten hard enough to bruise where they’re clutching at his hips to help guide him as he sinks further down.

Sooner than he would like to admit, his mind kicks back in and he tenses automatically, clenching around the intrusion as, unbidden and unwanted, his spiralling thoughts decide to remind him that said intrusion is, in fact, Lan Xichen’s cock and he’s struck with what can really only be called stage-fright, for some utterly ridiculous reason. (It’s not really ridiculous, he knows, it’s perfectly understandable to be worried about his performance considering it’s his first time and this is Lan Xichen, who should only ever have good things, but logic has no place here he’s freaking out —)

“A-Yao?” Lan Xichen prompts, concerned and sounding wrecked already.

“I’m fine,” he hurries to reassure, though he doesn’t pull back in order to make it more convincing by looking Lan Xichen in the eye. If he has to look his er-ge in the eye while struggling to take in his cock he’s pretty sure he’ll actually burst into flames, and that’s just not what he’s going for here at all. He kisses Lan Xichen’s jaw instead, a perfectly acceptable method of hiding from his sworn brother’s too-knowing gaze.

“Mn, you’re doing well. Halfway there, A-Yao.”

HALFWAY?!

Jin Guangyao squeezes his eyes shut and curls his lips in to tamp down an absolutely horrible urge to laugh. Hysterical laughter is not sexy; hysterical laughter would probably upset Lan Xichen actually, and that’s simply not allowed so he’s just going to have to get a grip. But… halfway?! Jin Guangyao feels as if he’s about to be split in half already, he’d thought he was done and that the next bit is the fun bit where he’s taken the whole thing in and Lan Xichen can proceed to do the things he does to Nie Mingjue that make him sound like he does right in the middle, when he’s deeply lost in pleasure.

Jin Guangyao clenches down a little tighter utterly involuntarily and shivers when it makes Lan Xichen choke on some flavour of pleasured noise right in his ear, sounding a little strangled.

“Take your time,” he adds, endlessly patient despite the fact that even Jin Guangyao can tell how badly he wants them to just get on with things already, and gods he just… he’s so —

“Er-ge,” he manages, and he’s thankful, in a way, that it comes out as breathless as he feels, because it means Lan Xichen (sweet, understanding Lan Xichen) abruptly realises that he’s gone as far as he can on his own without him actually having to say he needs help getting the rest of the way there.

Lan Xichen tuts sympathetically and slides his hands down from Jin Guangyao’s hips to stroke the outsides of his thighs until he reaches his true goal. He wraps his hands under Jin Guangyao’s bent knees and lifts, just a slight movement but suddenly all the strain in his thighs is gone and Jin Guangyao is no longer the one controlling his descent. He sinks down another inch instantly and gasps for the way it sends senseless tingles — neither pleasure nor pain — shooting up his spine to flood outwards into the tips of his fingers and toes.

“I’ve got you,” Lan Xichen groans and lowers him again, his breathing ragged in Jin Guangyao’s ear.

Jin Guangyao attempts to breathe through the unending pressure of it all and he takes the opportunity to sort of check out for a minute and let his mind focus on nothing but counting his breaths as Lan Xichen takes care of moving things along. He comes back to himself when he finally feels the silken warmth of Xichen’s thighs against his ass, finally fully seated on him. He drops his head forward with a groan of relief to rest on Xichen’s shoulder, barely registering the clumsy kisses Lan Xichen smears against the sensitive crook of his neck as they pause again.

“I want — before I start trying to move, maybe we could just —” Xichen breathes, nonsensically. If Nie Mingjue were here he’d probably be able to fill in the parts of the sentence Lan Xichen hadn’t said, but he isn’t and Jin Guangyao regrets that he doesn’t have that particular talent yet; he nods anyway though, as he’s pretty sure he’d be fine with anything Lan Xichen wants to do at this point except stop.

“Ah!” Jin Guangyao moans, almost sharply enough to qualify as more of a yelp as he’s suddenly flooded with qi; he’d thought the amount Xichen passed to him while fingering him had been just shy of too much! This is so much more, washing over him, through him, pulsing in time with the very essence of Xichen’s entire being, his heartbeat, his breath, his golden core, and it’s inside him, right next to his golden core —

“Fuck,” Lan Xichen bites out and it sounds utterly involuntary, a sharp gasp punctuated by a desperate jerk of his hips. The absolute filth of Lan Xichen swearing — because of his body and how they can make each other feel like this — has Jin Guangyao miraculously caring a hell of a lot less about the edge of physical discomfort.

