Archive of Our Own

So it’s like this: everyone knows about Hua Cheng. He’s a legend or something. You’re not supposed to be able to record him but there’s always something floating around on some corner of the Internet (it is carefully produced and recorded by Yin Yu). 

He came out of nowhere with a huge spread in one of the high end fetish magazines; nothing shows his face, but they’re all self portraits, and all shot from the perspective of a seated or kneeling viewer. He’s also known for fine art photography: shooting people so they look inorganic, shooting inanimate objects so they look like flesh.

His cat has its own wildly popular Instagram account.

Hua Cheng is also known for running pop-up kink parties, under an organization called the Gambler’s Den. The Gambler’s Den has a reputation as an intense place: it leans hard into voyeurism and exhibitionism, extremes of all kinds. Hua Cheng sometimes has partners, and sometimes he fucks them. Mostly he is known for being an intense dom: he will take you right up to your limits and he will make you look at them.

Xie Lian does not know any of this.

But he sees the sign one night, and he’s smart enough to know what’s what. And he thinks maybe it would be nice to see. It’s been a long time since he was around that kind of careful order. So he goes in and it’s about what he expected, maybe a little more performance art and a little more public sex than usual. 

He stops to admire a couple women doing rope work, one with more rope on her body than exposed skin, then two men, one of them trying to lower the other onto the single largest cock Xie Lian has ever seen in his life (“It won’t fit, Binghe, you monster—you can’t put that inside me, you can’t—” “It’s okay, gege, you can take it, be good”).

Without meaning to, he finds himself on a wide dais, near a man in a violently crimson shirt, seated in an obnoxiously ornate chair. He holds himself like a king, looking mildly bored but pleased by his subjects.

“Hello,” Xie Lian says automatically.

“How did you get in here?” says the man in red. “Who are you?”

“I’m sorry,” Xie Lian says. “I’m nobody really. I just wandered in.”

The main in red raises an eyebrow. “You’re nobody?”

He stands, and Xie Lian sees that the man in red is taller than he is. He looks up into the man’s single visible eye.

“If you’re Nobody, then perhaps I am Polyphemus and I will eat you alive. Or perhaps I am Circe, and these—” he gestures to the people before him, “—are my swine. Or perhaps I am Penelope, waiting for everyone in my house to get the message and fuck off.”

“I really am nobody,” Xie Lian repeats. Is he not supposed to be here? Has he stumbled into another situation where he is unwanted?

“Then maybe Nobody would like to sit with me a while, if he is so unremarkable,” says the man in red.

Xie Lian looks around. There is only one chair.

The man in red catches his eye, and spreads his legs wider. “There is plenty of room on the floor, if you would like.”

Xie Lian knows a challenge when he sees one; god knows he has issued enough of them himself. He walks right up to the man in red, and looks him in the eye, and gets on his knees.

The man in red laughs, delighted. “Now turn and face them all,” he says.

Xie Lian turns. Behind him, the man in red digs his hands into his hair and holds his head still. “I knew you’d be good,” he sneers.

Xie Lian shivers. The man in red shakes his head the way one might affectionately shake a dog’s head.

“They can all see you,” he says. “They’re not paying attention right now, but they will if I call them, and they won’t look away until I tell them.”

Xie Lian nods. He doesn’t want them to look at him. He didn’t come here to be seen, for once in his life. “Please don’t,” he says. “Please don’t make them look.”

“But what does it matter, if they’re looking at Nobody?” says the man in red.

“It doesn’t matter,” Xie Lian says.

(“You are disgusting,” He Xuan says three days later. “That is the grossest thing I have ever seen. Why can’t you fuck him on the throne like a sane human being.” 

“Don’t you have someone’s brother to fuck, instead of bothering me, Black Water,” says Hua Cheng.

“I hate you. I’m going to go have the most emotionally meaningless sex of my life now, to get over this.”)

“I’m feeling generous today,” says the man in red. “So we’ll just watch. Do you like it?”

“I don’t know,” Xie Lian says honestly. He hasn’t thought about what he likes for a long time.

“Do you dislike it, then? Do they frighten you? Do they disgust you?”

“No,” he says. The rope artist has woven a dress around her partner. Xie Lian watches her attach the other woman’s wrists and elbows to hanging ropes, posing her like a puppet. If he focuses, he can hear individual pieces of sound: conversation, and textures (“It’s too much, it’s in my throat, Binghe—” “You’re doing such a good job, gege, thank you”).

“Do you like to watch them?” Xie Lian asks.

“I don’t do things I don’t like,” says the man in red. “Are you jealous?” His hands are hot against Xie Lian’s scalp. “Do you want to do what they do?”

Xie Lian wants the man in red to crush his skull, maybe. “With you, perhaps.”

“Of course with me. Nobody approached me first,” agrees the man in red. “If someone tried to take you away from me, I would throw them out. I would ban them from every gathering in the city. I would destroy their reputation,” he says, directly into Xie Lian’s ear.

“Then I won’t go with anyone else,” Xie Lian says.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” says the man in red.

From then on, Xie Lian keeps his eye out for the next time the Gambler’s Den appears. He goes back every time he sees it. The man in red is always there, and Xie Lian always goes to him.

“You’re so pretty,” says the man in red. He digs his fingers into the corners of Xie Lian’s jaw till his eyes water and he opens his mouth. Then he spits in Xie Lian’s mouth.

Xie Lian bursts into tears. The man in red laughs. “Look, Shen Qingqiu,” he calls.

A thin, sour-faced man looks up; Xie Lian vaguely remembers him as the man who was complaining about his partner’s huge cock. “Hua Chengzhu,” he says.

“I made Nobody cry,” says the man in red. “Look at him. All I did was spit on him.”

The weight of Shen Qingqiu’s gaze only makes Xie Lian cry harder. He doesn’t want to be seen like this, not when he knows how Shen Qingqiu likes seeing people cry.

“He’s lovely,” says Shen Qingqiu, idly petting his partner’s own beautiful face.

“Gege,” says Binghe, eyes dangerously wide.

