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Cold.
That was the first coherent thought to cross the creature’s mind.
He was cold, and somewhere, beyond a barrier, there was a bright light.
Fingers twitched against a smooth, hard surface. It, too, was cold.
So cold.
He was cold as ice, but his body did not shiver.
The air smelled sharply of chemicals and burnt metal, something acrid in the back of his throat.
“Wen Ning?” A voice. This more familiar to his ears than any other sensation so far.
His eyes cracked open, the light blinding until a figure shadowed it.
“You’re awake! Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said, though the air barely left his lips. And it was then that the creature realized his lungs were not drawing air. He gasped, sitting up.
“Easy, easy,” the hazy figure said, arms catching his shoulders when he wobbled. “Your muscles are still figuring out how to function again.”
The creature stared at the man in his red lab coat.
No. Not red. Bloodstained.
It should have been an ominous sight, but the creature felt no fear.
The man was pretty. Tan skin, messy black hair spilling out of a ponytail, and framing strangely familiar features. The first thing he noticed were the tired, bloodshot eyes. Bright and bruised all at once. Then he observed a sharp nose, high cheekbones, and full lips with a mole beneath the bottom one.
The creature suspected those lips tasted like chili, though he did not know why.
“Who are you?” he asked, forcing air into his lungs before he could form the words.
The hopeful expression slid off the man’s face. “I’m Wei Ying. I am your friend.”
He said the last word in a way that seemed less than truthful.
“We are lovers?” the creature guessed.
A sad smile stretched the planes of Wei Ying’s face. “We were, yes.”
Something about the past tense displeased the creature.
“Who am I?”
Wei Ying’s expression somehow turned both fonder and sadder. “Your name is Wen Ning. You saved my life many times.”
“And you mine,” he said, knowing, somewhere in his marrow, that it was true.
Wei Ying waved him off, and Wen Ning felt that this, too, was familiar.
“Now, I’m sure you’re wondering where you are and why you’re chained to a slab of concrete,” Wei Ying began.
Truthfully, it was only then that Wen Ning realized there were cuffs holding his wrists and ankles. He nodded to Wei Ying, encouraging an explanation.
Wei Ying pinched his brow and sighed heavily, sitting on the edge of a metal countertop after pushing away an array of bloodied tools. “There’s really no way to delicately phrase this,” he admitted. “You were killed.”
Wen Ning blinked slowly and then realized he had not blinked since waking. “I appear to still be mostly dead.”
“That’s true,” Wei Ying agreed. He came closer, touching Wen Ning’s cold skin with ease as he unlocked the cuffs, unruffled by Wen Ning’s stark nudity.
Taking one wrist, he turned Wen Ning’s arm over revealing a talisman inked into his skin.
A similar talisman mirrored it on his left arm.
“These are how you’re still here.”
“But why?”
Wei Ying’s eyes slid to the side, his lip caught between his teeth. “I promised your sister I would save you.”
Wen Ning raised his gray-tinged hand and reached carefully for Wei Ying’s face, catching his chin. Wei Ying was warm. He forced their eyes to meet. “A’Jie did not mean this.”
He could picture a woman now to go with the familial title. A short woman with a matching temper that guarded a soft heart.
“I was too late,” Wei Ying whispered, his expression tormented. His hand went to Wen Ning’s stomach, and they looked down at the discolored patch of flesh, white thread stitching it together. “When I saw you there, bleeding out, I lost control.”
Black shadows danced around Wei Ying’s fingertips, and Wen Ning felt the same darkness answer from within his own veins.
“I used you as a weapon.”
“I do not mind being your blade,” Wen Ning said honestly, one partially-numb thumb brushing against Wei Ying’s cheek where a single tear grazed the skin. Soft. Warm.
So very warm.
“You are so much more than a tool for me to wield,” Wei Ying said.
Without thought, Wen Ning leaned forward, capturing those lips in a clumsy kiss.
Wei Ying stiffened in shock, but it only took a moment for his hands to clutch at Wen Ning’s shoulder and neck, pressing closer, deepening the kiss, and guiding him.
Each touch was dull, like a layer of cotton separated him from Wei Ying. He needed to feel more. Needed to feel everything.
Licking into Wei Ying’s mouth earned him a moan. Slipping a hand under the lab coat caused a gasp.
“Ah, Wen Ning, wait, I don’t know if yo—Oh!”
