#cryinngggg 13k tumblr post will u even work

[astronicht]

fanfic writers directors cut: in the pines , not sure I'm doing this correctly lol 🫣 can you talk about what you envision to happen next? If I remember correctly, there was a large chapter you broke up. I love this fic so much and reread it ever so often. I'd love to hear all your brain worms about it !! ty for reading and enjoy your day off 🩵🤍

"there was a larger chapter you broke up" would you believe I forgot that this was true. Anyway, Pines is very special to me, and may never actually get its final chapter for slightly hilarious reasons. But hey, you reminded me that there was a spare 10k of Pines hanging around! So like, I read through it last night and I have done one (1) entire editing pass. But I figured, you know! Why not!

Anyway, here's the next chapter of Pines (anyone curious what I'm talking about can read the first two chapters on ao3). I hope it brings you joy <3 Thank you for loving this fic

(nsfw below cut)

The next evening, Jiang Yanli drops off Jin Zixuan, who is dressed in comfortable pink sweatpants and a button-down white shirt and looks a little dazed.

“Are you alright?” Lan Zhan asks, letting him into the house through the garage. Maybe they should just watch baseball.

“Yeah,” says Zixuan. “It is. Loud. Over there right now.”

Lan Zhan has met Jiang Yanli’s brother once; he did not seem especially loud. He did not realize until this week that Zixuan lives part time at Jiang Yanli’s, but it makes sense. He remembers the big house, Zixuan’s choice of a small guest room. “Hm,” he says, and gets Jin Zixuan a glass of water. “Drink that.”

Jin Zixuan sits at the little square two-person dining table in the family room — the cozy room open to the kitchen, with the sliding glass doors to the yard, the birds flitting by the fountain that will need to be scrubbed out this week — and drinks his water. A warm silence falls. Lan Zhan feels good, leaning over the railing that separates the kitchen from the step down to the family room, watching Zixuan with focus. Outside, someone is using their fucking leafblower again. It buzzes through the open windows.

Zixuan finishes his glass. Lan Zhan and Jin Zixuan look at each other across the parquet floor of Lan Zhan’s family room, Lan Zhan from a step up and arms crossed on the railing.

“Be gentle with me, bro,” Zixuan says, stretching his socked feet into the patch of sunlight coming in from the door.

“No,” Lan Zhan says.

Zixuan stares at him, wide-eyed — then laughs and gets on his knees in the sun. 

They have both, Lan Zhan figures, had something of a very long week.

*

Wei Ying has a migraine on Thursday, he says. He wants to go straight home from work and sleep — he’s very sorry. Lan Zhan wonders, mouth tight— but then Wei Ying asks if maybe Lan Zhan is free on Fridays at the same time? He doesn’t want to assume, but Wei Ying has every other Friday off, and usually he’ll feel better by the next afternoon, and— 

Lan Zhan has every day off. Lan Zhan is not working right now. Not this year. 

He says he is free on Friday at three. 

Wei Ying doesn’t know to come through the garage like Yanli knew to bring Zixuan. He rings the doorbell, the same way Lan Zhan’s piano students do, but when Lan Zhan opens the door it’s him, there in Lan Zhan’s shady front walk, taking a few polite — or shy — steps back from the door along the path that leads from the corner around the garage, through the rock garden and the knee-high [blue flowers] that have been there for decades, now past blooming and thick with seed pods.

“Hi!” Wei Ying says. Then he lurches to a stop, and starts forward again. Lan Zhan nearly lurches forward out of the doorway himself, trying to keep the momentum of the approach. “Oh shit, I didn’t bring anything,” Wei Ying says, suddenly freezing and staring at Lan Zhan as if Lan Zhan can fix this. It’s funny. It’s funny. Lan Zhan feels something like wanting to laugh in his chest, tight and warm and yellow. “I can double back and get coffee. Fruit. A tiny orchid. Popcorn chicken. Do you like popcorn chicken? There’s a place I walked past, next to the Kumon tutoring—”

“No, thank you,” says Lan Zhan, a shade too softly to be what he is supposed to be. Relief, unexpected and blooming in shaky waves in his chest, is briefly overwhelming him. 

“Nothing?” Wei Ying asks, bouncing on the balls of his feet. They are near-strangers; Lan Zhan has never seen most of Wei Ying’s expressions. It seems like he wants to be pleasing. Wei Ying does not need to strive to be pleasing. It is not what anyone else would call pleasing, probably, but the attempt is already almost overwhelming. Lan Zhan wants to bundle him somewhere warm. Lan Zhan wants to pinch him, hard, till he can’t stand up straight. “There’s gotta be something, Lan Zhan, c’mon.”

Lan Zhan says, steadying himself on his own front door, “Oreos. Next time, you can bring me oreos.”

Wei Ying lights up a split second before he laughs. “Oreos?” he says.

“Oreos,” Lan Zhan agrees, embarrassed and trying not to show it. “I like them.” He hadn’t been thinking. He had not thought at all.

“A dom who gets compensated in oreos,” Wei Ying says, apparently to Lan Zhan’s maple tree, further in the rock garden, like it’s his partner in a comedy sketch.

Lan Zhan breathes through it: through liking oreos and liking sex and liking things so much when he likes them. Liking, still, the near-stranger talking to his maple tree.

“I will ask you if I want you to bring something. Maybe I will, next time. It is my job to take care of the rest. Does anyone know where you are?”

“Yeah,” says Wei Ying. “My sister. She, uh, knows about the whole scene, it’s cool. I sent her the address but not like, your full name, so.”

“You can text her my full name if you’d like,” Lan Zhan says, standing aside to let him in.

“Nah,” says Wei Ying. “Oh, this is big.” 

He means the house, and in some ways it is. Comfortably if not exceptionally big for an American house, but real estate is so expensive here that it is more impressive. That, and the entry opens into the living room, with a two-storey ceiling and pristine white carpet, eminently United States 1980s chic. He wonders if Wei Ying will ask about the house.

Wei Ying just looks at him and laughs a little and says, “I’m feeling kind of — can we start right away, with what you suggested? In whatever order? Does that work for you?”

If it’s just nerves that will be fine. If it’s discomfort, starting too fast could actually overwhelm him. “Alright,” Lan Zhan says, and pads towards the formal dining room, which like the living room is rarely used. Wei Ying takes off his sneakers in the entryway, then trails him slowly, footsteps sinking into the soft cream carpet. It is a lot, to see him on Lan Zhan’s carpet. “We covered most of it over text, but can I confirm we’re on the same page, now that you’re here?”

“Yes,” says Wei Ying, glancing up at Lan Zhan’s chandelier — Lan Zhan’s mother’s old chandelier — which is mid-century modern-ish pieces of straight glass but throws rainbows across the two-story ceiling that slopes with the roof.

 “Are you still interested in in-person sexual play?” Lan Zhan asks. There are two versions of what he could do, given Wei Ying’s parameters, both discussed and just now — “in whatever order” indeed. Wei Ying slowly looks down from the chandelier, down and at Lan Zhan, who is standing with his heart in his throat in the formal dining room. They are twenty feet apart.

Wei Ying stares at him. “Yes,” he says. 

“We have privacy here,” Lan Zhan says, trying to steady himself. “Stand there, at the base of the stairs.” He’s always liked how the stairs come down in the middle of the formal rooms, an open admission that there are real rooms here, tucked away, where people have lived, live still. “Strip down to your underwear.”

“Ah, you’re actually making me take my clothes off this time, gege?” Wei Ying asks, going for his shirt — a loose button-down today, black again but printed with tiny red flowers. “I’m moving up in the world.”

What Lan Zhan wants is to kiss him. Lan Zhan wants to say, No, wait a bit, I am making dinner. Stay for dinner. I will feed you and then I will wreck you. Please.

He found Wei Ying again, easy as anything. He thought he would never see this person again. The story — that they found each other again after a first meeting — should wrap itself around them, should tether them. But it won’t; Lan Zhan has learned his lessons; Lan Zhan is about to be thirty-one.

Lan Zhan breathes. He can hear the dryer running in the laundry room. He steadies himself, and it’s easy because if he’s unsteady then he will have to stop and tap himself out. He says, “Wei Ying, you asked me to make you come again.”

Wei Ying shivers, full-body. “I don’t usually—” he says, then licks his lips. “What happened, um, what happened the last couple times doesn’t usually happen to me. I honestly don’t uh, I don’t get off easily, or all that often.”

Lan Zhan blinks. He had thought they’d covered this. Most of the scenarios he’d offered didn’t require orgasm, including the ones involving sex.

“That is not a problem,” Lan Zhan says, to make it very clear. “I want to see you. I want to see your soft cock.”

“Hggh,” Wei Ying breathes. 

