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During the journey from Longyuan Pavillion to Siji Manor, Zhou Zishu almost teaches himself to stop thinking of Wen Kexing as his shidi.
It’s unfortunate, then, that it takes less than a day of being in Siji Manor for Zhou Zishu to slip up and say, “Shidi, let me show you—”
The air around him freezes.
Wen Kexing isn’t even standing near him. He’s on the other side of the courtyard, sweeping up piles of leaves blown into corners and allowed to rot and grow their own little worm-and-spider-based ecosystems. His qi will do as much damage as his broom, Zhou Zishu thinks, so powerful and visceral is this reaction.
Zhou Zishu swallows and tries again. “Lao-Wen. Can I show you the groves I ran through when I was young?” The words are heavy on his tongue, bearing far too much weight now for what he’d meant to speak as a light-hearted memory.
Wen Kexing turns just enough for Zhou Zishu to see his guarded expression. The broom in his hands extends along his side in what’s clearly a block. For a moment, Zhou Zishu wonders why—there’s nothing to defend against—before it clicks into place: Except my memories.
He’s not sure what his face does at that thought, but Wen Kexing’s faint smile—a Valley Master expression that doesn’t reach his eyes—tells Zhou Zishu that it was noticeable. “A-Xu,” Wen Kexing says, careful and considering, “I thought we were here to restore the manor.”
“It has lasted all these years.” Zhou Zishu leans against the arch leading into this courtyard, not thinking about all the dust he’s brushed away, all the insects and little animals making their nests in his old home. Maybe it isn’t even his anymore. Maybe there’s no point in reclaiming it and making it into a facsimile of his childhood. Even so, it is the only thing he can do to remember—to repent for—all he has lost. And yet— “It can wait another few hours.”
Wen Kexing shakes his head and turns away. His eyes are fixed on the ground as he says, “Not today,” the words barely loud enough for Zhou Zishu to hear.
He doesn’t know how loud that is. Maybe they were a normal volume. Maybe Wen Kexing snapped the words. The air is silent, and he cannot hear the hiss of broom upon stone. Zhou Zishu hates this, the unknowing of when his senses will vanish or fade, but there is nothing he can do about it. So instead he nods, choking down his bitterness. If he were better with his words, if his memories were less than a brand upon Wen Kexing’s heart, if he weren’t so happy with Wen Kexing—
He takes a breath, and says only, “Another day.”
Before he can miss any more of Wen Kexing’s words, or use his own to speak something else that will hurt one or both of them yet more, Zhou Zishu turns and retreats back to his own cleaning.
Perhaps in removing the dust, he can air out his own mind as well.
It doesn’t work.
Zhou Zishu tries, he really does, but he can only last two days, maybe three, without shidi slipping across his tongue. Wen Kexing doesn’t run from the word anymore, the way he did at Longyuan Pavillion, but the way the air grows heavy around him as he goes still and silent and shuts himself away is worse.
It takes two weeks before Wen Kexing breaks.
Absently, mind on the work he’s doing, Zhou Zishu says, “Shidi, can you—”
His mouth snaps shut on the request, but it’s already too late.
Wen Kexing turns to him and says, “I’m sick of this.” His tone is almost cheerful. There’s still more malice laced through Wen Kexing’s mouth than Zhou Zishu can remember hearing directed towards him before.
It shivers across his body, and Zhou Zishu closes his eyes briefly before carefully setting down the wall-hanging he’d wanted help replacing. “What do you want to do about it?” Zhou Zishu asks, shifting his weight to prepare for the attack he suspects is coming.
Wen Kexing plays with his fan, silently considering him, and then a smile spreads across his face. “I’m going to make you forget that word.”
Zhou Zishu swallows, mouth dry in anticipation of that challenge. “Not here,” he says. The walls of Siji Manor press against him, certainly, but his worry is more for Zhang Chengling. He should be two courtyards away, reading Longyuan Pavillion’s texts and teaching himself mechanics. He could come find them at any time, and Zhou Zishu doesn’t want to watch his face fall as he asks why his shifu and shishu—Do not use that word, Zhou Zishu scolds himself—are fighting again.
So instead, Zhou Zishu turns and leaps onto the rooftops, over the walls. He doesn’t need to say anything, or even look back, to know that Wen Kexing will chase him.
They dance across the groves of his youth, boughs bending beneath their feet, and the thought is sour as the unripe plums Zhou Zishu used to steal in anticipation of summer’s sweetness. He’s wanted to show Wen Kexing the grounds of Siji Manor since they arrived, but this—with Wen Kexing’s face winter-cold and ice-sharp—isn’t what he’d imagined.
His idle daydream had been to take Wen Kexing into these groves and reminisce about the trees he climbed, the boughs he learned to soar across with qinggong, the joy he and Qin Jiuxiao and the other youths of Siji Manor had created together. They’d darted across the orchards and plucked peaches and plums as prizes to present to their shifu and shiniang. The games of hide-and-seek and chase-and-catch had been training too, the only way Shifu had been able to get his too-dedicated head disciple to have fun.
