Chapter Text
“I love you,” Mo Ran says.
He says it often. He says it every day they’re together. And he says it often enough that Chu Wanning begins to believe him, even though there is always a tiny seed at the back of his mind that doesn’t know how to believe it fully. Mo Ran seems to realize that; Chu Wanning thinks it’s why he says it so often. I love you. I love you. Like he’s trying to erase all evidence of the cruelty that came before. It can’t work, of course. Too much damage was done to be completely erased.
But it helps.
Every day, the memories of that cruelty seem a little more faint, and Chu Wanning remembers more and more of the boy Mo Ran used to be. He’s still that boy, sometimes. Cheeky and mischievous, even though there’s a darker edge to it now. Mo Ran has seen so much, has been through so much. They can’t ever go back to the people they were before. Not completely.
Chu Wanning is thinking about this on this particular morning, when Mo Ran says, “I love you,” and looks into his eyes like he’s trying to make it stick this time.
“I love you,” Chu Wanning answers, more quietly. It isn’t the first time he’s said it. The first time was one of those first few times when Mo Ran had his hand wrapped around Chu Wanning’s cock, his fingers encircling Chu Wanning so perfectly. It had just all been too much, the sensation and Mo Ran’s dark eyes on him. When Mo Ran said, I love you, Chu Wanning said it back. Whenever he says it, it’s always quiet. He wishes he was unafraid. He wishes he could say it often, and loudly, and with the pride he feels. He can’t. But it seems to be enough for Mo Ran. When Chu Wanning says the words, it always seems to make Mo Ran more desperate for Chu Wanning, and yet also gentler. A devastating combination. Chu Wanning wishes he had the face to say it more often, but the truth is that he usually doesn’t. It sits inside him always, sparkling brightly, waiting for him to find the courage to say it, always pressing up against the inside of his throat, trying to escape. The conditions have to be perfect, and he feels sorry for Mo Ran. He should try harder.
“I love you,” he says again, louder this time, and more insistent. “I always have.”
That instantly feels like too much, and he can feel himself wilting slightly, getting smaller, his shoulders hunching inward automatically, like he thinks Mo Ran is going to choose now to judge him.
“Wanning,” Mo Ran sighs, and he swoops in and kisses Chu Wanning with that tender ferocity that Chu Wanning craves. The exact right intensity. Chu Wanning allows himself to be bundled away by it, not trying to resist even a little, and Mo Ran kisses him and kisses him and kisses him.
Every day they seem to move closer to something else, and Chu Wanning has done what he can in terms of furtive research in the library in those moments when he is by himself, so he has some idea of what it will be. But he feels unmoored by his own lack of practical experience. He feels like a failure, like someone who has missed important parts of his own education. Humiliated by the fact that his former student is going to have to be the one to teach him.
And yet thrilled, at the same time.
He has long since stopped denying that he feels a thrill every time Mo Ran touches him. Mo Ran could do anything to him, could touch him anywhere, and Chu Wanning thinks that he would crave more and more of it. He knows it’s horrible. He knows he’s terrible for even thinking it. But Mo Ran was so gentle with him in the beginning, and Chu Wanning never thought that he would experience that gentleness again, but Mo Ran has forgiven him. Mo Ran has been so bright, so here all the time, smiling and tender just like when he was younger, but better now, and not young anymore. Beautiful and dedicated, and he wants Chu Wanning.
It’s enough to make the fear and uncertainty recede, and he has always cared for Mo Ran so much. Why wouldn’t he allow it? Why wouldn’t he lean into it?
“I was cruel to you, before,” Mo Ran whispers against his ear, pressing a soft kiss to the outer rim of it, where he knows it makes Chu Wanning shiver.
“No,” Chu Wanning says quickly, even though the answer is yes. Mo Ran laughs a little, and it rumbles against Chu Wanning’s throat, where Mo Ran is kissing him now.
“I was,” he says.
“I didn’t blame you.”
“No. Don’t you understand how that’s worse?” Chu Wanning is stubbornly silent at that, and Mo Ran laughs again, though this time Chu Wanning can hear the despair in it. He touches Mo Ran’s face gently, guiding it up so that he’ll meet Chu Wanning’s eyes.
“You had reasons to hate me,” he says. He thinks about the wontons, scattering across the ground. He thinks about Mo Ran’s hating glare, staring up from Shi Mei’s corpse. He still isn’t sure how Mo Ran forgave him for that. He’s been afraid to ask. It hangs over him, sometimes, when he’s left alone to sleep and dream of the times before, when he thought that hatred was the only thing he could ever hope to receive from Mo Ran again.
Did you try to revive Shi Mei? He wants to ask. He doesn’t. Did it not work? Is that the only reason…
“No,” Mo Ran says quietly. “I didn’t have reasons to hate you. I just thought I did, and…” He hesitates. His fingers brush against Chu Wanning’s chest, tracing some kind of pattern there. He shakes his head and smiles ruefully. “Another time. There are things I understand better now. Memories I thought...well. Everything is a lot more clear to me than it used to be, but you are clearer than everything else. I was never right to hate you.”
