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Hua Cheng lies on his back next to Xie Lian, twirling his ashes between his fingers. It’s time to leave. He knows that.
He can’t overstay his welcome, not unless he wants to endanger the tenuous friendship that, against all odds, is growing between himself and Xie Lian.
Xie Lian, who knows his identity now and invited him home after their journey to Banyue, who tried to cook him dinner, who recited words Hua Cheng hasn’t heard in eight hundred long years, words he holds in his soul. His meaning. His purpose. If you do not know how to live on anymore…
He glances over at Xie Lian across the straw mat, who’s sleeping fitfully. Moonlight cuts across his face from a hole in the wall above the bed. His brows are drawn together and raised, his lips parted. He makes small little grunts and groans, his fingers twitching. What’s he dreaming about?
Hua Cheng tucks his ashes away for now. Another hour. Two. How long can he push his luck by staying here? Until just before dawn?
“San Lang,” Xie Lian says, and Hua Cheng looks at Xie Lian again, only to find him looking back blearily.
Before Hua Cheng can speak, Xie Lian’s hand shoots across the distance between them to grab a handful of his sleeve. Xie Lian uses it to haul himself close, as quick as a snake.
“Your Highness?” Hua Cheng asks, but Xie Lian only places a hand on his cheek, swoops in, and—
Hua Cheng’s brain leaks out of his ears.
What.
Xie Lian’s lips move against his. His tongue flicks out in exploratory, seeking little licks until Hua Cheng’s mouth parts in surprise, then that tongue dips inside. When it does, Xie Lian moans—grabs his face harder—slides a leg over Hua Cheng’s body and straddles him.
He’s—
Xie Lian is hard.
Hua Cheng can feel it against his stomach. His own cock tingles, fills. How could it not? “Your Highness,” he whispers between kisses, groaning when Xie Lian’s tongue strokes over his and he rolls his hips into Hua Cheng at the same time.
“Touch me,” Xie Lian says.
What is going on?
What the fuck is happening…?!
Is Hua Cheng asleep? Did he die? Is he hallucinating? He feels like his heart stops when Xie Lian roots around for his hand, finds it, and brings it down between their bodies. He presses it to his clothed, hard cock, grinding into it.
“Why aren’t you in your true form?” Xie Lian asks against his mouth.
Their lips part, and Xie Lian’s mouth finds the space behind Hua Cheng’s ear.
“Your Highness…wants me in my true form?” Hua Cheng asks through his panting.
“Mmmm,” Xie Lian moans, rolling his hips again. “Want you. San Lang.” A whimper. “Oil. Get the oil.” Oil? Why does he want…? Hua Cheng’s brain is still stalled somewhere between He’s kissing me and He’s aroused on top of me. “Ngh. Want you inside me.”
Inside him.
His Highness wants him… He wants…
Hua Cheng is the hardest he’s ever been in his entire life, and more confused than he’s ever been in his entire life.
Xie Lian leans back, all his weight on Hua Cheng’s middle, Hua Cheng’s cock trapped under Xie Lian’s ass. Xie Lian’s eyes are still foggy with sleep—or desire? Both?—when his hands untie his belt and part both layers of his robes. It exposes his bare chest, his jade-white skin, his hard nipples.
Then Xie Lian frowns and reaches up, patting his breastbone. “Where are your ashes?” His hand travels higher, to his throat, the bandages there. “Why are my shackles…” His eyes clear, and he looks around the room. “Why aren’t we in Paradise Manor?”
He knows the name of Hua Cheng’s home?
Not a second after he’s said it, his face pales and he scrambles off of Hua Cheng. Quickly, he closes his robes. His expression is all panic. He clutches the sides of his head, then hides his face in his hands. “I’m sorry. I seem to have gone crazy. Please— Please forget what just happened.”
Hua Cheng will, if that’s his god’s order, but he’s still lost. “Gege, what’s going on?”
“Nothing!” Xie Lian’s hands fall. There’s an awkward smile on his face, his eyes scrunched into crescents. He looks like he’s on the verge of a meltdown. He waves his hands back and forth like he’s erasing the last few minutes from reality and laughs forcibly. “Nothing. It’s nothing. I’ve lost my mind. Excuse me.”
