#dont look at me or the way i fcked up this summary cause i copy pasted from the other to get the format

[illuminatedvisage]

these hands in tightly hidden fists.

Pairing: Jing Yuan x (GN) Reader Summary: It is a late night, and the General's mind wanders. Warnings: Ineffectual Pining, Smut (sort of) Notes: 1.6k words of Jing Yuan being cockblocked by his own sense of morality. Title and quote taken from "So We Must Meet Apart" by Gabrielle Bates & Jennifer S. Cheng

jing yuan notices the earrings first—small, bright gems set on a thin chain, hanging like stars from your delicate earlobes. then your hair, styled with more care than usual, and the new perfume that stains your wrist with a faint scent that he strains himself to catch, to catalogue into the breadth of information he has carefully collected about you. your clothes are as usual, neat and formal, as is your manner, except for the way you sometimes fiddle with the hem of your sleeve and cast longing looks out the window while he reads your report.

that is to say, jing yuan notices you quite a bit and today, there is something different about you.

“you look lovely today,” he says after some time has passed. the seat of divine foresight has emptied out for the day, save for the few guards that stand at attention by the door; he would have gone by now too and released them from duty, if he hadn’t been expecting you. it is rare enough that your work brings the two of you together, and since your promotion at the divination commission, the master diviner has kept you busy adjusting and readjusting the nodes on the matrix of prescience to keep up with her constant calculations. you have a talent for it, attuned to the fine details of your surroundings, so he wonders why you always seem to miss the glaring fact of his love for you.

“oh, thank you, general,” you say, suddenly going shy. your gaze travels around the room, from walls to window and even to the guards, landing on anything but him. it’s adorable, the way you avoid his eyes even though you want, eagerly, to share something—another of your mannerisms that jing yuan has filed away in his heart.

would it be too much to hope that you had dressed up just to see him? that you had made yourself prettier than you already are for his eyes alone? it is presumptuous to think that he is in your thoughts as often as you are on his, but he does it anyway. he allows his eyes to linger on your mouth, the way it curves into the trace of a smile at his next question.

“is there a particular occasion?”

“i have dinner with someone later,” you let out like a confession, in one breathless, rushed whisper. the answer is so incomprehensible that he doesn’t register it at first. not until you start fiddling with the earring that caught his eye, twisting the chain around your finger. he wonders if it’s a gift from the person you are seeing tonight. he wonders how it would feel to tug it off your earlobe with his teeth. “general?”

there is a waxy feeling in his throat, so thick that you could scrape it off with a fingernail, at the thought of you with someone else. someone you might be directing that secretive smile toward. someone whose arm you might be touching as you lean in close, close enough to let them catch a brief taste of your perfume—

“general?”

“i see.” jing yuan clears his throat, looking for his words, which have all suddenly fled him. “where will you be dining?”

“we have reservations at the sleepless earl. i know, i know,” you laugh a little, “not that exciting, but i hear the storyteller is starting a tale about the high-cloud quintet tonight and i don’t want to miss the opening. it’ll be decades before he tells it again.” the smile you give him then makes the muscle in his jaw jump. “and afterwards, we might take a starskiff to the exalting sanctum. the luofu is passing close to a binary star system tonight…”

his hands tighten around the scroll containing your report—the detection of cosmological time dilation patterns in three-body starquake ruptures—your voice gone soft and muddled in his head as he tries to get his jaw to unclench, so that he might beg you—and if we’re lucky, they might set off an aurora that we can see from the pavilion—if he could only say something that would keep you by his side, instead of, of—owing to the expansion of space in ten to the third dimensions upon point of impact, we can predict that the best course of action for the alliance—he doesn’t want to lose you, doesn’t want to give you up to this person who has done what he has failed to—it’s quite a romantic spot, actually—has caught the tail of your bright comet—

with a wash of sick, nervous heat, jing yuan realizes that he could. he could keep you from going out tonight under the guise of work, have you explain to him in charts and calculations and the graceful arc of your hands those elegant predictions which were your life’s work. he could always count on you to put your duty to the xianzhou luofu first, even if it meant making others unhappy.