“Do you disagree?” asks Lan Zhan, leaning on the wall that divides the kitchen and the family room behind it from the rest of the house.

“Um. Might not be entirely soft, if that’s okay.”

“You cannot wait for me?” Lan Zhan asks, severe. Now that he has thought of seeing Wei Ying soft, maybe small, he wants it. He never saw anything at the party, just Wei Ying’s squirming hips. He has, he supposes, photographs.

“It’s just a little,” Wei Ying whines.

“I want to see you soft. Get on my dining table,” Lan Zhan says. “And take off your underwear.”

“O-okay,” Wei Ying says, padding across the carpet and then stopping to quickly take off his black briefs. He stops by the conversation pit, which largely stores a collection of paperback novels that belonged to Lan Zhan’s mother. “Hey, is that an orgy pit?”

“It is a conversation pit,” says Lan Zhan, who does not exactly mind speaking about his mother’s house during sex, but acknowledges that most people would prefer not to. “Get up and kneel on the table, and try to stay soft.”

Wei Ying sucks in a breath. His toes flex in Lan Zhan’s soft cream carpet. The sudden exposure, the nudity, the dining table, might actually shock him into staying soft. Or get him there; Lan Zhan will find out.

The dining table is an oval that seats eight people. It creaks a little, making Wei Ying flush as he climbs onto it, naked, his nipples tight and his dick and balls swinging between his legs. He is mostly soft, but Lan Zhan thinks he can detect something of a chub. It is medium sized but cute. Lan Zhan wants it, small and soft, in his mouth. Lan Zhan loves sucking cock.

Lan Zhan is kind of expecting Wei Ying to say something about the dining table, about the other-the-top exhibition of himself on it. Instead Wei Ying meets Lan Zhan’s eyes, licks his lips, and says, intimate as if they’re just murmuring together in Lan Zhan’s bed upstairs, “Do you think my cock looks small?” His eyes gleam. His face is solemn.

It is, honestly, average for a soft cock. It is curved prettily in the crease of Wei Ying’s bare thigh, because he is not kneeling properly. His ass is on Lan Zhan’s unused dining table. The tips of his hair look wet against his shirt, from the shower he would have taken before this. In the dry air here, he must have been in the shower very recently; fifteen minutes. Did he say he walked here?

Lan Zhan, fortunately, has always been able to concentrate with a cock in front of him.

Lan Zhan says, “Does it look small? Perhaps.” Wei Ying shudders.

Alright.

“Sit properly,” Lan Zhan says. “Kneel like I asked.”

“You can’t make me kneel on this,” Wei Ying says, shifting knee to knee, “there’s not even a tablecloth! Think of my knees, Lan Zhan!”

“I am thinking of your knees. Bruise them for me,” says Lan Zhan. Wei Ying barks out a breathless laugh and Lan Zhan almost smiles. The formal rooms feel less stiff. The blinds are closed, but behind them he can see the shifting light of the trees, his and his neighbor’s. They clack in the breeze.

Lan Zhan doesn’t smile, though. Instead he says, “Kneel properly and show me your soft cock.”

“Ah!” Wei Ying says, sitting back hard on his heels, posture for a moment reflexively perfect. Someone taught him to sit straight as a child, and adult Wei Ying has unlearned it. His hands fly up to cover his cock, which twitched hard. Lan Zhan stares at him, waiting. Wei Ying flushes, hands covering his crotch. “It’s a little bit hard now,” he whines to Lan Zhan. He slips into Mandarin for a moment, apparently just because the sajiao won’t be as effective in English. “Wouldn’t you rather see me hard for you, Zhan-zhan?”

“No,” Lan Zhan says. He was going to go for the toys right away, but he’s stopped halfway around the table, transfixed. “I want to see you soft. And small.”

Wei Ying whines and shoves his hands down harder on his hidden dick. Lan Zhan wonders wildly why he did not list CBT in his misc enjoyed kinks, even though what he’s doing now cannot hurt that much. There’s obviously— something, there.

“Are you trying?” Lan Zhan asks.

Wei Ying bites his lip. “Not--not all that much, haha.”

“Hm.”

“Don’t want your ego bruised when you realize how good I am at staying soft.”

Lan Zhan raises an eyebrow. “I hardly think my ego is responsible for your small cock.”

Wei Ying goes bright red. Lan Zhan is, briefly, able to breathe, and move. He takes advantage.

There is a cabinet to the far side of the dining table which is obviously supposed to be for wine. Lan Zhan has a set of wine glasses that hang from it, but no wine in it. He uses it to store the downstairs sex toys.

Lan Zhan pulls out three dildos that interest him in this moment. Then he closes the cabinet and plops the selection of dildos in their neat drawstring bags down on the end of the table closest to the living room. Two of the three are weighted with the motor of a vibe; dropping them makes a noise. Lan Zhan’s eyes narrow happily to see Wei Ying jump, just a tiny bit.

“If you can’t kneel, then lie back and spread your legs,” Lan Zhan tells Wei Ying, reaching up to slap him on the thigh — close to his cock but not actually on it. Wei Ying jumps, eyes wide. His cock twitches, too. It is so fucking gratifying to be able to see him this time, fuck. Lan Zhan wants to grind his teeth.

“Your cock is misbehaving,” Lan Zhan informs him. Wei Ying, finally, makes a little whimper like he did at the party, when Lan Zhan barely knew his name.

Greed thick in his mouth, Lan Zhan slaps Wei Ying’s cock.

Wei Ying rocks back, eyes wide, flushing bright patchy red on his face and his chest. He is paler than Lan Zhan; it shows up better on him. He sits back on his butt and spreads his legs like Lan Zhan wants. Behind him the sun is afternoon low and smoke-red through the blinds. 

“Oh,” he says.

“You are not staying soft,” Lan Zhan says.

“No,” Wei Ying breathes.

“Then I will have to use you for something else.” Wei Ying nods jerkily, but he looks tense. Maybe too exposed, on the table. Maybe it is not quite right. Lan Zhan picks up a purple dildo, one of the ones with vibrating function. “Give me your hand.”

Wei Ying puts one hand out, his fingers shaking a little. Lan Zhan picks up a bottle of lube and squeezes a little onto Wei Ying’s fingers. Too much, lets it spill. Wei Ying shivers — there, a step in the right direction. 

Lan Zhan goes to lean against the wall to the kitchen, arms crossed, watching. Twice Wei Ying has come with Lan Zhan at a distance. Lan Zhan wants — to make this hot for him. To make him feel good. To learn the rest of his rules and which of them he will ask to have broken.

“Fuck yourself,” Lan Zhan says. “Your fingers first, then with whatever I choose for you. I want to see what you can take.”

Wei Ying closes his eyes and arches his back and does it as Lan Zhan directs: one finger, two, stretch it for me, let me see, three. He’s quiet, though. His eyes stay shut. Like he’s reaching for something and can’t quite get it. When he starts on the dildo, his shoulders go tense.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. “Wait a moment.”

Wei Ying does, holds still with his eyes shut and a dildo half into him.

Lan Zhan pushes off from the wall, circles around the table until he is behind Wei Ying, until he can place a hand between his shoulderblades and only relax when Wei Ying’s shoulders go down, and Wei Ying himself relaxes and leans into the touch. Lan Zhan moves a chair out of the way so he can stand right next to the table behind Wei Ying, so that his chest is against Wei Ying’s back.

“Wei Ying,” he says, softly because his mouth is right by Wei Ying’s ear. He puts his hungry hands on Wei Ying’s ribs, feels his quick breaths. Not too quick; he’s only uncomfortable, Lan Zhan thinks. Too exposed, or too untouched. Something. Everyone has their snags, everyone. Lan Zhan feels full of them, himself. Normally he would be hitting one right now, feeling upset to have not gotten it right the first time, but he’s distracted by Wei Ying’s warmth against his chest. He feels, strangely, like he can get things wrong here, without fucking up.

Lan Zhan makes a little enquiring noise, and is about to follow it up with Too much? but Wei Ying responds like he asked, anyway.

“Ah, I don’t get why this is hard,” says Wei Ying, laughing a little, shoulders tensing and relaxing again. He tugs the dildo back out without Lan Zhan having to tell him. Lan Zhan puts a hand almost over Wei Ying’s on the dildo and taps it in rhythm, like piano keys. Wei Ying huffs a little almost-laugh and tries to imitate him. He clearly does not play piano. “This is so — texting you was so self-indulgent, you know? I’m pretty sure indulgence is supposed to come easily.”

Lan Zhan pauses. “I think indulgence is very hard,” he says, too honest into Wei Ying’s soft hair.

