Chapter Text
By the time XiChen takes enough blood to stabilize himself, Jiang Cheng is slightly light headed and very drowsy. He doesn’t bother complaining when Lan XiChen scoops him up and begins an inhuman run towards the edge of the forest to where his car is parked. Anyways, his brain is too busy trying to erase the sight and the loud squelch of Lan XiChen ripping a tree branch out of his body while still suckling on his forearm to leave any computing capabilities for anything else. He had made the horrific mistake of looking down and seeing the...insides of XiChen before some vampiric healing factor kicked in and XiChen’s chest grew back into unblemished skin.
“Where are your keys-” Lan XiChen is muttering distractedly, - they are at his car already. Hm, he seems to be losing time, which can’t be good, Jiang Cheng thinks distractedly as he lets Lan XiChen prop him up against the hood of the car and frisk him up and down.
His keys are snatched from a pocket and he’s strapped into the shotgun seat at incredible speeds, when he suddenly has a terrifying thought.
“XiChen, did you pass your licence exam?”
Lan XiChen gives a terse “Yes.” eyes already on the road as he eases Jiang Cheng’s car out onto the gravel road.
“Good.” Jiang Chen mutters, “I’m going to nap now.”
He’s vaguely aware that Lan XiChen is saying something to him urgently, but Jiang Cheng can’t be assed to care when sleep is infinitely more inviting.
In seemingly no time at all, Jiang Cheng is roused back to relative consciousness by XiChen’s cold fingers desperately patting his face.
They are outside his hotel room- so not no time at all then. XiChen has him in what amounts to a princess carry, and appears to have used Jiang Cheng’s keycard to open the hotel door already. The vampire is now giving him worried eyes, idling outside Jiang Cheng’s open hotel room.
“Why are we still out here?” Jiang Cheng mutters, trying to wriggle his body out of XiChen’s hold, and then, when XiChen hesitates, eyes full of apprehension sliding between Jiang Cheng and the door frame - Jiang Cheng feels some semblance of understanding drag ashore the wreckage of an old wives tale from the sluggish waters of his mind.
He thinks about XiChen who, for the ten years they’ve hunted together, always asks if he can come in at Jiang Cheng’s door.
He successfully untangles himself from XiChen’s hesitant arms, and turns to look at him disbelievingly: “Wait, so as a vampire you can go prancing into the sunlight and cross any number of streams but you can’t cross a doorway without permission?”
“It’s a consent thing.” XiChen mutters.
“Well,” Jiang Cheng says, stepping through the doorway and immediately holding onto the wall as a new wave of dizziness hits him “Come on in, Count Dracula.”
It turns out XiChen thought he took way too much blood and caused Jiang Cheng to faint - which can be precursor to extremities shutting down and other unpleasant things Jiang Cheng very hurriedly tells XiChen not to describe to him - and freaked out. Jiang Cheng makes a mental note to check over his car later to see if there's any damage from Lan’s jia’s most studious exorcist, the First Jade Lan XiChen breaking actual traffic laws to get the both of them back to Jiang Cheng’s hotel room where one of Wen Qing’s all purpose healing drafts is packed in Jiang Cheng’s suitcase.
Honestly Jiang Cheng is quite touched - and just a tiny bit flattered. Thankfully Jiang Cheng’s dizziness and general faintness is due to the rapid loss of blood coupled with the excursion of hunting - compounded with the speed with which XiChen was moving him, all had him in an exhausted sleep in the car, but not losing consciousness due to an extreme herroraging as XiChen feared. After stuffing a few power bars down and having XiChen do a short balance of their energies, Jiang Cheng feels almost back to his usual equilibrium.
It doesn’t stop XiChen looking pitifully guilty as he tries to feed Jiang Cheng some more food.
“If I have more sugar, I’m going to throw everything I just ate back up.” Jiang Cheng warnes, before narrowing his eyes at the vampire. “Are you trying to avoid the topic of you confessing to me while in a life and death situation?”