Yet, Zhou Zishu is sure that—were he not in a malaise of memory—Wen Kexing would gladly play those childhood games at the slightest prompting. He lets himself drift into that thought, imagining what it would be like to tag Wen Kexing on the shoulder and twist away from his reaching hands and dance into the treetops to scatter petals with light feet.
He opens his mouth, unthinking, says, “Jiuxiao and I—”
Wen Kexing snaps, “Don’t,” and his words anchor Zhou Zishu back in the aching present.
Zhou Zishu lands, feet as light on the grass as they had been on the leaves above. “That wasn’t about you.” He’s lying. They both know he’s lying, too, because Wen Kexing sighs as he joins Zhou Zishu on the ground. Zhou Zishu studies him—stony face, fan tucked in his belt, poised to lunge at a moment’s notice—and thinks of how far they’ve come since Longyuan Pavillion. Wen Kexing might be tense with anger, but he is still here, and not running away.
They face each other, statue-still. Wen Kexing swallows something—words, movement; Zhou Zishu can’t tell—and narrows his eyes with what could be thought or threat. Zhou Zishu’s pulse is heavy against his throat and wrists as he waits. To move would be to give Wen Kexing an opening; to speak would be to give Wen Kexing more ammunition.
A minute passes, then two, and the only sound is the wind in the trees and lonesome birds in the distance.
Then Wen Kexing tilts his head, and his muscles melt into feline looseness. “I’m not your shidi, A-Xu.” He smiles, mockingly—this is the untouchable Valley Master, not lao-Wen—and Wen Kexing moves forward until he’s right in Zhou Zishu’s face. “This is your past, not mine.”
“It could have been yours.” Zhou Zishu knows it’s a mistake even as he says it, reaching gently out to take Wen Kexing’s shoulders.
Wen Kexing slams him against a tree before his fingers cross even half the distance.
Zhou Zishu knows how skilled Wen Kexing is. They have fought together, bled together, saved each other’s lives. Wen Kexing has never acted against him like this; even their earliest sparring match outside Mirror Lake Manor had been a dance and a game.
This knocks the air out of Zhou Zishu’s lungs and leaves him dazed.
“It wasn’t,” Wen Kexing snarls, body taut against Zhou Zishu. “How many times do I need to say this?”
Zhou Zishu stares at him, lips parted and gasping for air, trying to find an opening to struggle free.
Wen Kexing doesn’t give it to him. His grip shifts from Zhou Zishu’s chest to an arm across his collarbones, pressing into his throat. The other hand, newly free, presses into acupoints and locks Zhou Zishu’s arms at his sides. Wen Kexing pauses there, face frost-frozen right in front of Zhou Zishu, and speaks. Each syllable is so slow and precisely articulated that Zhou Zishu can read the words from his lips; even if his hearing disappeared there would be no avoiding this. “My name is Wen. Ke. Xing.”
“I know,” Zhou Zishu tries to say.
He only manages the first syllable before Wen Kexing slaps his mouth shut. “Be quiet, Zishu.”
The name hurts more than the blow. Zhou Zishu glares at Wen Kexing, trying to pierce his aura of menace by will alone.
“Wen Kexing never met Qin Huaizhang.” Wen Kexing pulls a handkerchief from his robes as he speaks, the rhythm of his speech unbroken by his actions. “Wen Kexing never bowed to the master of Siji Manor. Wen Kexing is not Zhou Zishu’s shidi.”
Zhou Zishu’s reward for opening his mouth in protest is to have that handkerchief stuffed inside. Wen Kexing had predicted his response, he thinks, teeth grinding into soft cloth. He could spit it out. Zhou Zishu shifts his tongue and jaw in preparation, but Wen Kexing grabs his face and locks his mouth closed with graceful fingers before he can.
“Zhen Yan would have been your shidi.” Wen Kexing flint-dark eyes bore into Zhou Zishu’s. He is dangerous, alien, and compelling; Zhou Zishu wouldn’t want to look away even if he could. “But I am not Zhen Yan. I am Wen Kexing. I raised myself on Mount Qingya. I don’t believe you understand what that means, A-Xu, or why I cannot have had the childhood you imagine.”
The sound that slips out of his throat at A-Xu is embarrassing. Zhou Zishu hates this. He is held here by Wen Kexing’s arm across his chest and bound by the qi still holding his acupoints taut. His body tingles from his instinctive attempts to move anyway, and his shoulder is going to be bruised from the weight Wen Kexing is leaning upon it, and he can’t taste the cloth in his mouth but he can smell the ink and sweat on Wen Kexing’s fingers right beneath his nose. There is nothing here that should leave him breathless and wanting as if Wen Kexing is teasing him in bed.