“Nahhh, hell, that’s too serious an answer, gege,” says Wei Ying, wry smile back, over his shoulder and so close to Lan Zhan’s cheek that he could bite it. He is so naked. Lan Zhan could have unwrapped him slowly, but he rushed. He wanted to rush. “Lan Zhan,” he adds, licking his lips. It is the first time he has said Lan Zhan’s name aloud. He does it naked on Lan Zhan’s formal dining table, with his head resting back on Land Zhan’s shoulder and Lan Zhan’s dildo held loose in his hand, under Lan Zhan’s hand. “Lan Zhan, give me a more fun answer.”

“Alright,” says Lan Zhan. He hums and reaches down, slowly enough to know if Wei Ying will tense again, to play with the stretch of Wei Ying’s rim around the toy. “Indulgence will be extremely easy. I will make it so.” He adds, dry, “Miraculously.”

Wei Ying huffs a laugh but his hands spasm on his stomach. His dick twitches at the same time. But his fingers still dart around, searching.

Lan Zhan will not leave him searching. “I haven’t done right by you,” he murmurs into Wei Ying’s ear. Wei Ying squirms, in a good way this time. “I left you out in the dining room. You must be cold. Come entertain me while I— while I cook.”

“Yeah,” Wei Ying says, voice already softer, brighter. Oh, perhaps indulgence will be easy after all. Lan Zhan cups his chin and he looks even warmer. So happy at the idea, which is such a simple one.

Lan Zhan will fucking improvise for three hours if that’s what it takes to get this right. 

They go together into the kitchen. The house is brighter here, smaller, the ceilings a normal height. Land Zhan idly closes the blinds while Wei Ying laughs and pretends to wave to the joggers on the footpath, who cannot see into the house easily. Probably.

Inside the kitchen door is a hook that holds a calendar and two aprons and a fly-swatter and what looks like a New Years decoration he never took down. He takes down both aprons. One goes over the counters, which will just have to be bleached again a little ahead of schedule.

“Bend over the counter,” Lan Zhan says. The apron is arranged so Wei Ying is not hitting his dick on the cupboards. He opens the fridge. Out of the corner of his eye, Wei Ying cups his dick warily. Even with the apron he’ll have to hold his hips a little away from the lip of the tile.

“Go,” Lan Zhan says, closing the fridge. “Are you hungry?”

Just regular hungry. Feeding kink wasn’t listed. Lan Zhan wonders if he can ask for that, and then remembers that that is not what this arrangement is about. He breathes.

Wei Ying is taking his time. Lan Zhan plants a hand along his spine and presses slowly but sternly down. Wei Ying yelps. He tucks his face to the side easily enough though. He nuzzles the cool tile of Lan Zhan’s counters.

His eyes crack open. “I still— something in me.”

Asking over text was probably easier. Lan Zhan remembers, feverish, how much he had wanted to be full.

Lan Zhan thinks first of a finger, or something. He thinks of Wei Ying losing steam on the dining table with the very reasonably sized purple dildo.

He thinks about how things that should be easy are so hard.

“A pear?” Lan Zhan says, mild, putting a little bowl of cut pear in front of Wei Ying. It was what was already in the fridge.

“Lan Zhan—”

Lan Zhan pinches his thigh, finally. Wei Ying gasps. Lan Zhan was going to let go but does not yet, waits. Wei Ying’s forehead comes to rest on the tile. His hips are shifting and he’s having to force himself not to grind into the hard cupboards behind the thin layer of apron.

“Eat one slice of pear.” Lan Zhan lets go of his thigh. Wei Ying gasps. Lan Zhan nudges the bowl a little closer to Wei Ying’s face and takes a few steps back out into the formal dining room. He ignores the dildos on the table and the little puddle of lube and goes into the wine cabinet.

Back in the kitchen, Wei Ying has one slice of pear gripped in his teeth. He has bitten it right out of the bowl. Lan Zhan leans around him and taps the end of the pear slice sticking out of Wei Ying’s mouth.

“In,” he says. Wei Ying looks up at him. Lan Zhan raises an eyebrow and pushes a little on the pear slice. Wei Ying sucks it in in one gulp. “Don’t choke,” Lan Zhan says, amused. Wei Ying chews noisily at him.

Lan Zhan waits till he’s swallowed before putting the new dildo on the counter next to the fruit bowl. In case he really does choke.

Wei Ying just stares, maybe hypnotized, at the largest, pinkest dildo Lan Zhan owns. It is swaying gently where Lan Zhan placed it upright, balanced on its gargantuan fake pink balls. 

The thing about this ridiculous dildo is that it’s really too big and too flexible to be good for fucking, if you can get it in; it’s quite squishy, and Lan Zhan uses it sometimes for people who get off by letting him slap them in the face with it. 

“You’ve had a snack. Before I start cooking I need two things: I want to watch you show me how bad you are at fucking yourself, and then I need to fetch something from the laundry room. Try to put this in yourself.” Whether or not he can get it in doesn’t matter. Lan Zhan just wants to see him try.

Lan Zhan lays the second apron on the floor, to catch lube drips. Wei Ying steps on it as Lan Zhan leans down and lifts each of his feet delicately to push the apron under him.

“How far— ah— how far is the laundry room?” Wei Ying asks. His dick is filling rapidly; Lan Zhan can see this clearly when he is crouched at Wei Ying’s feet. He shivers.

Lan Zhan stands up and picks up the bowl of pears in one hand and twists his other hand in Wei Ying’s hair, pulling it into a single twist that Lan Zhan can grip at the back of Wei Ying’s skull. He doesn’t pull very hard, just lets the pressure speak for him.

“I will show you,” Lan Zhan says drily. “Do you need help putting it in?”

“N-no,” Wei Ying says. He’s mouth-breathing.

“Do it with me right here, I want to see it. If you get it in, you can come with me to the laundry room.”

“Yeah,” Wei Ying breathes, even though the laundry room hardly sounds like a treat, and scoots his feet and the apron back on the linoleum so he can bend over further, just his hands braced on the counter. His hands scramble on the big pink dildo, and instead of putting it down to open and pour lube into his hand he holds it between his knees. Lan Zhan’s breath catches. He wants to— to bite him. Make him drop it. Make him pick it up, complaining.

The thing about things that are easy is that sometimes this makes them impossible. The thing about things that are impossible is that they are easier. Wei Ying did not like the shallow end of the pool.

Wei Ying pants and lubes the dildo and fingers himself a little. It’s already easier than anything on the dining table. The room smells like pears and silicon. The blinds clack.

Wei Ying leans down even further and twists his hips to open them up a bit. “Are you watching?” he breathes, and nudges the giant pink dildo against his hole, letting it skid away. Again, twice. “Don’t you want to make me do it right?”

“Do it right,” Lan Zhan says, from deep in his chest, not thinking. He’s begging; he’s ordering.

“There’s no way I can,” Wei Ying says. “You know I can’t.” His hands become clever again instead of clumsy. Lan Zhan’s brain has not restarted. He is just there, in his kitchen, watching Wei Ying work the tip into himself, sighing — no, breathing out to make himself relax further.

“Oh no,” Wei Ying pants. “It’s actually going in, Lan Zhan— you said I wouldn’t be able to get it in.” It is, it really is. The easy option was impossible; the giant pink face-slapping dildo is forcing his ass open, slow. Lan Zhan watches his ass stretch around its widest girth, then try to pinch closed on a smaller part of the toy, but it’s all thick shaft. 

“You are going to walk with it in you to the laundry room with me,” Lan Zhan says, his teeth buzzing, his cock hard in his trousers. “You will want to push it further in,” he adds. 

“Shit! Shit, nng,” Wei Ying says. “There’s so much of it, though. Even if it slips a little, I’ve got like five inches in me.”

Not a bad estimate. The thrust depth, minus the flared base with its big pink faux balls, is [eight] inches [check the specs on Outlaw]. “Yes,” Lan Zhan says. “And you will need more.”

Wei Ying twists his head to stare back at Lan Zhan as he pushes the dildo in, deeper. His legs shake once, hard, but he does not stop. His eyelashes flutter; he does not break eye contact with Lan Zhan for a long moment. Then he lets out a big shuddering sigh, his body surrendering to its new situation. His belly gets softer when he relaxes. They do not know each other well enough for Lan Zhan to palm it affectionately, but he likes it very much. Wei Ying says, on the end of his sigh,“Ahh, why do you even have something this big, gege? People buy this shit to--to leave out to impress their hookup or whatever, not to use.”

They’ve been speaking almost entirely English since Wei Ying arrived; to say this he has switched to Mandarin. Lan Zhan did not actually know the slang for hookup until just now. Last time — when they met, in the roses — it was playful, pressing. In retrospect it had not been a test Lan Zhan would have failed by speaking his father’s language badly, but just Wei Ying on the offensive, figuring a new puzzle out. This is not like that. He does not know what this is like. With his father and his uncle he spoke Mandarin at home; with his mother he spoke only English, even when she could not think of a word. She would make them up, sometimes. A whole secret language: words for microwave and for dish towel and for pasta strainers.