He wants (needs) to make this good for Lan Xichen. The excuse of dual cultivation practice is flimsy at best, he knows that. The true purpose is to make each other feel as good as sex possibly can, without the pressures of their true dual cultivation sessions hanging over their heads and ensuring the experience always has an unpleasant undercurrent reminding them that it isn’t to be enjoyed, it’s sex with a purpose.

Well, the purpose of this is to enjoy it. So he’s going to.

Jin Guangyao curls his arms around Lan Xichen’s neck, buries his fingers in the underside of his hair, and tugs, forcing his head back and accidentally turning him on so much, apparently, that he has no control over the way his hips buck up again, seeking to fuck deeper into him. It comes with a surge of his qi, and when he settles again it withdraws a bit, a rushing river rather than a tsunami of cool, clear energy.

“I’m good,” Jin Guangyao breathes against his mouth, and it’s true. The wash of Lan Xichen’s qi soothed his aches instantly, including that of trying to adjust to something so large so deep inside him, and that, paired with the intensity of sensation from the qi in his meridians, has got him fully hard again. He’s good, and this feels overwhelming and bizarre but still totally utterly good, and as he watches the realisation of that hitting Lan Xichen he’s surprised by how hungry it seems to make him, his eyes dark and heavy-lidded and his hands clenching tighter under his knees. “Huan-ge–”

Jin Guangyao isn’t entirely sure how he ends up on his back; one second he’s on his knees looking down at Lan Xichen’s ravenous, handsome face, and the next he’s on his back and ever-so-slightly disoriented as Lan Xichen buries his face in the crook of his neck and starts fucking into him with no further preamble.

It’s difficult to focus on anything but that, but Lan Xichen seems far too occupied with trying not to come yet to actually circulate the qi he’s pushing into Jin Guangyao’s lower dantian with every thrust forward and so Jin Guangyao decides to try his hand at it. He fumbles the first few times, the qi slipping away with the slick hot drag of Lan Xichen’s cock pulling out just enough to get some decent friction on the next thrust in, but as always, Lan Xichen is so precise in his rhythm that it’s easy to fall into it with him.

Jin Guangyao begins to time his breathing with the thrusting of Lan Xichen in and out of him and the instinctive rolling of his own hips, and once he manages that it’s easy to visualise their combined qi moving through him the same way.

Well — moving through him and, perhaps more importantly, back out, into Lan Xichen. He pictures the circuit of it, the entry point low in his belly on each inhale, the quick rush of it through his meridians in the blink of an eye, and then the passing back of it from his mouth to Lan Xichen’s when he exhales and their lips press together in some clumsy imitation of a kiss.

And something clicks.

It’s dual cultivation.

It’s proper dual cultivation, everything shared and equal between them in a steady, simple rhythm that their cores can follow and make use of, and the triumph of it feels almost as good as when they come together in the same instant some time (not long enough) later.

The aftershocks of it last so long Jin Guangyao half-wonders if it counts as another orgasm. Lan Xichen’s qi is spinning in both their cores, his own nearly indistinguishable beneath the overflowing pool of it but he doesn’t even care. Some small bit of it is in Lan Xichen’s core and he didn’t lose anything — he’s gained so much from being with Lan Xichen that he hardly misses it; it’s a fair price to pay to get everything in return, and judging by the trembling in Lan Xichen’s entire body and the way the kisses he’s pressing to Jin Guangyao’s collarbone feel far wetter than they should he feels the same.

The guilt will come later, he thinks. He knows without even asking that it’s never been that good for Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue together, despite their best efforts, and he knows that when his higher brain functions come back to him he’ll be spending a significant amount of time trying to figure out just what it is about him that made the dots finally connect. For now he just feels… amazing. Smug. Happier than he’s ever been in his life.

He’s pulled from his musings on how this is even better than successfully knocking Nie Mingjue’s haughty temper down a few pegs had been by Lan Xichen starting to move again, stirring groggily (though still somehow not quite clumsily) to start smearing kisses along his collarbone and shoulder once again.