Yet here he is, straining towards Wen Kexing and listening for the slightest sign of his affection. There is none in Wen Kexing’s face, despite the softness of A-Xu; he is blood-stained steel wrapped around a dead man’s bones. Zhou Zishu knows that look. He saw it in the mirror every day when he dressed himself in Tianchuang robes and bound his conscience up with his hair.
The recognition quells him.
Zhou Zishu relaxes against the tree he’s pinned against and stops trying to spit out the gag. He’s not surrendering, he tells himself. It’s a relief to leave words behind, to let bodies speak in all ways that matter. Relenting like this is nothing more than a question; all he wants is to know what Wen Kexing’s goal is and to listen to what he has to say.
The way Wen Kexing’s lips curl in satisfaction is a welcome reward, as is the way Wen Kexing’s hand strokes softly across his cheek as he releases Zhou Zishu’s jaw, but he does not need them.
“Let me teach you a lesson about who I am,” Wen Kexing says. He unlocks Zhou Zishu’s arms, though Zhou Zishu notes how he takes care to keep himself ready to catch Zhou Zishu and force him back into place if he needs to.
Zhou Zishu breathes, slowly, through his nose, and swallows around the cloth in his mouth. With anyone else, that would be too trusting an act. He has no reason to hold himself captive like this.
And yet.
Zhou Zishu doesn’t move.
Even when Wen Kexing steps away and undoes his belt, looping it around his neck as he reaches for Zhou Zishu’s in turn, all Zhou Zishu does is narrow his eyes and tilt his head slightly.
Wen Kexing reads it as the question it is. He laughs—beautiful and resonant even when he’s wound tight enough to break—and pauses to smooth the querying wrinkle from Zhou Zishu’s forehead. It’s kinder than anything else about his posture, and he withdraws before Zhou Zishu has time to lean into the contact.
“Don’t worry,” Wen Kexing says, as if worry were the issue. “This isn’t about sex.”
Zhou Zishu rolls his eyes, one of the few forms of communication left to him, as Wen Kexing’s hands move quickly along his clothes. They have fucked their way through many emotions, but the chill radiating from Wen Kexing doesn’t speak of sex to Zhou Zishu. It says many things about power, and it certainly has Zhou Zishu’s attention, but his questions aren’t about sex.
If Wen Kexing wishes to teach him a lesson, he will play the student. If Wen Kexing wishes him undressed for this lesson, then so be it. Zhou Zishu does not need the protection of those soft layers anymore; the secrets they held were stripped from him in Yueyang.
The Nails throb within Zhou Zishu’s chest at his thought, not at all soothed by the way Wen Kexing’s hands pass over them. Wen Kexing’s movements are crisp and economical as he removes Zhou Zishu’s layers. There are no lingering caresses, no words to break the silence, and each piece of clothing is folded and neatly set aside. Wen Kexing’s attention barely seems to be on Zhou Zishu as a person, his gaze fixed on the point where fingers and fabric meet and never moving to find Zhou Zishu’s eyes.
Zhou Zishu waits, grasping the pattern of Wen Kexing’s actions, and then moves to act during the brief pause where Wen Kexing turns to place his innermost shirt on the ground. He reaches up for the gag—it’s faster than forcing it out with tongue and breath alone—and Wen Kexing immediately moves to block him. The shirt, Zhou Zishu notices in the long instant where he can see what’s coming but cannot avoid it, drifts to the ground.
Wen Kexing’s long fingers wrap bruise-tight around his wrist, halting it in mid-air. Wen Kexing’s palm slaps over Zhou Zishu’s mouth hard enough to bang his head against the tree’s trunk once more.
Zhou Zishu gasps, or tries to; it catches in his throat, stifled by cloth and flesh alike.
“Don’t,” Wen Kexing snaps, and for a moment Zhou Zishu dizzily wonders if that’s about breathing or the gag.
Then he remembers to draw breath through his nose, and his pulse settles into a firm beat against Wen Kexing’s thumb.
Another opponent might have followed through or checked on him, Zhou Zishu thinks as he glares at Wen Kexing in challenge. Another opponent wouldn’t be watching him, any concern hidden behind carefully disdainful boredom, waiting for another attempt at struggling free.
Another opponent wouldn’t have been able to convince him to stand here to begin with.
Zhou Zishu growls, deep in his chest. Wen Kexing might call himself a feral beast, while Zhou Zishu had once allowed himself to be kept on a nobleman’s leash, but they both know that tame has never meant safe.
Wen Kexing meets his stare and laughs, the joyous sound incongruous with the sharpness of his bared teeth. “You begin to understand.”
He snatches Zhou Zishu’s other wrist before Zhou Zishu can claw into his arm. His smile doesn’t fade, but neither does it reach his eyes.
Zhou Zishu wants to match it, but all he can do is grind his teeth into cloth and think about what would happen if he tore his hands free of Wen Kexing’s grasp. He could; a twist of his hips as he raised his knee and drove down with his elbow and Wen Kexing would be forced to release him or be struck on the collarbone and groin.
