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“I heard that you have acquired a student,” is a common way that old colleagues greet Jing Yuan these days, followed closely by, “I heard that you have acquired a ward.” This is how Mingze greets Jing Yuan when he visits the Luofu from the Zhuming. Mingze is not as old as Jing Yuan by at least four hundred years, but they’ve been passing acquaintances for at least three centuries now, and they’ve remained on cordial terms, and that is what qualifies as a work friendship, or at least a friendly colleague, now that Jing Yuan no longer has any other friends from his own generation.
“Time flies,” says Jing Yuan, pouring Mingze an obligatory cup of wine. A bit of liquor does much for the alliance between the seven Xianzhou ships, and here is no different. “Once I’d been a student myself, and I never could have imagined that I’d one day take one myself.”
“Even the immortal have life cycles, I suppose,” says Mingze contemplatively. Jing Yuan thinks it’s a bit funny when people at least several centuries younger than himself wax poetic as if they’re ancient grandparents, but Jing Yuan supposes that Mingze himself is, by most Xianzhou native standards, indeed quite old. “Say, where is he? Your little prodigy.”
Jing Yuan hesitates. “Out and about,” he says at last. “Yanqing is getting older now. He doesn’t require me to monitor his every move, and soon he’ll be even more independent than he is already.”
“Ah, is he at that age?” Mingze chuckles. “I had a teenager once. I couldn’t get her to do anything I told her to.”
No, Yanqing was independent, but he was always obedient, always hungry for Jing Yuan’s praise. In that way, Yanqing was still so much the child who cried at night, crawled into Jing Yuan’s bed, clung to Jing Yuan’s arm at all hours of the day. In an attempt to convince Yanqing to fly on his own, Jing Yuan had sent Yanqing away, perhaps selfishly, knowing how Yanqing would… react to seeing someone speak with Jing Yuan so informally. “No, no, you are my guest here on the Luofu,” Jing Yuan insists as Mingze reaches to pour Jing Yuan a cup of his own wine.
“Ah, but I’m a measly colonel of the Xianzhou Zhuming. It should be I who pours the cup for you.”
“I insist,” says Jing Yuan, just as he hears his office door close. He looks up. Mingze blinks and looks around. “No, nothing,” says Jing Yuan as Mingze opens his mouth to ask. “Think nothing of it. If there was any danger, Yanqing would take care of it.”
“Ah, he must be growing up well if you place so much trust in him. Growing up is never easy. You must have done a wonderful job raising him.”
Jing Yuan feels his smile strain.
*
“General,” comes Yanqing’s voice in the dark. Jing Yuan, still slightly tipsy from drinking, only halfway manages to get his eyes open.
In the dark, Yanqing’s body weight pushes the mattress down. “Nightmare?” Jing Yuan’s voice asks, even as he knows that Yanqing is older now and no longer comes to Jing Yuan’s bed when he’s frightened of the dark.
“I had a nightmare that the general abandoned me,” says Yanqing’s voice.
Jing Yuan must have reflexively opened his arms to invite Yanqing into his bed the way they used to sleep together when Yanqing was a child, because he wakes up again, with no recollection of having fallen asleep, and Yanqing is curled up behind him. “You’re getting too old for this,” Jing Yuan says with a yawn, to which Yanqing does not reply, only tucks his arms possessively around Jing Yuan’s waist and buries his face into Jing Yuan’s shoulder.
This should have been Jing Yuan’s first warning sign, but he’s exhausted. The bed is warm. Yanqing’s body is finally going through its first growth spurt and he now always runs hot, all his skin stretched taut over his lengthening limbs. There’s a breath on the back of Jing Yuan’s neck, which becomes a careful kiss, and then a long, possessive lick up his spine.
Jing Yuan goes still. Now he’s awake and painfully sober.
“General,” Yanqing whispers. His hard cock drags pointedly along the back of Jing Yuan’s thigh.
