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Mobei Jun once asked his uncle if people like them were allowed to love.
It was the same day Mobei Jun took his first life, his hands still shaking from the pistol’s aftershock which cut into his palms like a knife. The fragile bones of his fingers felt hollow for hours after, unable to do much in assisting clean-up. Watching the men who served his family’s name take apart a corpse before spraying the red away with a foul smelling liquid which foamed pink as the two mixed. It reminded Mobei Jun of a sickly ocean shore, seafoam bloodied and lapping at the sand.
Only this was not the ocean, it was his home.
And that was his father’s blood soaked the intricate carpet red.
Linguang Jun had laughed at the question. It was the same laugh he used when Mobei Jun said something silly, or ridiculous. A child doing anything and everything to entertain the admired adults around him. That laugh never felt the same after Mobei Jun watched it form on the cheery face while behind the smiling man subordinates were slicing up the blood soaked carpet and preparing for it’s disposal.
“Of course not.” Uncle had said, patting Mobei Jun’s hair and scrubbing at something which had dried on his cheek after the gun went off. “We’re punished for falling in love, my dear little snowdrop. It’s too dangerous for creatures like us, look what happens when we try.”
Mobei Jun had killed his father.
He killed his father to stop the man from killing his uncle.
Linguang Jun’s throat bore the signs of hands - father’s hands brother’s hands - in deep red and blue binds across the otherwise unblemished skin. He looked like he was wearing a scarf of violence and his clothes were still stained with the aftermath of the bullet going through - a father’s a brother’s - skull. Mobei Jun tried to understand how the smile was able to stand the bruises. How his uncle could tolerate letting his voice fall cheery and sweet while it cracked at the edges from nearly being strangled.
Veins in his uncles’ eyes still lingered in maddening pink hue at the edges, and no matter how soft his uncle spoke, he looked like a wild creature before Mobei Jun.
Mobei Jun to this day isn’t certain why he asked if he would be allowed to love at that moment. Perhaps because he’d loved his father, and he killed the man. He set aside his love and took a life and that love never really came back. Even as the body cooled Mobei Jun realized love was gone, that he was just numb in the aftershock even when Linguang Jun took him away from their family home. Burned his clothes and cut his hair so it no longer resembled the corpse’s style, remade him in a night so when the world asked him how do you feel of your father’s disappearance? He could easily say - they were never that close.
“Love is a trick.” His uncle said, years later, into his re-education. Mobei Jun was a teenager then, sitting at his uncle’s parlor room while his uncle’s new husband was choked to death in the other room. Whenever he would look towards the doorway, catch sight of a flailing shadow, Linguang Jun would reach over and pat his head. Ease Mobei Jun’s focus back to him and the game of cards between them. “It tells you to cut out a piece of yourself and let another be it’s keeper. But why should you?”
Linguang Jun had fast hands, deadly heads. They gathered the cards together without trouble even in leather gloves, parting the deck and shuffling them back together with a thrrrrp sound muffled by his fingers. His wedding ring gleaming in the honey yellow light of the brass lamps on either side. There was a dull crack as Linguang Jun’s lover killed his husband and it triggered a sweet smile on the man’s face. Rising without a sound and tucking the cards into Mobei Jun’s hands, giving him a brief comforting pat as he went to pull a gun from out of a hidden compartment of the table.
“Love is an open wound leaving you vulnerable.” He lectured and Mobei Jun nodded, bracing himself as his Uncle’s lover returned from the dining room to claim his reward for his deed.
He was promised Linguang Jun, told he could stand at his side, that he could protect him from the evils of the world if he started with this husband. (Mobei Jun had liked his uncle-in-law, he was a nice man who took him sailing and bought him fine jewelry to match his uncle’s. He knew how close they were, knew the way to Linguang Jun’s affection was to spoil his darling nephew. Mobei Jun was studying for finals when his uncle stopped into his room and informed him the man would be dying soon. “How? From what?!” Mobei Jun had asked in a panic while his uncle shrugged with a bored look and answered: “I haven’t decided yet.”)
This lover was a friend of the family, someone who had less to offer but more willing to give. Mobei Jun thinks this man really loved his uncle, but so did the corpse in the other room.
So did Mobei Jun’s father.
