Chapter Text
Mo Ran sleeps past sunrise, head buried in his pillow, breaths even and slow. Chu Wanning doesn’t sleep at all.
It’s getting worse. Chu Wanning dares a glance down at Mo Ran, heart trembling as he glimpses his twisted visage, tormented even in sleep. He leans closer, only because his eyes are closed, with breath held, studying the dips and curves and plains, the mystery of Taxian-jun’s sleeping face.
There is nothing more painful than watching his once sweet, innocent disciple slowly lose his mind and not even realize what he is losing. What he has lost.
Once, Chu Wanning was so horribly naive. So bitterly disillusioned. He fell for the lie hook, line, and sinker. Logically, he knows there is no way he could have known about the carnivorous flower that was slowly eating away at Mo Ran’s heart, consuming every last scrap of his kindness and warmth. But his own heart is not a logical thing.
Self-recrimination comes easily to Chu Wanning. After all, even before he knew of the curse, he knew it was his fault that Mo Ran had turned out this way. Taxian-jun would not have been born if it had been Chu Wanning who had died on that desolate, snowy night, under the bleeding sky.
Now knowing that this flower would have bloomed with or without his presence, Chu Wanning stays alive only because he is the last person on this earth who can protect Mo Ran, try and save him, try and feebly, brokenly, lead him back to the light. Mo Ran has been lost to the darkness for so long, blinded so that the light cannot reach him even if he were shown it, but Chu Wanning will not give up. He refuses. For as long as he lives, as long as he remains by Mo Ran’s side, he will stubbornly lead him towards that light, hoping one day Mo Ran to finally open his eyes and really, truly see. Chu Wanning will not leave him. He refuses to abandon Mo Ran.
It is the reason breath still resides in his lungs, the reason his heart still beats, despite how bloodied and agonized. How is Chu Wanning to save Mo Ran if his own heart falls apart first? He has to be strong enough for both of them, even though he’s broken, continuously breaking a little more each passing day.
Chu Wanning doesn’t have the faintest clue what’s happening in Mo Ran’s head right now. He wishes he did. Can the Flower of Eightfold Sorrow grow even larger? What else can it do? The texts pertaining to this curse are pitifully few, and the details are even more inscrutable. Damn demons, always making things so complex.
But despite the Flower of Eightfold Sorrow ravaging his memories and hollowing out every last bit of goodness inside his body - as it is purported to do - he still remembers the man who saved him, that day when he almost starved to death in the snow. Chu Wanning doesn’t know how, can only guess that Mo Ran had suffered so miserably that day that the terror of looming death, and the sorrow and rage at the people who had forsaken him made such a deep, indelible mark that the lifeline Chu Wanning offered him must have gotten embedded too deeply to expunge.
Should Chu Wanning tell him…?
No, Mo Ran most likely wouldn’t believe him. And it feels wrong, writhes under his skin like maggots, the thought of trying to justify himself with this. Chu Wanning hadn’t saved Mo Ran for his gratitude. He’d saved him because it was the right thing to do. He was just a child, desperately hungry, alone, and cold like no child should ever be.
Chu Wanning wrapped his arms around his ribs, shivering.
And now this dream. This mysterious dream, this monstrous nightmare that is tormenting Mo Ran past the brink of sanity, the contents of which he keeps tight-lipped, rotting inside his chest. Now, more than ever, Chu Wanning wishes he could slip inside Mo Ran’s skull and see that dream for himself, no matter how horrid, how horrific. At least he would know the face of the newest monster he is fighting against.
Chu Wanning knows, now, that Mo Ran hasn’t truly been himself since he was fifteen, but these new erratic mood swings are different from his cruelty and bloodlust. There’s something haunting Mo Ran. Something eating away at him, his violated heart, bit by bit. Perhaps it is something crueler than the flower, though the flower of eightfold sorrows has certainly taken its pound of flesh.
But at the end of the day, dreams are intangible monsters. Ghosts of the subconscious set loose in the dark. There is a ghost possessing Mo Ran, maybe more than one, and Chu Wanning’s one talent is exorcising ghosts. He just needs to find the particular spell for Mo Ran’s ailment, because surely it exists. Surely, it must.
No matter how tightly he holds himself, Chu Wanning feels as if he’s going to shake apart. He squeezes his eyes shut, long-lost stars dancing in his darkened vision. The night sky’s tears.
He thought, just for a moment, wouldn’t it be nice to be held? To fall into someone’s arms and let them support your weight, let them shoulder part of the back-breaking burden so that even if the heaviness did not abate, at least you were not suffering alone. Wouldn’t that be everything he’d told himself never to want?
The thought, in the end, did last only a moment, and it was as fleeting as any of his other dreams. But there were no arms to embrace him but his own.
Chu Wanning did not dream anymore, but he could not say he envied Mo Ran. Unconsciously, Chu Wanning shifts closer to him, to watch Mo Ran as he sleeps.