I let Shi Mei die, Chu Wanning thinks, but he can’t say it aloud. He is so tempted, always, to ruin his own happiness, and he doesn’t understand why. Mo Ran is holding him. Kissing him. Mo Ran, the man he loves. And still Chu Wanning cannot stop wondering if he is just a replacement, and not a very good one.
“What do you mean, clearer?” he settles for, because he can’t bring himself to speak Shi Mei’s name. Mo Ran sighs, and he presses his forehead against Chu Wanning’s. He does this, sometimes. Seems conflicted about what to report to Chu Wanning and what to keep secret. Chu Wanning thought at first that it was out of loyalty to Taxian-jun, but he isn’t sure about that anymore. Sometimes he thinks that Mo Ran is struggling with whether or not to mention Shi Mei, too. This ghost that hangs between them.
“I don’t know what I mean,” Mo Ran answers quietly. “Not yet.” His voice is low and dangerous, but there is a fervent heat boiling up from deep within. Excitement. “But I will understand myself better soon. I...Taxian-jun is sending me on a mission for a few days. When I get back, I’ll have the answers I need. And I promise that I’ll tell you everything.” He hesitates, his strength receding in the face of his obvious insecurity. He looks at Chu Wanning with eyes that are rimmed in red, wet with unshed tears. “As long as you promise not to hate me.”
“I could never hate you,” Chu Wanning answers, because it’s the truth. Mo Ran smiles, but it’s the kind of smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. It doesn’t seem to have helped. He kisses Chu Wanning again, deeper.
“You would,” Mo Ran says, his tone taking on the joking edge that means the conversation from before is over. “If you knew how much I think about fucking you in this bed while your husband is none the wiser.”
Chu Wanning gasps, though it’s less because of the words and more because of the sudden shock of lust that runs through him when Mo Ran speaks them. Mo Ran notices, grinning wolfishly as he presses a kiss to the corner of Chu Wanning’s mouth.
“Would you like that, Wanning?” he asks. “Would you like for me to fuck you?”
Chu Wanning whimpers. He might die of shame before this is over. He can’t answer such an absurd question!
“I think that’s a yes, but I’m not sure,” Mo Ran continues blithely. “Can Shizun nod, at least?”
Chu Wanning glares at him, but his fingers are curled around one of Mo Ran’s wrists, and he’s digging his nails into the skin. It’s as much of an answer as Chu Wanning can force himself to give. Mo Ran laughs again, delighted.
“Oh, Wanning,” he sighs. He continues kissing down Chu Wanning’s throat, pushing him back against the pillows, a combination of gentleness and roughness sending fire through Chu Wanning’s very blood. “You’re so smart, finding ways to tell me what you want.”
He kisses Chu Wanning with a hunger then that seems to be fed by both the mentions of Taxian-jun and the fact that Mo Ran will be leaving. Chu Wanning knows he can survive without Mo Ran’s attentions for a few days. He hasn’t become totally spoiled.
But…he’s still afraid. Afraid that Mo Ran will leave and then realize, when he’s free of Chu Wanning, that Chu Wanning has somehow bewitched or tricked Mo Ran into thinking that he’s anything other than what he is.
He’s afraid that Mo Ran won’t come back. That he’ll get hurt out there, doing whatever it is he’s doing under Taxian-jun’s orders, and Chu Wanning won’t be there to help him.
He’s afraid that Mo Ran is just using this excuse to leave. That all of this has been an elaborate joke, a scheme of revenge, and he’s going to reveal to Chu Wanning just how pathetic he is before he leaves for good.
But those thoughts are fleeting, because it’s impossible to hang on to them when Mo Ran continues to touch him this way, fingertips leaving trails of liquid fire up Chu Wanning’s spine, lighting him up like a firework about to go off.
“Tell me you’re mine?” Mo Ran asks, at the exact moment he pushes open Chu Wanning’s inner robes and wraps his fingers around Chu Wanning’s cock. Chu Wanning gasps again, his mouth falling open, his forehead rising to press against Mo Ran’s. Mo Ran’s eyes are dark like this, blocked from the light, and there is a cruel tilt to his mouth, but it’s so different from the cruel tilt from before. Chu Wanning knows that Mo Ran likes this. Likes that Chu Wanning squirms and loses control of himself, his feet scrabbling for purchase in the sheets, his hands gripping everything he can reach. It’s not cruelty, but it’s something like cruelty. Mo Ran could drag this on for hours and be perfectly satisfied, and Chu Wanning knows this, and he wants it, and he hates himself for wanting it, and for being so obvious.
“Yours,” Chu Wanning gasps.
“Not Taxian-jun’s, no matter what pretty red robes he forced you to wear. You’re mine.”
“Yours,” Chu Wanning whines, because Mo Ran’s hand is slow, the pressure perfect as it moves over and over, a maddening sensation. Chu Wanning is sure that he could die from this.
“Mine,” Mo Ran whispers. He releases Chu Wanning’s cock, and Chu Wanning cries out, but Mo Ran shushes him gently, pressing a kiss against the side of his head. “Not yet,” he says, ignoring the way Chu Wanning’s legs quiver as he tries to keep from jerking his hips forward, tries to keep from reaching for himself, finishing himself off if Mo Ran won’t do it. What has happened to him? He has become so insatiable.