“Don’t fuss, baobei, gege thinks you’re the prettiest,” says Shen Qingqiu. “Maybe you should watch Hua Chengzhu and take notes.”

“Take notes?” Binghe repeats.

Shen Qingqiu takes a deep breath. “This master will quiz Binghe later, if he likes.”

None of them pay any attention to Xie Lian’s crying. The man in red pulls his hair a little bit. “This is all it takes to make you cry?” says the man in red. “That’s pathetic. I don’t even have to do anything. Do you cry this easily for anyone?”

No, Xie Lian wants to say, no he never cries, he is always brave and positive and composed. He doesn’t even cry when he’s alone.

“I asked you a question,” says the man in red.

Xie Lian takes a shuddering breath and shakes his head.

The man in red wears shiny black boots. Xie Lian doesn’t pay much attention to them, most of the time. One of those boots presses down on his cock, and he’s paying attention to them now. He knows he’s hard, but he hadn’t thought about it. It’s been so long since it was a concern.

His white jeans aren’t very forgiving. A boot print will be very obvious. “Please no,” he mumbles.

“Oh, now you can speak? I asked you a question and you didn’t say anything,” says the man in red. He does not move his foot.

“Don’t, please,” says Xie Lian. Everyone will be able to see that the man in red stepped on him. He won’t survive it, they’ll all know. He does not say his safe word.

The man in red presses down harder. “I said, do you cry this easily for everyone?”

It hurts, which only makes Xie Lian cry more. Distantly, he hears the sound of pen on paper—Binghe literally taking notes while he watches. 

“All I have to do is spit on you and step on you a little, and you cry so hard you can’t answer a simple question. It’s not like it’s my fault, you’re the one who gets hard from it,” says the man in red.

Xie Lian tries to curl up around himself, but the man in red yanks his head up by the hair. “Really? You’re going to try to hide from crying in public? It’s too late. They’ve all seen you.”

Xie Lian somehow cries harder. He looks awful, he knows it, and everyone is watching him humiliate himself—fucking gorgeous Luo Binghe is taking notes so that he and his pissy boyfriend can do some kind of student/teacher roleplay because their lives are perfect.

“Do you even realize you’re humping my leg like a bad puppy?” the man in red snaps, and Xie Lian comes all over himself. 

“Good boy,” says the man in red, as he hauls Xie Lian’s miserable body into his lap. “Good boy, good boy.”

Xie Lian hides his face in Hua Cheng’s red shirt, and lets him pour room temperature water into his mouth.

“Good boy,” Hua Cheng says. “Luo Binghe if you don’t fuck off right now I will castrate you. Pretty boy,” says Hua Cheng, petting Xie Lian’s hair, “you were so brave letting me do that with you, you were so good. I know you don’t cry like that for anyone else, baobei, thank you.”

Xie Lian sleeps like a drunk that night. His eyes are sore and bruisey the next morning. It’s fine: nobody cares about him enough to ask. He looks like he got punched. The man in red barely touched him.

“I should break you open and fuck you,” says the man in red some while later. He locks a silver cuff around Xie Lian’s ankle and strings the key on one of his countless silver chains. “It’s not like you can get away.”

Xie Lian didn’t put sex as a hard limit on his registration. So far, the man in red hasn’t really expressed much sexual interest in him. The man in red makes him come sometimes, but Xie Lian knows that’s not necessarily sex, just power. Just another thing the man in red can make his body do. It doesn’t even always feel good when the man in red makes him come. Sometimes he does it until it hurts.

Xie Lian listed his usual safe word, and he knows the man in red knows it. He knows the man in red would respect it. He’s seen the man in red throw people out for ignoring safe words.

“I wouldn’t be able to stop you,” Xie Lian agrees.

“Nobody can stop me from doing anything,” says the man in red. “I am a king here.”

Xie Lian nods.

“I am a king and you aren’t even my servant. You’re just a pretty toy, aren’t you?” says the man in red.

Xie Lian hesitates. He doesn’t like when the man in red makes him say he’s pretty. 

“I said—”

“Yes, I’m just a pretty toy,” Xie Lian says. He knows what happens when he doesn’t answer questions.

The man in red backhands him. “Don’t interrupt.”

“I’m sorry,” Xie Lian says. He knows it doesn’t matter.

“I don’t think you are yet,” says the man in red. “Do you want to know what I was thinking about before?”

“Yes,” Xie Lian says immediately, so quickly he doesn’t really understand the question.

“Yeah, you would want to know how I’d fuck you, you slut,” says the man in red. 

He pulls on Xie Lian’s hair and arms until he’s kneeling with his back to the man in red, facing the room. The man in red leans down over him to speak in his ear.

“There are a lot of ways, so it would take a long time. Maybe I would dislocate your jaw and put my cock in your throat and use you to jack off. It’s not like anyone would notice the difference if I made you cry about it. Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. You’re Nobody,” says the man in red.

Xie Lian feels disgust, fear, and lust curdle in his stomach. He knows about dislocated jaws.

“Or maybe I’d put you on your back up here and fuck you till it gapes. If I got bored I might let other people have a turn with you. You’d cry so bad if I let Luo Binghe fuck you with that weapon of his. He’d break you if I didn’t do it first.

“Or maybe,” murmurs the man in red, “I’d cut a hole in you somewhere so I could know I’m the first one inside there. No one else would be allowed to fuck that spot but me, I’d make it perfect. I’d touch you where nothing else ever touched you, and I’d never let you put anything else inside that hole, only me.”

His voice is so soft and tender that Xie Lian almost isn’t scared. He could almost say yes and ask the man in red to do it. He’s never heard the man in red want something so transparently or overtly sexually.

“Do you like that? Do you think that sounds nice, sweetheart? Do you want me to make a special place inside you?” the man in red sighs.

”But what if it hurts?” Xie Lian says. He feels like he’s drowning. He wants to do anything the man in red says, he sounds like he wants it so much.

“Yeah, it would hurt,” the man in red says. “But so would anything else I want to do to you, and I’d like it so much.”

“Would you do it here?” asks Xie Lian. He doesn’t want to leave. He wants to stay here, but he can’t remember why.