Lan Zhan wrenches himself out of the past. He loves to live in his mother’s house, but he does not want Wei Ying to ask why he went distant.

Also, the pink dildo is as close as silicon-balls-deep in Wei Ying now as it is ever reasonably going to get. Wei Ying pants and shifts around it, arching back. Lan Zhan steps close and says, “Good boy. Take my arm.”

One of Wei Ying’s hands paws gracelessly at Lan Zhan’s forearm. Lan Zhan catches his hand in his own, and helps him straighten up like he is a precious thing. Wei Ying groans and sways and doesn’t get entirely upright, the long heft of the dildo inside of him, its big pink balls brushing his thighs. He has to put a hand on it the first time but then he is able to keep it slipping out, lips pursed in concentration.

“Go on,” Lan Zhan whispers, mouth thick with longing. He lets Wei Ying keep his grip on Lan Zhan’s forearm, like a gentleman leading someone through a room, only Wei Ying is naked and starting to sweat and has Lan Zhan’s biggest squishy pink dildo up his ass. Wei Ying’s grip is light. Lan Zhan wonders if this will be too easy. Wei Ying takes a step and — ah, this will not be too easy. A stumble, and the noise he makes — Lan Zhan won’t find it easy, either.

Wei Ying manages two and a half stumbling steps before he is doubling over, gasping, and clinging on to Lan Zhan’s arm to stay upright. If Lan Zhan were not supporting him, perhaps he would have tried to go farther, perhaps he would have gotten through the doorway to the kitchen before he collapsed on the linoleum, unable to walk. Lan Zhan would like to work him up to that. Lan Zhan wants Wei Ying to be so overwhelmed that he falls to the floor and feels wanted and wanted and wanted all the way down, even with his face pressed to linoleum, even with his ass in the air, straining to take the dildo. He should still feel Lan Zhan’s desire pouring over him.

As it is, this is so good. Wei Ying is breathing fast, is looking daunted but not lost. He knows what he needs to do; he knows Lan Zhan will not ignore him. 

“Oh,” Wei Ying gasps, “Fuck, this is impossible, Zhan’er.”

“You are only trying to walk to the laundry room, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying makes a little high noise and takes another shaky step. 

“It’s so big,” Wei Ying gasps out. “Fuck, I can feel it. I can’t even walk right, gege, are you seeing — hnng — are you seeing this.”

“You have made it to the steps,” Lan Zhan says, dryly congratulatory.

“Fuck!” Wei Ying says, so high and sharp that Lan Zhan wonders if they have hit a tipping point, but no, Wei Ying takes another step. He is shaking. Lan Zhan is shaking too from how much he wants him, how much he likes this.

“God, you have to help me,” Wei Ying whines. Fuck, he’s getting so worked up from this. It’s like Lan Zhan finally found the right little angle and he’s opening up beautifully, so good Lan Zhan can’t even look directly at him all at once. Lan Zhan tries not to pant, too. He breathes through his nose. He looks over his shoulder at Wei Ying’s ass, where Wei Ying is still half bent-over as he tries to stumble forwards. The dildo has slipped out maybe a centimeter; it’s big fake balls are prodding Wei Ying’s thighs as he walks. Wei Ying’s other hand is slung around his lower belly as he shuffles his way across the kitchen, face flushed, his little brown nipples hard. He notices Lan Zhan looking and moans, loud.

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck, fuck. I can feel it in me. It’s slipping just a little. Lan Zhan, help me get there.”

Lan Zhan goes to take his arm again. Wei Ying moans and must accidentally clench; the dildo slips out another centimeter. They are on the two steps down to the den. The laundry room is only six feet away, really. The washer and dryer are in the linen closet in the hall off the den.

“It is slipping,” says Lan Zhan. Wei Ying whines and clamps his hand harder around Lan Zhan’s forearm, leans more heavily. He’s stopped, eyeing the steps.

“Lan Zhan,” he pants, forehead against Lan Zhan’s bicep. “Can I please — can I push it back in?”

Lan Zhan thinks about it. If Wei Ying had asked Lan Zhan to push the dildo back in for him, Lan Zhan had been half-thinking that he would make Wei Ying do it to himself. But Wei Ying asked to do it himself; maybe a bargain to be able to get away with it.

“No,” says Lan Zhan. “I will do it.”

Wei Ying shivers, and — spreads his legs a little. As if to give Lan Zhan access.

Lan Zhan wants to grab the dildo by its ridiculous pink balls and shove it hard into Wei Ying, hard enough to make him stumble, hard enough that it would hurt, a little. And keep it there, grinding it in, until they hit a real tipping point. Maybe if Wei Ying were more carefully stretched.

Instead he says, “On your knees.” Wei Ying jolts, surprised. The dildo slips another centimeter, and now the weight of the flared base and the shorter length inside Wei Ying must make it tip up and press, hard, against Wei Ying. Maybe not his prostate exactly, too deep and too big, but good enough. He cries out and Lan Zhan has to press his shoulder down to keep him focused, to send him to the floor at Lan Zhan’s feet.

Wei Ying kneels, hands twitching like he wants to reach back. “On your forearms too,” says Lan Zhan. They are on the parquet floor, where Zixuan kneeled earlier this week. This is very different. Lan Zhan’s heartbeat is thudding in his jaw, his hands.

“Oh,” Wei Ying whispers, and then he’s done it: positioned himself on Lan Zhan’s clean wood floors on his forearms and knees, ass in the air with a big pink dildo waving ridiculously from it. Lan Zhan kneels down too, quickly, not giving Wei Ying a chance to feel anything but nicely crowded. He touches Wei Ying’s thigh first. Wei Ying whines and sways into it until Lan Zhan snaps, “Stay still,” and grabs his hip. He shivers and tries to move again. Lan Zhan takes hold of the end of the dildo, lube-sticky, with his other hand and presses it in a centimeter. 

Wei Ying stops trying to move and starts trying to gasp. His face is turned towards Lan Zhan, his eyes dark and desperate and intent, the way Lan Zhan feels dark and desperate and intent. It was only a centimeter. He’s so desperate for it. Who has been fucking him so poorly that he is still so desperate for it?

“I’m putting it back in, now,” Lan Zhan says. The rest goes slowly, slowly. He presses it deep into Wei Ying, and this time gets to feel the press and give of Wei Ying’s body around it.

“Stand up,” he says, once he’s finished, trying not to look like he feels like he just had a religious experience. Wei Ying trembles and shakes his head. Lan Zhan blinks, hard, tries to clear his thoughts, unclench his jaw. Before he can do anything else, Wei Ying makes to stand. Lan Zhan helps him up, one arm hauling him to his feet, the other with two fingers on the dildo’s base. A little mercy, to keep it in tight and deep while Wei Ying straightens.

Wei Ying moans, slumps against Lan Zhan. But he’s the one who takes the first step forward. Lan Zhan does not want to make him lead. He takes two swift steps and pulls Wei Ying along in his wake, huddling naked and so hard against his side. 

“Hurry,” Wei Ying whispers. “Hurry, I can’t keep it in.”

They’re crossing the corner of the den towards the hall to the downstairs bathroom. Lan Zhan, obligingly, hustles him faster. Wei Ying whines, shuffles across the sun-warm parquet flooring. The den faces full west, but Lan Zhan has closed the blinds on the sliding glass doors. Everything is dull warm with flashes of bright white sunlight sneaking through.

They make it into the laundry room hallway. Wei Ying is gasping. The dildo has stayed in, but Wei Ying’s own cock is swaying, now, jutting out hard and wet and lewd in front of him. With his free hand, Lan Zhan pulls open the closet doors that hide the laundry.

“Oh thank god,” Wei Ying whispers. “Will you fuck me with it for real, now? Don’t you want to? I’ll get on the floor again, Lan Zhan, I’ll—”

“Good job,” Lan Zhan says, shaky, against Wei Ying’s temple, because it bears saying. Wei Ying shuts up for a moment when he hears it. There is just fast breathing, a body moving against Lan Zhan’s. “Turn and put your hands on the wall.”

There is an obvious pause where Wei Ying decides to push. He says, “Don’t you wanna—” and Lan Zhan gratefully takes the opening to grab his wrists and push them against the wall. He lets himself squeeze, once. He lets himself make it hard, lets himself use the strength that lives in his fingers, in his hands. Wei Ying just cries out, cock jumping. The dildo slips but Lan Zhan lets Wei Ying go to catch it, and doesn’t hesitate to grind it back in. Wei Ying, hands braced high on the wall, says, “Ahh--ahh.”