“Yanqing,” Jing Yuan warns.
“The general helps me with everything else. Why not this too?”
“Last time was the last time,” Jing Yuan says softly.
Yanqing shakes his head against Jing Yuan’s back. “But I can’t stop thinking about things I shouldn’t. I’m so pent up, General. You said it was normal to be pent up when you’re becoming an adult.”
Yanqing is not this stupid; Jing Yuan knows that he plays up the childish tone in his voice to wheedle things out of Jing Yuan that he shouldn’t have. “Not like this. It’s not something I can help you with.”
Yanqing’s arms tighten around Jing Yuan’s waist. “Why? Is Yanqing not good enough? Yanqing doesn’t remember a time when we weren’t together, and now the general doesn’t want me at his side anymore?”
Jing Yuan swallows. He shifts, trying to pull away from Yanqing’s tight grip. “Go back to sleep, Yanqing.”
Yanqing’s mouth grazes the back of Jing Yuan’s neck, his hands slipping into the open front of Jing Yuan’s sleeping robe. “I can’t sleep. All day I have to look at you. I have to wait while other people take up the general’s time. I have to bear it while other people put their hands on you.” Yanqing’s small fingers dig into Jing Yuan’s skin, his blunted nails daring to leave small marks. His breathing grows sharper. When Jing Yuan still makes no move, Yanqing’s hips seem to move on their own, adolescent hormones getting the better of him. “General,” he moans, rutting in earnest like a dog. “I can’t… It hurts…”
“Shh,” Jing Yuan says, turning over. Not that there’s anyone lurking outside the Arbiter General’s bedroom door who might hear something they shouldn’t—guarding his door at night was always Yanqing’s job, and now Jing Yuan’s nightly guard is the very one stealing into his bed at night. “Quiet now.”
“I need the general so badly,” Yanqing pleads. In the dark, Jing Yuan can see the lines of his cheekbones, where the baby fat will soon melt away and leave Yanqing’s adult face. Even already this hungry creature in Jing Yuan’s bed is unrecognizable from the sweet boy he raised, and he’s not even fully grown.
Hearing in the back of his head Fu Xuan’s pointed comments about how Jing Yuan spoils Yanqing too much, Jing Yuan hushes him again, allows Yanqing to spread his legs and straddle one of Jing Yuan’s legs. Even in the dark, even in a room locked and bolted, Jing Yuan slips his hand into Yanqing’s pants as furtively as he can, as if ashamed in front of an audience who isn’t there. Yanqing’s mouth opens sweetly against Jing Yuan’s shoulder, but the second he whimpers Jing Yuan shushes him, smooths his hair back and soothes him with a firm hand around his waist. Jing Yuan massages his cock in the smallest movements he can manage; the lewdness of skin slapping would be too much to bear when even the soft shifting of sheets and Yanqing’s open-mouthed breaths make Jing Yuan’s gut curl. “This is the last time,” Jing Yuan whispers, and Yanqing nods eagerly, the way he does when Jing Yuan swears this will be the last time that Jing Yuan purchases an expensive sword for Yanqing’s collection and they both know it won’t be.
It’s almost no time before Yanqing is squirming and rocking into Jing Yuan’s fist, making little noises that Jing Yuan shouldn’t listen to as Yanqing’s teacher, and Jing Yuan tries his best to ignore. “Let it out,” Jing Yuan murmurs. The sooner that Yanqing comes, the sooner they can put this behind them. He’s only helping his teenaged ward with his growing pains, Jing Yuan tells himself. When the night is over, all of this will fade in the morning light.
But then Yanqing gets his mouth on Jing Yuan’s neck, nibbles the skin with teeth and laves over the bruise with the flat of his tongue, and Jing Yuan fights not to flinch. It’s a practiced move, something one would do with a real lover, not fit for whatever this is—this late-night mistake of attempting to pacify Yanqing’s growing appetite that, no matter how many times Jing Yuan attempts to relieve him, only seems to increase.