“I- '' Lan XiChen’s eyes widen slightly “Oh gods, I did do that, didn't I... I was so worried about you that it momentarily slipped my mind.”
“Well?” Jiang Cheng demands. He winces internally - he sounds like he’s conducting an interview, not discussing matters of the heart.
“Jiang WanYin, I want you to know that everything I said was true, but I have been honoured that you have given me your friendship and hope we can continue being friends, despite your misgivings for what I am.'
Jiang Cheng frowns. "I don't have misgivings about who you are?"
"What I am. I know you don't like vampires much."
"I have a shitload of self worth issues and one of them happens to be adjacent to bloodsuckers." Jiang Cheng says without missing a beat, and then gestures to his neck for good measure. As if magnetized, XiChen’s gaze immediately latches onto his birthmarks. Jiang Cheng’s next sentence dies unuttered in his throat when XiChen moves-
Slowly, he raises a hand, and Jiang Cheng has to fight hard not to give into his instincts and slap the hand away before it can touch his cursed marks. XiChen’s cold fingertips graze over them as if bestowing a blessing, and then his palm presses revantly against Jiang Cheng’s jugular.
Jiang Cheng revels in the cold. His marks that others fear, his marks that were the catalysts of him losing an integral part of himself, his marks that resulted in his family being fiercely -suffocatingly- protective over him, over the twisted, pathetic version of him reflected back by society’s biased mirrors - had only ever been fascinating to Lan XiChen. For some perverse reason, that makes Jiang Cheng feel incredibly powerful.
On the flip side, he’s almost purring just with Lan XiChen’s one handed grip on his neck, and that just won’t do when they very decidedly have not talked about anything on Jiang Cheng’s List of Questions Lan XiChen Should Answer Right Now or Jiang Cheng will Literally Die - so he pulls XiChen’s hand away from his neck with an embarrassed cough, aware that XiChen immediately freezes when he’s pushed away.
“You must have known-” Jiang Cheng begins, slowly and with a frown because what he’s about to say is incredibly humiliating “that I’ve been - you know, into you - for a while now. So you didn’t make a move because of the vampire thing? Well don’t worry about it. I think I’ll manage the same way I’ve managed over the past ten fucking years.”
Jiang Cheng probably looks extremely delicious right now since he’s pretty sure all his blood is collecting under the skin of his cheeks - but he plows on anyways, tightening his grip on the hand he just removed from his neck : “-so you better decide now if you want to pursue me without all this vampire this and that bullshit.”
Sometime during his speech, XiChen had started to grin, and by the end, XiChen is looking at him like he’s an unopened spiritual theory scroll.
“Jiang WanYin- Jiang Cheng.” Lan XiChen slides his other hand onto their joined grip “I would love nothing more to pursue you. Do you know how your tenacity burns? It lights aflame my cold veins like nothing else. Every time we connect our spiritual energy is such wondrous, exquisite torture for me - to align our very energy and yet to hold myself back from holding you the last few years has pushed me to the limits of my restraint. They say that vampires come alive in moonlight - but even Chang’E’s gaze does not electrify me the way ZiDian’s light does. To watch you dance within, to watch you fight despite all that the world has wronged you has been heaven’s blessing - but for you to allow me to hold you like this, to tell me such sweet words that fill me with such hope - truly I must have done a great deed in a past life.”
Jiang Cheng stares at him. “You said all of that just to make fun of my confession being ‘I’m into you’ didn’t you?”.
When XiChen bursts into laughter, his happiness luminous in this cheap hotel room and his teeth marks still throbbing on Jiang Cheng’s arm, Jiang Cheng really doesn’t have it in himself to be anything but fond.
“Lan’s don’t lie, everything I said was true.” XiChen reminds him, and then gathers Jiang Cheng into his cold, solid arms, grinning down at Jiang Cheng who finds his own arms already enthusiastically participating in the embrace. “You can hardly fault me that my love inspires such poetry.”