Greed sits buzzing in Lan Zhan’s teeth.

Lan Zhan says, “I am going to take the dildo out, on the count of three.” Then he says, “One,” and fucks the dildo up into Wei Ying sharply. Wei Ying jumps, moans. “Two,” says Lan Zhan, doing it again. “Three,” and a final time, and Wei Ying’s knees shake. He eases the dildo all the way out this time, careful around Wei Ying’s fluttering rim.

“Good job,” he says again. “Good boy, good boy. Turn around.”

Wei Ying moans and does it, eyes glazed. Lan Zhan places the dildo, balanced neatly on its balls, on the closed lid of the washer. He purses his lips and — lifting people is about using your legs and otherwise not overthinking it — lifts Wei Ying with Lan Zhan’s arms around his upper thighs and deposits him on top of the rumbling dryer.

“Sit there,” he says. Wei Ying blinks at him, hands braced on the edge of the dryer.

“Um,” says Wei Ying. He coughs. Maybe his mouth is dry; they will get water. “I’m getting lube all over your dryer?”

“I want lube all over my dryer,” Lan Zhan tells him desperately. He has rarely meant a thing more. 

Wei Ying looks at him, wide-eyed. “Spread your legs,” Lan Zhan tells him, only a little because he needs him to. He is greedy for it. Wei Ying shudders and does so, his cock bobbing, his balls softly trembling with the movement of the dryer. Lan Zhan bites his own lip savagely. He takes one of Wei Ying’s ankles and moves it further to the side. Then he crouches down and — as Wei Ying’s eyes flutter shut — pops open the dryer door.

“Hywah?” Wei Ying says. “You’re— you’re gonna do laundry while I’m here, um. Here spreading my legs for you?” His voice peters off weakly at the end of the sentence. His face is even more flushed.

“No,” Lan Zhan says, pulling his softest bathrobe out of the dryer, warm and soft. He closes the door again and the dryer rumbles back to life. “You are going to help me cook.” The bathrobe is white, fluffy, with something faux-fur-ish going on around the cuffs and collars. It came from some resort stay, somewhere, Lan Zhan does not remember. A family vacation.

Lan Zhan lifts him off the dryer and sets him down on his feet, wraps the dryer-hot robe tight around him, does up the belt. Lan Zhan puts a hand on his back and says, “Alright, now you will entertain me while I cook.”

Wei Ying shivers, but he is not cold, this time. They walk back to the kitchen, quickly this time. Lan Zhan could make Wei Ying crawl but he wants to crowd him, wants Wei Ying to feel crowded, manhandled. Wants to be the one to do it. The hand on Wei Ying’s waist goes to Wei Ying’s hair. It’s back in a ponytail, a tiny one. Cute, but Lan Zhan takes it down, lets it brush Wei Ying’s shoulders. Wei Ying makes a little noise, then pants when Lan Zhan makes a fist in Wei Ying’s hair, tugging him a long a little. He nearly trips on the step up to the kitchen. Lan Zhan grabs his arms, move them behind his back. Wei Ying tests his grip right away when Lan Zhan gets both wrists in one hand. Lan Zhan squeezes, hard.

There they are in the warm kitchen sunlight again. Lan Zhan says, “Kneel here,” and pulls Wei Ying down by the wrists even as Wei Ying goes. Wei Ying’s thighs are splayed wide where he kneels, his hard cock jutting up wet and obscene from the parting of the bathrobe. Wei Ying looks down at it, flushing.

“Needy,” Lan Zhan says, letting go of Wei Ying’s wrists and petting Wei Ying’s hair. He presses two fingers against Wei Ying’s lips. “Suck, needy boy.” Wei Ying moans and does it, his bare cock jerking. A bead of precome forms at the tip and slides down. Lan Zhan fucks his fingers in harder, harder. He can feel the wanting in his own throat. Wei Ying just moans more, takes it. He does not need softness here, just a certain kind of roughness, a certain kind. Lan Zhan puts his other hand in Wei Ying’s hair again, tugs, and says, “That’s enough. Wait here, I will be right back.”

Wei Ying nods, serene there on the floor, eyes glazed. Spit is on his chin.

“Hands behind you,” Lan Zhan tells him. Wei Ying does it, squirming.

Lan Zhan does try to be quick; it’s barely a few steps to the dining room to grab the first dildo Wei Ying had tried, the more normally sized purple one, not quite so phallic but armed with a very sturdy suction cup, and a pair of light leather cuffs from the wine cabinet.

He puts both in one of the discarded drawstring bags still on the dining table, and goes back into the kitchen.

Wei Ying is touching his dick, just rubbing the tip, thumbing the slit. Eyes open, looking at Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan raises an eyebrow and does not hurry, steps up to and then past Wei Ying to place the bag on the counter.

“Brat,” he says, and sinks a hand in Wei Ying’s hair, tugs him forwards so Wei Ying has to take his hand off his dick to catch himself to keep from faceplanting into the linoleum. Wei Ying nervous-laughs and moans on the same breath; both a noise of release. He’s on his hands and knees on Lan Zhan’s kitchen floor, in Lan Zhan’s warm bathrobe. Lan Zhan flips up the skirt of the bathrobe. Wei Ying’s ass is still smeared with lube, his hole still wet and a little looser. Nothing looks hurt; his asshole is flushed dark and Lan Zhan should check if he has any little tears. After

Wei Ying had said what we talked about and in whatever order. So Lan Zhan finally, finally smacks him — hard across the ass. His own cock throbs harder than his hand when he makes contact. Fuck, fuck, he likes this so much. He gives himself two more, gives Wei Ying two more. He flips the bathrobe back down as Wei Ying gasps and shakes.

“Oh god,” he’s whispering, high pitched. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, it stings.”

“It’s supposed to,” Lan Zhan breathes. His own hand stings, he knows it stings. He thinks of Wei Ying over the phone, tugging on his balls. “Kneel back down. Hands out in front of you.”

Wei Ying does it, squirming as his ass hits his heels. It was not much; it was only a sting. Watching him revel in it, squirm towards it and away from it, is so much though, so much. Lan Zhan takes his wrists and quickly straps on the cuffs. They are not his bulkiest pair; the bedroom is better set up for that, but he likes the leather, likes them well enough. He tightens them, closes the quick-release snaps. Instead of hooking the metal clasps onto the little o-ring, Lan Zhan uses the strap attachment, a tough cord also covered in leather. He clips it to each o-ring on each wrist. Wei Ying can hold his hands about six inches apart. Lan Zhan can grab the strap between, which he does. Twists it around his wrist and drags Wei Ying with him as he reaches for the drawstring bag again, for the next thing.

He pulls out the purple dildo and holds it to Wei Ying’s face, his lips. “Suck,” he says. Wei Ying scowls up at him and Lan Zhan does what he’s been asked to do, takes Wei Ying’s jaw and presses hard on the hinge of it till Wei Ying gasps and flinches and his mouth falls open. Lan Zhan fucks the dildo in and Wei Ying sucks it, greedy now that he’s had a chance to resist, greedy now that he’s been forced to do it. Saliva drips down his chin again. Lan Zhan pulls it out, swift. Wei Ying moans and chases the dildo and Lan Zhan smacks his cheek with it lightly, a warning. Wei Ying’s eyes flutter and he moans, swaying. Ah.

Lan Zhan lowers the strap of the cuffs and then lets go, lets Wei Ying get back on his knees and forearms.

Lan Zhan plants the suction cup of the purple dildo on the cabinet door. He said Wei Ying could entertain him while he cooks; it doesn’t have to be so literal but still, he likes the idea. He’s trying to think of something to do for dinner that does not involve chopping too many vegetables. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. He likes the game but does not care about food just now.

Wei Ying is wrapped in the warm bathrobe, eyes hooded, mouth parted. Lan Zhan can see his tongue. Lan Zhan flips up the skirt of of the bathrobe again, palms Wei Ying’s ass. Wei Ying flinches away from it, flinches into it.

Lan Zhan kneels next him, tests the grip of the dildo. It holds nicely. He puts his hand in Wei Ying’s hair and tugs him backwards, makes him shuffle back on knees and his forearms, wrists still cuffed right where he can see them.

The dildo rubs up against Wei Ying’s ass, obscene. Wei Ying jolts. He probably guessed what Lan Zhan was doing behind him but he has not been able to see the dildo. He twists around to look now, wide-eyed, shock-mouthed. Lan Zhan dribbles more lube on Wei Ying’s hole but leaves the dildo wet with only Wei Ying’s spit.

“Aren’t you glad you drooled all over it?” Lan Zhan asks him. 

