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“Lao Wen!”

Zhou Zishu sits up sharply, tongue still locked to the roof of his mouth from shouting his lover’s name, and he raises trembling hands to scrub tiredly at his face.

“Ah-Xu?” Wen Kexing’s voice is sleep-ragged at his side and Zhou Zishu does his best to slow his breathing, to try to stop his heart from pounding in his chest. He tries to stop seeing his zhiji dead right in front of his eyes, but if it’s not the sight of him falling off a cliff then it’s that of him lying dead and still in a burning shed, and if it’s not either of those two haunting memories then it’s the most recent, that of opening his eyes to find Wen Kexing fading right in front of him, hand in hand as his qi drained out of him like water through a sieve. A sob manages to escape his throat despite his best efforts and Wen Kexing is on him in an instant.

“Ah-Xu!” he gasps as he sits up and wraps long arms around him, hugging Zhou Zishu close to his chest. “What is it? What happened?”

Zhou Zishu knows even as he does it that it’s petty, but he pushes Wen Kexing away. Not as strongly as he has in the past, perhaps, but he does it, an elbow to his lover’s side that makes him wince and loosen his grip though he still doesn’t let go entirely.

Zhou Zishu’s hands curl into tight fists in the blankets still covering their laps and he tries to forget about Wen Kexing’s hands, ice cold and limp in his grip as Zhou Zishu had scrambled to find some way to pass his qi back. His arms remember the weight of Wen Kexing’s corpse, the way it had felt to gather his lifeless body close to his chest and bury his face in that silver-white hair, the only outward sign of the strain Wen Kexing had forced himself through just to make Zhou Zishu immortal - with no regard for his own life, or for how empty Zhou Zishu would find the world without his zhiji at his side. 

And mourning these incidents feels so strange when the man himself is not only alive and perfectly fine at his side, but at fault for each and every one. It’s this thought that sends him staggering from their bed to shove his feet into his shoes. 

“Ah-Xu wait, where are you going? It’s the middle of the night,” Wen Kexing points out like he doesn’t already know it. It doesn’t take Zhou Zishu long to find his outer robes to shrug on over the layer he sleeps in and he doesn’t even bother tying them shut before he stalks from the room and out into the rest of the sprawling armory around them.

He hears Wen Kexing curse and tumble out of bed behind him but he doesn’t stop to wait for him, he just starts wandering in an attempt to soothe the itching under his skin. In the aftermath of everything, after Zhou Zishu had found a way to pass their refined qi back and forth, after Wen Kexing had remained unconscious for over a month recovering from nearly fizzling out into nothing, they’ve been too happy about being reunited in the past few days since he woke for Zhou Zishu to find space to comfortably fit the fact that he’s angry as well. It hardly feels fair to say anything now , and he’s been forcing himself not to give a voice to the ugly thing in his chest mainly because he feels that he knows what Wen Kexing will say. That he lived, that they’re here now, that they finally have as long as they want to be together so why spoil it with unhappy things? 

And Zhou Zishu is trying, but it’s so hard . He shoves it all away in his waking hours but then it comes back to haunt him in his sleep and he has to watch his zhiji die over and over again, every single fucking night.

Zhou Zishu comes to a stop at random and begins idly running his hand over the books on the closest shelf, searching for something he hasn’t read yet, or even just something he read so casually first as to be able to enjoy it a second time. Anything for a distraction, anything to try to get rid of the sourness of the bile rising in his throat from the remembered panic of opening his eyes, his senses fully restored, only for the first thing he felt properly since the application of the Nails to be his lover’s dead body. Well, nearly-dead, but it had certainly felt close enough to his newly awakened senses.

Wen Kexing finds him as he’s still brushing dust off of the contents of one of the cubbyholes in the shelf.

“Ah-Xu,” he calls, quiet in the gloom of the sparse few lanterns and the moonlight filtered through vents in the mountainside high above their heads, reflected and magnified by a neatly hidden collection of mirrors far above their heads. “There isn’t light enough to read by tonight. What are you doing?”