That can’t be true. Hua Cheng knows the cultivation path of the Royal Holy Temple. Xie Lian would never abandon his abstinence on a whim, especially not for someone he just met, especially not Hua Cheng of all people, the Scourge of Heaven, the red demon, a monster hiding under a pretty skin.
Besides, Xie Lian seems confused about his shackles. He knows Paradise Manor. He expected, Hua Cheng realizes, for Hua Cheng’s ashes to be on his person. Expected Hua Cheng to be in his true form.
Has Hua Cheng lost some of his memories? Does His Highness have extra? “Gege knows Paradise Manor?” he asks, fishing, and Xie Lian startles. He looks away.
“Um.”
“Gege said he didn’t know anything about ghost kings.”
“I don’t,” Xie Lian replies immediately, then winces. “I mean… I… Oh.” He rubs his forehead. “To be honest, San Lang, I seem…to have slipped back in time.”
What?
Hua Cheng struggles to comprehend what that means. “In the future, gege…expects to wake up in Paradise Manor?” Xie Lian is silent. “You have no shackles.” Silence. Xie Lian stands, and Hua Cheng follows, pulled into his gravity. He watches as Xie Lian struggles to light a red candle on his altar. Hua Cheng continues to press, a palpable tension in the air. “Gege has my ashes.”
“San Lang…”
Daring, Hua Cheng approaches. He places a hand lightly on Xie Lian’s waist, leaning in just a little, just enough. With a husky voice, he asks, “Gege rolls over in the middle of the night asking me to fill him?”
Xie Lian hides in his hands again. “San Lang,” he whispers. Hua Cheng is hard. He’s achingly aware of it as Xie Lian trembles. He skates both hands up Xie Lian’s sides. Grabs just above his hips. Leans in until his chest brushes Xie Lian’s back. “San Lang,” Xie Lian says again, with a gasp at the end of it this time.
Hua Cheng must be insane, but he can’t help it. All signs point to him being correct. Xie Lian wants his true form. Xie Lian sleeps in his residence. Their home. Has sex with him. All of that swirling around his head, he ducks down and kisses Xie Lian’s jaw. Hears Xie Lian’s nails dig into the altar. He doesn’t flinch away.
Hua Cheng kisses his jaw again. Goes even crazier. Bites it.
“I… I can’t,” Xie Lian says. He turns in Hua Cheng’s grasp, then pushes Hua Cheng’s hands away, not hard and he still holds onto them by their wrists. His gaze is on a far wall. “This body’s cultivation. No licentious acts. I can’t.”
“Is gege’s cultivation broken in the future?” The lack of answer he receives is answer enough. “Am I the one who broke it?”
Xie Lian’s whole body shakes with shivers. “I really shouldn’t tell you too much. I can’t—” His expression straightens out at once, and his shivers stop. He pushes Hua Cheng fully away this time, a professional amount of distance between them. “I can’t tell you anything. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
That’s probably true. “Sorry, gege. I got carried away,” he apologizes.
“It— It’s fine! We should figure out how to reverse this, I suppose,” Xie Lian says, then frowns. His hands pull his robes apart again, belt forgotten on the straw mat. This time, he manages to light the candle on the altar, and it reveals something Hua Cheng missed in his haze of arousal: a dark curse mark over Xie Lian’s hip, like a hand-sized bruise.
Xie Lian’s mouth pinches, and his body rises and falls with a sigh. “I bet I touched something while I was scrap collecting earlier. San Lang won’t be happy.” He seems to realize what he said. “Not you. Um. Well, I suppose it is you, when you get down to it.”
Hua Cheng takes pity on him and lets the awkwardness slide, instead flattening a hand over the curse mark clinically. It’s strong, but not as strong as he is. “I can break it,” he says.
“Can you?”
“Yes, but I doubt returning you to your time will erase my memories of tonight,” he says. He hopes it doesn’t. He never wants to forget any of this.