Wei Ying’s head drops down between his shoulders and he shudders. Lan Zhan scoots his robe up a little bit more, so Lan Zhan can clearly see his dick. Hard, wet. Lube has dribbled down from his ass to drip along his balls. Soon it might drip down the shaft of his dick. 

“Here you go,” Lan Zhan says, teasing the tip of the dildo against Wei Ying’s hole. “To keep you full while I cook, baby.”

Wei Ying shudders again, fists clenching. “Oh fuck,” he breathes, “Oh fuck, please, I need it.”

“Hm,” Lan Zhan says.

Lan Zhan makes him squirm for a minute, uses the flex of the dildo to brush it hard against Wei Ying’s hole but not let him take it inside. Wei Ying finally gasps and says, in a rush, “I need to be full, I gotta. Just keep me like this in your kitchen, please, please.” 

Lan Zhan hums and holds the dildo steady. Wei Ying fucks himself back onto it so hard that he hits Lan Zhan’s fingers. Lan Zhan sits back, in front of Wei Ying. A hand in Wei Ying’s hair, Wei Ying’s glassy eyes meeting his. “Just keep it in you, baby,” Lan Zhan says softly. His hands cup Wei Ying’s face. “Stay still and keep it in you, good boy.”

Wei Ying moans and spreads his knees a little. He’s shaking, he’s sweating. Lan Zhan always hated sweating until he discovered sex, and now he loves it. “Fuck!” he says, loud in Lan Zhan’s big house, in Lan Zhan’s kitchen. “It hurts, it hurts.”

“Are you telling me to pause?” Lan Zhan asks.

“No,” Wei Ying whispers. He looks straight into Lan Zhan’s eyes. “I’m telling you it hurts.” Their gazes hold. Lan Zhan’s world swims. He grips his cock in his trousers for just a second, but Wei Ying sees. Wei Ying’s eyes roll back. He twitches like he wants to fuck onto the dildo, but he stays still. Lan Zhan is breathing open-mouthed too, now.

Lan Zhan’s brain unclouds for a brief, shining moment and he remembers that he is soaking shiitake mushrooms in the soup pan on his stove. They should be ready to take out and trim the stems. There; he’ll use kitchen scissors instead of the cleaver and it will be something approaching passably safe.

He gets up and takes the whole soup pot and places it in his sink, where Wei Ying is on his hands and knees. He reaches down and pets Wei Ying’s hair. Wei Ying chokes and tries to chase his hand, mouth open. He catches Lan Zhan’s thumb and sucks and Lan Zhan does make a sound, involuntary. His mouth is so soft. He is grinding a little back on the dildo. If he does too much he really will make it hurt too badly; the big dildo was more than enough.

“Stay still,” Lan Zhan says.

Lan Zhan takes the kitchen scissors out of the drying rack, and pulls out a shiitake, and snips the first mushroom stem. They pass a few quiet minutes that way, with Lan Zhan snipping stems and occasionally petting Wei Ying’s hair. The sun is lowering, golden. Less smoke in the air today.

Wei Ying moans and uses the slack in the strap between his wrist cuffs to struggle up from his forearms to brace himself on both hands — on Lan Zhan’s foot, ow — and bury his face in Lan Zhan’s thigh. His little hot mouth is sucking frantically at Lan Zhan’s trouser leg, fabric going damp. Lan Zhan is so turned on he is lightheaded. He puts the scissors down in self-defense. Maybe he can just tear off the last of the mushroom stems. Fuck, fuck.

“I can’t give you my fingers,” Lan Zhan tells him, stern. “I’m cooking. It would be unsanitary.”

He watches as Wei Ying tries to balance between the dildo in his ass, his bound hands braced and Lan Zhan’s foot, and his mouth on Lan Zhan’s trousers. The cabinet door creaks. Wei Ying strains upwards and puts his mouth over the crotch of Lan Zhan’s trousers.

Lan Zhan is not going to survive this.

“Do you—” Wei Ying whispers to Lan Zhan’s hard, hard cock. “Lan Zhan, would you…?”

There is a roaring in Lan Zhan’s ears.

Lan Zhan has condoms in his pocket with no actual intention to use them for this particular scene. He was going to use toys. He was going to fill Wei Ying a dozen little ways. He still will, he promises himself, he still will if Wei Ying wants to do something like this again, but not until — 

“Be patient if you want it,” Lan Zhan says. Fuck, his voice is too low, too rough, too affected. Wei Ying just moans, noses at his thigh again, suckles at his dark wash jeans. “I can,” Wei Ying says, “I can, I can be patient, help me be patient Lan Zhan, I— I — I—!”

“Pull off the dildo, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, because he cannot be this unbalanced and risk falling over with it still in him. The suction cup would probably just come off the cabinet, but it could bruise him.

We Ying moans but does it with surprisingly little complaint. Instead he focuses, apparently, on gripping Lan Zhan’s jeans between his teeth even as Lan Zhan unzips his fly, hasty, violent. Lan Zhan wonders if Wei Ying is coming unplanned by both of them but no, it doesn’t seem like it. He would be able to see, anyway. The come would splatter on his kitchen floor. Lan Zhan gasps as he pulls his cock out.

Wei Ying looks up at his cock. “Too big,” Wei Ying murmurs, “Too big, you’ll break me, hahhh, you’ll really—”

It’s ridiculous after the pink dildo situation. It doesn’t matter.

Lan Zhan rolls the condom over his cock, tightens his lips. He has learned to enjoy it, the feeling. It is one of the little rituals to sex, to putting his body in someone else’s. Now it is part of the anticipation. The little extra tightness of it at the base of his hard cock, the way it presses gently at the soft skin of his balls. Lan Zhan buys mostly anal condoms, plain and sturdy. Not perfect for blowjobs, but it will work. 

“Open for me,” Lan Zhan whispers. His heart is beating so hard. And then he gently feeds Wei Ying his dick. They shake together, Lan Zhan hissing out a breath between his teeth. “Good,” he grinds out, “Yes, good boy.”

Wei Ying moans, and this time it is around Lan Zhan’s cock. Lan Zhan breathes deeply, focuses on Wei Ying. The dizziness fades. The kitchen settles back around him, existing, warm and familiar. Wei Ying is having a little trouble getting his mouth onto Lan Zhan’s cock and still grinding back on the dildo; Lan Zhan obligingly steps closer, lets him fill himself on Lan Zhan. He can drink and drink; Lan Zhan has oceans of this. Wei Ying moans. Lan Zhan thrusts forward, presses his cock in, presses Wei YIng back against the counters. Wei Ying’s cuffed hands scramble at the hem of Lan Zhan’s trousers. Lan Zhan eases them into something which can be kept up, a slower rhythm.

Still, Wei Ying is panting harshly through his nose. Lan Zhan carefully, carefully frees his hands and cuts a few more stems off mushrooms, very slowly, and watches. Grinds his cock into Wei Ying’s mouth; stops, pulls Wei Ying off to make him breathe gasping breaths and to tell him, “Good job.”

Wei Ying says, hoarse, “Is it good, Lan Zhan, does it feel good, do I feel good?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan bites out, both hands framing Wei Ying’s face, pulling him back to Lan Zhan’s dick, “Yes, you feel good. You feel so good, Wei Ying.”

Wei Ying moans and slides off Lan Zhan’s dick with a little pop; Lan Zhan doesn’t immediately force him back, waits to see what he will do. He shuffles closer, stumbles trying to kneel up and brace himself against Lan Zhan’s legs, mouthing at Lan Zhan’s shaft. Lan Zhan grabs the cord between his wrist cuffs and pulls up, both surprising Wei Ying and keeping him upright.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whispers, “I--I—”

Lan Zhan guides his head back to Lan Zhan’s cock. Wei Ying whines and shuffles closer, closer, till he’s plastered up against Lan Zhan’s legs. There — his cock, which he’s rutting desperately against Lan Zhan’s leg. When Lan Zhan gasps and pulls Wei Ying off Lan Zhan’s cock he whispers, “Lan Zhan please, please, oh god. I won’t get in the way, you can keep cooking, I can just. Just.”

“You want to grind on my leg?” Lan Zhan says.

“I’m gonna,” Wei Ying pants, “Oh fuck, I can’t help it I’m gonna come like this on your kitchen floor, I’m gonna.”

“We didn’t plan on you coming,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying tips his head back, whines, humps Lan Zhan’s leg harder.

Lan Zhan holds his head back, pulls off the condom, and slaps Wei Ying’s cheek with his dick. Wei Ying’s eyes roll back; he moans and buries his face in Lan Zhan’s hip, probably right against the zipper of his undone jeans. He’s really going for it now, not trying to be subtle, not trying to be elegant. It is hard to be suave about humping a man’s calf. The bathrobe is untied now, in disarray, and Wei Ying is fucking up hard, faster, grinding his cock against the soft bathrobe and Lan Zhan’s jeans. It probably hurts. He probably likes it.