“Go back to bed.”

“Ah- Xu -”

Zhou Zishu moves without conscious thought when Wen Kexing reaches for him, fingers just catching on his sleeve before Zhou Zishu whips around to grab him and pin him to the shelves, a furious glare in his damp eyes. The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scuffle isn’t nearly enough to wind either one of them, but they’re both breathing hard anyway into the scant space between them. Perhaps Zhou Zishu shouldn’t be surprised to find that it only takes the span of a single breath for Wen Kexing’s concerned gaze to go steely, rising to meet the fury he must find in Zhou Zishu’s glare.

“Go ahead,” Wen Kexing challenges with a haughty jerk of his chin. “What is it?”

It’s easier like this, with Wen Kexing seemingly angry right back at him. This is not his Lao Wen, this is the Chief of Ghost Valley - fitting, when he feels less like Ah-Xu and more like the leader of the Window of Heaven, full of a cold sense of merciless righteousness that usually ends with blood on his hands.

“I’m tired of dreaming about all the times you ripped my fucking heart out,” Zhou Zishu finally manages to spit and when Wen Kexing bares his teeth at him in a parody of a smile it’s almost a shock to see his teeth gleaming white rather than stained pink with someone else’s blood.

“Is that so? The feeling is mutual.”

“How many times would you have continued to make me watch you die if we hadn’t trapped ourselves in here?”

“ You trapped us here with your avalanche trick, and I would have kept doing it as many times as necessary to keep you alive!” Wen Kexing is practically snarling, though he doesn’t fight against Zhou Zishu’s hold keeping him pinned to the shelf.

“You didn’t have to follow me here!”

Wen Kexing does fight back a bit then, just a savage jerk of one arm that frees it from Zhou Zishu’s grip so he can reach up to curl his fingers into a fist in the front of his robes for the purpose of jostling him, as if shaking him will help him understand as he shouts, “After all this anger over my plans to save you, you have the nerve to also be angry that I didn’t stay put when you left me behind to go die anyway?!”

Zhou Zishu is the one to bare his teeth next, but Wen Kexing takes advantage of his moment of trying to formulate a reply to flip their positions so quickly Zhou Zishu nearly becomes dizzy even before his back is slammed against the shelf and Wen Kexing’s forearm presses against his throat.

“After everything we’ve done, everything we had just lost, you left me,” Wen Kexing says next, no longer shouting but the faint glitter of tears in his eyes and clumping his lashes together is somehow more cutting than if he were. “If you die I die, how dare you take my choices away from me!”

“ Your choices?!” Zhou Zishu bites back, finding his metaphorical feet again even as he has to go up on his toes a bit to accommodate the way Wen Kexing is pressing him higher with the arm on his throat. “ Your choices are why I was dying so quickly in the first place! I was going to be healed, Da Wu was going to fix everything but your plan that included everyone but me forced my hand! Why would I continue living without you after watching you die? How could you not have known I would try to follow you even after Ye-qianbei stopped me from jumping with you?!”

“How could you throw your life away so quickly?!”

“ There is no me without you!”

Zhou Zishu’s shout rings off the stone around them. Wen Kexing slowly releases the pressure on his throat as the reverb of it fades into nothing but silence again broken only by their breaths, too fast and out of sync. But they’re both here. They’re both breathing. They’re glaring daggers at each other, but they’re both here .

“A day without you, a week, a year, an eternity? I don’t want any of it,” Zhou Zishu continues eventually, voice low and fervent. “Of course I tried to follow you. What else would you expect me to do?”

“And then at the last, you turned around and abandoned me. Are you really such a hypocrite, Ah-Xu?”

Zhou Zishu doesn’t refute that, though he can’t quite help but grind his teeth and curl his hand still holding one of Wen Kexing’s wrists a little tighter.

