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Zhou Zishu had settled down for the night when he sensed someone outside the door of his chambers. He tensed for a moment, ready for a fight, but then he placed the cadence of his visitor’s footsteps and breathing: Wen Kexing. He relaxed.
The sudden appearance of Wen Kexing at his door wasn’t entirely unexpected. Wen Kexing liked to envelope himself in an air of mystery, or at least unpredictability. But he had come round Zhou Zishu’s door every night for the past week, as if he couldn’t quite stay away.
Zhou Zishu raised an eyebrow as Wen Kexing opened the door without bothering to knock. Wen Kexing was lucky he’d never happened on Zhou Zishu changing. Of course perhaps Wen Kexing wouldn’t have minded. It was hard to tell how sincerely he meant his flirtations; he flirted like other men breathed.
“Ah-Xu,” Wen Kexing said, stepping inside. “I’ve brought wine.” He had the look about him of a supremely satisfied cat just returned from the hunt, as if the wine were a particularly impressive mouse. Zhou Zishu suspected Wen Kexing would not be entirely displeased with the comparison.
Zhou Zishu regarded the wine. Someone had once told him that a cat would keep coming around as long as you fed it. Of course, he hadn’t fed Wen Kexing a damn thing and he came by every night anyway. Or perhaps Zhou Zishu was the cat in this scenario?
“Come to the roof and drink with me,” Wen Kexing said. “We can look at the moon together.”
He should say no. He would have said no, were it anyone else. But Wen Kexing was looking at him with a crinkled smile, as if they were sharing some secret little joke, and Zhou Zishu found all his usual defenses failing.
Wen Kexing leaned closer, so close that his breath felt warm against Wen Kexing’s skin. “The moon is very beautiful, tonight,” he murmured, but his eyes were locked on Zhou Zishu as he spoke.
Zhou Zishu swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. That was… forward, even by Wen Kexing’s standards. He couldn’t help the shudder that ran through his body, or the heat. “If it is so very beautiful,” he said, reaching for the wine, “I shall have to see it for myself.”
***
The moon was beautiful, Zhou Zishu could admit that much. Or perhaps it was just easier to appreciate it with good wine and pleasant company.
They reclined side by side as they drank, murmuring to each other in the dark as they gazed up at the night sky.
Zhou Zishu couldn’t have said what they spoke of. Poetry, perhaps. Some of it was lost in the haze of the wine. But on a baser level, Zhou Zishu couldn’t quite concentrate on speech, not when Wen Kexing was so close to him, their bodies pressed together at the shoulder and hip. Zhou Zishu could feel the heat of Wen Kexing’s body even through the layers of their clothing. He found himself hyperaware of every time Wen Kexing shifted: every breath, every tensed muscle.
He tried to tell himself it was just an old warrior’s wariness, but he knew that for a lie. The simple truth was that Wen Kexing was just very distracting, in a way that had nothing to do with fighting at all.
“Ah Xu,” Wen Kexing murmured, and there was a heat in his voice that cut through Zhou Zishu’s musings. “I’m very happy right now. Can you guess why?”
It was a trap, of course, but perhaps it was one that Zhou Zishu wanted to fall into. “I imagine you’ll tell me,” he said, staring resolutely at the moon.
Shifting silk on the roof tiles next to him, and then Wen Kexing was moving closer, so close that Zhou Zishu might have leaned in and kissed him, had he wanted to.
Did he want to?
Wen Kexing’s eyes were laughing. “Can’t you guess, Ah-Xu?”
Zhou Zishu was suddenly thirsty, but not for wine. “I think I might have some idea.”
He didn’t need to look to see that Wen Kexing was pouting. “Ahh, Ah-Xu, how am I to know whether you understand, if you won’t say it?”
A man could go mad from this. He already felt half-mad, drunk on wine and the heady drug of Wen Kexing’s presence.
Fuck it. He put his wine down on the ridge of the roof, and then before he could talk himself out of it, leaned in and kissed Wen Kexing.
Wen Kexing tensed when their lips touched for the first time, as if expecting an attack—interesting—but then he melted into Zhou Zishu’s arms like there was no place he’d rather be.
His lips were wet with wine, soft and plaint as they parted to let Zhou Zishu lick into his mouth.
When he pulled away from the kiss, Wen Kexing was holding himself very still, his lips parted and his eyelashes trembling against his cheeks.
Zhou Zishu took a sip of his wine. “Did I guess correctly?