When he is sleeping, and having pleasant dreams, or perhaps not dreaming at all, or lost in thought, or first awakening in the morning, unaware of the horror that has befallen them, that is when Chu Wanning once again glimpses Mo Ran, his little disciple. The only man he ever let into his heart. His eyes will be soft, and still. His face is not a grotesque mask of hate and cruelty, but tired and pale. Chu Wanning sometimes imagines it isn’t too late to save him.
What if he hadn’t given up on Mo Ran back then? What if he hadn’t been so mired in self-hate and let himself be so easily convinced that Mo Ran’s corruption was a consequence of his cruel, clumsy hand? Where would they be now? Chu Wanning could have spared the world so much. Spared Mo Ran so much. Xue Zhengyong and Wang Chuqing might still be alive. Xue Meng and Mo Ran could be brothers again, and not mortal enemies who will forever be plagued by an unforgivable blood debt.
These what-ifs are less than useless, Chu Wanning knows. He may have opened the Space-Time Gate of Life and Death, he may have saved the other world, but here, he cannot turn back time. He cannot change the past. Some bloodstains can never be washed clean.
He can only try and save Mo Ran’s life, even if it costs him his own. He has little left to give.
But he will save Mo Ran, even if it is the last thing he will ever do, even if he cannot save himself.
At least now, there is nothing Chu Wanning can do. He can only wait until sunrise, and hope that, perhaps, a soft touch against Mo Ran’s shoulder might keep the monsters in his nightmares away.
No, not even that, for the monster that managed to slip free from his nightmares is here, lurking in the shadows. Chu Wanning can feel their eyes on him now, even in the absolute dark.
Hold on Mo Ran. For just a little longer.
Hold onto me, I won’t let you go.
Stay, for as long as you can.
I’m here.
Even if I could free myself from this cage, I wouldn’t. I will only escape with your hand in mine. In your embrace, I will stay ensnared.
Chu Wanning couldn't remember when he fell asleep; he only knew he had because in between one blink and then next, Mo Ran was on top of him, his arms caging Chu Wanning into his embrace. A cruel parody of an embrace.
Chu Wanning only remembered to narrow his eyes in a hateful glare when Mo Ran leaned down to capture his lips, more teeth than lips. He consumed Chu Wanning like a starving wolf, and Chu Wanning ineffectually beat his wrists against his chest. He had just woken up and yet he is still so tired, not just tired but exhausted, bone-weary, even the marrow eroded. He could never dissuade Mo Ran, could fight back but never win, and now that he knew they were both losers in this invisible war, he began to wonder more insistently - what was the point, anymore? All of his dignity has been stripped from him. All of his pretenses and purity lie in ashes beneath his broken body. This is a show he keeps up for one person alone.
“Stop,” Chu Wanning still hisses, as are his designated lines, when Mo Ran finally parts, those stinging lips pressing down his neck. “Get off of me, Mo Ran. I don’t want you.”
The words hurt even his teeth, but Mo Ran just laughs. “And since when has that mattered?”
It never has, even if it wasn’t the truth.
Mo Ran will take and take and take and Chu Wanning is powerless to stop him - just as Mo Ran is powerless to stop himself. He need think of nothing, just surrender himself to this dark desire, this punishing pleasure.
This is a hell they are trapped in together, though there is no light, they know they are still alive only because they are pressed so tightly against each other, feeling intimately each shuddering, helpless breath.
Chu Wanning is naked even before Mo Ran strips him of his inner robe. Mo Ran’s eyes were everywhere, and for a fleeting moment, Chu Wanning wondered what he looked like, in Mo Ran’s eyes. In Taxian-jun’s. Does he look defiled? Despised?
Does he look like any part of himself might want this, even though he still cannot find the answer within the depths of his soul if he ever has?
Chu Wanning is certain he doesn’t want this. The force. The brutality. The pain, heartbreak, the need to humiliate and break, because that is all that is left within Mo Ran to desire. But there is a part of him, a part that he has never been able to kill, that craves the abominable heat that floods through his veins. How insensible he becomes, fucked within an inch of his life, unable to think of anything at all but Mo Ran, Mo Ran, and how Mo Ran might touch him, love him, if he was another man, and Chu Wanning was not this brittle, broken, unlovable thing. If fate had ever been kind enough to allow them to cross the stars and entwine themselves in red string, Mo Ran might take him with the same possessive, obsessive force, but he might kiss Chu Wanning’s tears away after. He might hold Chu Wanning tight against his burning chest after, littered with lovebites instead of scratches and scars and withered petals. Could Mo Ran have loved him, once?
Could Chu Wanning ever love Mo Ran again?
Or is that the name of the sharpest thorn still lodged in his heart?
It would be best for Chu Wanning to murder these contemptuous feelings, to forget that they ever lived inside him at all. Chu Wanning has a responsibility to him, as a teacher and as an elder, and that is all.
He tries so very hard to forget loving Mo Ran.
How can he love Mo Ran, when even Chu Wanning is no longer sure who Mo Ran is?
Chu Wanning’s chest hurts as if his heart has been run through with a sword. He has fallen on the battlefield of his heart, and he isn’t sure if he can find it within himself to get up once more. His chest felt hot and tight. He must be dying.