Wei Ying glanced down at his naked body and the leg that nudged his own apart.
“Oh,” Wei Ying whispered, his cheeks darkening. “I suppose it still, um… works,” he finished with a squeak.
Wen Ning’s face twitched in an attempt to smile that didn’t seem to quite make it all the way, his body still stiff and cold. “You’re a scientist,” he began, somehow knowing that Wei Ying would rise to the bait.
The bashful look turned into a sly grin as Wei Ying cupped Wen Ning’s cock contemplatively. “You’re right. This requires further experimentation. Care to run some tests?”
Wen Ning laughed, the sound a dry wheeze.
Clumsily, his icy fingers stripped Wei Ying of the stained lab coat and the black scrubs underneath.
The resentment purring in his veins clamored louder when he bared Wei Ying’s warm, living flesh.
He craved it, running his half-numb fingers over smooth skin and leaving goosebumps in his wake.
A brush of his thumbs against dusky nipples left Wei Ying hard and shivering. “A’Ning,” he breathed, head tipping back to bare his throat.
Wen Ning’s fingers rose to circle that fragile column. He knew instinctively that he could crush Wei Ying’s windpipe with the barest show of strength. He also knew that even with his memories in shattered, flickering wisps, he would rather die again than harm a hair on this man’s head.
Were he a compass, his humble magnet would point to this man—his due north.
“Young Master,” he breathed, the title a familiar weight on his tongue.
Wei Ying shook his head, his hair spilling loose from the red ribbon as he cupped Wen Ning’s face with an aching tenderness he wished to feel fully. “I deserve no such distinction.”
Wen Ning privately disagreed, so he kissed Wei Ying to distraction as they fell onto the concrete slab together in a tangle of limbs and angles and hardness.
The stone at his back was just as cold as it had been when he awoke, but Wei Ying’s body was a blazing hearth at his front.
Wei Ying straddled his thighs, his inquisitive eyes locked on the erection standing tall at Wen Ning’s groin.
“Is it different now?” he wondered.
“Well.. you have no blood circulation,” Wei Ying supplied. “However, the resentment and electricity seem to be managing. I’d love to know how,” he said, sounding wistful.
Wen Ning tried to chuckle. “I would prefer not to be vivisected…dissected?”
Wei Ying snorted. “Wen Qing is going to kill me when she gets back.”
“She won’t,” Wen Ning said confidently. His sister was a doctor. He could picture her in maroon scrubs and an expression of perpetual exasperation.
“Easy for you to say,” Wei Ying huffed, kissing Wen Ning’s forehead before leaving to rummage around in the drawers of the lab.
Wen Ning missed his warmth immediately.
“Aha! I knew there was some in here, still.”
Wei Ying returned with a mostly empty bottle of lube, and Wen Ning got a flash of a memory of Wei Ying bent over the metal countertops with his pants around his thighs and a silencing talisman pasted over his mouth.
His cock throbbed, which Wei Ying eagerly noted. “Fascinating! Is the resentment responding to your arousal?”
Wen Ning nodded.
Wei Ying’s grin turned wicked. “You naughty boy. What were you thinking about?”
“You,” he admitted, the sight of Wei Ying smirking between his legs sparking yet more memories.
“That’s not fair,” Wei Ying grumbled, almost to himself. He bit his lip and made a breathy noise. “Gods, I need you.”
Wen Ning watched, filling his static lungs with air as Wei Ying poured lube into his palm and wrapped his hand around his aching cock.
This touch was electric, so much. Too much. Not dulled at all. He moaned, his hands immediately going to the edge of the concrete just for something to hold.
“Good?” Wei Ying asked, working his hand up and down methodically.
“Too good,” Wen Ning bit out, his frozen body thawing from that one point of contact.
Wei Ying laughed. “If that’s too good, just you wait.”
“Wha—?”
But no sooner had he started to ask than he watched Wei Ying rise on his knees to straddle his hips.
Wei Ying’s cock was flushed a deep red at the tip, shiny and dripping with arousal. Wen Ning wanted to touch it, but he didn’t trust himself now. His control felt like a fragile, tenuous thing stretched thin and taut as Wei Ying took him in hand and guided the head of Wen Ning’s pale, black-veined cock to his hole.
The incandescent heat enveloped the head of his cock, and Wen Ning would have lost his breath had he any left to give.