He is, abruptly, exhausted. Perhaps it’s the sleepless nights of relieving Wen Kexing’s ‘deaths’ from every angle. Perhaps it’s the stress of having kept all of this tucked close to his chest since the moment Wen Kexing returned during the second heroes’ conference. Perhaps it’s the way the fight leaves Wen Kexing’s eyes as quickly as it had appeared. Perhaps it’s none of these things, or all of them, but whatever the reason, the thought of somehow keeping score for the next however many years they live, of holding onto resentments and bitterness and playing a constant game of who-owes-whom makes him so tired .

Zhou Zishu tips his head back to rest against the shelf at his back, baring his throat (perhaps unwisely, when Wen Kexing is still so angry at him) and closing his eyes against the sight of the filtered moonlight overhead.

“We can’t keep living like this,” he mutters and he feels Wen Kexing’s body go stiff against his where they’re pressed together practically from chest to ankle.

“Like what? Don’t tell me you regret this already, Ah-Xu. It’s not even spring yet, you have to at least wait for the thaw before you can decide to leave me behind again.”

“Lao Wen!” he protests sharply with a jostle of Wen Kexing’s arm in his grip. “Like this , angry with each other for things that we’ve done because we don’t know how to live for each other. This is getting us nowhere.”

Wen Kexing takes a long, slow breath in and Zhou Zishu is about to drop his head again to look at him when he’s abruptly stopped in his tracks by the feeling of teeth on his neck, too sharp and insistent to be comfortable. He gasps and can’t help but jerk a bit in Wen Kexing’s grip, a frisson of heat slinking down his spine and out towards his fingertips as he follows it with a soothing but possessive pass of the flat of his tongue, hot and wet against his skin.

“Lao Wen?” he manages to gasp around the too-intense pressure of Wen Kexing’s teeth around a different section of his throat, more sensitive than the last - so sensitive his knees nearly threaten to buckle, though that may also be because Wen Kexing chooses that moment to dart a clever hand between the drape of his robes to grab him through his trousers. There’s nothing gentle in the gesture, it’s hard and possessive. Painful.

They haven’t been intimate since Wen Kexing had finally regained consciousness. Between adjusting to their new reality, Wen Kexing finally having an opportunity to begin grieving for Gu Xiang, and Zhou Zishu working to build them something of a permanent living space in the armory, and with an as-of-yet undefined eternity stretching on before them, they’d just...settled. Tried to relax and let time pass as it would now that it’s no longer their master.

Zhou Zishu realizes belatedly that he should have anticipated that it would feel different with the return of his senses, but he is somehow still blindsided by the shock of it, crystal clear and overwhelming. He can feel Wen Kexing’s too-quick exhales against his freshly bruised skin, hot and damp in the chill of their new home. His hand is painfully tight between his legs and Zhou Zishu gasps again as his grip tightens even further, bucking his hips back to try to escape Wen Kexing’s groping but there’s nowhere for him to go. He bites down again and Zhou Zishu swears he can feel every single one of his teeth - no longer just the muted sensation of more pointed pressure than his hands could provide, now he can feel his skin protesting the sharp crush of capillaries, red bruises blooming like aching flowers under his lover’s mouth.

“If you want to be angry then be angry,” Wen Kexing growls into the point of his collarbone, and the bite he leaves there has Zhou Zishu’s back arching without his permission though he at least manages to keep a pathetic whimper locked in his throat. “You’re not getting rid of me so easily.”

Under such an onslaught, it doesn’t take long at all for Zhou Zishu to find his temper again. Wen Kexing is harsh and cruel with him, offering no reprieves or mercy as he takes what he wants. Zhou Zishu has absolutely no qualms about giving him the same in return, digging in with his nails until he pierces his skin, and only then does he scratch up his back and leave bloody furrows in his wake. He bites whatever part of Wen Kexing he can get his mouth on, and finally when Wen Kexing is ever-so-slightly distracted with gathering all of Zhou Zishu’s hair into one hand to yank on it, Zhou Zishu manages to get his ankle hooked behind Wen Kexing’s to kick his leg out from under him. Paired with a shove of the hand he has bunched up in the front of Wen Kexing’s robes, it’s a perfect move to unbalance him and send the pair of them tumbling to the hard ground.