Wen Kexing opened his eyes to offer him a wide smile. “I was going to say I was happy because of ‘good company’ actually, but how good can you be, if you stop at one—”
Zhou Zishu did not stop at one. Two kisses became three became countless more. But Zhou Zishu wanted more than Wen Kexing’s mouth; he wanted all of him, wanted to taste and suck and devour every part of him.
With a grunt, he wound a hand in the hair at the nape of Wen Kexing’s head, pulling his head back to expose the smooth skin of his neck to the night air. Wen Kexing gasped as he laved his tongue over the line of Wen Kexing’s jaw, biting at the place where Wen Kexing’s pulse danced beneath the skin, kissing a line of open-mouthed entreaties down the pillar of Wen Kexing’s neck to the hem of his collar. He drank in the taste of Wen Kexing’s skin like fine wine; he drank down Wen Kexing’s quiet gasps and thready moans as well.
It was too much for any man to withstand. He fumbled around in the dark until he found what he was looking for: the hard length of Wen Kexing’s cock jutting up beneath the fabric of his robes.
Got you. He pressed his palm down, grinned as Wen Kexing ground up against him, hips jerking reflexively as he sought more.
Wen Kexing’s eyes were wide in the dark. “Here?” he asked, panting a bit. “Ahh, Ah-Xu, anyone might hear us.”
Zhou Zishu snorted. Such modesty, as if Wen Kexing hadn’t been the one to lure him out here with wine and pretty smiles in the first place. “You’ll just have to be very, very quiet, then.”
The sound Wen Kexing made when Zhou Zishu slipped a hand inside his robes and took his length in hand suggested that Wen Kexing had elected to ignore this particular piece of advice. His head fell back against the roof tiles, moaning as Zhou Zishu stroked him from the root to the tip of his cock.
There was no time to remove their robes, not when Wen Kexing was trembling in his arms and kissing him like he might drown if he stopped. Not when Wen Kexing was gasping beneath him, back arched and hands clenched white-knuckled in the silk of his robes.
Zhou Zishu let himself forget future and past, why and wherefore. He was content to float on sensation alone; he was drunk on it.
The cold night air, chilling the sweat on his skin. The faint warmth of the moon on his face. The dig of the roof tiles into his back. The fall of Wen Kexing’s hair, like a veil of black silk, silvered in the moonlight
And Wen Kexing, head twisting and turning against the roof tiles, eyes wrenched shut and mouth open, lips kissed bright and red as rubies. Wen Kexing, rutting into Zhou Zishu’s hand, panting, crying out, “Ah-Xu, ah, ah, ah, ah—"
Zhou Zishu was no poet, but Wen Kexing coming apart in his hands was more beautiful than any moon he’d ever seen.
He felt the pulse and jerk of warmth in his hand, and bowed down to kiss Wen Kexing, swallowing every last one of his cries.
They were supposed to be quiet, after all.
***
Zhou Zishu leaned back against the eaves, sipping his wine and watching as Wen Kexing came back to himself. It took a bit; it seemed he’d been quite overcome by the experience. Zhou Zishu tried not to feel too smug about that, and largely failed.
Zhou Zishu took in the lines of Wen Kexing’s face. There was something different about him in this moment. It took Zhou Zishu a moment to place, and when he figured it out he couldn’t help laughing a bit. Wen Kexing’s normal mien was one of a man always in control, always amused, and never surprised. But now there was a hint of vulnerability abut him, as if Zhou Zishu had gone and done something well and truly unexpected.
“Ah-Xu…” Wen Kexing murmured, blinking up at him.
“Mmm?”
“You didn’t… that is to say…”
Zhou Zishu raised an eyebrow. “Spend? No. But the great lao-Wen shouldn’t worry, watching you was pleasure enough.”
Wen Kexing’s hands flew to his mouth in mock-horror. “Ah-Xu! That you would think me such an ungracious lover—! You wound me.”
Zhou Zishu let himself be pulled into another embrace. “You may touch me as much as you like.” He said between kisses. “But not on the roof.”
Wen Kexing’s eyes narrowed. “And what, pray tell, is wrong with the roof?”
The roofing tiles digging into his back, for one thing. And the fact that he was out of wine. But also… “Well,” he said, “for one: we must be quiet if we are to remain on the roof. And I want you to make me scream.”
Wen Kexing’s eyes went very wide in the dark. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.”
They did make it off the roof, eventually. But it took a while longer.