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Jing Yuan hums, fingertips sinking into silky, flowing locks of hair, combing through the dark tresses idly and enjoying himself. He promised Blade to help with combing it all away, but he never said he would be brief and now is stalling for time, indulging, each little touch and tremble - a battle won. He is good at finding those little victories, recently.
There are things to be done, and attachments left to untangle, and nothing is bright and simple anymore, not as it once was, in the Before. There is not much that can be picked up and mended in the After. And yet, like this, just for a moment…
“Tch, as inappropriate as ever,” Blade complains with a low growl, one that makes Jing Yuan smile where he cannot be seen. No matter the words, the other Alpha still turns his head slightly to the side, Jing Yuan’s fingertips grazing over the sensitive skin on his neck. Blade is not wrong. It is appallingly inappropriate for an Alpha. “So many centuries, and behaving as you are meant to is still beyond you.”
Jing Yuan chuckles softly, another pass of his fingertips just slightly more teasing. He never did learn.
“Mmm, so you do not complain when it gets you into my bed, but an idle affection is inappropriate already?” He is not surprised when Blade scoffs and tries to move away. “Never took you as one to shy away from a challenge,” a taunt, his grin widening, as he twirls the stolen hairclasp between his fingers - bait and hook, “and I did take quite a lot yester-”
“Silence.”
Mouth crashing into his silences the teasing, a little too harsh, too biting, but it cannot strip away the cat-like grin, even as Jing Yuan’s eyes close in warm pleasure, and he lets go, melting into each greedy motion, lightheaded as seconds trick away in breathless indulgence. Blade, when it comes to most things, is strikingly gentle. It is Jing Yuan ruthlessness that always surprises his enemies.
“I like you better when you are quiet,” Blade tells him then, a lie that Jing Yuan graciously allows, if it gets him more kisses trailed down his throat, bruises sucked into his skin that he will conceal in the morning. Not the same, it is still more than enough as his arms wrap around Blade’s shoulders, nails uncaring as they claw, grounding against the wave that threatens to shatter Blade again. Maybe Yingxing burned like a fire that could - and did sweep through Jing Yuan's carefully laid plans like a catastrophe, turning everything to ash. Blade, in turn, is different. Mellowed out, sweet with the underlying note of rot, missing that flame of life and passion that used to guide him before.
In the great garden that he plans and ruthlessly prunes, Jing Yuan resolved to always have a space for both.
(Spider lilies were, after all, one of his favorite scents.)