“I knew it, all Lan’s are bastards.” Jiang Cheng mutters, he tries scowling, and decides that it’s probably not very effective as XiChen kisses it right off his face.
“You died during the Lan estate fires, didn’t you.” Jiang Cheng asks the next day, as they drive back to the city. “WangJi said you ‘suffered a spiritual injury’ right before I lost my core, he meant you were Turned.”
XiChen pauses from where he had been diligently selecting a new song.
“I inhaled a life-threatening amount of smoke escaping the fires, but I didn’t die.” XiChen admits quietly.
A cold touch eases the sudden tight grip Jiang Cheng is punishing his steering wheel with. XiChen rubs the inside of his wrist comfortingly, his voice distant as he continues. “When Meng Yao found me, I knew I couldn’t last. I asked him to Turn me while I was still alive - It has always been my hypophysis that being Turned while the spiritual core is intact would allow the core to remain even as a vampire. Obviously, no one had ever tested that theory, but Meng Yao was willing to try, as he had been trying to cultivate his own core at the time …”
“Meng Yao had been a bloodsucker this whole time too, hun?” Jiang Cheng cuts in.
“I literally just told you my most groundbreaking achievement in undead spiritual energy and that’s what you focus on?” Jiang Cheng can hear XiChen’s pout.
“You literally have a class full of little nerds to impress with that stuff next September.” Jiang Cheng quips back, but the half-hearted attempt at a light jab falls hollow even to his own ears.
A wound he thought closed years ago now pours with new blood. The agony with which he mourned his potential, so uncaringly cut with Wen Chao’s hatred resurrects itself as it howls for XiChen’s life, ended more than a decade ago.
“Lover,” Lan XiChen calls to him, softly, his voice a steadfast compass guiding Jiang Cheng through the reaching darkness that is settling over him as he ponders - both of them, youths lost. “What is past is past.”
A hundred emotions seems to be vying for Jiang Cheng’s attention, but he had always been bad at expressing even the most basic one. In the end, all he can say is “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” XiChen whispers back, still rubbing his thumb over Jiang Cheng’s pulse comfortingly, where Jiang Cheng’s spiritual energy would have surged to meet him, if their youths were not ripped from them so cruelly.
Jiang Cheng is twenty eight when he asks.
He looks down at the budget book he's balancing, then up at Xichen who has a book open in his lap but is absentmindedly staring at his neck instead. Jiang Cheng looks back down at his budget book, and then back up again. Xichen hadn’t even noticed.
"Lan Xichen, do you want to suck my blood?"
With a faint startle, XiChen meets his gaze: "of course I want to suck..."
He trails off, and has the nerve to look adorably confused, and then continues "-oh, I think misheard your question."
Jiang Cheng takes a deep breath, and then deadpans: “I love you.”
XiChen's eyes going ridiculously moony is the only warning he gets before he finds himself with a lap full of vampire--he pushes XiChen's face away as the man tries to place an exaggerated smooch on his face "Get off! I’m only listing reasons I shouldn't throw you out of my house right now for your horny crimes-"
“What’s reason number two?” XiChen asks with a laugh, entirely thick faced.
“Absolutely cannot think of a second reason.” Jiang Cheng says, slapping the top of XiChen’s head softly with his budget book. “Now answer my question.”
The warmth of XiChen’s laugh cools to a neural, worried chuckle. When XiChen takes a breath in to speak, it is with a gravitas that Jiang Cheng had not expected from this conversation.
“I do not think it...safe for me to take live human blood unless absolutely necessary.” XiChen slides one of his hands against Jiang Cheng’s neck, a gesture now familiar to the both of them, and Jiang Cheng leans into the cold of his lover’s skin. “You remember what I said when you asked me about crossing uninvited doorways? A vampire’s power is balanced on the tightrope of taking what is willingly given - feral is what describes a vampire that drains a human, but a vampire cannot drain a human without shamefully refusing to reign in the power they hold.”