Fuck, Lan Zhan thinks savagely. Fuck.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, “Lan Zhan I can’t stop, I can’t stop, I— ahh, ahhh!” He breaks off and Lan Zhan thinks perhaps he will try to hold his breath again, but he cannot do that either, it seems. Lan Zhan, in some insane impulse, slips a knuckle of his finger into Wei Ying’s mouth, between his teeth. Wei Ying obligingly bites down on Lan Zhan’s knuckle and screams through a clenched jaw as he comes. It splatters over the bathrobe, the floor. Wei Ying shudders a few times then collapses against Lan Zhan.

He just breathes, hard, and clings. “Wha—” he mumbles. “The fuck.”

Lan Zhan kneels down and quickly unclips the cord between Wei Ying’s cuffs. Wei Ying pants for another moment then sways into Lan Zhan. It’s so different than before; they are touching again. The bathrobe is nearly off one shoulder. Lan Zhan reaches up to fix it, reflexively. Wei Ying puts both hands on Lan Zhan’s shoulders, cuff strap dangling from his right wrist. He is shaking, flushed, intent. He looks Lan Zhan in the eyes and says, more clearly than he has spoken in half an hour, urgent, “I know we didn’t plan for it for another couple sessions, but Lan Zhan, would you be able to fuck me?”

Something in Lan Zhan surges towards him. Lan Zhan looks down at Wei Ying’s teeth marks in his knuckle. Marks from toys or bodies were on Wei Ying’s good list. So was, in fairness, being fucked.

Lan Zhan, for a moment, cannot talk. He tries and he cannot. He holds up two fingers.

“Yeah,” Wei Ying breathes. “That works, Zhan’er. I can’t — I won’t be able to calm down till you’ve fucked me.” Lan Zhan thinks about Wei Ying alone on the dining table, untouched at the party, alone in his bed texting someone because he wanted so badly to be full.

Words are nearly back, but not quite yet. Lan Zhan hoists Wei Ying up again, onto the white tile, the neatly bleached grout. Wei Ying laughs, shaking from the orgasm he hadn’t really expected or been ready for. Something in Lan Zhan unknots. Wei Ying on the counter is not like Wei Ying on the dining table. Wei Ying is balanced between his sink and his keurig, spreading his legs. Lan Zhan ducks down and presses his face there, breathing between Wei Ying’s thighs. Drags his face up and down them as Wei Ying shakes, kisses his thighs, brushes with his fingers Wei Ying’s hole, his balls, his soft cock. Wei Ying pants, overstimulated. He wraps his legs around Lan Zhan’s shoulders, tugs almost shyly even with his head thrown back and his own semen all over his stomach and Lan Zhan’s bathrobe. Lan Zhan slicks up two fingers and touches where Wei Ying is ready for him. He wants to laugh; he has big hands but he absolutely started Wei Ying on something hilariously, monstrously bigger. He did not set himself up well for this at all. Yet when he thrusts two fingers in Wei Ying cries out, Wei Ying says, “Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, finally. Take it, take what you need from me, please, ahh— please!”

And Lan Zhan rocks foreward, fucks Wei Ying on the kitchen counter. The mushrooms are still in the soup pot in the sink, right next to Wei Ying. The sunlight through the smoke is red gold and Wei Ying is bathed in it like he is standing under stained glass, or in a bright room done up in red silk. Lan Zhan’s fingers are in Wei Ying, not his cock, which is tucked messily back into his trousers. He shoves his other hand down them. He is supposed to be giving a piano lesson right now.

But Wei Ying is beginning to cry, and it looks different than a line of text from Wei Ying saying “I might cry”. Lots of people cry, but it hasn’t been like this. Wei Ying isn’t going to come again, but he wants the sex, he wants it. Lan Zhan tugs his own cock with his left hand, so turned on his ears are ringing and his face is numb. Wei Ying is begging for him to come as if it’s Lan Zhan’s dick that’s in him, tears on his cheeks, overwhelmed next to soaking mushrooms, next to the keurig. Lan Zhan thinks perhaps Wei Ying likes it, likes being worked into the fabric of Lan Zhan’s kitchen. There is the paper towel roll, there is the sink, there is Wei Ying getting reamed on two fingers, there is the keurig. Rice cooker, kettle, discarded condom on the floor.

It is something. It is a thought.

Lan Zhan bites his own lip hard as he comes, filled up with it. Wei Ying slams his head back, moaning and soft, and Lan Zhan barely manages to get his hand up in time but he does cup it between Wei Ying and the window, lets Wei Ying smash his head into Lan Zhan’s palm and grind Lan Zhan’s knuckles against the blinds, which may be broken now, Lan Zhan doesn’t know. He’s come and it’s peaking again, a phantom second arc of pleasure through him. Another spurt of come in his hand. He pants, raggedly, into the air above Wei Ying, which is the safest air in the kitchen to breathe.

Wei Ying is whispering, “Yeah, yes, yes,yes—yes,” and he is not going to come again, Lan Zhan does not think, but the crying is something like that. A release for Lan Zhan to work him through. Lan Zhan gently pulls his fingers out with a little goodbye wiggle that makes Wei Ying jump and then take his first good, deep breath. First, Lan Zhan leans over a few inches from Wei Ying and runs the sink. He washes both his hands. One is covered in his own come, the other was bare in Wei Ying’s asshole. He uses dish detergent. Wei Ying mumbles when a little spray catches him. Then, slowly, he takes Wei Ying’s shaking thighs from around his waist and sets them down on the counter, stroking each one. Wei Ying cannot even hold his legs up around Lan Zhan’s waist anymore. He strokes both thighs again, grateful, painfully grateful for all of Wei Ying. Strokes his shivering ribs and his bony, hairy ankles and wraps the bathrobe tighter around his chest. Then, thoughtfully, he tucks his little finger of the Wei-Ying’s-ass hand back into Wei Ying’s ass, just for a bit.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whispers into Lan Zhan’s shoulder after Lan Zhan presses his face there briefly to massage his neck with his clean hand. “Oh. Oh you like. Took good care of me.”

“Hmm,” Lan Zhan responds, acknowledging Wei Ying. He feels there is room for improvement. He feels good, though. Warm, tired. Ahead on tomorrow’s dinner prep, hilariously. His kitchen blinds are definitely broken. Wei Ying in his arms like this is distracting, Wei Ying around one finger, still. When Wei Ying shifts, Lan Zhan is the one who makes an involuntary noise. He felt Wei Ying tighten around his pinky.

“Ahh,” Wei Ying says. “Ah, you stayed in me, you even stayed in me?” He sniffles and Lan Zhan smiles at him a little, cannot quite help it. He crooks his finger hello. Wei Ying whimpers about it, big and performative.

“I am going to pull out now,” he warns, as if he’s balls-deep in Wei Ying. Wei Ying nods and sighs, pouting a little. Lan Zhan bites his lip and pulls his pinky out, regretfully. Wei Ying swings a leg a tiny bit, just enough to hit his heel against the cabinet.

“Stop hiding it. Wanna see how much you came,” he mumbles.

“Wei Ying made me come so much,” Lan Zhan says soothingly — honestly, too — as he buttons his jeans over the mess. His blouse has jizz on it, thank god. Wei Ying’s mess, on him. He opens the cabinet below Wei Ying and throws the blowjob condom away in the trashcan that lives below the sink.

“In the kitchen!” Wei Ying slurs above him. “You throw condoms away in your kitchen!”

“It is my house,” Lan Zhan says, straight-faced, heart pounding again just from looking at him. But it is less terrifying; he is floating on it. Wei Ying in his kitchen, well-fucked. Wei Ying just blinking at him, soft eyed and hazy.

It is something. It is.

***

In the back yard there are two deck chairs of dubious comfort, covered in scratchy outdoor cushions.

They are laying together in one, watching the dusk come into the garden under the pepper tree. Walkers go by on the bike path behind the house, mostly hidden from view behind the lemon tree and the hedges and the compost bins.

Lan Zhan is warm from a very, very fast shower, and in boxers and the second-best bathrobe. Wei Ying is in the good bathrobe, still warm from the dryer, somehow. He had not wanted to shower yet.

It seems like when Wei Ying is coming down, he talks. At first Lan Zhan thought (while getting talked at through the shower door) it meant he was resurfacing, but no, he’s still in headspace, just not the quiet kind. The gentle lap of words are good; they help Lan Zhan judge so easily where he is even as Lan Zhan bundles him up in one arm. They are spooning. Wei Ying had grabbed a blanket off the sofa in the den for them.