Zhou Zishu doesn’t bother feeling guilty for cushioning his own fall with Wen Kexing’s body, he just sets about continuing what they’d started with a sort of hunger that startles even him, but that Wen Kexing seems to take in stride. He had started this, after all, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that he’s prepared to see it through to the end no matter how rough it should get.

It’s a messy thing, quick and aggressive with absolutely none of the finesse they’ve managed to find together in all the times they’ve done this before. By the time they’ve finished, Wen Kexing’s bared torso is a mess of blood and come - from both of them. Zhou Zishu brushes the back of his hand against the swollen curve of his bottom lip without any regard for the flare of aching, burning pain he finds there where Wen Kexing has bitten him bloody. 

“You got hard,” Wen Kexing finally mumbles through bright red lips. Zhou Zishu can see that his teeth are pink as he speaks and he wonders if it should worry him that that feels right. What he had actually said filters through the haze a moment after and he huffs a humorless laugh as he shakes his head a bit and leans back on his heels where he’s straddling Wen Kexing. The motion grinds his ass down against his softening cock and Wen Kexing hisses a little, shuffles his feet like he’s going to try to get away though he settles again after a moment, allowing the overstimulating pressure.

“Philanthropist Wen so kindly traded his life so that I could have all my senses restored,” Zhou Zishu retorts as he crosses his arms over his chest and grinds himself down more purposefully into Wen Kexing’s lap until the man’s back arches and his hands fly down to grip his hips tight enough to bruise there too.

“A fair trade,” Wen Kexing mumbles, still staring at him in bleary wonder. Well, not at him. At his cock, which hasn’t even managed to go entirely soft. How can it, when he can finally feel Wen Kexing’s hands on him properly? When every place their bodies are touching feels like the spark of a struck match?

“And if I hadn’t found a way to pass the qi back to you such a ‘ gift ’ would be absolutely wasted on me living here alone!”

“You’re still angry after that?”

Zhou Zishu doesn’t even deign to respond to that with words, rather he just grinds his hips again and Wen Kexing chokes on some sort of wounded noise that ends with a whimper. His teeth are no longer bloody though he certainly looks worse for wear, his lips still red even where Zhou Zishu hadn’t split his bottom lip straight down the middle with a particularly vicious bite. There are bruises already blooming dark and possessive all over his chest and shoulders, the imprints of Zhou Zishu’s teeth stark on the pale canvas of his skin. His silver hair is a tangled mess underneath him, his robes equally dishevelled where they had been shoved aside to give Zhou Zishu room to work. As he watches, Wen Kexing releases his hip to drag one elegant hand up his own stomach, his long fingers smearing through the mix of blood and spend to swirl them together before he continues his dragging touch. He smears the mix up his own chest and then pops his fingers in his mouth as he looks up again to meet Zhou Zishu’s gaze. 

“In that case, you can have me like that again, if you’d like,” Wen Kexing mumbles as he withdraws his fingers, seemingly uncaring of the mess he’s making of himself as he reaches down to scoop more of their come onto his fingers. Zhou Zishu reaches out to stop him with a hand tight around his wrist.

“Hurting you isn’t going to make me less angry about what you did.”

“Nor I, but it’s nice to get the energy out anyway.”

Zhou Zishu licks at a trickle of blood he can feel beginning to weep from his own split lip and Wen Kexing tracks the movement as if mesmerized by the briefest glimpse of his tongue. Zhou Zishu releases his wrist then and he expects Wen Kexing to return to his task of licking his fingers clean, but instead he drops his hand down again, this time to press his whole palm to the mess on his abs. Before Zhou Zishu can wonder what his fascination with it is, Wen Kexing is wrapping his slicked hand around his cock - and he goes properly hard again so quickly his head spins.