“You wanna do it here? You’d let me do that in front of everyone? I’d have to make them watch, they’d all want to watch. I haven’t let anyone watch me fuck in a long time,” says the man in red. One of his hands is under Xie Lian’s shirt, petting his ribs through his skin.

“You should have everything you want,” Xie Lian says, not totally sure why that’s dangerous.

“I’d eat you alive if you could survive it,” says the man in red.

“Okay,” Xie Lian agrees. He feels like he’s somewhere near the verge of sleep. He doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to.

(“He is perfect, Black Water, he is the most beautiful man I have ever seen. I want to put my hands in his lungs," Hua Cheng says.

“Have you considered being normal and putting your dick in his mouth,” says He Xuan without looking up from his phone. “What do you think about this fish tank? The wall can definitely support a person’s weight.” 

Hua Chang leans over to look at the screen. “Looks good. You should put piranhas in it and then stick your girlfriend’s head in there.”

“He’s not my girlfriend, and I would never scare my fish like that.”)

“You’d let me do anything to you right now,” says the man in red. “I could put my cock in you and I don’t think you’d notice, if I kept talking to you.”

“Yes,” Xie Lian says. He wants to listen to the man in red forever. He says such pretty things.

“I want to crack all your ribs open and live inside your chest. I want to break your fingers off and eat them,” says the man in red. His fingers dig in under Xie Lian’s low ribs, where he’s too thin.

“Please make it hurt,” Xie Lian says.

“You deserve to have it hurt,” agrees the man in red.

Later, Hua Cheng feeds him fresh fruit and finger-combs his hair. Xie Lian isn’t totally sure what either of them meant by that conversation. He likes how it made him feel; Hua Cheng has something almost like the obsessive intensity that Wuming had.

Sometimes Xie Lian thinks about Wuming, in the same way he sometimes thinks about Mu Qing and Feng Xin. How poorly he treated them all, how he took them for granted. At least he suspects Feng Xin and Mu Qing have each other. They probably still argue and fuss over each other. He likes to think he helped them get together, but probably not.

If he thinks about it for too long, the guilt of what he did to Wuming threatens to overwhelm him. Wuming was so young, too young for Xie Lian to crush him the way he did. Too young to want to be crushed like that. Honestly, he isn’t even sure if Wuming was old enough to be allowed around all that, which isn’t why Xie Lian didn’t fuck him.

He understands why Wuming wanted what he did, why he got off on it. Being wanted, and being able to pry it out of someone so cold, is addictive. He was too cruel to Wuming. It hurts to think about, how desperately Wuming wanted attention, how much he wanted to love something. Xie Lian wanted something to love that didn’t ask anything of him. Wanted something to love him no matter how he treated it.

He hopes Wuming is okay, wherever he is. Xie Lian left him alone in that mausoleum of an apartment, him and his cat. He hopes Wuming found someone to use him like he wanted, and put him back together afterwards. Xie Lian just broke him and broke the leftover pieces. It was so good, being the center of all that desire. It was better than being the Crown Prince, because nobody wants a monster’s favor but everyone likes beautiful happy fairytales.

He kept Wuming’s picture, and he feels bad about it. Looking at those wounds shouldn’t make him happy; he disfigured that boy forever, as badly as if he had burned his face or written an ugly tattoo on him. What if Wuming feels ugly now? What if he hates Xie Lian for hurting him, as he should?

Xie Lian can never repay the damage he did to that boy.

Hua Cheng’s attention is almost like Wuming’s, that same addictive quality. But Hua Cheng wants so much more than Wuming, and he takes so much more. Xie Lian wants to give, to someone like that. He wants to have someone take from him, to balance everything he took from everyone for so long.

He thinks about what he would say to Wuming if he met him again. He likes to think he would recognize Wuming and that maybe he wouldn’t be frightened of Xie Lian. He would pet Wuming and tell him how sorry he is, and how he wants to be nice to him now. He wants to pet him and kiss him and tell him how good he was and how he didn’t mean any of it and how good Wuming made him feel. 

He doesn’t know how he would reward Wuming best; he knows Wuming liked his boots, or maybe his feet. He would ask Wuming to touch them, if he wanted. But it’s been so long. If he’s lucky, Wuming doesn’t remember Xie Lian, doesn’t think of him at all.

“You’re preoccupied tonight, Nobody,” says the man in red. “Are you listening to me at all?”

“I’m sorry,” Xie Lian says. “I did something bad. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“I don’t keep you here to think. I keep you here to do whatever I want, whenever I want it. Who cares what you’ve done?”

“I hurt someone and I never apologized to him,” Xie Lian says. He can’t stop. Tonight the man in red has been making him watch a young man worship his angel-faced partner’s empty eye sockets. He never really saw Wuming’s face, never saw what color his eyes were.

“I said I don’t care. Am I boring you, Nobody? Are they boring you? Are you too good to be here with the rest of the whores and perverts?” demands the man in red.

“No, no, I’m not bored, I’m sorry,” Xie Lian says. He wants to look away and look at the man in red.

“And? Are you too good for us? Or are you a slutty deviant who shouldn’t be allowed in polite society?”

“I shouldn’t be allowed in polite society,” Xie Lian says, meaning it more than he should.

“That’s why I made the Gambler’s Den,” says the man in red. “So that I could have a place for all the other dirty things I like. So I can show off. And it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. He Xuan fucked a corpse in front of its baby brother one time. I’ve ruined people’s lives, for fun.”

“But he was so young, and I was so awful to him. I cut him,” Xie Lian babbles.

“And he probably loved it, you probably gave him a new kink. Now will you shut up?” says the man in red.

“He didn’t deserve what I did,” Xie Lian says.

The man in red hits him in the face, hard, twice. “Stop complaining. You’re annoying me, and I don’t have to listen to you. I don’t care what you did or when you did it. You’re Nobody, you’re nothing. If you can’t shut up I will make you, because you’re too pretty to throw out. But you aren’t my favorite toy, and you aren’t my only toy.” 

Xie Lian nods, surprised.

“I can have anyone I want in here, and I can prove it. Watch. Luo Binghe, come here,” calls the man in red.