But Wen Kexing is still fully dressed, and Zhou Zishu is only wearing thin trousers and his shoes. Against a less well-matched opponent, that wouldn’t matter. Against Wen Kexing, those bare centimeters of protection make all the difference.
Slowly, deliberately, Zhou Zishu relaxes his muscles.
Wen Kexing narrows his eyes, then nods. He releases one of Zhou Zishu’s hands, takes hold of the belt still looped around his neck, and knots it firmly around Zhou Zishu’s wrist. “Don’t break it,” Wen Kexing says calmly. He tugs on the binding, and Zhou Zishu’s heart begins to race once more. “I won’t be the one to explain to Chengling.”
Zhou Zishu snorts, laughter and disgust alike, and considers arguing the point. He doesn’t know how he could right now, but it’s the principle of the matter; whatever this is, it’s Wen Kexing’s idea, and any torn clothing should be Wen Kexing’s responsibility.
But he doesn’t shake his head. He doesn’t gesture to Wen Kexing in either Tianchuang’s sign or Siji Manor’s. He doesn’t even roll his eyes. He sighs, a long slow breath, and allows his free hand to drop to his side in a concession he doesn’t want to admit he’s making.
Wen Kexing smiles at the sight—genuine, this time, the corners of his eyes crinkling—and steps away to anchor the other end of the belt to an old knotted branch.
Zhou Zishu wants to lean into that smile. He wants to run his fingers along those wide lips, gaze into the brightness of his eyes, feel the joy that radiates so clearly from Wen Kexing in these moments. It is, he tells himself, the reason he has accepted what Wen Kexing is doing. He likes seeing Wen Kexing experience such joy, especially when it brings no harm to others.
And, despite ample opportunity, Wen Kexing has done no harm to Zhou Zishu. This is a game, Zhou Zishu thinks, and not one he is opposed to seeing play out. There is no need to fight this.
So, when Wen Kexing returns, Zhou Zishu smiles at him as best he’s able and offers his other wrist freely to be bound.
It’s worth it for the expression on Wen Kexing’s face, startlement fading into that same pure joy. It earns Zhou Zishu a gentle stroke of Wen Kexing’s knuckles across his cheek. That light touch is a far more precious gift than it should be. Though they touch all the time—hands on shoulders and thighs pressing together in combat and companionship and caress alike—and this is barely anything in comparison, Zhou Zishu cannot think of anything but the almost-vanished pressure and warmth.
Wen Kexing does not offer him anything more. He steps back, and beckons Zhou Zishu away from the tree. Zhou Zishu follows, and does not resist when Wen Kexing ties him so that his arms are spread and he’s positioned in the open space between two gnarled plum trees. He stands easily, balanced and perfectly aware that he could pull free in a second if he chose to do so.
Wen Kexing is aware of this as well, he knows, and seems very certain he won’t.
He wishes he thought Wen Kexing’s judgement was wrong.
Zhou Zishu forces himself not to twist to keep Wen Kexing in sight as Wen Kexing circles behind him. It’s easier to stay still and forward-facing once Wen Kexing touches him again, fingers soft as he undoes Zhou Zishu’s hair cuff and gathers the newly-loose strands. His hands are quick and precise, and Zhou Zishu almost wants to complain about how gentle he’s being; it sets him on edge, makes him wonder when the next element of danger is going to be introduced.
As he ties Zhou Zishu’s hair into a bun, Wen Kexing says, “I’ve never been good at pledging myself to others.”
Zhou Zishu rolls his eyes, though there’s no way Wen Kexing will see. No good at pledging himself to others, but he adopted Gu Xiang when he didn’t need to do anything of the sort, and he followed Zhou Zishu even when he didn’t need to, and he has become Zhang Chengling’s mentor just as surely as Zhou Zishu himself.
“But you?” Wen Kexing finally tugs on Zhou Zishu’s hair, pulling it tight as he binds it in place. “You know what it means to put yourself on a leash.”
Zhou Zishu goes perfectly still, mind blank for a moment, and then starts working the gag out from between his teeth.
“I’ll let you go when you bare yourself to me, A-Xu, and no sooner.” Wen Kexing punctuates his words by kissing the now-bared nape of Zhou Zishu’s neck almost reverently.
“What kind of lesson is this?” Zhou Zishu asks, words garbled at first and then clearing up as Wen Kexing’s handkerchief falls to the ground. Now, with speech returned to him, he doesn’t bother to turn and try to catch sight of Wen Kexing; Wen Kexing will become visible again when he chooses to, and no sooner.
There’s no response. Wen Kexing has to have heard him—he’s not the one whose senses rebel—so if he’s refusing to reply then there’s no way Zhou Zishu can coax an answer from him. Zhou Zishu’s jaw tightens, and he forces himself to relax, to appear unconcerned and unruffled by Wen Kexing’s actions.