“Check it out Lan Zhan,” he slurs, twisting his head to look up at the sky between two Italian cypress pines which gently shade the lounge chairs. “It’s still light out but you can already see the moon. And right now Jupiter and Saturn are right next to each other somewhere to the--to the left. They’re really bright right now, have you seen them at night?”

“Maybe,” Lan Zhan says. It doesn’t seem like Wei Ying needs more of a response than that, but Lan Zhan finds himself offering, “There’s a bright star I see from my window when I go to bed, just above the hills.”

“When you go to— oh, no. Silly boy, that’s Mars. Mars rises a lot later.”

Lan Zhan smiles. “Now I know,” he says, solemn.

“If you could like, see Jupiter’s magnetic field….” Wei Ying says.

“Mn?” Lan Zhan prompts.

“Oh. If you could see it, Jupiter would be the size of a quarter in the sky.”

Lan Zhan nods. Wei Ying nods back, that bit of wisdom dispensed.

There is a pause. Above them is a dusty evening-blue sky that feels, somehow, higher than skies in the rest of the world. It just feels like that here, in this place. In the Bay, in this neighborhood, where the fire-wind whispers in the pines. Breeze in the trees, pepper tree and lemon and pine. The neighbors who fight all the time are trying to grow roses.

“Are you, um. Lan Zhan, are you hard?”

“Yes,” says Lan Zhan, carefully. “A little.” 

“Can I um, feel it? If you’re comfortable with that? I just like — I feel better knowing that you’re — yeah.”

Lan Zhan nods slowly, his nose brushing Wei Ying’s hair. He relaxes his hips, which had tensed when Wei Ying asked, careful to keep his erection away from Wei Ying in case it felt like pressure, or did not help him ease back to the surface.

He doesn’t actually mean to take his cock fully out, just to adjust his boxers and press it against the backs of Wei Ying’s thighs, but he is hard — very hard, not just a little, his body is like this — and when he tugs at fabric his cockhead pops out of the fly of his boxer briefs. Wei Ying makes a happy little sound in his throat, even as Lan Zhan watches in dazed resignation as he pulls back the blanket to see that Wei Ying has rucked up the bathrobe and Lan Zhan’s cock is smearing precome on Wei Ying’s bare thighs.

Wei Ying smiles a little, face tucked against the scratchy cushions, and lifts his top leg under the blanket. Lan Zhan bites the inside of his mouth and breathes. He holds his cock and guides it between Wei Ying’s warm, barely sweaty thighs. Wei Ying relaxes and Lan Zhan allows himself a sharp little exhale, a ghost of a gasp.

He feels, unexpectedly, calmed by it. His cock held tightly between Wei Ying’s legs, safe and welcomed. Lan Zhan says, anyway, “You do not need to be making me hard in order to feel good.”

Wei Ying flaps a hand like — I know, I know.

“It’s nice,” Lan Zhan whispers, laying fully back down.

Wei Ying shifts around until he can squeeze Lan Zhan’s hand. Now the message is urgent instead of flippant, but the same: I know, I know.

***

That night, Lan Zhan cannot sleep.

The moon is full and Mars is so bright above it, overwhelming and obvious, red-tinted and unapologetic. Right where Wei Ying said it would be, right where it has been every night for weeks when Lan Zhan did not have a name for it. Moonlight cuts Lan Zhan’s bed in half at his calves; his feet are in a story, a dreamworld. Sleeping alone long enough makes him forget that he does sleep. There is no proof of it. There is no example of sleep’s existence next to him in bed. Dreams feel like no proof. He wants to see himself sleep. He wants to sleep next to someone who will watch him sleep, who might touch his hair where it sticks sweat damp to his face when he is halfway in between.

***

In an attempt to balance out his life a little, and because she is his friend, Lan Zhan tries something new and has Jiang Yanli over to smoke weed and watch baseball. It goes extremely well. Lan Zhan finally calms down, after the Friday with Wei Ying, who has of course texted, but it’s not— They sit in silence, getting high and making the occasional cutting remark about [baseball thing]. “Do you watch other sports?” Yanli asks.

Lan Zhan glances at her out of the corner of his eye, joint pressed between his lips. He got into smoking weed when he quit smoking cigarettes. People don’t believe that he used to go out to a lot of clubs (where he also smoked), but the wall of noise is a lot easier than the up and down meandering of a bar. A club is honest with you. Also, Lan Zhan liked to fuck, and his brothers friends were all Berkeley law students.

“Some,” Lan Zhan says, voice a little tight with smoke. “I don’t like soccer,” he adds preemptively.

“Hm,” says Yanli. “Hm, give me the remote. Do you know figure skating at all?”

“No,” says Lan Zhan.

“I am going to show you something,” says Yanli, doing violence to Lan Zhan’s smart TV remote. “This shit is wild.”

“Okay,” says Lan Zhan. He is pretty high. Potentially, he thinks ten minutes later, too high to be faced with Yuzuru Hanyu in all his glory, but there it goes.

They watch in silence as Yanli finds a full competition rerun on Youtube. Everything is in Russian, so Lan Zhan does not even have to listen to commentary. Ideal.

“This is good,” he tells Yanli very seriously after an hour. They have moved from men’s singles to ice dance, and Lan Zhan is learning exactly when to make a disparaging face at a badly turned out twizzle. “I like this sport.”

“Good,” Yanli says, taking a solemn drag on the joint as, on the screen, a new kind of combination lift occurs. “What else do you like? You didn’t say.”

Lan Zhan frowns. “Softball,” he says. “Alpine skiing.”

“Do you like… badminton?”

“No,” Lan Zhan says. “Why?”

“Oh, it’s just funny,” Yanli explains earnestly. “All the sports you like are completely the opposite of my little brother. He was on the varsity badminton team. He secretly still loves badminton.”

“Your brother is a business major. I am unemployed. We are not the same.”

“Oh, no, not A-Cheng, my other brother. My other one,” Yanli assured him, flapping a casual hand.

��Oh,” says Lan Zhan. “I apologize, I thought there was only one.”

“Nope,” says Yanli. “My two boys.”

She sounds loving, and tired.

“I will work hard at hating badminton,” he promises her solemnly. “I will keep it up my whole life.”

“Thank you, friend,” Yanli says, flinging a leg up on the sofa. “I am going to take a nap. Make the tv show us pairs skating. You’ll like— Sui and Han, Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

She falls asleep. Lan Zhan sits comfortably, legs spread, on his sofa. He watches pairs skating. He cries a little. When Yanli wakes up he says they should go for a walk to look at the bridges over the bay.

“You can see the bay from here?” asks Yanli. She is filling Lan Zhan’s uncle’s Oakland As mug with water, which she says she is bringing with her for the walk.

“Yes,” says Lan Zhan. “It’s better if we walk up the Peak, of course. But we can see them if we walk up and loop on the street above the bike path, up the hill.”

“That’s so funny,” says Yanli. “I live so close by and I never noticed!”

“It is only one place,” says Lan Zhan.

They find outdoor shoes and walk down Lan Zhan’s street, under the whispering pines. They walk up the street where kids like the drag race at night, before the coyotes come out. An old uncle comes past walking a very small dog that wants to sniff Lan Zhan. They walk up to the fancy little neighborhood above Lan Zhan’s fancy little neighborhood. The hills are golden behind them, perfectly golden, like a promise: you do, you really do live here, for better or for worse. 

At the crest of a little neighborhood hill they stop on the sidewalk and look down. There it is, a tiny distant glimpse of the Bay, which looks flat and calm from a distance. The haze is settling. The sun has gone down already into the cold green Pacific, the ocean which has for so long held Lan Zhan’s life in it. You cannot see the ocean from here; you cannot see the North Bay or SF, or any famous skyline at all.

The bridges have blinking red lights on them, for planes Lan Zhan guesses, coming into Oakland or SFO.

“Which one is that?” Yanli asks, slurping her water. Her shoulders are relaxed, finally. Lan Zhan’s phone buzzes in his pocket, a sweet promise, but he does not take it out yet.

“I do not know,” says Lan Zhan. “Dumbarton? San Mateo?” He squints as if he will be able to figure it out by looking.

Yanli hums a few bars: Bridge Over Troubled Water. “Like a briiiidge called Saaan Mateo—” she mumble-sings into her mug of water, and laughs, and Lan Zhan dares to hum along for the first time in very many years, since the last time sang with his throat instead of piano wire, here in this place where he can escape nothing. He hums and she makes up the words, makes up the words, and he sings along, low for just a second: Like a bridge called San Mateo, I will lay me down. She breaks into laughter. Lan Zhan feels more solemn than that, but it seems like that is alright.

Lan Zhan takes out his phone, just for a moment before they walk down the hill into the lilac dusk, to take a picture to send.

#my fic #in the pines #ask replies #fic ask replies #anon ask replies #cryinngggg 13k tumblr post will u even work