“Go on,” says Shen Qingqiu, with a little push.

The man in red shoves Xie Lian aside and spreads his legs wider for Luo Binghe as he settles between them. “Hua Chengzhu?” Binghe says.

“Open your mouth,” says the man in red. “I’m sure gege will reward you for being good later.”

Luo Binghe flutters his eyelashes and opens his pretty, soft-looking mouth. Xie Lian feels a sudden, brutal flash of jealousy.

The man in red undoes his trousers, and pulls Luo Binghe forward by his hair. Binghe makes a small sound and visibly relaxes.

“Now be good, and be quiet and watch, Lianlian,” the man in red commands.

Xie Lian does watch: Luo Binghe gets more and more bonelessly relaxed, brow furrowing and relaxing, while the man in red pulls him further and further down his cock, until the whole thing is in his mouth.

The man in red sighs. “I can’t believe Shen Qingqiu doesn’t keep you like this all the time when you’re so good about it. No, don’t suck. Don’t drool on me either. Just sit and be quiet, or I’ll tell your gege you were bad and then he won’t let you put that ridiculous thing you call a cock inside him anymore.”

Luo Binghe swallows, once, but his throat stops working. The man in red twists his ear. “Do not test me.”

Xie Lian feels insane with jealousy. He has no claim on the man in red, but Shen Qingqiu certainly does with Luo Binghe. Neither of them seem bothered though, as if the man in red casually taking people’s partners is something normal. Shen Qingqiu even looks rather smug, as if he’s flattered to share. 

What if the man in red gives Xie Lian to someone else? He’s threatened to let Binghe fuck him before, but Xie Lian thought it was just because of the strain implied with that. What if he gives Xie Lian to the angel-faced blind man, or the women with all the rope? What if he gives him to He Xuan?

“See? Even greedy Binghe knows how to be good,” says the man in red, petting Luo Binghe’s curly hair.

(“I want to break every bone in his body and glue them back together with gold,” says Hua Cheng.

“I’m changing my locks, stop coming into my house. Can we go back to your boring piss phase, if we have to do this?” He Xuan says, scrolling through water filter reviews.

“You hated my piss phase.” 

“I just called it boring. You’re not actually a piss guy, you’re just a guy who wants to make everyone uncomfortable.”)

(After the man in white leaves him, San Lang goes briefly, intensely mad. He hurls himself at challenge after challenge. He doesn’t sleep for days at a time, bathes in water so cold his lips turn blue, goes days without eating and drinking until he shakes and his vision blurs. He starts fights and lets other people finish them. He begs heroin-thin Shen Jiu to beat him.

Skinny, bitchy Shen Jiu doesn’t beat him but he lets San Lang sit on his cock and complains the whole time.

“I don’t really care what you do, just put on a show. And don’t kiss me.”

San Lang closes his eye and pretends Shen Jiu’s ice cold hands are gloves.

“Gege,” he whines, and then he can’t stop himself. “Gege, please, I’m sorry, don’t leave me, I’ll be good, I’ll do anything, don’t leave me alone again, gege please, I want to go with you, you’re God to me, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, gege please, I want it, I love you—”

“No wonder he left, you never shut up,” Shen Jiu says.)

The man in red is the most obscene thing Xie Lian has ever seen. He’s hardly doing anything, just sitting with his cock in Luo Binghe’s mouth, sighing occasionally. He barely even moves. His eye drifts closed and his shoulders relax. 

Xie Lian feels possessed. He has never been this envious of another person in his life. He wants the man in red’s attention and idle, casual possessiveness. Luo Binghe hasn’t done anything at all to deserve the man in red’s favor, other than not be Xie Lian. He could do whatever it is the man in red wants, and better than Binghe.

The man in red scrapes his nails slowly along Binghe’s scalp; Xie Lian can hear it so clearly that his own skin prickles pleasantly. Then the man in red opens his eye and smirks at Xie Lian, and makes a low, luxurious sound, like someone getting into a hot bath. He is entirely unselfconscious, but it doesn’t seem performative. He clearly likes having an audience, but he’s not doing anything for them. Everything he does is for himself; the enjoyment of others is incidental. Xie Lian flushes so hard his eyes water.

“Now swallow,” says the man in red, and Xie Lian does. Luo Binghe does too, as the man in red guides his mouth off. He wipes at Luo Binghe’s face with his sleeve. “Good boy. Back to gege, now.”

“Thank you, Hua Chengzhu,” Luo Binghe says dutifully. Shen Qingqiu is in his lap almost immediately, and shoves his tongue down Binghe’s throat. 

“Binghe is such a good boy! I’m so lucky, I’m so proud of you, you’re so smart and good and pretty,” Shen Qingqiu says, petting Binghe’s face and hair, glowing with pride.

Xie Lian stares. He has never seen anyone enjoy anything so clearly or so calmly. At first he isn’t even sure happened.

“Are you paying attention now?” asks the man in red, doing up his trousers. “Come here. No no, here.” He pulls Xie Lian into his lap and squeezes him like a teddy bear.

“I’m listening,” says Xie Lian. He can’t look at the man in red without flushing so hard he sweats.

“I know you are,” says Hua Cheng. He pets Xie Lian’s clothes and hair and plays with his fingers and nuzzles his face like a cat. “You’re good and sweet, I knew you could do it. Thank you for watching me fuck Binghe like that, I really liked it.”

“I liked it too,” Xie Lian says, without meeting his eye.

Sometimes, Xie Lian sees ghosts. He sees Wuming in the swish of a girl’s ponytail, a cold white hand reaching from the cuff of someone’s white coat, the echo of Feng Xin in a man arguing on the phone. They’re never real, of course. Only ever phantoms of things he lost. You can lose things you hate, too, and nobody tells you that.

The man in red has his hands tangled in Xie Lian’s hair. He was playing with it, braiding and re-braiding it like a child with a doll, but now it’s snarled around his fingers. Xie Lian can’t bring himself to care about the mess. It will take forever to untangle, it will hurt, he might have to cut it. But the man in red scrapes his nails over Xie Lian’s scalp, and nothing else matters. 