Chu Wanning is stiff, drawn so taut that if he hits the floor, he believes he could simply shatter. Taxian-jun’s hands are tight around his bruised hips, a vice. It feels as if there is no force in this world strong enough to tear him away. His teeth skim Chu Wanning’s jaw, his lips leaving a trail of warm wet that burns as hotly as a brand on his flesh. Chu Wanning tries to turn his head away, tries to close his eyes, but Taxian-jun always makes him watch, with fingers pressed into his jaw, handling him with a hand that has ripped the still-beating hearts out of men.
“Don’t you want to watch your husband enter you?” Taxian-jun asks, deceptively sweet. His purple-black eyes glint with malice, with madness. With a plea, perhaps. “This venerable one would think a whore like you would like that.”
Chu Wanning grits his teeth. Slick fingers find their way between his legs, prodding against the tight furl of his entrance. If he resists, it will hurt more. Chu Wanning knows this, yet he still cannot allow himself to give in. He is a glutton for punishment, perhaps. This is his atonement, perhaps, for failing to protect Mo Ran. If he could not save his sweet, innocent disciple, then how dare he save himself?
Mo Ran’s fingers are cruel inside him. Each thrust feels as if it is pushing another inch of sanity out of his decaying body. Mo Ran watches with enraptured eyes, hungry and vulturous, teeth glinting when he bares them. Such a look should never belong on Mo Ran’s face. Chu Wanning tries to look away, but he can’t. He can’t even close his eyes and remember the sweet, innocent, earnest smile of the boy who had run up to him and tugged impatiently on his sleeve, wheedling, “Xianjun, pay attention to me, please.”
Mo Ran fucks inside of him with one fluid thrust, and it feels like violence. Chu Wanning cannot quite contain the small, ragged gasp that tears itself from his throat. Taxian-jun’s eyes go impossibly darker.
“You’re so tight around me,” Mo Ran purred. “Oh, baobei, if only you could feel how warm and wet you are down there. Feel so good. Better than a fucking woman.”
Chu Wanning tried to stay still, but his fingers could not help curling into fists, the hands in Mo Ran’s grasp wracked with imperceptible tremors. He turned his face away, leaving Mo Ran to click his tongue. He bore down on Chu Wanning, heat and blistering madness, shoving Chu Wanning’s knees up against his ribs. He couldn’t breathe. He could not breathe between the feeling of suffocation and Mo Ran’s mouth against his, devouring every last scrap of breath.
Mo Ran could go on like this forever. Sometimes it felt that way. His hips were ceaseless in their attack, fucking Chu Wanning until he was winded. The position Mo Ran contorted him into changed constantly. Mo Ran was restless, relentless as he ravaged whom he called his most hated.
A hand slid to the flat plane of Chu Wanning’s stomach, jumping under the sudden touch. “Can Wanning feel me here?” Mo Ran asked, his voice full of malicious delight. “Am I deep enough, Wanning? Want me to go deeper?
It didn’t matter whether Chu Wanning’s head shook or nodded, whether he said yes or no, Mo Ran flipped him onto his stomach anyway and slid in as deep as he could go.
Chu Wanning is being fucked so hard at first he doesn’t understand that the thing knotted behind his ribs is terror. It takes him even longer to discern what exactly it is he is terrified of. He is usually incapable of thought when Mo Ran takes him like this, as brutal as a starving wolf, as possessive as a beast staking its claim, rough and relentless. He used to try and disappear into a dark, safe place inside his mind, where he could pretend the pleasure didn’t reach him and the shame and disgust he felt didn’t skewer him. But Mo Ran didn’t allow that for long. Mo Ran couldn’t allow him to escape, to go far, even inside his own head. Mo Ran needed him to humiliate, to torment, to hate.
Mo Ran needed Chu Wanning as a lost child needs light within the dark - he’s been blindly, aimlessly striking out for so long, and Chu Wanning was the only one left who hadn’t bled out, yet.
Mo Ran needs Chu Wanning, and he doesn’t even know why.
The knowledge does not make it any easier to stomach. Truly, ignorance is bliss. If only Chu Wanning could empty out his haunted head and go boneless on the bed, simply close his eyes and let himself be overwhelmed, his only worry to cling onto the sheets as Mo Ran thrust unrepentantly into him instead of this, his desperate scrabbles for the last fraying threads of his sanity.
If only he didn’t feel as if he might like to cry.
Mo Ran’s fingers in his hair wrench his head up, out of the pillow he’s hiding in and back into the present, forcing Chu Wanning to confront the fact that he is terrified that, for the first time, he may cry from being fucked.
He cannot cry like this, naked, defiled, his disciple ravaging him as he pleases, the only resistance he is able to manage the sounds he keeps caged in his throat, his bitten, bloody lips, penance for the way heat is coiled tight in the cradle of his hips. It wars with the heat collecting in his cheeks at the prospect of breaking down entirely.
After all, he hadn’t made a sound even when it had hurt so terribly he’d wished he was dying, so why now does his traitorous body wish to succumb to that nauseating weakness now?