“Oh,” Wen Kexing says softly, eyes wide, as he strokes him just once and Zhou Zishu can’t help but shudder with a punched out little noise that he’s too late to stop. He squeezes his eyes shut and leans forward until he can rest his weight on one hand pressed to the floor next to Wen Kexing’s shoulder, his lips parted as he suddenly struggles to catch his breath. “Oh Ah-Xu, our first time when you can feel me properly shouldn’t have hurt you so much.”

“It’s only fitting that it should be too much,” Zhou Zishu manages to grind out. He opens his eyes to find Wen Kexing looking anxiously back and forth between them, his eyebrows drawn up in open concern, so different from the furious hunger of just a few minutes ago. “Too much - and not enough. Try again.”

“Mn?”

“Hurt me again.”

“Ah-Xu -”

Zhou Zishu catches Wen Kexing’s chin in his free hand, harsh and unforgiving. “ Again , Lao Wen. You think I’ve been waiting for you to wake up all this time just for you to be afraid to touch me? Make me forget what it was like to feel you dead in my arms.”

That seems to do the trick. Wen Kexing’s eyes flash and Zhou Zishu isn’t even startled to find their positions reversed; the only concession for the stone floor that Wen Kexing gives him is a hand behind his head to keep him from hitting it too hard as he’s thrown down on his back - other than that he’s just as harsh as he was before. They’re already ragged and bloodied, it doesn’t take nearly as much effort the second time for Zhou Zishu to lose himself in the ache of Wen Kexing pressing on his new bruises, biting even fresher ones next to them.

He gasps and exhales a moan that echoes off the stone around them as Wen Kexing bites his neck hard enough to draw blood there too at the same moment he slides two spit- and come-slick fingers inside his body with absolutely no mercy. It hurts, but his Lao Wen and so he doesn’t complain. He’ll never complain as long as it’s Wen Kexing who’s the one bearing down on him, pressing into him, working him as expertly as ever even though so much internal attention isn’t necessary now that he can finally get hard again. It doesn’t seem to matter what he needs or doesn't - his entire being belongs to the man on top of him and he knows that Wen Kexing enjoys reminding him of that.

The only reason the second round lasts anywhere close to the same length of time as the first is because this time Wen Kexing forces him to wait every time he trembles close to the edge of orgasm, until by the time he finally allows it Zhou Zishu is so overstimulated it hurts as much as it pleasures.

“Enough,” Wen Kexing pants when he’s finished and they’re now both sporting the same messes on their chests. “ Enough Ah-Xu, no more angry sex tonight. Alright?”

“Fine,” Zhou Zishu pants as he stares unseeingly up at the ceiling. “Tomorrow, then.”

“No.” Zhou Zishu closes his eyes as Wen Kexing starts stroking his cheek with his hand that’s still relatively clean, but he frowns when he feels the now-familiar sensation of shared qi flood through his meridians.

“What are you doing?”

“We’ll heal faster if we share it.”

Zhou Zishu darts his hand up to grab Wen Kexing’s wrist to force his hand away from his face and he opens his eyes with an effort to meet Wen Kexing’s confused gaze.

“Leave it.”

“Ah-Xu?”

“Penance.”

Wen Kexing blinks at him for a long moment and then the last of the fight truly drains out of him as he hangs his head, his hair sliding over one shoulder to hang between them and the rest of the room. In the moonlight backlighting it it almost seems to glow and Zhou Zishu’s breath hitches in his chest as he looks at it, this reminder of how much Wen Kexing had tried to give up. For him. He had never asked so many people to want to die for him. All he had ever wanted was the people he cared about to live , why were they all so determined to leave him behind anyway?