By now, the man in red isn’t playing with his hair so much as pulling on it with his trapped hands. He pulls Xie Lian’s head one way, then the other, until his neck or shoulder or back crunches. Xie Lian is a little dizzy from it.

“Nobody is very quiet tonight,” says the man in red. He scrunches a huge snarl at the back of Xie Lian’s head.

“I didn’t want to distract you,” Xie Lian says. “You’ve been watching all night.”

“Because you haven’t said or done anything,” the man in red says. He grips Xie Lian’s head and shakes it a little. “Do you want attention? Is that what this is?”

Xie Lian does want attention. He always wants the man in red’s attention, but he knows this is unreasonable. The man in red is important, and busy. Many people and things want his attention, and most of them need it. Xie Lian does not need his attention, not the way the Gambler’s Den does.

“You can have my attention if you want. You’ve had it the whole time, or do you think I don’t know who I keep at my feet?”

The man in red pulls, yanking Xie Lian up by the hair. His scalp aches, and the small of his back tingles.

“On my lap,” says the man in red, still guiding Xie Lian by the hair. Once he’s settled, the man in red works his hand out of the grip of Xie Lian’s hair. He strokes over Xie Lian’s clothes, feeling him the way a butcher or a vet might feel an animal.

For a moment, Xie Lian feels almost underwater. He has the sudden, visceral sensation of being in a fish bowl. Only he and the man in red are in the bowl; everything else is visible, but muted and distant. Then he blinks, and it’s gone. The man in red has a thumb against his pulse.

“You smell good,” says the man in red, pressing his face into Xie Lian’s hair.

“Good enough to eat,” says the man in red, hand wrapping around Xie Lian’s upper arm. “How much larger is a deer than you? I’ve killed those and dressed them.”

Xie Lian thinks of the man in red with a tall bow. He thinks of that one black eye fixing on the soft spots, of a long field knife in his hand. He thinks of red blood on red clothes. He shivers.

Xie Lian thinks of blood and fur on the man in red’s hands. He thinks of the fat under the skin going soft and melting into stained skin. He thinks of browned blood under black nails, the scrape of a knife on porcelain through rare meat. He swallows. How different could it be, if the man in red dressed him like a felled deer? Xie Lian would gladly play hunting games if the man in red asked.

“I would let you,” he says.

“You could not stop me,” the man in red says.

He bites at Xie Lian’s shoulder. With a hand at the man in red’s cheek, Xie Lian feels the muscles at his jaw bunch. His jaw clicks when he lets go. Xie Lian imagines snapping it in or out of place. He wonders if it gives the man in red headaches.

“You would not stop me,” says the man in red. He starts to work his other hand free from Xie Lian’s hair. It pulls.

“It’s the same thing,” Xie Lian says.

“I don’t think it is,” says the man in red.

The man in red always smells good, in a way Xie Lian cannot quantify and could not describe if asked. He smells like a person: skin and spit and hair and whatever he has recently eaten or drunk or smoked. Xie Lian doesn’t think much about it until he finds Hua Cheng smoking outside the Gambler’s Den. The smoke smells almost like gingerbread, thick and foggy.

“Hello,” Hua Cheng says. He raises the thin black cigarette the way he might raise a drink to toast.

“Good evening,” Xie Lian says. It’s almost cold out, but Hua Cheng doesn’t seem to mind.

The cherry glows when Hua Cheng inhales. His mouth is a long, black-painted line. He barely parts his lips to breathe out; Xie Lian half expects to see the smoke come out stained.

“They’re already started inside,” Hua Cheng says. “But I’m happy to wait outside. Share?” He holds out the cigarette.

“No,” Xie Lian says, “thank you.” He can’t stop staring at Hua Cheng’s mouth. There’s no filter on the cigarette, just black paper. He imagines he can see black lipstick on the paper, but it’s just that, his imagination. It’s not the right light to see.

Hua Cheng raises the brow over his eyepatch. “Perhaps later,” he says, and stubs the cigarette on the sole of his boot.

Inside, the man in red is settled in his chair, playing with a silver lighter when Xie Lian gets to him. The man in red grins at him and starts pulling carelessly at Xie Lian’s shirt as soon as he’s within reach.

The man in red tosses Xie Lian’s shirt to the floor and hauls him into his lap. He picks the laces of Xie Lian’s shoes apart and drops them, then goes for his socks. It ends with him seated sideways on the man in red’s lap, legs dangling over the arm of the chair.

“Nobody is exactly who I wanted to see today,” says the man in red. His lighter flashes back in hand, clicking on and off. Xie Lian smells it burning.

“I’m glad I’m not imposing,” Xie Lian says.

“It’s hardly as if Nobody could impose.” The man in red gathers Xie Lian’s hair up and starts twisting it into a knot. He takes a long silver pin and digs it into Xie Lian’s hair to secure it. It’s heavy at the back of his head. Xie Lian doesn’t deserve something like this. It’s clearly custom made, one of Hua Cheng’s silver butterflies perched at the top. Usually Xie Lian puts his hair up with rubber bands.

The pin is bright and shiny, probably freshly polished. It’s been days since Xie Lian washed his hair properly, and the awareness of that contrast makes his skin prickle. Everyone will notice it when they look.

The man in red settles back and tilts Xie Lian’s head this way and that, inspecting his work. “Pretty.”

Up close, Xie Lian has a perfect view of the man in red’s mouth. It is painted immaculately black, lined crisp and clear and unnatural. Xie Lian imagines the man in red before his mirror, brow furrowed, working the paint into the creases of his lip, the heat of his breath softening it, layer after layer. He imagines the man in red baring his teeth to check for stains, practicing smiling at his reflection.

He imagines the man in red sitting on a bed, round mirror in hand, his back to the eye of Xie Lian’s mind.

That black paint, if it stained, would surely leave a kiss as perfect as a stamp.

The lighter flickers in the man in red’s hand. On and off, on and off, open and closed. He handles it like a butterfly knife. Xie Lian shivers.

“Are you cold?” says the man in red.

“Only a little,” Nobody says. The man in red is warm, even through his clothes.