Jin Guangyao reluctantly (and with much grumbling) allows Lan Xichen to pull out and pick him up like he weighs nothing in order to rearrange their position and the covers to his liking. He doesn’t even have it in him to complain about the lack of cleanup, or the potential for ruined bedding to be a damning source of gossip amongst the servants. They can figure that out tomorrow or something, just any other time when Lan Xichen isn’t cuddling and kissing him in a cocoon of blankets that just feels comforting rather than stifling.

“A-Yao?” Lan Xichen eventually murmurs, soft as a feather. Jin Guangyao reluctantly surfaces from the pleasant haze of being kissed within an inch of his life in order to pay attention, an irrepressible smile slipping across his lips as Lan Xichen trails his hand down from the curve of Jin Guangyao’s waist to rest over his lower dantian instead, burning brighter than it ever has before. His happiness at the reminder of what they’ve managed to do together lasts for roughly three heartbeats before his brain catches up with what he’s seeing in Lan Xichen’s eyes and he feels his entire body go cold.

“A-Yao, I—”

There’s a world of emotion there, and Jin Guangyao knows him. He knows him better than anyone else in the world does, except perhaps Nie Mingjue and Lan Wangji, and there’s no pretending that he doesn’t understand the Look on his face. He’s tender and entreating and apologetic all at once, lips trembling around the weight of what he wants to say, and Jin Guangyao hates himself for it the second he does it but he can’t help but start to withdraw-

“No,” Lan Xichen pleads and it’s practically a whimper, broken and small in a way Lan Xichen should never have to be. Jin Guangyao freezes, torn between despising himself for upsetting his er-ge and the desperate need to not hear this momentous thing they’ve never dared to say before.

It isn’t that he doesn’t know. It isn’t that he doesn’t feel it himself with a desperation that aches. It’s that if he hears it, if he has to confront it, if he can no longer live in a comfortable state of not knowing it for certain, he doesn’t know how he’ll survive.

It’s hard enough now, to only be able to see each other in stolen moments, to always concern themselves with propriety and appearances and giving the cultivation world nothing at all to reprove when they can be together. Their bowing ritual and the fact that Lan Xichen calls him ‘A-Yao’ even in public is already really too much, but through unspoken agreement they’ve decided that that miniscule hint of the depth of feeling they have for each other is worth sacrificing the slightest bit of their respectability for.

But if Lan Xichen tells him he loves him, if Jin Guangyao says it in return because how could he not, then they’ll have to face the truth head-on; the truth that at some point their love won’t be enough; the truth that duty will inevitably pull them apart, that issues of heirs and inheritance and families and Sect politics will doom them to love each other from a polite distance for the rest of their natural lives.

He can’t–

“I won’t,” Lan Xichen promises him, pressing the words into his forehead with a firm kiss. “I’m sorry, I won’t say it.”

Jin Guangyao closes his eyes and forcibly drags himself away from contemplating what ‘it’ is. He knows, he knows, and perhaps not saying it at all is worse than hearing it aloud even like this would be, tucked away together safely far from the prying eyes and listening ears in their respective homes. But what if saying it will make them both all the more miserable for who knows how many years to come? That’s a bet he’s just not willing to place.

Still. He can’t leave it like that. Lan Xichen deserves better. Lan Xichen deserves every good thing Jin Guangyao can possibly give him, no matter how little it really is in the grand scheme of things.

“I won’t say it either,” he whispers, “I’m sorry.”

He lets Lan Xichen kiss the bitterness of it away entirely, and then to keep kissing him sweetly until they grow tired enough to drift off to sleep tangled up in each other’s arms, precisely where they both know they want to be.

|NEXT|

[toomuchracket]

fluffy flatmate traditions ... like cooking for each other, regular movie nights ... domesticity 😌

oh, the dream!! movie/watching tv nights become a regular thing quite quickly after you both realise you can use it as a way of snuggling together and falling asleep in each other's beds without the other complaining (you guys are sooooooo oblivious to the fact you're both in love it's quite funny), and it's also just a nice way of learning more about each other through the things you choose when it's your turn to pick the film. i think matty also tries to get you into gaming with him as well, but you're not necessarily as keen - you'll play sometimes, but you're content to mostly just sit and watch the way his face scrunches cutely when he's concentrating, and see him smile when he does well on something difficult.