“I bet you’re right…” Xie Lian looks torn—upset. It bothers him that much that Hua Cheng may remember this? “Gosh, San Lang. I really don’t want anything to change. What a mess.”
Oh.
Hua Cheng softens.
Xie Lian wants the future they have—but the way it’s supposed to unfold. Still, he wants it. He wants Hua Cheng. His ashes. His home. His real face. His touch.
Hua Cheng strokes the curse mark with his thumb, gentle.
“I’ll do my best not to change anything,” he promises, “though I won’t know if I’ve succeeded.”
“I guess that’s the most I can ask for, which is already a lot.”
As though Hua Cheng wouldn’t give him the entire world and more if he asked.
He is greedy, however. “Can you tell me one thing before you go?” he asks, expecting a no.
Xie Lian’s brows knit. He doesn’t seem angry, just curious. “What is it?”
Hua Cheng swallows, about to put his heart and soul on the line—expose his feelings in full. It’s terrifying, but he wants to know. Needs to know. “How long do I have to wait for this?”
Xie Lian’s whole body relaxes into his touch. His gaze is warm—sad but warm. “I can’t tell you specifics. But…San Lang has probably figured out by now that I love you. Don’t worry about when. That doesn’t matter.”
Love.
Hua Cheng is a weak creature: he cups Xie Lian’s jaw and kisses him. Against all odds, Xie Lian kisses back.
“I’ll be patient,” Hua Cheng promises. “I won’t make assumptions.”
After all, it’s very possible he’ll make some incorrect decision now, something that alters their future, that loses him Xie Lian. Some line he crosses which scares Xie Lian off. Some event that was pivotal to Xie Lian returning his feelings, an event he misses or second guesses or fumbles. He can’t… He can’t be overconfident. He can’t assume this is going to work out, that at the end of all of this Xie Lian will be his. But he can’t veer too far in the opposite direction. Can’t play it so safe out of fear, causing Xie Lian to never realize his feelings.
“Just be yourself,” Xie Lian says. “That’s the only advice I can give. Don’t worry. Just be yourself.”
“Are you scared everything won’t work out?”
“Yes,” Xie Lian says honestly, looking down at the curse mark. There’s the possibility he won’t return to where he came from, that he’ll vanish instead, replaced by some other Xie Lian who exists in some other completely different future. “It’s okay.”
“I’ll look for a way to remove my memories,” Hua Cheng says. “Just the ones from tonight. If I can’t do that, then…I’ll try my best not to ruin everything.”
“The only way you could ruin things is by not being a part of my life.”
Hua Cheng has no idea what to say to that, so he says nothing. He draws attention back to the curse mark. “Ready?”
“I’m ready.”
He nods, then pours spiritual energy into the curse, overloading it. It fizzles away, the dark bruise fading fast. When it’s totally gone, Xie Lian blinks like he’s waking up from sleep. His eyes travel down to Hua Cheng’s hand on his hip, then to Hua Cheng. He stares, calm, trusting. Doesn’t move away or panic that he’s half dressed.
“Sorry, gege.” A lie comes to mind quickly. “I don’t think I used enough Shanyue Fern. You still had some venom in your system. You were disoriented.”
“Oh.” He blinks. “Well, thank you.”
Hua Cheng helps him tuck himself back into his robes, fetching his belt and wrapping it around him. You’d never know anything happened between them. That Hua Cheng knows anything that he knows.
He wasn’t lying, though: he will try to find a demon or a curse or an object that erases his memories. If losing this night is what he has to do to secure a life with Xie Lian, it’s an easy trade.
“Let’s go back to sleep, gege,” he says, and leads them to bed.
They settle, and Hua Cheng extinguishes the candle on the altar with a burst of spiritual energy. Xie Lian rolls over, his back to Hua Cheng.
An incense time later, he’s breathing softly with sleep and Hua Cheng is back to twirling his ashes.
He’ll give them to Xie Lian before he leaves tonight. That much he knows is safe. That much he can trust. Not that he’d ever consider a different option. His existence is tied to Xie Lian’s.
Nothing could ever change that.