From nowhere, the man in red produces one of the thin black cigarettes. Nobody hears the sizzle as the tip lights, the faint squeak as the man in red draws his breath in. His chest expands against Nobody’s shoulder.

His breath is smooth when he breathes the smoke out, not a hint of a catch. The sweet smell isn’t part of the way he always smells to Nobody, so either the man in red is very clean or he does not smoke often.

Nobody shivers again. The man in red strokes a hand down his ankle, then digs a thumb into his calf. It hurts, and Nobody wishes he would break it. 

“I think you must be cold,” says the mad in red. “You know better than to lie to me.”

“I did not lie,” says Nobody. Sweat starts to gather at the back of his neck.

“Perhaps I know Nobody’s needs better than he does,” says the man in red. He taps ash from the cigarette, and it lands on the back of Nobody’s hand.

The ash is hot, only for a second, but it’s enough for Nobody to flinch. He wants to brush it away, but can’t bear the thought of soiling the man in red. It would stain his silk shirt. Better that Xie Lian’s own skin or clothes should be soiled. He brushes the back of his hand against the leg of his trousers, leaving a small gray smudge. It’ll come out in the wash, probably, and if it doesn’t, then it hardly matters. Xie Lian no longer has fine things.

Under the ash is a little, irrelevant burn. Even now, the sting is fading.

“You don’t like the ash?” says the man in red. He takes another draw, regarding Nobody through the smoke. It still smells sweet.

“It’s not that—it’s not the ash,” Nobody says. “It was hot. I was surprised. I didn’t think, I just didn’t want to get you dirty.”

“Nobody is so sweet,” says the man in red, grinning. He draws a thick lock of Xie Lian’s hair over his fingers. “Many people might say that I am already very foul.”

Xie Lian thinks of the man in red with his legs spread, sighing, head tipped back and eye closed. “I mean, your shirt. Silk is hard to clean.”

“And yet you didn’t think twice about staining your own things,” says the man in red. “What about your hand? Did it burn you?”

“Not really,” Nobody says. The spot on his hand is pink, the pain gone. “It’s nothing, just unexpected.”

“You don’t mind being dirty.” The man in red sighs out more gingery smoke. Xie Lian cannot see if the paint on his lips comes off on the paper of the cigarette, both are so black.

“It doesn’t matter,” Xie Lian says.

“It does matter,” the man in red says. The corners of his mouth tighten. “You are mine, and I expect my things to be clean.”

Xie Lian tries not to shrink. He does not want to disappoint the man in red, but he cannot help but think that if the man in red wanted clean things, he should not have laid claim to Xie Lian, perpetually worn and used as he is.

Idly, the man in red takes Xie Lian’s foot in his hand, apparently without thinking. He runs a warm thumb over the high, arched bones at the top of Xie Lian’s foot, shifting some of the tendons. The man in red digs his fingertips into the knotted muscles in the sole of Xie Lian’s arch. He smokes in silence, gazing about the room, content to ignore Xie Lian.

When the man in red grinds a knuckle into something deep and painful, Xie Lian can’t stop the way he kicks. He’s not trying to get away or stop the man in red, it’s just such an odd sensation that he can’t imagine any other reaction. Immediately, the man in red does it again. This time Xie Lian doesn’t kick, but stays still.

“Did that hurt?” says the man in red.

“Yes,” Nobody says.

“You’ve been limping for a week,” says the man in red.

Has he? Xie Lian hasn’t noticed any new aches or pains; his hip still hurts from being pulled out of joint all those years ago, and his ankle never healed entirely right from being stomped.

“I wore a lot of impractical shoes when I was younger,” Xie Lian says.

To this, the man in red says nothing, but taps the ash from his cigarette. It lands in Nobody’s hair.

He switches the cigarette to the other hand, and reaches back down to Nobody’s foot. The cherry glows, and Nobody wonders how it tastes.

“That burn isn’t likely to blister,” the man in red says. He strokes the back of his knuckles across the top of Nobody’s foot. The burning end of the cigarette barely brushes along the thin skin. The man in red could burn Nobody to the bone if he wanted.

Nobody holds himself as still as possible, for fear of burning if he moves too much. The hot cigarette comes closer and closer to his skin with each pass, Xie Lian winding himself tighter and tighter until he knows he will start to shake. Occasionally, he thinks the coal touches his skin. The faintest red lines rise, whether from the heat or from real contact, he doesn’t know. His breathing grows shallow.

The man in red ignores him. The black cigarette is nearly burned out.

“Please,” Nobody says at last. “Please, if you’re going to burn me, do it. It’s too much. Please.”

“You want me to burn you?” says the man in red, raising an eyebrow and looking down on him.

“Yes,” says Nobody. “No. It will hurt. Please stop teasing.”

The man in red takes his hand away from Nobody’s foot. “All right. We’ll do something different.”

Suddenly Nobody feels very cold. He didn’t want the man in red to stop touching him. “No,” he says. “That’s not. Don’t stop.”

The man in red taps ash into Nobody’s hair again. “So you do want me to burn you. You’re just tired of waiting and you think you’re above asking for things.”

“No!” Nobody says, horrified. Is that how people see him? Too proud ask for what he wants, expecting everyone to anticipate his wishes? Is he still so spoiled?

“Then explain yourself.” The man in red lights another cigarette from the end of the first, then drops it on the floor and grinds it under his boot.

“I—” Nobody starts. “I was afraid. I thought I might kick you. I thought you might not do it. I was afraid of crying again.”

“Well,” the man in red says, “you needn’t worry about that.” He takes another long draw.

Then he grips Nobody’s bad ankle in his free hand, plucks the cigarette from his lips with the other, and grinds the burning end into the tender inner arch of Nobody’s foot, the only part free of calluses.

Xie Lian screams, in both pain and shock. For a moment he doesn’t know where he is, the pain so bright and sudden. His eyes swim with tears.

When his mind and vision clear, he finds Hua Cheng patting the burn with something cold and soft.

“That, I think, will blister,” says Hua Cheng. He smiles at Xie Lian, as if they share a joke.