“Come back to bed,” Wen Kexing says and Zhou Zishu can hear the tears thick in his voice though he can’t see his face. “ Please .”

Maneuvering up off the floor and righting their robes at least enough to make the chilly walk more bearable takes a surprisingly long time, but thankfully Wen Kexing had kept track of where he was going as he had followed Zhou Zishu through the armory and so he just has to follow behind him as they return quickly enough to their ‘bedroom’, for lack of anything better to call it. As they walk, his own anger ebbs back out of him, as it always does, to be replaced with a soul-deep grief. His anger is really only a poor cover for that lurking sorrow anyway, and it consumes too much energy to maintain the front for too long. By the time Wen Kexing is helping him out of his outer robes and nudging him in the direction of their bed he feels so weighed down by the ghosts of his mistakes that all he can do is obey and sit heavily on the edge of it.

“ ‘Penance’,” Wen Kexing muses with dark humor as he returns Zhou Zishu’s robes to their spot and begins to strip out of his own. “Are we not already paying penance having to spend the rest of our lives in the cold? Away from Chengling and Four Seasons Manor? It’s a price I’m willing to pay a thousand times over in order to live this life with you, but it is still a sacrifice. Don’t you think that’s penance enough?”

Zhou Zishu doesn’t even bother looking up from his hands between his knees as Wen Kexing talks to him, only raising his eyes with a sharp inhale through his nose when the other man comes to kneel in front of him, though he can still only stand to look around the vicinity of his chin.

“Ah-Xu. What are you punishing yourself for?”

“You have to ask?” 

“I do. We’ve already forgiven each other for the lies we told, you don’t fool me. What are you really angry about?”

“I’m not trying to fool you, I am angry that you lied to me.”

“And you have lied to me. We’re even as far as I’m concerned, and I think it would be useless to keep score from here on out. What are petty disagreements to immortal lovers, hm?”

Zhou Zishu finally lifts his gaze the rest of the way with an effort to look Wen Kexing in the eyes. They still manage to shine somehow even in the dim light of the candles guttering in the corners of the room, and Zhou Zishu can’t quite resist reaching out to hold his face with both hands. Hands that can now feel how soft his skin is, how warm. He strokes his thumb slowly along the plush curve of his bitten bottom lip and the softness of it, the easy give of it beneath his touch, have him aching to bite him again. Again and again and again until he no longer feels quite so hungry for him, so desperate. 

“Ah-Xu,” Wen Kexing murmurs seemingly for no reason other than to call for him. Zhou Zishu lets his thumb move with his lips as he does so, the drag of the warm, damp skin against his fingertip a concrete reminder that he hasn’t lost Wen Kexing. He’s here, alive and breathing and determined to live for the rest of their forever at his side.

“I want to stop seeing you dead,” he confesses, much less angrily this time than the first as he allows his grief and fear to take their rightful place at center stage. “I want to but I can’t . You were so cold, Lao Wen, the first thing I felt was you so cold -“

Wen Kexing’s brows knit together as he turns his head just enough to press ardent kisses to his palm, his long fingers curling around Zhou Zishu’s wrist to hold his hand still for it.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes and Zhou Zishu’s breath hitches in his throat. “I’m sorry , Ah-Xu.”

Zhou Zishu coaxes Wen Kexing into turning his head forward again with a press of his palm to his cheek only to meet him more than halfway in a kiss that’s messy and clumsy and perfect in every way he needs it to be. Wen Kexing surges up to deepen it, to loom over him and then press him back insistently with his whole body as he climbs onto the bed first to straddle him and then to lay him down, kissing kissing kissing all the while.

Even in what Zhou Zishu has come to think of as his ‘first’ life - his life before Wen Kexing - he doesn’t think anyone’s touch ever affected him as much as Wen Kexing’s does now. His hands, though they’re cool simply by virtue of where they live, feel like branding irons as they skim down his chest and arms, dragging his dishevelled sleeping robe off in their wake. He shivers in the chill of the cave as the cold air meets his flushed skin and even that, somehow, adds to the overwhelming flood of sensations from Wen Kexing’s hands alone. 