“General,” Yanqing whispers. “Let me make it good for you too.” Jing Yuan ignores this; Yanqing is always saying such things. “I’ve been practicing,” Yanqing says softly.
Jing Yuan stills. “With who?”
“Nobody. Just myself. Please, General, you’re always doing so much for me.” Yanqing’s voice takes on that petulant whine of desperation. “Let me do this for you.”
“Shhh. It’s you who came here because you’re pent up. Come here—“
Yanqing goes gladly, pushes Jing Yuan down and crawls on top of him, panting and whimpering against Jing Yuan’s mouth. His hips jerk and stutter in a debased need to fuck into a warm hole; Jing Yuan feels a bit nauseous seeing his student, once a sweet-faced child, now succumbing to an adult’s sexual instincts. Yanqing groans loudly, suddenly squirming away as Jing Yuan hushes him again. “General, not your hand—“ In the dark, Yanqing’s eyes are overwrought gold, tinged dark at the corners from lust. “I want to be close. The most important person to me…”
Jing Yuan hushes him again. No matter how many times Jing Yuan insists that Yanqing will have to grow up and find a lover elsewhere, Yanqing refuses to listen. But instead of going silent, Yanqing just speaks lowly, a secret for the two of them: “I’ll make it good for you, General. Please. I want to feel you.”
Jing Yuan hesitates. “You can have my mouth.”
“I want the general,” Yanqing says, eyes narrowed.
Jing Yuan had always been bad at denying Yanqing. He spoiled his student rotten; he let Yanqing get away with being headstrong and strong-willed and he still lets him get away with it. Yanqing’s joy is so palpable when Jing Yuan gestures for the lube that it’s hard to regret. Slowly, sick with shame at the squelching noise, Jing Yuan fingers himself open because he doesn’t trust Yanqing to do it. For everything else, Jing Yuan has taken great care to teach Yanqing how to do all manner of things himself, carefully supervised as Yanqing replicated the feat, set Yanqing free to do as he pleased, knowing that Yanqing’s independence was almost always bound by Yanqing’s desire to please the general in turn. For this, Jing Yuan has never taught Yanqing how to stretch someone out, how to warm the lube, how to make someone lose themselves on fingers alone. It’s not the sort of thing Jing Yuan is supposed to teach him, and it’s supremely too little, too late, but Jing Yuan can’t bear to think about teaching Yanqing something like this formally when every time Yanqing has crawled into his bed was supposed to have been the last time.
Yanqing holds him tight from behind as he slips inside. Yanqing is still smaller than most grown men, but not by very much, and at the rate Yanqing is growing, not for much longer, either. He’s long enough to just kiss the spot inside of Jing Yuan that older, more experienced lovers had once tortured until Jing Yuan had once been able to cum without a single touch to his cock. This is worse; Yanqing is long enough to tease and wide enough for the stretch of Jing Yuan’s hole to burn, but not enough for anything more than the most tantalizing, maddening hint of almost-pleasure.
What a horrible image. Curled up in bed like this, with the sheets covering where they’re joined together, they could be the picture of innocent guardian and ward, teacher and student.
“Tell me how to make it good for you,” Yanqing begs. His voice is shaking and breathless.
“You don’t have to think about that. This is because of your needs, not mine.”
Jing Yuan can feel Yanqing pout against his back. “I don’t want to be the general’s student, who the general dotes on and gives guidance to. I—“ Yanqing begins to move, rocking in slowly from behind. “I’m almost an adult. I want to be the general’s lover.”
“There’s such a thing as too much ambition.”
Yanqing naturally doesn’t listen. “Can I touch you here?” Yanqing’s hands are hesitant as they cup Jing Yuan’s ass.
Jing Yuan jerks reflexively. “Where did you learn something like that?” Jing Yuan replies hoarsely.