one night might unfold into another into another as he lures you into his trap. he could start now. dismiss the guards. demand your time. steal a touch or two, first at your wrist, then your elbow, narrowing the distance between you by degrees as he bids you to lean over the desk and explain to him some prediction he pretends not to understand—all the while he looks not at the report, as you might have believed, but at the column of your unmarked throat that he longs to sink his teeth into like a claim. a night like that repeated a dozen times over. how long would it take you to sense him prowling at the edges of your comfort? to realize how close you have already allowed him?

how long would you be able to hold out against him?

jing yuan cares for you, cares what you think of him, and so your seduction would be as patient and meticulous as any strategy he’s executed. perhaps, after so many nights like that, alone together, he might ask you for a drink. tea or wine, whatever your preference, he’d offer to pour you a cup if you returned the favor. one drink becoming two becoming more, just like the hours he’d steal away from you, your tired head dipping into your chest as you struggle to stay awake in his company.

he’d have moved to your side of the table by then, offered you his shoulder to lean on; polite and trusting as you are, he doubts you would have questioned it as you drift into a haze of half-sleep. he’d stroke your shoulder, then your cheek, the crown of your lovely hair. he’d take the teacup from your slackening grasp and marvel at the sensation of your hand in his, at the delicate points of your fingertips, the soft cup of your palm that he cannot help but kiss. perhaps you would have woken, and if not, he’d take the time to memorize your hands, to slip his tongue between your fingers and nip at the sensitive skin between pointer and thumb.

you’d wake with a gasp, and he would turn his head to swallow the sound.

your lips—they’d be divine, he knows it, stained with the flavor of your drink, bitter and sweet as he coaxes you open on his tongue. he’d like it if you kissed him back, hand tangling in his long hair. he’d like it if you sighed, meltingly, into his embrace; if your supple body arched beneath his wandering hands. there, he’d show the first and only sign of his impatience, working them into your clothes so he could feel the heat rising beneath your skin and know for certain that you felt it too—that you were filled with a need as powerful as his own.

he’d take you on whatever surface was available, on the floor, on his desk. he would lay you out and fit himself between the spread of your legs, fingers probing inside you—at first one, then two, then three if you could take it. he thinks you could. he would do it slow, a precise calculation of what would bring you the most pleasure; if you whined, he’d only go slower. with just his fingers he could make you fall apart. he imagines you gnawing at your lips, slick with spit as you moan into the tabletop, your body slick around his fingers as he fucks them into you.

how would you feel on his cock? squirming as he splits you open or holding yourself breathlessly still? his hands on your hips as he presses himself into the heat of you, hoping to leave bruises that you’ll remember tomorrow and tomorrow after that. he’d fuck you however you’d like—slow, hard, fast, soft. he’d fuck you until you saw stars sparking beneath the cover of your closed eyes, no need to look outside, to look away from him at all. he’d make you come again and again, slack jawed, clawing at the his shoulders, addicted to the push and pull of him inside you. you’d ask him for more and he would give it to you gladly.

bent over like this, you wouldn’t be able to see him at all. he is grateful for that. what would you think if you saw that hunger so naked on his face, which he has only ever shown you so indolently calm? he is not known as a man of large appetites, but for you he is a wild, starving thing. for you— for you—

“general?”

jing yuan smiles at you, locking those thoughts of you behind the placid expression on his face. you haven’t noticed anything at all, and why should you? it is a mask that has not slipped for hundreds of years, unlike his next words, which slip loose without him meaning to.

“i hate to keep you longer than i should, but if you wouldn’t mind…”

A/N: i want him so bad i look stupid i know. i feel like jing yuan is just a little bit of an asshole but he tries hard not to be because he is also very aware of the power he has over people and knows that he could exploit them all too easily. but i really, really want him to (: anyway i like my jing yuans literally sick with longing. will i ever let him fuck for real???? stay tuned for more.

#jing yuan x reader #hsr x reader #jing yuan imagines #hsr imagines #.illuminations #.xianzhou luofu #dont look at me or the way i fcked up this summary cause i copy pasted from the other to get the format #im dumb and silly!!!!! #fixed it now tho