Is it because the pleasure is so great he wishes he were dead? Not simply pleasure, but closeness, the illusion that if he could just curl up in Mo Ran's chest, he could bring him light, salvation, even though it is impossible, a dream that is not his to have.
Just because Chu Wanning wishes it desperately, more desperately than he has ever wished for anything, will not make it so. Wishes cannot be conjured into reality, Chu Wanning knows this all too well. There are no more stars in the sky to wish upon - they are all dead. Theirs will not be a happy ending, the storyteller insists. Yet still, Chu Wanning wants. He hopes. He prays to the gods that have abandoned them both.
In the swimming waters collected in his eyes, he sees that boy from so long ago, a boy who, irrationally, made him want to cry with a smile.
Chu Wanning knows he shouldn’t want this, when he can’t even be sure Mo Ran wants it. Wants him. Once, it was so simple. Chu Wanning was never under any illusions that Mo Ran wanted him. Sex was about power, about defilement, about exorcizing that consuming hatred in a tangible, violent way. Chu Wanning understood it, though he loathed it. Loathed even more the part of him that wanted to pretend that Chu Wanning at least had Mo Ran in some way.
Who cares if he hates you, his weak, broken heart cried. At least he wants your body. At least this part of you, somehow, is not disgusting to him.
But it was disgusting, loathsome, for Chu Wanning to need comfort now, when he's known for all his life the only arms to ever wrap around him were his own. This defective body - why would it crave something it knew Mo Ran was incapable of giving? Even if Mo Ran's heart was not ripped out of his chest of his own volition, it was still long gone.
So then, why did Chu Wanning still hope? Why hope, when hope hurt worse than despair?
Above him, Mo Ran was panting against his neck, inhaling greedy lungfuls whenever he caught his breathe, as if Chu Wanning was the very air he needed to breathe.
“Wanning,” Mo Ran murmured, throaty, full of feeling that made Chu wanning's poor head spin. In these moments, it was so tempting for his body to go lax, to willingly surrender, to call back to Mo Ran with a voice drenched in equal parts tenderness and fervor, for what did that tenderness mean? Though tenderness was not love, not affection. It was the tenderness of an unhealable bruise.
If he closed his eyes, that bruise could have been one given with love, rather than hate. In the dark, when prodded, it would feel the same, anyway. Or so he thought. What was the difference between a lovebite and one that sought to kill?
Torn between great shame and disgust, fury at his own powerlessness, rage at Mo Ran’s mindless revelry in it, has transformed into a kind of bone-deep misery that makes him feel weightless, as if he is made up of only endless tears. Chu Wanning is so tired. Loath as he was - and still is - to admit it, Mo Ran and his covetous consumption soothes him into sleep - or forces him into it. Does Chu Wanning even know the difference, anymore? His whole entire life, it seems he’s been faced with the burden of the lesser of two evils, the illusion of choice, a forked road that leads into the same abyss.
Oh. And here it comes. It is like thorns prodding against his eyes, tearing through his tender conjunctiva, blooming into a blossom that quickly wilts, petals falling like rain down his cheeks.
Chu Wanning tries in vain to hide it from Mo Ran. He buries his face into the pillow, trying to stay as still as prey caught within the sights of a predator. But he can’t keep his shoulders from shaking, nor his chest from heaving. His legs are fit to collapse, back arching without his consent, wanting to escape and wanting more in equal measure.
“Oh? Does Shizun like this?”
Mo Ran has found an angle that pushes his length right up against where Chu Wanning is tenderest and he hates it, hates how much he loves it, how his body naked, in more than only the physical sense. Mo Ran knifes his hips up, burying himself impossibly deeper, and Chu Wanning bites his bottom lip until he fees the skin split.
Mo Ran bears down on him, bowing over his back, his chest heaving against his trembling shoulder blades. Chu Wanning’s throat twists, there’s a sob trapped in his larynx, a bird fluttering against a cage, desperate to escape. Mo Ran’s teeth sink into the side of his neck, trying to free it bloodily.
Wetness stains the pillow. Chu Wanning feels as if he could drown in it. Chu Wanning’s heart clenches in panic - he is an ugly crier, he knows this about himself. He already has an undesirable face, and that cold, unloveable mien is not made any more lovable shattered and wet. Mo Ran will surely grow repulsed and then soft inside of him, or he will ridicule Chu Wanning, snarl how disgusting he is, how pathetic, how weak, and then shove his head down so he doesn’t have to look at him when he climaxes. Chu Wanning cannot say which outcome would be worse.
He feels sobs clawing up his throat, hot, hot, burning his tongue. Chu Wanning’s breath tore itself from his lungs in sharp, violent bursts as he struggled to keep his composure, but to no avail, as the tears refused to keep themselves hidden any longer. They’re coming out fast, and wet, and messy, utterly unable to be hid.
He bit his bottom lip until he tasted blood, yet still, the tears did not stop. Before long, little, breathy whimpers eked from his kiss-stained lips, wet with cries he could no longer stifle.