“I’ll make you forget it all,” Wen Kexing promises as he drags those burning hands up to grip the sides of his neck, press his thumbs under his jaw to coax him into tipping his head back so he can kiss the bruises he’d left. “I’ll make you forget everything but me right here with you like this. Alright?”

“Alright,” Zhou Zishu breathes, at a loss for anything else to say. Why shouldn’t he agree? It’s impossible for him to forget it all but he’d like to try, and Wen Kexing has made so many impossible things happen already. Maybe this one is in his power as well.

He lets himself get lost in the way each kiss and caress feels brand new, and so quickly it could almost be embarrassing he feels his cock growing stiff again, his entire body reacting to each brush of fingertips or soft hair or lips against his skin like it’s the first time he’s ever felt such a thing. It’s the first time he’s ever properly felt Wen Kexing, at least, and he can’t help but think that that’s good enough; his first time feeling his zhiji’s touch the way it’s meant to be felt. If this is what he’s felt every time Zhou Zishu touches him then it’s no wonder Wen Kexing has so often begged and coaxed him to go just once more, to kiss for just a little longer, not to separate yet if they don’t have to. Not that Zhou Zishu hadn’t understood the desire to be close before, of course he has, but this really elevates things to a new height he had been incapable of even imagining.

Zhou Zishu sees stars the moment Wen Kexing leans in to take him into his mouth. He doesn’t come but it’s an extremely close thing, and there’s no stopping himself from whimpering and shifting restlessly as he tries to chase the pleasure Wen Kexing is offering him. He’s stopped by Wen Kexing’s wide hands heavy on his hips pressing him down into the bed and keeping him still so he can focus on working himself down the length of him painfully slowly. There have been times, usually in the afterglow of particularly good orgasms, when Wen Kexing has told him that if he could use all his best tricks then Zhou Zishu wouldn’t stand a chance against him, and Zhou Zishu has always scoffed, never believed such assertions could be anything but empty bragging. He should really know by now that Wen Kexing doesn’t brag without reason - if he says he can kill someone then he will. If he claims he can exact a fitting revenge against the world that wronged him, then he will. And now Zhou Zishu knows intimately that when Wen Kexing has said that he knows precisely how he wants to rip Zhou Zishu apart, he has meant every word.

He feels like he’s being slowly flayed apart, seen and known at every level of his being solely so that Wen Kexing can understand best how to destroy all of his defenses. Not that he should be surprised, of course - this is hardly the first time Zhou Zishu had thought he was fine only to suddenly find that his walls have been smashed to rubble and Wen Kexing is standing too close to him in the aftermath of it, smirking at him and leaning in to say something filthy in his ear to make him blush and snap at him even as he tries to pull him closer.

Zhou Zishu comes for the third time that night with his hands in Wen Kexing’s hair and his legs wrapped haphazardly around his ribcage, head thrown back and throat tight around a strangled moan that ends on something that sounds suspiciously like a sob.

Wen Kexing gives him absolutely no time to recover. He keeps his mouth on him until it turns genuinely unbearable and then he’s back, kissing him like he’ll die if he doesn’t taste every inch of his mouth at that very moment and slamming home inside of him between one breath and the next. Zhou Zishu doesn’t bother trying to restrain the pained noise that escapes him at the intrusion but Wen Kexing ignores it, instead just setting up a punishing rhythm that leaves Zhou Zishu no time at all to try to come down from his third orgasm before arousal builds in him again.