Linguang Jun’s face hardly moved, even as he screamed for help and fired the gun as if he didn’t know what he was doing.
“This is going to hurt.” Uncle said, his expression falling to almost apologetic before he bent as if to kiss Mobei Jun’s head.
Mobei Jun pulled away.
“DNA.” He replied, stopping the man and soaked in the pride radiating from his uncle’s eyes.
“You’re such a good boy.” Linguang Jun nodded. “After this we can fly out to that little coastal town, you liked the seaside restaurant didn’t you? We’ll take a vacation, the world will expect us to mourn after this break in.”
Mobei Jun nodded and closed his eyes before his uncle could knock him unconscious.
“He’s still alive.”
Mobei Jun doesn’t have to look to unload a bullet between the eyes, stopping the odd gurgles coming from the bloodied form.
“Now he’s not.”
Luo Binghe made a face, either amused or annoyed, and clapped his hands together as they stood in the room of corpses and gunsmoke. It would seep into their clothes, their skin, leave them reeking of death for days until enough washes and clear liquor would cleanse the stain away.
They were going to leave this building in its current state as a message so Mobei Jun didn’t immediately start working to dismantle bodies, and for that he was grateful. The day had been tiring and one of these men had been faster with a knife than Mobei Jun expected. Still not as fast as him however and the wound didn’t slow him down. Mobei Jun’s mood was always left soured when he got hurt on the job, however expected that was. He took it personally and made sure the man’s death hurt as long as he could even if it spilled guts on his shoes.
“You look stressed.” Luo Binghe hums, stepping over pieces of what remained and leaning into Mobei Jun’s space. “You need a hobby.”
Mobei Jun stares at him unimpressed.
“What, we all have hobbies!” There’s actually care in his tone and so few things Mobei Jun hates more than when Luo Binghe slips and shows he cares about others. “Sha Hualing raises birds, Meng Mo does a lot of narcotics, I bake. Even your uncle has a hobby, isn’t he working on a widower now?”
Mobei Jun would roll his eyes but that was beneath him.
“Widowers take longer.” He replies and kicks a blood soaked leg out of his way to pick up the knife which had sunk into his body not long ago. He wanted it as a souvenir. “They need to appear to die naturally or by suicide. Too suspicious if they’re murdered.”
“Maybe you could take up knitting?” Now Luo Binghe was teasing him, his smile was too pleased. Like a kid brother who liked to mess with your things and watch you get angry. Mobei Jun supposed that’s why he liked the man, this youthful beauty, straightforward about what type of beast he was under that stunning smile.
“Are you coming over?” Mobei Jun asks and Luo Binghe blinks, surprised. Usually he has to play much harder to get invited into his lieutenant’s bed. The change of pace doesn’t deter him, actually it encourages his grin and there’s a playful heat in his gaze.
“Why, Mobei, are you falling in love with me?”
“No.” Mobei Jun says, bored. His uncle would be proud. “I just want to know if I’m getting sleep tonight.”
“You’re such a romantic.” Luo Binghe sighs and leans up, molding lips that always feel hot against his own. Kissing him with a wet, noisy swipe of a tongue and tangling a bloody fist in Mobei Jun’s hair.
It’s cathartic sleeping with Luo Binghe as neither of them believe in love.
What they have is feral, violent, loyal. They can hold one another down with bruising touch and bite into surrendered flesh without once confusing it for love. He can sweep Luo Binghe with a fist and rut inside him with a snarl and neither of them think they are meant to be more than this.
Messy. Raw. Angry. Adoring. Tender.
Luo Binghe’s cock leaves bruises at the base of Mobei Jun’s throat and Mobei Jun’s teeth scars the edge of Luo Binghe’s hip and in the morning they’re arguing over breakfast and how strong coffee should be. Naked, beaten, sated and settled.
This isn’t love, Mobei Jun would be sickened by that. Thinking of his father, his in laws who have died - those who begged Mobei Jun for aid as his uncle cut them down. He thinks of love and how it weakens, how it drove his father to the decisions which secured his death.
Love has pulled a trigger many times.
Mobei Jun would like to keep Luo Binghe safely away from love.
“My uncle tricked me into killing my father.”
They’re at a safehouse by the sea. The waters aren’t too far from the arched windows of the room and shine by the moon and stars like a million little razor blades riding the motion of the wind. Splashing dark seafoam against a black sand shore while the night holds them in quiet and peace.