Mo Ran stilled behind him, breathing loudly, almost louder than the blood rushing through Chu Wanning’s ears. Almost.
“Wanning,” Mo Ran’s voice was searing, scorching, wild with heat. He looked as if he'd lost the last remnant of his sanity. “Are……you crying?”
Chu Wanning flushed the color of blood. He could not answer.
Mo Ran did not need him to. He had eyes, after all.
He pulled out quickly and, in a movement just as swift, flipped Chu Wanning over onto his back. Chu Wanning landed harder than he felt should have been possible on a mattress, breath having deserted him, winded, and Mo Ran was immediately back on him, pouncing like a starving wolf as he caught Chu Wanning’s chin between his fingers and twisted his face so he could drink in the sight of his teary, red-rimmed eyes. His jaw went slack at the sight, lips softly parting.
“Oh,” Mo Ran breathed, his pupils somehow even darker than his pitch-black irises. The sound was one of pure sex, pure ecstasy, and it hit Chu Wanning like a physical thing. He may have bitten back the moan that ran from his chest to his mouth, but his lips still softly parted. Mo Ran ground against him, his slick cock throbbing against Chu Wanning’s sopping hole, and Chu Wanning did whimper then, and yet another tear slipped out unbidden. A wild sound came from Mo Ran, ripped right from his throat.
“Stop.” It was a reflex; it slipped from his lips without his consent, and Chu Wanning was mortified, but Mo Ran wouldn’t stop. He plunged right back in, kept going rougher, harder, faster, his eyes locked on Chu Wanning’s teary visage, enraptured. He looked as if he were on the knife-edge of losing himself, and Chu Wanning felt as if he would lose himself right along with him.
“You’re…actually….crying?” Mo Ran panted, his fingers brands on Chu Wanning’s hips. Chu Wanning threw his arm up to hide his face, as if that would do anything, as if that wasn’t just another weakness exposed. Mo Ran dug into the rawness of him, ripping that flimsy barrier away as if it were nothing, pinning both wrists above his head in one hand. Mortifyingly, Chu Wanning felt Mo Ran grow inside of him, throbbing hotter. It was unbearable. Chu Wanning’s body - treacherous, malformed, weak - responded wantonly, arching beneath the body mercilessly plundering him. "Fuck," Mo Ran cursed, full-throated.
Heat prickled behind Chu Wanning's eyes. His vision blurred. He was looking at the world through a veil of mist, drowning in his own never-ending sorrow. Every time he had failed Mo Ran was buried in his brutalized yet wanting body.
Mo Ran was inside him, all around him, and Chu Wanning didn’t want to think anymore. It would be better if he were benumbed, if he felt nothing at all. But he cannot seem to salvage any of the ice that usually comfortingly encases him. The heat he is boiling alive with still has to go somewhere, but now it pools between his thighs, leaving his legs trembling and his heart beating much too quickly. He is shivering, muscles drawn taut, clutching at Mo Ran as if he never wants to let him go, hips grinding back against him, welcoming him in deeper, even though Chu Wanning was already so full of Mo Ran there was nothing left. Chu Wanning hiccuped; it was too much. He had the irrational fear - hope? - that he would not survive this. Mo Ran caught the sound with his lips and swallowed it with a sound of his own, one of savage pleasure.
Tears clung to his lashes, distorting Mo Ran’s ghoulish visage, rendering him more beast than man. Yet Chu Wanning still wanted him, more than anything in this cruel world.
“Wanning,” Mo Ran groans, his own lashes fluttering as he fucks in so impossibly deep, Chu Wanning can feel it in his choked throat. “Shizun. Cry for me.”
Chu Wanning tries to shake his head, no, but the word won’t come.
“Cry for this venerable one,” Mo Ran rasps, his burning forehead resting against Chu Wanning’s as he pounded into him. Chu Wanning could not tell which of them burned more fiercely. “Oh, my poor Shizun. My poor, precious concubine. Am I going too hard? Can you not take it? Ask me to be gentler. I will, if you ask me to.”
It was clearly a lie. A taunt. A cruel but tempting illusion. Mo Ran wouldn’t stop, not for anything in this world, but the words struck Chu Wanning in the softest part of his heart. Because his heart, the wretched, bleeding thing, wanted that so badly, more than he wanted to regain his dignity, his ability to breathe. He wanted Mo Ran to slow down, to kiss away his tears, to hold him as the candlewick burnt down and let the darkness swallow them whole, leaving them only a tangle of limbs and desperate heartbeats.
Tears streamed down his cheeks in rivers. The more Chu Wanning tried to blink them away, the more came. Mo Ran’s eyes were hooded, and stars peaked out from between his lashes as he watched Chu Wanning drown. He swept down, only for his tongue to lick those salt trails away, lashes fluttering and eyes going hazy as if drunk off the taste of Chu Wanning's agony.
A sob ripped itself from Chu Wanning’s throat, which was barely better than the moan that wanted to come out instead.