Yanqing’s hand squeezes. Maybe it’s for Yanqing’s own benefit; he’s almost shaking with arousal. “I just want to touch. All day long I’m not allowed to.”
Yanqing’s hands grasp greedily at every inch of Jing Yuan’s thighs, pulling and squeezing. At last it’s like a dam breaking; unable to pull Jing Yuan’s body weight across the mattress and instead he helplessly fucks into Jing Yuan like Yanqing could crawl inside his body completely. Jing Yuan hushes him again but the sound of skin on skin only grows louder with each helpless thrust of Yanqing’s hips. His cockhead barely brushes against Jing Yuan’s prostate, leaving him hard but unsatisfied.
Jing Yuan covers his face against his pillow and pretends he is not here. “The general is hard,” Yanqing whispers reverently. “Do I please you? Does it feel good for you too?” But Jing Yuan says nothing; Jing Yuan would rather not have his illusions shattered that Jing Yuan is merely assisting his student with a late-night teenaged growing pain. He can sleep at night only if he assures himself that this is only for Yanqing’s benefit, that Jing Yuan derives no pleasure from it, that his student’s needs come before his own.
With a frustrated noise, Yanqing shoves at Jing Yuan’s thigh and hikes his leg up with the fervency of the blind instinct to fuck deeper, harder, to selfishly chase his pleasure somewhere inside Jing Yuan’s body, except at this new angle Yanqing’s cock drags sharp and heavy over his prostate and Jing Yuan gasps, muffled into the pillow. It was the surprise, Jing Yuan tries to tell himself; he was just taken aback. “General!” Yanqing breathes, as if Jing Yuan has given him a gift.
“It’s nothing,” Jing Yuan says hoarsely. “Just—hurry up and come—"
Yanqing’s hips slam home again, frantic and fast with the first taste of successfully pleasuring someone else. Jing Yuan’s sentence dies in a punctured moan.
Yanqing is a fast learner as he is in everything. Jing Yuan bites his lip until it threatens to bleed and Yanqing is like a dog with a bone, chasing that spot inside his teacher relentlessly now that he knows where it is and what it does, until Jing Yuan’s cock is leaking against the sheets, trapped and painfully hard against his own thigh, noises punched out of him and leaking like filth into the night air.
“Let me hear you,” Yanqing begs. Jing Yuan bites back another groan. Even the slightest noise feeds Yanqing’s frenzied movements, and Yanqing pulls Jing Yuan’s thigh up to such a high angle that he can feel the burn in his leg. “General—please—is it good? Tell me it’s good—“
Jing Yuan would rather die than say any such thing aloud, but the more he struggles to bite his lip over his noises, the more insistent Yanqing’s movements become. The sound of their fucking is loud and unmistakable as Yanqing’s body curls against Jing Yuan’s, taut like a bow as he blindly chases his peak.
“Oh, please, General, let me, let me—“ Yanqing mumbles, and Jing Yuan had no idea what he’s asking for considering that his hands are now vicelike on Jing Yuan’s waist and he’s fucking into Jing Yuan with increasingly blind fervor. “Let me—I want to—!”
“Let it out,” Jing Yuan murmurs.
Yanqing slams in as deep as he can in a single thrust and lets out a small cry against Jing Yuan’s back, and then keeps fucking him, unsteady but nearly possessed, milking every bit of cum out until it’s fucked into Jing Yuan’s body. Jing Yuan can’t help but shudder and clench, making Yanqing gasp and grind deeper. His nails on Jing Yuan’s chest are sunk into his skin like barbs, like he could lock the two of them together and never let go.
Jing Yuan’s head is full of noise and nothing at all. He’s so hard that he doesn’t know if it would make it better or worse to touch himself. He fights to steady his breathing. “Th—there,” he says, but his own voice sounds uneven to himself. “Do you… do you feel better, Yanqing?”
Yanqing too pants for air. “I left the general unfulfilled,” Yanqing says into Jing Yuan’s hair.