He listens to Wen Kexing’s footsteps and the rustling of branches and tries to guess what he’s searching for. Zhou Zishu suspects he knows, especially once he hears the crisp snap of young wood. He gets confirmation a few seconds later when a whistle sounds in the air, thin wood cutting the wind, ending with a solid smack against cloth. Zhou Zishu resists the shiver spreading across his skin, but he can feel the hair on his arms standing up nonetheless. He still doesn’t understand why Wen Kexing is doing this, or how it will get Wen Kexing what he wants, but he knows to start bracing himself and sinking into a place where nothing can affect him.
Wen Kexing walks back to him. Every sound he makes is intentional; Zhou Zishu has seen him walk over dry bones without disturbing them, and the orchards of Siji Manor are a much softer substrate. He wants Zhou Zishu to know where he is, and the security that brings is a relief even as Zhou Zishu tells himself not to be seduced into softening his guard.
“I am the Valley Master,” Wen Kexing says, very simply, and maybe that’s all the answer Zhou Zishu needs. It’s easy for powerful people to enforce their lessons with pain; Zhou Zishu himself has participated in such punishments. There isn’t time to consider how familiar Wen Kexing is with this before the switch sings through the air and lands across Zhou Zishu’s back. He sways with the blow, refusing to make any sound of acknowledgement despite the pain waking his deadened senses.
Zhou Zishu wants to turn and take that switch out his hand and tear into him, scream at him and tell him that he will never submit to another person again the way he did for Prince Jin when he was young and scared and didn’t know anywhere else to go.
He twitches, and the belts he promised not to break tug against his wrists, and Zhou Zishu halts. This isn’t Prince Jin, he reminds himself. The trees around him make that clear. So does Wen Kexing’s voice, saying, “I can match you, Manor Lord, and I can break you, and I want you to be mine.”
Zhou Zishu stares straight ahead. There’s no point in responding to that. Wen Kexing will do what he wants, and Zhou Zishu will take it. He still doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t need to.
Wen Kexing sighs. Disappointment, Zhou Zishu thinks, and then he’s not thinking because Wen Kexing’s switch licks idly across his shoulders again. It doesn’t hurt. It’s almost soft, even. Maybe that’s why it startles him enough to voice the question echoing through his head: “Why break me? Am I not already broken?”
He regrets it almost immediately, but he can’t take the words back, no matter how bitter they are on his tongue. He knows he’s nothing like the young Manor Lord he’d been a decade ago, assured of his martial skill but nothing else. He is nothing like the founding head of Tianchuang, either, a steel shadow standing beneath a single man who had promised him a new life and forged him into a harbinger of death.
All Zhou Zishu has left is his own body—impaled by his own hand and shattered so that his senses are slowly fading and his martial arts are too easily exhausted—a stubborn disciple, and Wen Kexing.
Wen Kexing’s fingers brush against his back, running along old scars etched into his skin. It’s an eerie sensation; those nerves were cut and healed so that now they buzz and ache, and touch which would make him arch into pleasure elsewhere instead simply reads as pressure and presence. “Are you?” Wen Kexing asks, impersonal, curious, as his fingers reach the end of the scar they’d traced and drop away, leaving Zhou Zishu with nothing but the cloth around his wrists for company.
He stares at the branches waving in the wind, at the blossoms still too young to scatter their petals across the earth, and whispers, “No.”
There is a moment, in the wake of that syllable, when the world feels balanced on its edge.
Then Wen Kexing says, “Good,” and the switch comes down, imbued with enough qi to rock Zhou Zishu where he stands. Through the haze of pain, blaze-bright and welcome in a way Zhou Zishu doesn’t want Wen Kexing to realise, Zhou Zishu hears Wen Kexing speak again: “I’m going to break you open now.”
Wen Kexing wields his makeshift switch in his right hand, and it licks out to curl around his torso and limbs to limn him with bright lines of pain. Wen Kexing’s left hand reaches out on its own to touch him. Sometimes, it is soft, the barest sweep of fingertips across his waist. Other times, Wen Kexing strikes him with his palm or the back of his hand—hot sparks and deep thuds—or scrapes qi-hardened nails along his bones.
Zhou Zishu does not gasp at the myriad sensations, but it’s a near thing. There’s less to resist when what’s being enacted upon him keeps changing. He can brace himself for pain, let it sink into the ache that’s been his constant companion for two years, but it means that pleasure is a gift that he doesn’t know what to do with. It is all he can do to stay still and accept it stoically instead of jerking away.
Hardest of all to avoid are Wen Kexing’s words.
“You’re beautiful,” Wen Kexing tells him, and punctuates it with a fanning series of gentle blows across his hips. Zhou Zishu arches away from his voice, and Wen Kexing reaches back with his hand, gripping Zhou Zishu’s neck and holding him in place as he says, “Most people would be screaming by now.”