XiChen pauses to smooth his other hand across Jiang Cheng’s brow, which had bunched together in his confusion. “Ah, how to explain this- A vampire must be given permission before he bites into a human, just like how they must be given permission to walk into another’s home, not due to a biological quirk but a spiritual one. Do you not wonder why death through a vampire’s draining is so rare when there’s nothing a normal human can do against a normal vampire’s speed and strength? It is because if a vampire takes without permission, to abuse their power in that way is to subject themselves to Karma’s unbiased eyes. A vampire’s restraint is the one and only seal that safeguards their humanity, and without it a vampire will not last long under Karma’s judgement.”
“A feral vampire is just a vampire without restraint. Someone who has bitten where it is uninvited, someone who tasted what power feels like without the shackles of humanity - if they are not killed, they will only collect Yin energy from the dead they leave behind and will eventually be consumed by their own hubris when the Yin tears them apart from inside out.”
XiChen slides his palm until he is holding Jiang Cheng by the nape, and then places a cold kiss against his neck, reverently, carefully, then hides his expression in Jiang Cheng’s collarbones. “Jiang Cheng, when I was turned, my core began to produce an abnormal amount of Yin energy, even for a vampire. Can you blame me when I began to question if that is not the Universe’s way of warning me against what I might become?”
Jiang Cheng thinks of XiChen sucking pitifully on small blood bags Meng Yao secures for him, thinks of him sinking his teeth into the raw steaks Jiang Cheng buys for that tiny bit of watered down blood. He thinks of how carefully Lan XiChen invites himself into their shared bedroom when his aversion to doorways is supposed to vanish as soon as Lan XiChen started living with him.
He thinks of every Wednesday and Saturday night, when XiChen takes his wrist - as carefully as the first time he’s done it when Jiang Cheng was still raw from his losses - and finds balance. Together.
Jiang Cheng gathers his lover’s face in his hands and guides him until their gazes connect. “Lan XiChen. You should know that I of all people don’t believe in keeping the hand we were dealt. The Universe can go fuck itself.”
He pulls XiChen back into him by the cheeks and places a peck on XiChen’s startled, cold lips. “And- I think you know the meaning of restraint better than most. ‘Power comes from within, control starts with self’, no?”
The delighted chuckle whispered against his lips sounds so sweet “You listened to my lectures!”
“Consider it an early birthday present.”
“What, taking an interest in your partner’s life’s work?” XiChen punches his shoulder good naturedly “You’re supposed to do that by default. I still want a cat.”
“Consider this a present too, freely given.” Jiang Cheng says, tapping his own neck, watching XiChen’s attention narrow to his jugular, to the pump of his blood under the vein he raised with the light strikes.
“Your blood?” XiChen whispers.
“No, dumbass-” Jiang Cheng flicks him on the forehead. “-my trust.”
The expression XiChen turns towards him is one he’s going to remember for a very long time. He wonders if XiChen bites into him now, would he taste the love that burns for him expanding warmly through Jiang Cheng’s capillaries and sinking into his being so thoroughly?
“Also, I think you should consider it because buying steaks for you is really pushing into my budget, and what kind of vampire doesn’t like pig’s blood pudding?” Jiang Cheng adds, just to hear XiChen laugh against his lips again.
Jiang Cheng is thirty years old when XiChen drinks from him for food for the first time.
“Wait.” Jiang Cheng says, and XiChen immediately pauses from where he is kissing over Jiang Cheng’s birthmarks to look at him, concern dripping from his eyes and some undoubtedly sweet assurances already on his lips.
Before XiChen can say anything, Jiang Cheng taps the left side of his own neck, mirroring the moles his mother gave him.
He smiles.
“Why don’t you make a new mark on me.”
And XiChen does.