The barely-smoked cigarette lies crushed on the floor. “That hurt,” says Xie Lian.

“Yes,” says Hua Cheng. “And now, every time you have to clean it, you will think of me.”

As if Xie Lian does not think of him every day already. He will think of Hua Cheng with every step, every shift of his weight. How could Hua Cheng think anyone might forget him?

(“Is it just boots for you, or is it also feet?” He Xuan says. “Either way, take them off my coffee table.”

“It’s mostly boots,” Hua Cheng says, without moving. “Not really feet, unless it’s. You know. Him.”

“Oh yeah, you’d do anything to get inside those stupid jackboots.” 

“If you talk about him too much, you know what’ll happen. I’ll get a boner, Black Water Sinking Ships. Then what? I’ll be here in your house, hard, with my shoes on your table.”

“You started it,” He Xuan says. “You’re still never going to fuck him. I bet he doesn’t even have the boots anymore.”)

“I already do,” Xie Lian says. He always will.

“It will scar if you don’t care for it properly,” Hua Cheng says. “A little memory.”

Despite Xie Lian’s careful cleaning, the burn heals unkindly, with a round, shiny scar. He spends too much time on his feet for it to heal any other way. It doesn’t matter; the only person who sees the soles of his feet is the man in red, and anyone else who looks at him in the Gambler’s Den. It’s hardly an identifying mark.

No matter where it is, the Gambler’s Den is always warm. It makes sense: many of its patrons spend their time in various states of undress. The man in red wears linen and silk shirts, light but strong and fine. They drape and flatter him. Sometimes he folds his sleeves back or looses a few buttons, but never discards his shirts entirely. He is surprisingly modest for a man in charge of an underground sex club.

The night is still hot when Xie Lian finds the Gambler’s Den. He nods to Yin Yu’s unreadable face at the door, passes He Xuan laying out towels next to gallons of water, and goes to Hua Cheng. Even inside, it is so hot that Hua Cheng’s hair is gathered up into an elaborate knot run through by his long silver pins. A mess of long, straight scars stretch over his arm, visible through his sheer red shirt, suggestive of writing but without meaning. Xie Lian has never seen him wear anything so revealing.

Nobody settles at the man in red’s feet, head on his thigh. The man in red smiles and pets Nobody’s hair. It is too hot to sit in his lap.

“Let’s play a game,” says the man in red. He arranges Nobody’s folded legs and straightens his spine. Then he places a chunk of ice in Nobody’s hands. For a couple moments, it feels good. Then the cold sinks in, and Nobody shivers.

“No,” says the man in red. “Stay still. Don’t drop it.”

Nobody clutches the ice, even as it melts in his hands. Cool water drips down his wrists. The ice burns against his palms. Sweat trickles down the backs of his knees. 

The man in red plays with Nobody’s hair and watches his subjects. He Xuan places steaming hot compresses at the pulse points of a long, slender figure on the floor. How he can bear to work with boiling water on such a hot night, Nobody can barely imagine. 

“Does the ice help?” asks the man in red. “You looked overheated when you arrived.”

“It’s cold,” Nobody says. His body is too hot, his hands too cold. He cannot tell if he should shiver or sweat, so his body tries to do both. Sitting like this makes his bad hip ache. It never healed correctly from the dislocation.

“You can have more when that’s gone,” says the man in red.

Nobody does not want more. He holds out his wet, cupped hands. 

The man in red places a beautifully carved piece of ice in his palms, so large his hands barely close around it. The thing looks more like a mineral crystal than an ice cube, something that would not be out of place on a rich man’s desk or display of fine curiosities, not something for Xie Lian’s cracked, shaking hands to melt away where it cannot be admired. Even he cannot admire it, as the man in red folds his hands around it.

“It is too pretty,” Xie Lian says, trying to offer it back to the man in red.

“Don’t give your responsibilities back to me,” says Hua Cheng. “I made it for you.”

“It’s beautiful. It’s too cold,” says Xie Lian. “I can’t hold it.”

“You will. You already are.”

Nobody grips the ice tighter. His eyes water. So many fine things have passed through his hands and been reduced by his touch. What is one more, if the man in red asks it of him?

“Stay here, darling,” says Hua Cheng, as if Nobody has anywhere to go. He strokes Nobody’s head and stands. Nobody’s gaze stays fixed on his own clasped, burning hands.

The shrinking ice leaves his hands numb and undextrous, his grip uncertain. He tries to interlace his fingers for a better hold, but he fumbles. The ice nearly slips from his grasp, and he yelps, head jerking up to look for the man in red. Surely fumbles and failure are part of this game.

But the man in red has his back to Nobody, head inclined to listen to Yin Yu speak. He shifts his weight, and folds his arms over his chest. The sheer red shirt pulls close against his body. Curling down his back are long, deep, intentional scars, in the shape of a falling flower. For a moment, Xie Lian does not believe what he sees.

He drops the ice. It shatters. Maybe he screams. At the sound, the master of the Gambler’s Den turns to look over his shoulder, over the Crown Prince’s signature.

Xie Lian flees from Wuming. Before he can think, he is across the room, out the door, shoving Yin Yu aside. He runs, nearly blind with horror, nowhere but away. All the pain from old injuries vanishes, washed clean by terror. He cannot face the enormity of his offense, not before so many who trust Hua Cheng. 

Surely Hua Cheng–Wuming–the man in red–must have known Xie Lian for himself at the first. He must have recognized Xie Lian’s voice, or his figure, or his hair, or his scent, or his tread. It is absurd to think that Wuming could fail to recognize Xie Lian, even after all this time, even despite never having seen his face. Shame wells up within the horror; how could Xie Lian not recognize Wuming, after everything he subjected him to? How often has Xie Lian looked at that photograph, memorizing the shape of him?

If Hua Cheng did not know who Xie Lian is–if he did not know that Xie Lian is the one who brutalized and crushed and abandoned him, how could he tolerate finding out? The only sensible response would be to send him away. It is too much to hope that Wuming might have forgotten Xie Lian. And the betrayal of Xie Lian approaching him again, without identifying himself! No one would believe that Xie Lian did not know who Hua Cheng has been, not after their history.