“I’m not most people.” Zhou Zishu flinches at the way Wen Kexing’s thumb rubs beneath his ear. So gentle. It would be so easy for Wen Kexing to push a little harder and dislocate his jaw. “You wouldn’t do this if I were.”
Wen Kexing laughs. It’s his honest laugh, deep and human, and Zhou Zishu relaxes minutely because of that. He shouldn’t. He knows that, and Wen Kexing’s switch bites into his shoulders and wraps around to kiss his collarbones and break the skin, just to make it even clearer. Zhou Zishu’s eyes squeeze shut, and he tenses against the fragile bonds holding him, and he does not make a sound.
“You’re right,” Wen Kexing says. He presses his lips to the back of Zhou Zishu’s neck. “And I want all of your heart, not just the parts Tianchuang allowed you to keep.”
Zhou Zishu shuts his eyes. “Lao-Wen.” He tries to breathe, but the air catches in his lungs. “I left that life.”
“Then tell me, A-Xu, what part of your body hurts the most.”
Wen Kexing releases him. There’s nothing but the ground beneath his feet and the fabric around his wrists to hold him steady. There’s nothing but the welts along his ribs and the bruise on his hip and the ever-present ache of the Nails in his chest. Zhou Zishu does his best not to tremble. He doesn’t think he succeeds. “The Nails,” he says, because it’s safe. He doesn’t know if it’s true.
“Do they hurt more or less than this?” Wen Kexing flicks his switch into Zhou Zishu’s side. It bites into his stomach, and Zhou Zishu feels a trickle of blood slide down his skin from where the tip hit.
Zhou Zishu says, “Less,” before he can think better of it. This wound was sharp and unexpected and he couldn’t brace for it. He’d known something would come, but he couldn’t have guessed what.
“Thank you for telling me,” Wen Kexing says, and the worst part is how sincere he sounds. Zhou Zishu doesn’t know what to do with that. In Tianchuang, Prince Jin didn’t care if he was hurt so long as he could perform his duty. At Siji Manor, Shifu had wanted him to toughen up and learn to act despite pain. He would praise Zhou Zishu after training for pushing past exhaustion or bruises, but scold him if he admitted to tiredness or cried. Even a broken bone should be reported with at most a grimace, not tears.
So Zhou Zishu doesn’t say anything. He just stands there as Wen Kexing runs his fingers down Zhou Zishu’s back. The pressure is consistent the whole way down; the sensation is not. It’s interrupted by scars and intensified by welts, and Zhou Zishu takes a long breath to try and focus on anything else.
“You don’t need to hide your pain, A-Xu,” Wen Kexing murmurs. It’s as soft as if they’re in bed together. “Nothing will harm you while I’m here.”
There’s no point in saying You’re hurting me right now, because Zhou Zishu knows that’s not what Wen Kexing’s talking about. Instead, he says, “What’s the point of this?” even though he’s afraid he already knows.
“I want you to cry.” Wen Kexing drags his fingernails across Zhou Zishu’s chest. They catch on his nipples and his scars in equal measure, and Zhou Zishu gasps at the electric shock buzzing through his nerves. “I want you to show me all your pain.”
Zhou Zishu shudders. He tries to tell himself it’s about the way the Nails throb in his meridians. He knows it’s not true. “I don’t cry.”
“You should.” Wen Kexing bites down on the thick muscle of his shoulder, and Zhou Zishu’s head falls back to rest against his.
“Why?” Zhou Zishu’s voice trembles ever so slightly despite his best efforts to keep it steady.
Wen Kexing’s tongue trails up his neck. “I want you to.” Then, in a warm whisper right into his ear, “Isn’t that reason enough?”
Before Zhou Zishu can say No, Wen Kexing pulls back and lays into Zhou Zishu’s back. The pain washes out his words, leaves him focusing only on not—
He doesn’t need to avoid showing how much it hurts, Wen Kexing says, but Zhou Zishu can’t leave behind two decades of training so easily. He pays attention to his breath, and his balance, and the burning in his chest that he normally ignores. The Nails are a ballast in this storm. Zhou Zishu has avoided reacting to them for years; he can hold on through the litany Wen Kexing drills into his skin.
Wen Kexing tells him, “Your back is the most gorgeous canvas I’ve ever used,” and Zhou Zishu tries to think back to the shape of his blows. Before he can cohere them into an image, Wen Kexing’s mouth is sucking on his ear and Zhou Zishu gasps at the warm wetness of his tongue and the even pressure of his chest wrapping against Zhou Zishu’s bare skin. The welts sing again at the touch, but even that blends into the pleasure of Wen Kexing’s teasingly-soft mouth.
It lasts only a few seconds before Wen Kexing murmurs, “Gorgeous,” into his ear and steps back, switch already flicking out to paint him with pain.
Zhou Zishu shivers, and the smallest noise escapes his throat. He hates that it did, but he can’t take it back.