cooking/kitchen-related things with the two of you are also fun. i think that the first time you made a tea and a coffee for yourself in the flat, matty watched you like a hawk to see how you did it, and every one he's made for you since has been perfect. and in terms of cooking, you take turns on who's making dinner; both of you are decent cooks, and you've got a pretty good repertoire of dishes you can make that you both like a lot, so dinner is always a nice experience. i think for the most part you and matty don't cook together, as such, because you get a bit crabby if people come anywhere near you in the kitchen lol. but he sits at the breakfast bar chatting to you throughout the process, and offers to help if you need it, and you do the same in return for him (although a lot of the time you genuinely do need to help matty because he gets distracted easily and forgets to stir things or turn the heat up/down lol). what i think would be more fun than cooking would be going together to do a food shop - you start out in tesco sticking to your shopping list, but it quickly gets abandoned in favour of matty going "OOH look we could have that one night" and waving various food items at you the whole way round the shop. i also think that on more than one occasion, matty has come into your room at like 10pm on a monday night and went "snacks run?" and the two of you have driven to the shop at that time of night purely to stock up on chocolate and ice cream and crisps and fizzy drinks. and it's always fun, looking at him under the shitty fluorescent lighting as he debates between buying gummy bears or cola bottles, before he says "fuck it" and buys both <3

[jaehwany]

tag game ✨

i was tagged by ali @metawin to answer these questions! thank youuuu 💜💜💜

1. why did you choose your url?

i’ve been a ken stan for many years so i think i’ve been using this url for at least 7 or 8 years?? and now i’m too attached to it to let it go. also i think i’m just honestly too lazy to ever think about changing it

2. any sideblogs? if you have them name them and why you have them.

none that are active! i used to help run a few fyeahs (lol remember when these were a thing...) and also had a fashion id blog. i currently only have one i use to save inspirations and references

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

i’ve only been more active on here since quarantine last feb/mar but i’ve been on tumblr since 2010 :’)

4. do you have a queue tag?

nah i’m a spam reblog kinda gal sorry

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

i think it was cool to have one way back then lmao i didn’t really start it for any particular fandom. it was also a good way to pass the time during boring lectures. but since then this blog has gone thru extensive phases (if you know you know..) to become what it is now

6. why did you choose your icon/pfp?

bc i couldn’t resist. she’s so cuteeee and makes the best expressions 🥰️🥰️🥰️

7. why did you choose your header?

love love loveddd this moment from the ep 2 ipytm doc. it’s just a super cute heart fluttering moment and i love the “imperfection” of it since it wasn’t used in the final take

8. what’s your post with the most notes?

um an exo post from almost 10 years ago that i’m too embarrassed to link lol but it has like >15K notes i think. but since i was more active last year, this IOTNBO post (which looks awful i knOW!! i used to screen record the eps bc i was too lazy to torrent them 😭)

9. how many mutuals do you have?

i don’t actually know! enough to provide the validation i seek 💞

10. how many followers do you have?

shhhhhh 💞💞💞

11. how many people do you follow?

125. i do unfollow blogs regularly especially resource or translation blogs that i follow during specific hyperfixations and no longer have interest in following anymore (ahem skam) 

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

not really

13. how often do you use tumblr each day?

right now probably daily! i’m more active usually when there are currently airing shows i’m keeping up with

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once?

not my non confrontational ass lmao. i remember someone indirected me on twitter once upon a time and it kept me up for days 😔

15. how do you feel about ‘you need to reblog this’ posts

immediate gut reaction is a very defensive “don’t tell me what to do!!!!” but hmm yeah i agree with ali - interact with a post if u want to and don’t feel obligated to bc you’re in charge of your own social media experience and if you’re not in the right head space to do so then you shouldn’t feel bad about scrolling past. it’s always something you can revisit if you feel up to it or don’t that’s okay too. having empathy is important but we’re all human and there’s also a limit to the number of issues we can dedicate our time and effort to understanding and caring for

16. do you like tag games?

yes!!! they’re always fun to do and i try to do them as much as i can

17. do you like ask games?

i don’t usually participate bc i’m shy but i love dropping asks in other people’s inboxes and finding out more about them!

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

idk 😭😭😭

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

i don’t even know what having a crush feels like anymore

20. tags?

i’ll tag: @clarawho @baijingting @baek1nho @surii @cryborgs @cuddlybitch @ramsking @ficklefackle @mmesutozill @belsmultifandommess @starfire-s @wjmild @gimme-a-chocolate @kateknowsdramas (hehe almost tagged your old url kate!! XD)