“No need to worry about me.” The words come automatically. “Come on, Yanqing. Let’s get you cleaned up and then we can go back to sleep.”
Yanqing’s hips roll just slightly. Although he’s mostly gone soft, he’s still snug inside of Jing Yuan, and it’s hard not to think about the cum in his guts that Yanqing is slowly pushing deeper into Jing Yuan. “Yanqing,” Jing Yuan warns, a helpless echo of how this degeneracy began.
“Why won’t the general tell Yanqing how to please him?” says Yanqing crossly from behind him. As if remembering Jing Yuan’s cock after all, Yanqing’s hand finally reaches around to stroke him, his fingers so small around Jing Yuan’s much larger cockhead. “You’re so hard but you never said anything. How can I learn and impress the general if you don’t teach me what you like?”
There’s no need to take care of me dies in Jing Yuan’s throat as Yanqing starts to stroke him in earnest. It’s a practiced motion, long and firm, the way that Jing Yuan supposes Yanqing probably touches himself when he’s alone. “General, if you squeeze me like that,” Yanqing whines, “I’ll get excited again…”
Jing Yuan must make some kind of noise just then, because Yanqing’s hand disappears. “Does the general like that?” he asks excitedly. “The general wants to go again?!” he asks, like he's a child again begging for another round of sparring.
“I never said that,” Jing Yuan says weakly.
But it’s too late. Yanqing pushes Jing Yuan over onto his stomach, so that Yanqing can better press them flat against each other. Yanqing’s cock isn’t quite hardening, but it’s not exactly soft anymore either—the terrifying stamina of youth, Jing Yuan thinks with a touch of trepidation. Yanqing rocks against him quicker now, the slide of his cock eased by the first round’s cum still inside. “This time,” Yanqing says with determination, “this time I’ll make the general come.”
*
Jing Yuan doesn’t come on the second round. He doesn’t come on the third, either, although he gets so close only to be brought back from the edge both times that it feels like he could have come. Yanqing is so young and so frighteningly determined to get what he wants that when Jing Yuan finally comes, it’s on the fourth round, his hole fucked loose and full of Yanqing’s cum, his legs spread humiliatingly wide so that Yanqing’s cock can reach as far inside him as it will go. With their hips flush to each other, Jing Yuan comes hard all over his own stomach, pushed to his limit, desperate enough to come completely untouched.
*
Jing Yuan has so far lived his life by the belief that if one does not wish others to know about one’s actions, one should not be doing it in the first place. Even his decisions to bend or break rules as general were open secrets, actions that everyone knew of but couldn’t oppose him for due to the political power he now wielded. His other secrets he keeps to himself: Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
By morning, Jing Yuan pretends to doze while Yanqing pops up out of bed at an ungodly hour, regenerated and eager to get back to his early morning training routine. Late night sex, Jing Yuan can see, has been invigorating for at least one of them. Yanqing kisses Jing Yuan’s cheek before he goes, tenderly like a husband leaving for work instead of the boy Jing Yuan had raised, and Jing Yuan buries his face into his pillow to hide his expression. Yanqing hesitates before he goes. He opens his mouth as if to speak. In the end, he loses his nerve, kisses Jing Yuan’s hair one last time, and then leaves to go.
That was the last time, Jing Yuan tells himself when he peels his eyes open. When he sits up and drags himself to the bathroom, the bathroom mirror tells him that Yanqing has taken the time to leave gnawing little bites all over his shoulders, like a teething puppy chewing on anything it can get.
Jing Yuan sighs. Pinches his temples. Rubs the sleep from one eye and sighs deeply.
The actions of the student are the teacher’s responsibility to bear, he supposes. Jing Yuan pulls out his makeup kit to begin covering the hickeys too high for his collar to cover, takes solace in the fact that soon Yanqing will be grown out of this phase, and reassures himself that all of this will never happen again.