"That's it," Mo Ran grinned a devilish smirk, a deranged one, one that was not his own, burying himself to the hilt. He hissed violently as Chu Wanning buried his face into the fleeting, illusory safe warm dark in the crook of his neck. His lips were moth wings fluttering against the damp salt of his cheek. "You're such a - such a slut that now, now you're even crying about it? Does it hurt that bad? Or...or does it feel that good?"
Chu Wanning could not answer. He did not know.
"I can't...." he could only muster, his voice ruined, broken into countless glinting shards.
His face has been entirely torn off, and Mo Ran is kissing at the raw, tender flesh beneath. His lips glittered with Chu Wanning's torment, and Chu Wanning hated the part of himself that found the sight alluring. But he could not help it, really.
He could not help but want to search Mo Ran's eyes for any remnant of a soul, those eyes that were as dark as pitch. But there was light there, deep within, the glittering collapse of dying stars, rendering his irises the shade of the sky just before morning light rose, chasing the shadows of the night away.
Chu Wanning's broken, brutalized body could not help but collapse, as all of the sorrow, desperation and fear bled out of him in tears. And Mo Ran could not help but find rapture in the ruins, entwining their bodies so tightly together that Chu Wanning could close his eyes and pretend that they were becoming one person. But that thought only made the tears flow faster.
Finally freeing himself, his wrists shoved ineffectually at Mo Ran’s chest, but it was fruitless. He wanted Mo Ran to leave him and he wanted Mo Ran to never leave. For Chu Wanning, someone who had long been doomed to the eternal winter raging inside his own chest, how could he not help but crave the warmth that blistered inside Mo Ran, even if it burnt him to ash?
To say that it didn’t hurt would be a lie. A wish that would never come true. It shouldn’t hurt, and Chu Wanning didn’t want it to, but it did. Like breathing, something so mundane one never thought twice about, had become an excruciating agony. Yes, in this moment, it hurts to breathe - and breathing shouldn’t hurt, but it does. Life hurts, and it does.
Sometimes, Chu Wanning could imagine it didn’t.
Sometimes, his imagination could bleed over the boundary, and taint the feelings of real life. Sometimes he could even convince himself of this glorious delusion, this fleeting Fata Morgana in the sun that only burned his eyes, but was so lovely, so softly golden, that he could not bring himself to turn away. Surrounded by Mo Ran’s warmth, even if it would be the blaze of their destruction, Chu Wanning could not help but welcome it.
He could not help but cry out, the sound torn from him like everything else, as sensation overwhelmed him, a dark wave dragging him under, Mo Ran’s arms his only tether as he sobbed into his chest, undone.
Mo Ran followed closely after, spilling into Chu Wanning as if he were trying to fill him up, replace what had been bled from him, ceaselessly licking - kissing - away his tears.
As if he cared.
As if it were an apology for the words that had been stolen from him.
Fingers gripped his chin. Bruises throbbed, sewn into his throat with teeth. Hot breath washed over his mouth, soaked with silent sobs. Chu Wanning was too bone-weary to flinch away.
"Wanning," Mo Ran murmured, voice shorn from exertion. "Look at me."
Chu Wanning squeezed his eyes so tightly shut he saw stars.
Do it, he thought irrationally, wildly, this prayer for the demon that had ruined them both. Rip my throat out. My heart. I'm begging you.
"Xianjun, Xianjun, I'm begging you, pay attention to me, please."
It was the bleakest silver lining, but Chu Wanning thought that at least he could give Mo Ran this. This fleeting solace, this temporary respite which was so, so ephemeral, yet Mo Ran acted as if it were more integral than his sick, dying heart.
Chu Wanning had to have hope, for Mo Ran had taken all the hope he had in his tiny, yet-defiled body, and given it to Chu Wanning, his only wish for his Shizun’s eyes to land upon him, even if only for a second.
It was impossible, yet who would brother harbour hope for the things that were? Hope hurt. Hope was cruel. Yet it was the only balm, the only bandage against the injustices that would have long brought other men to their knees. Chu Wanning did not believe in demons; he believed in the light.
Mo Ran’s eyes were so light-starved, but they could be fed.
He still hoped enough that he could dream.
As soon as Chu Wanning’s legs felt they could work again - sometime around midday - he dressed himself in his customary robes, the collar buttoned especially high, and went to the library to engross himself in yet more research. It was a long, tedious effort, more often than not frustrating enough to bring him to tears, but Chu Wanning persisted.
During these long, lonely hours, sometimes Chu Wanning’s mind would wander. He hated himself for the thought, and the distant hope it brought, but sometimes he could not help but wonder if it wasn’t hate Mo Ran felt for him - truly felt for him - what was it that he felt?
It could very well be simple, uncomplicated hate, but Chu Wanning thought that may be more his own insecurities talking than the actual truth. If this curse erased any other feelings Mo Ran possessed besides bone-deep loathing and soul-deep despair, what if he felt something for his Shizun beyond what Taxian-jun swore filled his desecrated heart?