Wen Kexing strokes his hair, says, “Yes, A-Xu, just like that,” and then digs both hands into the sensitive skin over Zhou Zishu’s kidneys.
Zhou Zishu pivots slightly, instinctively, aiming to kick back at Wen Kexing in retaliation. The cloth around his wrists creaks, and Zhou Zishu stops moving again. His breath is coming in gasps now, and his hands are tightly fisted, and every action he takes feels like an admission that Wen Kexing is getting to him.
“A-Xu, you don’t need to hold back.” Wen Kexing taps his hands with the switch. It’s unexpected. It burns against the thin skin, the sensitive nerves, sends echoes billowing down his arms to coat them in nettle-stings. “I want everything.”
“Nobody wants everything,” Zhou Zishu snaps. He’s lying. He wants the same from Wen Kexing. They both know it. They’ve been prying off each others’ masks since they met, and this is nothing more than another path to the same goal.
It doesn’t make him like it any better.
“I’ll be the judge of what I want,” Wen Kexing says, very calmly, and then his tongue washes across Zhou Zishu’s oldest scars and it’s worse than the welts. This is worship, and Zhou Zishu curls his spine, trying to shut it away, and Wen Kexing huffs and drags his shoulders back into perfect posture.
Zhou Zishu lets out something far too close to a sob.
Wen Kexing kisses the knob of his spine, catches his teeth on the vertebra’s edge, and murmurs, “Good, A-Xu, you’re perfect like this.”
Zhou Zishu is not perfect. He has never been perfect. He shudders, and turns the whine in the back of his throat into words to try and cover the sound. “Like what?”
“When you let me see your pain.” Wen Kexing slaps him, broad hand curling around to Zhou Zishu’s cheek before bouncing off and dropping into a palm strike to his upper arm. Zhou Zishu grunts, and Wen Kexing says, again, “Good.”
Zhou Zishu can feel his cheeks warm. Not just the one Wen Kexing struck, an excuse Zhou Zishu’s realising Wen Kexing engineered, but the other one. It’s the praise, he realises, because Wen Kexing keeps talking as his fingers and switch reach out and caress him with sensation that’s building towards overwhelming waves of pleasure and pain.
“I know your shifu cared about you,” Wen Kexing says, words rising and falling to the beat of the pain he inflicts. “He taught you so much. He’s the reason you could survive. I’m very grateful to him for all of that. But there’s one thing I wish he hadn’t drilled into you.”
It takes Zhou Zishu a minute to realise Wen Kexing wants an answer from him. “What,” he says, and it’s barely a question.
Wen Kexing strokes his hair, then grabs it and twists. Pain shoots through Zhou Zishu’s scalp as Wen Kexing says, “You don’t need to hide when it hurts.”
“Did you?” Zhou Zishu asks. There’s a film of water in his eyes. He blinks it away.
Wen Kexing silently releases his hair and starts lightly tapping his switch on Zhou Zishu’s arm, almost like he’s drawing a ladder from shoulder to wrist. When the switch lands on the thin skin at Zhou Zishu’s elbow, Zhou Zishu lets himself gasp at the way pain shoots through his nerves. It’s deliberate manipulation, but when Wen Kexing says, “Yes,” he knows it worked.
Before Zhou Zishu can attempt to follow up this admission, Wen Kexing continues. “But I knew where I was safe and I could cry there, and I had to show Gu Xiang it was okay to cry sometimes. Did you have anything like that?”
Zhou Zishu doesn’t speak until Wen Kexing flicks his switch against Zhou Zishu’s cheek. Then he forces himself to say, “No,” before Wen Kexing can leave a too-obvious mark on his face.
Wen Kexing sighs, then kisses the same place he just hit. The drag of his tongue against the not-quite-welt stings more than the strike itself had. “Then we will stay here until you find that place with me, A-Xu,” he says.
The promise warms Zhou Zishu’s chest.
Then Wen Kexing withdraws and begins striking him even more intently. There is no pattern to his choices that Zhou Zishu can find, but there is a rhythm to it, a beat Zhou Zishu can almost sink into. It never lasts long enough for him to gather his focus, his breath, his qi; Wen Kexing seems to notice every time Zhou Zishu searches for that quiet and he changes his actions, speeds up or slows down or leans in to bite him so he startles at the new and unexpected sensation.
It is not torture. Torture would be kinder, Zhou Zishu thinks as Wen Kexing presses his lips against the back of his ribs where the switch broke skin. He knows how to withstand torture. He has taught his men how to resist it, learned the best ways to take prisoners and leave them no choice but to admit to what Prince Jin needs them to confess. Torture shatters people and leaves nothing but a shell behind, ready to be filled.
That is not what Wen Kexing is doing. Wen Kexing only wishes to break him down enough to crawl inside the cracks he creates and reform Zhou Zishu around him, and Zhou Zishu cannot help but love him for that.