Wen Kexing is an absolute monster, and Zhou Zishu loves him so much it’s a physical ache in his chest. And there, at last, is the root of his anger. Wen Kexing makes him hurt so much , it’s only natural for him to want to protect himself from it, to put distance between them with frustration and bluster, to keep the unbearable ache of such consuming love from taking him over completely. It’s been necessary, until now, to maintain that distance even after they were in agreement that they were all either of them needs in this world. The fact then had been that Zhou Zishu was going to die and leave Wen Kexing behind to mourn him, a fact they had frequently done their best to ignore but at least Zhou Zishu had never managed it, and he was fairly sure Wen Kexing never had either. He’d spent so much time expressing concern for Zhou Zishu and his injuries, it stands to reason that he’d spent even more time thinking about them than talking about them, and any time the barest whisper of a possible cure had reached their ears Wen Kexing had always pounced on it like a street cat, vicious and single-minded as he’d dug in with his claws to drag out any information he possibly could.

Zhou Zishu’s fourth orgasm of the night leaves him feeling hollow and satisfied, finally, even as Wen Kexing spills inside of him, fills him up. As they share hot, too-heavy breaths in the aftermath, as Wen Kexing presses wet kisses to his lips and cheeks and jaw, as Wen Kexing settles his weight over him and slides a hand up into his hair to cradle him and hold him close, Zhou Zishu releases the anger that’s nothing but a smokescreen for the ache of loving too fiercely for his heart to contain it all.

“I love you,” he says into the intimate silence but for the rhythms of their living and breathing and the soft rustle of skin and cloth rubbing together as Wen Kexing readjusts his legs and attempts to get comfortable on top of him. “That’s what I’m angry about. I love you.”

“Reasonable,” Wen Kexing mumbles muzzily into his shoulder with a lazy kiss. “Will you elaborate or am I meant to just understand why loving me should make you so upset?”

“You expect me to believe that you don’t love me so much it somehow becomes other emotions as well just so your heart can contain it all?”

Wen Kexing is silent for a few long moments as their breathing slows in tandem, fingertips tracing slow, gentle circles around the ball of his shoulder as he turns his head a bit and shifts a few times until he’s settled even more comfortably.

“Ah..Perhaps I do understand, then,” he finally murmurs, and Zhou Zishu can hear a faint smile in his voice. “Is that what you’re seeking penance for? Loving me?”

“Maybe. Or maybe for everything else I’ve done before you. Maybe I have to pay for it to deserve being able to keep you until we get tired of this life and decide we’d like to end it.”

“Ah-Xu,” Wen Kexing tuts and he’s definitely smiling now. “You’ve said it yourself that if a man sets aside his weapons he’ll become good. I don’t believe you need to punish yourself like this. You don’t need to find a replacement for the pain of the Nails just because you’ve survived your torment.”

Zhou Zishu’s breath catches in his chest and he tips his head enough to try to look down at Wen Kexing. One of his eyes is visible at this angle and Zhou Zishu is unsurprised to find his gaze full of a quiet understanding.

“That’s...hm. Alright. I suppose it’s useless to argue that, I’m sure you already know exactly how to win against me.”

“Of course I do,” Wen Kexing replies with a tired chuckle. “But there’s also no point in arguing it simply because I’m right, and as I said before - what use is there in keeping score? Time and debts and the measure of good and evil are nothing to us anymore. We’ll do as much good as we can from here, and when we’re ready we’ll re-enter the world and continue to do good there until we die together. The past doesn’t concern us anymore.”

Zhou Zishu hums softly and finally finds the energy to raise one hand to begin combing his fingers through the snarled mess of Wen Kexing’s hair, keeping his touch light even when he encounters snags and knots. Wen Kexing melts into him as he works and when he starts breathing deeply, the rhythm regular, Zhou Zishu doesn’t bother resisting the desire to turn his head and press a long, slow kiss to his forehead. He lifts his free hand to curl his fingers around Wen Kexing’s wrist and, as has become a habit that’s as natural as breathing, he lets their energy circulate together, fitting himself easily into the familiar paths of his love’s qi and speeding up the healing process as much as he can, for both of their sakes, as the love of his life sleeps comfortably in his arms.