He could understand Mo Ran’s disillusionment. His loss of loyalty. His dissatisfaction with Chu Wanning, once he came to the inevitable conclusion that the teacher he had once looked upon fondly was nothing more than a cold, awkward, loveless man. Chu Wanning had been cruel to him when he was a teenager; in many ways, Chu Wanning deserved Mo Ran’s hatred. He deserved Mo Ran to disavow him as his teacher, at the very least.
Chu Wanning was not loveless; that was the problem. Sometimes he had felt so obvious. But in hindsight, how could Mo Ran have known that Chu Wanning once harboured for him feelings that were utterly abhorrent for a teacher to have? Chu Wanning had not only made it a secret, he had buried it so deeply beneath the earth that even a thousand years of digging could not reach the abyss in which he had cast his heart. Chu Wanning had perhaps treated Mo Ran more coldly than his other disciples, because of these feelings, and how ashamed of them he was. He didn’t understand them, and he didn’t want to, but left alone with them, he could not pretend they did not inhabit the cold chasm of his chest, burning bright upon receiving just a warm smile.
As much as it had terrified him, and left him disoriented, Chu Wanning had selfishly not wanted to give up the warmth Mo Ran had given him. Just his very smile alone could banish the darkness and cold that had pervaded Chu Wanning’s body his entire life.
Once upon a time, Chu Wanning’s greatest fear was that Mo Ran would realize his Shizun was not ascetic and pure, but disgusting, and greedy, and needing more than Mo Ran could ever possibly give.
But it turns out, they both need so much. It’s just a shame for Mo Ran, that Chu Wanning is the only one left who can offer anything - it’s why he cannot stop searching. If not him, then who will set Mo Ran free? No one else would let Mo Ran out of his cage - would agree its better for him to be in there, to rot and die in there, snarling and alone.
The rest of the world would see that as justice. Only Chu Wanning would know otherwise. The worst sin of all would be taking that secret to his grave - so he reads, on and on and on.
It seemed as if he had read every single book this library possessed. Chu Wanning had read them all cover to cover, over and over again, and he kept at it, as if by some miracle, there would be a line of text he had missed that would clearly explain everything and give him a neat, simple solution on how to save Mo Ran’s life. Chu Wanning was never one for fairytales - yet somehow, he’s conjured up one of his own. Hope has made him desperate for a happy ending, in any form.
His finger traces along the characters, not because he needs to keep his place, but more just to do something with his hands. His eyes felt heavy in his head, lashes fluttering, threatening to drop like curtains as sleep lingered at the edges of his periphery.
If only there existed a way to purge Mo Ran of this poison. If only there was a way to rip out these roots without tearing out Mo Ran’s ruined but still beating, still tender, very human heart.
If only Chu Wanning’s love was enough to save him, who could hurt Mo Ran then? He would be inviolate. Immortal. Chu Wanning would die to give this solace to Mo Ran, and he would die with a smile on his face, with no regrets.
Even if it was not solace in Chu Wanning Mo Ran sought, Chu Wanning would still give it to him. Unhesitatingly, without question, eternally. Even broken and bruised, he’d use what was left of his flesh to build Mo Ran a home. He would house Mo Ran in his chest. Wrap him up in his soul, even if it meant baring its ugliness. Perhaps Mo Ran wouldn’t mind so much, if he knew it was the truth, the most honest part of Chu Wanning. Even if the cage of his ribs indeed looked like a cage, he’d let Mo Ran break him from the inside out, if that was the penance he had to pay, for failing to protect him, for loving him, in every way except the one that mattered, loving him but so much so that it left him blind, loving Mo Ran while hating himself, believing Mo Ran’s cruelty to only be a mirror of his own.
Even if he had to go to the darkest depths of the underworld to retrieve this cure, this elixir he would do it, ten, a thousand, a million times over, no matter how dangerous or forbidden….
Chu Wanning’s hands shook as a frightful consideration, a fragile, trembling ray of light, fell into place.
There was a way.
Rufeng sect was no more, rendered a pile of ash and sun-bleached bone, but Chu Wanning knew Nangong Liu in all the worst ways, and before he had left, one of the catalysts - though not the catalyst, the ghost of a heartbeat seems to echo in his ears - was learning that the sect leader liked to steal ancient, priceless, forbidden texts from other sects.
In particular, Guyueye texts, especially their texts pertaining to healing of demonic curses, were the rarest, most coveted treasures of all. They were the hardest to get one’s hands on, so of course, Nangong Liu had to have them, no matter the cost.
Chu Wanning swallowed, throat clicking. It was a slim chance. But he had worked with worse odds. If he could somehow get out of this place, escape only for a day, if he could find the ruins of Rufeng sect and dig through those graves, to perhaps save a life-
“What is Shizun reading?” Mo Ran asks, peeking over his shoulder. Chu Wanning doesn’t jump, his teeth simply sink deep into his tongue.
Of course, his instinctual reaction is to shove Mo Ran away, to do whatever it takes to hide the content of said book. But Chu Wanning knows if he tries to hide what he’s reading, Mo Ran’s interest will only become more ravenous, carnivorous. However, he cannot simply hand it over so easily.