Shang Qinghua isn’t sure how to respond, and that’s expected. He looks startled, confused, then sad - the most emotional creature Mobei Jun has ever met in his life and that’s saying something. Shang Qinghua is terrible at empathy, he struggles with it. Can’t put himself in another’s shoes for the life of him but he’s so feeling all the time. Almost explosive with it.
When he cries, he practically screams.
When he’s angry he nearly drowns in his pouting.
When he’s sad...he looks at Mobei Jun with eyes as large of the moon and seems afraid to do anything about it.
He thinks neither of them learned how to comfort another, and that’s probably why they fit together so well. Same brittle pieces torn out, same mangled pieces glued back in.
“I might actually be Linguang Jun’s son actually, I never checked once certain details of the past were revealed to me.” Mobei Jun is sitting in an armchair facing the sea. It’s not soothing and reminds him of that day. Hearing screams, feeling panic and violence through the bottoms of his shoes as he approached the living room that day. His father was without a scratch which didn’t make sense for how angrily his uncle was fighting back. He was telling Linguang Jun to be good and behave jn the same voice he’d chastise Mobei Jun for wandering off at company events. Or the times he’d be too rambunctious at the dinners where frightening men would leave a bad feeling in the air.
Those same men came and cut his father up, sealed him away, the police were certain it was a triad-related kidnapping.
The day before his uncle showed Mobei Jun where he kept a gun in the office. Showed him how to use it for his protection and it took many years for Mobei Jun to consider how convenient that was.
“Should I check?”
“No.” Shang Qinghua is sitting on the bed, he has a computer that looks simple but has more software crammed inside it than most technology stores. Wires from external harddrives and things Mobei Jun has no understanding tangle around his bare legs. The devices all spread out across the bed in a network of nefarious web and Shang Qinghua is the pretty spider sitting certain in control of it all. But his face is sad and he’s biting his lip thinking on what to say. “I think that would just hurt more.”
“Probably.” Mobei Jun nods and thinks his uncle is very right to say falling in love is a trick. It’s dangerous.
He can visualize himself reaching over, pushing his hand into Shang Qinghua’s ribs and stealing back the piece of himself he let the man take. The piece he carved off which left him bleeding since they met, slowly flooding his own chest with blood and obsession over this clever little spy.
Uncle said men like them weren’t allowed to love, that they’re punished for it.
He wonders how the world will punish him for loving Shang Qinghua?
Linguang Jun says it’s not love, no. That’s it’s obsession, it’s possession, it’s greed - then he looked at Mobei Jun like he was something sinister and foul and he had to leave his uncle’s gaze or else he’d taste gunsmoke and copper once more. His hands so near a tremor that it took him three tries to unlock the door.
“Sir,”
Shang Qinghua’s hands are soft from lack of rough work, but scarred from years of sharp wires and thin blades. They are small in Mobei Jun’s hands, slip inside the caverns of his grip and hold tight to the trembling bones that once felt hollow and now feel remade in steel or stone.
He could break Shang Qinghua’s hands with his own, Sometimes he wants to strangle Shang Qinghua, leave him a cooling body on the living room floor so that his smile no longer has a hold of him - so no one else can take him away.
He thinks he’d be closer to his father then.
Maybe he would understand this feeling better.
He pulls Shang Qinghua into his lap, it’s easy, the man is so light. So vulnerable to hurt. He doesn’t make a sound as he’s cradled against his chest, pulled close and Mobei Jun’s nose presses against the edge of a pulse. Burying into the base of his throat to feel that he is alive. Trace the warmth of his body through the feeble night clothes and pinch where he is soft in a need to leave marks as he goes.
“Your roots are growing in.” Shang Qinghua says, kissing Mobei Jun’s hairline where the pale hair is giving birth to black - like his father’s. He’s dyed it for so long he sometimes forgets it’s color, he thinks Linguang Jun forgets his own too. He thinks they’re probably the same sometimes.
Mobei Jun cradles Shang Qinghua in his arms, kissing his collarbone and wondering if he punishes himself, will the world accept the trade and let him love this man?
“Fix it for me.” He says, hair long forgotten and closes his eyes when Shang Qinghua kisses his brow.