And, intermixed with the physical blows, there are the verbal ones. Whenever Zhou Zishu reacts to the pain, however subtly, Wen Kexing will tell him, “Yes, just like that,” or “Good,” or “A-Xu, you’re wonderful,” or even “You’re perfect like this.”
Zhou Zishu strains towards every word, even as he flinches away from what that means.
The switch cuts into his shoulder-blade, and Zhou Zishu yelps. Wen Kexing’s lips are already on his skin when he whispers, “Yes, thank you.”
Zhou Zishu shivers, and he can’t tell if it’s from the words or from the way Wen Kexing’s tongue soothes the wound and licks blood away. It’s sweet, for that moment, and Zhou Zishu relaxes into Wen Kexing’s touch just in time for Wen Kexing to pull away.
His fingers—so gentle only a moment ago—scrape across Zhou Zishu’s spine. “You’re so good, A-Xu,” Wen Kexing murmurs, soft and sweet. “Go on. Show me how this feels.”
The last time someone had told him how good he was and meant it, Zhou Zishu thinks in the distant haze somewhere past his body and the grunts and cries he has allowed Wen Kexing draw from him, he had still been a child.
Then, he had still had his shidi.
Now, Wen Kexing’s methodical blows have broken down the last fragile remnants of walls hiding his memories until all that’s left is aching awareness of the past. His shifu died too soon. His shidi are lost, led into danger by his youthful naivety. This last scrap of the childhood he’d shed, found once more, has changed beyond recognition.
But then, so has he.
Zhou Zishu feels tears slip down his cheeks and thinks, Weakness.
Wen Kexing catches them on his thumb and says, “I love you.”
Zhou Zishu collapses, not wanting to hold himself upright. He can’t breathe. His chest hurts, and it’s not the Nails, and his wrists ache from the bonds—Wen Kexing’s untying them, he can feel frantic fingers scrabbling against his skin—and he’s shuddering like it’s deep winter even though he knows autumn’s last heat is still upon them.
He’s crying, he realises, as Wen Kexing wraps his arms around him and presses kisses to his forehead. Sobbing, really. He doesn’t—
“I can’t,” he says, trying to calm his heart, his lungs, the painful pounding in his skull that’s not Wen Kexing’s doing at all except for how it is.
Wen Kexing tightens his hug. “You can,” he says, and the world smells of Wen Kexing and nothing else, and Zhou Zishu can’t see right now and he doesn’t know if that’s the tears or the Nails and he doesn’t think he wants to know. Wen Kexing’s fingers loosen his hair, and Zhou Zishu relaxes fractionally as it cascades down his back; jianghu freedom from court strictures. Wen Kexing murmurs, “A-Xu, I’m here. You’re safe. Let go.”
Zhou Zishu presses his face into Wen Kexing’s chest, into the softness of his robes and the strength of his muscles and the pretense of being unseen that having his face covered allows. His hands lock onto Wen Kexing’s shoulders, and he doesn’t try to control his strength but it doesn’t matter because Wen Kexing can take it, can take everything he has to give and will return it with a laugh.
He shakes, and Wen Kexing holds him, and the quiet murmurs of “You’re so good, A-Xu,” and “You’re safe,” and “I love you” only echo in Zhou Zishu’s mind. He knows Wen Kexing isn’t talking. Knows that the only sound—fading in and out as his emotions set his qi roiling and spiking in his body—is his gasping sobs. He still hears every word, clear and resonating even when the rest of the world is gone. Maybe it’s carried by the healing qi Wen Kexing is guiding into his body. Maybe it’s just memory. Maybe it doesn’t matter, because Zhou Zishu knows every word is true.
Eventually, Zhou Zishu’s muscles unlock. Eventually, the only thing supporting him is Wen Kexing. Eventually, Zhou Zishu says, “Was that what you wanted?”
Wen Kexing presses a kiss to his forehead. “Do you understand?”
Zhou Zishu sighs. His throat aches. His eyes are sore. He asks, “Was there someone there for you?” and thinks I should’ve been there for you, and knows that Wen Kexing will hear that too.
For a moment, Wen Kexing’s fingers still in their calm rhythm across Zhou Zishu’s scalp. “I’m glad you weren’t,” he says, barely loud enough to be heard. “I do not wish that childhood upon anyone.” Then Wen Kexing’s hands start moving again, and—more loudly, more cheerfully—he says, “Luo-ayi was there if I needed her. It was… enough.”
“You aren’t alone anymore, lao-Wen.” Zhou Zishu aches to reach up and touch him, press reassurance into his skin. He doesn’t have the energy to do more than shift a little closer in emphasis.
“Of course not.” Wen Kexing raises Zhou Zishu up until their eyes meet. He smiles. “You’re mine, A-Xu. Didn’t I say that already?”
Zhou Zishu leans forward, lets their lips brush in a kiss, and whispers, “Yes.”
It is gentler than how Wen Kexing has claimed him.
It leaves no less permanent a mark.