“Get lost,” Chu Wanning grumbles, and even to his ears, it sounds half-hearted. Movements saturated with irritation, he slowly closes his book and sets it down, not out of Mo Ran’s reach exactly, but hopefully far away enough that he will lose interest, in favor of tormenting Chu Wanning.
“Does Shizun know any other words?” Mo Ran laughs, grinning in the face of Chu Wanning’s glare. Chu Wanning doesn’t respond - Mo Ran doesn’t want a response, anyway. He just wants to see Chu Wanning bare his teeth.
As expected, Mo Ran continues, running a finger languidly up the length of Chu Wanning’s arm. “Oh right, vile beyond nature, beyond remedy. Do you remember telling me that, Shizun?”
Chu Wanning’s throat clicks as he swallows. He wants to close his eyes, but he refuses - one cannot show weakness in the face of a wolf, no matter how deep its claws sink in, how much its teeth along the side of his neck, never fatally sinking in, only grazing, hurt.
Mo Ran will never know how his words cut Chu Wanning down to the bone. Chu Wanning is all too adept at hiding where he aches, where he is fragile and tender, and Mo Ran is too busy bleeding out, anyway, to take any notice of how Chu Wanning shakes with pain.
Chu Wanning wonders, foolishly, uselessly, what Mo Ran’s reaction might be, were he to glimpse even just a jagged edge of one of Chu Wanning’s unhealing, festering wounds.
“I remember,” Mo Ran says, aiming for casualness and failing so spectacularly the attempt doesn’t even warrant a cruel, slithering smirk. Thus, a stifling silence descends upon them.
I know, Chu Wanning closes his eyes, biting his cheek. And that’s all you remember, isn’t it? All that is left.
He asks himself, for the millionth time.
How did it all come to this?
If I could go back-
Mo Ran interrupts him by unceremoniously climbing onto his lap. Chu Wanning, caught entirely off-guard, can do little more than dumbly let him do so. Then again, even if he had his wits about him, could he ever stop Mo Ran, Taxian-jun, from doing whatever he pleased?
But why is this what Taxian-jun wants? Is this what Mo Ran wants? When does one stop and the other begin? How tightly are the two entwined?
Could they survive separation?
Mo Ran nuzzles into his neck, nose against his pulse. “You smell most strongly of haitang here,” he murmured, as if it was a secret. Inhaling heavily, for the span of several heartbeats, like Chu Wanning was a drug. “And of blood, too. A bloodied haitang.”
Chu Wanning stiffened from unease, and not simply from Mo Ran’s clumsy, but macabre words.
It begins with a prickling down his spine, which he could easily mistake for unease, or even disgust. Since learning about the flower, though, the disgust has transformed. No longer is it directed at Mo Ran, but reserved solely for the perpetrator pulling the strings. But this is a different feeling. It is not even a physical feeling - Chu Wanning is a cold person by nature, but surrounded by Mo Ran and his warmth, the early winter chill is impossible to feel.
Chu Wanning suddenly knows, with utter surety, that they are being watched.
Of course, they are. This mastermind is always watching him. But this is a different feeling from the distant knowledge of being observed, monitored, maneuvered like chess pieces on a board. Chu Wanning can feel eyes on him in the dark, on their entwined silhouettes, on the way Mo Ran’s lips press against his neck. He wonders if they’re mapping out the marks.
“You never pay attention to me,” Mo Ran mumbles between kisses that feel more like a chill against a fever, than anything truly resembling passion. Sobs that don’t make a sound, that leave only that sorrowful feeling.
Chu Wanning’s eyes trail up to the ceiling, cold. Calculating. “How could I pay attention to anything else?”
Mo Ran scoffs against his throat. So close he could tear his jugular out. Why does this mastermind need Chu Wanning alive?
“It’s fine. I don’t mind,” Mo Ran says, clearly a lie.
“Then why don’t you leave me alone?” Chu Wanning asked, tasting the blood of his heart in his mouth. Mo Ran curled into him, knee digging into his stomach. It was the only hard part of his body at this moment, as far as Chu Wanning could tell.
“How could I?” Mo Ran asked, and it seemed as if he were asking himself as much as Chu Wanning. He pulled back, grabbing a fistful of Chu Wanning’s hair to yank his head back, so they were staring at each other, two broken souls reflected in the hollows of their eyes.
“Don’t you know your hatred is beautiful to me?” Mo Ran murmurs, bitterness in the back of his throat that does not reach his strangely soft voice.
The fist in Chu Wanning’s hair turns into a stroke, a cruel caress.
“Why can’t I hate you, Chu Wanning?” Mo Ran’s voice was broken, so broken it bled marrow. “Why can’t I?”
Chu Wanning glared at Mo Ran, but all the ire in his gaze was solely reserved for the unseen shadow, not the boy eternally encased in his memories as sunlight incarnate, pure and untainted by the darkness that attempted to swallow them both whole.
If only this hate was yours. Maybe I would know what to do with that.
The resolve in Chu Wanning's heart hardens into the same ice that encases - cages - Mo Ran's.