Beneath his fingertips, the edge of the slab crumbled.
“Oh,” Wei Ying shivered, goosebumps popping up across his skin. “You’re so cold.”
“Is it bad?” Wen Ning timidly asked.
Wei Ying ran his nails down Wen Ning’s torso, the sensation now sharp everywhere except the discolored section—the part of him that had once been a piece of someone else.
“Nothing about you could ever be bad,” Wei Ying said with such sincerity that Wen Ning understood why he had trusted Wei Ying from the moment they had met—first as boys at the science fair and then again when Wen Ning had risen tonight.
When Wei Ying sat fully on his cock, Wen Ning felt the hearth-like warmth grow into a raging inferno.
Every touch was an electrical fire—sudden and devastating and consuming.
His hands jerked in the air over Wei Ying’s hips, each roll of Wei Ying’s body too much. A sharp, acute light in a murky twilight.
Wei Ying tutted, grabbing Wen Ning’s wrists and dragging them to his hips.
“Don’t—! I can’t—!
“You can,” Wei Ying replied. “You won’t hurt me.”
It was a challenge as much as a show of trust.
Not can’t hurt. Won’t.
Tentatively, he rested his hands on Wei Ying’s hips, letting his eyes fall closed as he drowned in the burning tightness the enveloped him with every bounce.
He could hear Wei Ying’s breaths growing shallow and high. He could feel the way he shuddered, his body like a vise when the harsh harmony of their bodies hit just right within him.
“Fuck,” Wei Ying panted. “So good for me. Exactly what I needed. Is it good for you?”
“Yes,” he breathed, drawing breath just to say so. “So warm. So tight. So much.”
Wei Ying made a pleased noise and sped up, their hips slapping together now, each downward bounce met by the upward thrust of Wen Ning hips.
“Can you cum for me? Cum in me?”
“I-I’m not sure.”
Wei Ying leant bent down with a determined glint to his eyes. “Let’s find out.”
And then he leant forward and licked Wen Ning’s nipple.
“Hah!” All the air vacated his lungs at once, and he bucked hard, thrusting so deep and so quickly that he knocked the air from Wei Ying’s lungs, too.
His fingertips twitched, leaving bruises on Wei Ying’s hips, but he pulled back at the last second, no bones broken.
Wei Ying wheezed a laugh and winked. “Well now, that was some reaction. Though you know what they say about replicating results...”
And then he licked the other nipple; Wen Ning felt something begin to coil and tighten in his lower dantian.
The echo of their skin slapping together was sharp and obscene in the lab.
His hands began to guide Wei Ying up and down, lifting him higher, forcing him deeper and tipping him just right until Wei Ying’s nails sank into his chest and his lips parted in a long, low moan.
Wen Ning could feel Wei Ying’s body tightening. Could feel the pleasure mounting and knew the exact moment when he would climax.
The moment Wei Ying tipped over the edge, Wen Ning felt his own body answer, something spilling from his cock into Wei Ying’s body.
“Oh,” Wei Ying gasped, his hands flying to his stomach. “Oh, that’s different. Cold,” he clarified quickly at Wen Ning’s furrowed brow. “I kind of like it.”
When Wen Ning’s cock had softened inside of him, Wei Ying slid off his lap with a wince. “Ow, this was a bad choice for my knees.” With a wince, he plopped himself in Wen Ning’s lap and reached back, running a finger through the mess in between them.
“Yep! Looks like you can still cum!” He cuddled against Wen Ning’s chest, a spot of radiant sunshine in his arms.
Wen Ning held him close, breathing in the salt-sweaty scent of him that mingled with his usual warm spice.
“Though of course,” Wei Ying began, twirling a strand of Wen Ning’s hair around his finger, “we still have to replicate the results.”
Wen Ning kissed his forehead. “Tomorrow,” he suggested. The lines under Wei Ying’s eyes were deep. Almost as bruised as his hips.
He could see the apprehension in Wei Ying’s eyes. Something manic and grief-stricken and so very human.
“Rest, Young Master. I will still be here when you wake.”
“That’s quite a promise to make,” Wei Ying said softly.
Wen Ning placed his hand over Wei Ying’s beating heart, letting its steady rhythm soothe them both. “It’s the promise I make, nonetheless.”
Wei Ying slumped in his arms, like a puppet with cut strings. “Okay,” he whispered. “Don’t forget it.”
“Never.”