Xie Lian locks himself in his bedroom at the end of his panicked flight. Self-revulsion nearly turns his stomach–after so long thinking about what may have become of Wuming, of wondering what he would do if they met again, of crafting apology after apology, what he does is run away? He should have left more carefully. Throwing himself across the room, across the city, was not a subtle way to get away if he did not want to disturb Hua Cheng’s people. Now everyone knows he ran from something.

He does not unlock the door for days. His phone rings, and he turns it off. Work can fire him if they can find the paperwork, if any of his information checks out. It won’t. He hasn’t had a real address in years. Finding work isn’t hard if you’re not proud. He creeps back and forth between his bed and the bathroom for three days. Xie Lian has not been proud for a long, long time.

On the fourth day, the sickness of hunger drives him out of the bedroom, into the tiny kitchen. It is dusk, but he knows his home well enough that he doesn’t bother with the lights. Electricity is expensive, and the dark is comforting and soft.

He Xuan unfolds himself from the sidewalk trash armchair like a marionette from hell. In his single long, straight dress, he looks like a black pillar crowned with an unsmiling head. “Hello, your highness.”

Xie Lian places his back against the wall. “Why did he send you?”

He Xuan arches an eyebrow. “No one sent me. I have been here for two days, and I have eaten all your food.”

“Did you follow me?”

“No,” He Xuan scoffs. “I was busy. The world no longer revolves around you, whatever Crimson Rain might tell you.”

“How did you find me?” Xie Lian asks. If Hua Cheng did not send He Xuan, then he is here for his own purposes, which have always been mysterious.

“I know some very nosy bitches,” He Xuan says. He crosses the room and stands before Xie Lian to tower over him. Despite He Xuan’s deceptively delicate build, Xie Lian has seen him restrain and manhandle people with ease. His eyes are as flat and black as his mouth. “I am here on my own business.”

“I don’t have anything I can give you,” Xie Lian says uncertainly. 

“You owe me,” He Xuan says, “for years of unrelenting misery. I thought Crimson Rain was annoying and fucked up on you ages ago, but that was nothing to how unbearable he is without you. He has stewed and lamented for you ever since you disappeared. Everything he does is to catch your personal attention, did you know that? He created a perfect habitat for you, like some kind of bug, with no hope at all that he might ever see you again. He has a religious shrine to you in his house. And he has told me about this the entire time. You cannot possibly imagine how annoying that is. I thought he would shut up when you turned up again, but no, he is somehow even worse. He has been wild since you ran off, he won’t eat, he won’t sleep, and he won’t leave me alone.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Go tell him to be quiet, or I will lock his house and burn it down. And then I will have to find a new club. Think of how sad that will be,” He Xuan says. With that, he steps back from Xie Lian, crosses the room, and leaves. He does not close the door behind him.

“You don’t understand what I did to him,” Xie Lian says to the empty room.

The food really is all gone.

Xie Lian haunts the city as he hasn’t since the man with the white mask reached for Wuming. He does not think about it. Wuming was not something to be grasped or stolen, he was a person. He is a person. He is Hua Cheng now. The hot summer rain makes Xie Lian feel like a shrimp, the city itself a giant steamer.

Days later, he sees the winking red lights of the Gambler’s Den reflected on wet pavement. Relief and terror break like a wave. Despite He Xuan’s words, he cannot entirely believe that Hua Cheng wants to see him again.

Yin Yu raises a hand to stop Xie Lian when he enters. “Crimson Rain Sought Flower is not here.”

The Gambler’s Den is never without Hua Cheng. Xie Lian has never seen it without him. It never occurred to him that it could be hosted without his direct oversight. Is Yin Yu lying? Was He Xuan lying? Does Hua Cheng not want to see him? Xie Lian tries to see around him, but Yin Yu draws himself up to a surprising height and breadth. 

“He is not here, your highness,” Yin Yu repeats.

Does everyone know who Xie Lian used to be? He thought people would forget him. Was being the Crown Prince such a ridiculous idea, to stay with everyone for so long? He has not been the Crown Prince since before he met Wuming. “Where is he?”

“At home,” Yin Yu says.

“Where is that?” Xie Lian asks.

Yin Yu gives him directions to a cold, expensive part of the city, a place Xie Lian hasn’t seen for a long time. Hua Cheng lives on the top floor of a steel and glass tower.

“I’m here to see Hua Cheng,” he tells the doorman.

The elevator to the top floor is so perfectly silent that Xie Lian starts to fear that it is not moving. His reflection looks sick, eyes bruise-dark, face pale and patchy. He misses his mask, something he hasn’t thought of since abandoning it in the old apartment. He does not want to miss it. Wearing it was not a good thing.

The elevator opens to a hallway of rich wood, polished to a glow. A single door stands at the end of the hall. Xie Lian goes to it, but does not knock. This high up, the noise of the city is gone. Xie Lian can hear himself blink. 

It is not locked when he tries the handle. He knew it would not be; he imagines it never is. He feels every beat of his heart move the blood through his body, despite veins clogged with dread. There is no way he can atone for what he did to Wuming, not in any way he can think of. The only person who absolve Xie Lian of those offenses is the one offended. Xie Lian has no other choice.

The rich wood continues inside the penthouse, but Xie Lian sees only Hua Cheng. Now that he knows, it seems impossible that he did not know him for Wuming immediately, but at the same time, impossible to imagine that they are the same person. They have the same glossy hair, the same wide, elegant hands. They have the same unwavering, brilliant gaze. Hua Cheng is taller, a little broader, and carries himself so differently. He fills and commands any room he enters. Wuming had been quiet to the point of invisibility, until Xie Lian wanted him. Then he came alive, bright as a taper.

“Hua Cheng,” Xie Lian says.

He crosses to stand before Xie Lian, eyes fixed on his, and kneels at Xie Lian’s feet. The perspective makes it clearer than ever, even with his face uncovered and his eye socket empty. He takes Xie Lian’s hand.

“I have remained, and have always been, your most faithful servant, your highness,” Wuming says, smiling up.