But Mo Ran delivers. He’s careful with Chu Wanning in some respects, and keeps telling Chu Wanning tell me if it hurts, which is more embarrassing than anything else. It’s also humiliating when Mo Ran says that Chu Wanning needs to be prepared, like he’s...like he’s some animal giving birth or something. But even the humiliation sends sharp spikes of lust driving through him, so Chu Wanning can only conclude that he simply must be broken, as a person. Why else would he feel like this? Like he’s being given everything he wants.
Mo Ran has long fingers, and they’re strong, too, and that is a terrible combination, it turns out, because they press inside him, and they move, and it’s an impossible sensation. Something Chu Wanning never envisioned even when he glanced furtively at those instructions in the books that he was too ashamed to be seen reading. Maybe he should have read them more carefully, because all of it seems like a surprise, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s Mo Ran doing it.
Mo Ran. He would let Mo Ran do anything to him.
Mo Ran seems to know it. He’s looking at Chu Wanning like a starved creature, like Chu Wanning is everything he wants, and Chu Wanning feels drunk off the power of that. Just the simple fact of knowing that he’s wanted, or maybe it’s simply that he’s wanted by Mo Ran. There is power in that, to him. It’s a thing he never thought he would have, a thing he certainly didn’t think he deserved. And it’s his. Mo Ran looks at him with want, and he’s doing all these shameless things with Chu Wanning, to Chu Wanning, and he seems almost worshipfully happy about it. How could Chu Wanning have ever expected this?
That feeling of power leaves him when Mo Ran enters him for the first time, but it's not power that he wants now anyway. He feels completely overwhelmed, completely taken apart, and he wants it. He wants this. He doesn't know what's wrong with him, but he doesn't care when he's like this, and he lets his head fall back against the pillows, and he lets Mo Ran do whatever he wants, and he tries to make Mo Ran happy. He tries to meet Mo Ran’s thrusts, tries to hold on to Mo Ran. It feels more difficult than it should. Mo Ran is so big, and Chu Wanning can think of nothing except how full he feels, how whole.
Mo Ran is insatiable like this, like just the sight of Chu Wanning beneath him is enough to give him endless energy. And there’s no reason for that to be true. Chu Wanning feels awkward and exposed and ugly beneath Mo Ran’s gaze, but it becomes harder and harder to allow that feeling to take hold. Mo Ran is just...so convincing. He whispers filthy things. He talks about how beautiful Chu Wanning looks beneath him. Chu Wanning is too overwhelmed to do anything but nod, and agree, and hold harder to Mo Ran. Maybe he won’t believe Mo Ran when the high has worn off, but it’s so easy to believe him now. Mo Ran looks at him like he’s beautiful, like he’s special, like he’s a loved and precious thing. Chu Wanning allows himself to believe it. If it's just for tonight, if it wears off once the high is over, then he’ll deal with that later. He just wants to take whatever he can get now. He’s starved for it. Insatiable. Some kind of sex-starved creature who wants Mo Ran to remain inside him always.
He thinks about saying it. He doesn’t. He can’t. His face turns red just from the idea of speaking such shameless thoughts. Mo Ran doesn’t seem to have that problem, but then again, Mo Ran never did. Mo Ran says whatever comes into his mind and lets Chu Wanning sputter with shock. It’s no different now, even with Mo Ran’s cock inside Chu Wanning, piercing him, filling him. He has no shame even now, and even though he is intense and passionate and merciless and all the things that Chu Wanning apparently wants, he’s also still Mo Ran, and that turns out to be everything. He laughs when Chu Wanning sputters. He kisses Chu Wanning when Chu Wanning looks aggrieved. He calls Chu Wanning shizun in a teasing voice even when Chu Wanning half-shouts at him not to call him that. He’s still Mo Ran, and Chu Wanning is still Chu Wanning, and it’s good that Chu Wanning never needs the reminder, because it’s all he can do to cling to sanity like this, with Mo Ran relentlessly above him, his hands setting fire to Chu Wanning’s skin.
When it’s over, after what feels like hours or days or maybe an entire lifetime of entanglement, Mo Ran stays. He makes sure that Chu Wanning is comfortable. He cleans him with a cloth warmed in water by the fire, and he’s gentle, his fingers pressing idly on the already-darkening bruises at Chu Wanning’s hips, and the places on his shoulders and chest where Mo Ran had bitten without thinking. Chu Wanning doesn’t mind the bruises and the marks. He thinks he will like to look at them once he’s alone. He thinks he’ll like the reminder. But he doesn’t quite have the face to tell Mo Ran that, and so he’s silent, watching Mo Ran as Mo Ran traces those signs of violence, so incongruous with the lightness that still fills Chu Wanning’s chest.
He keeps waiting for Mo Ran to say that he has to leave; he wouldn’t blame him. But Mo Ran doesn't leave. He never even suggests it.
He'll have to leave eventually. The Emperor has never come to visit Chu Wanning at night, and there's no reason to suspect he'll start, but Chu Wanning doesn’t like to think of the risk. Even this feels too indulgent; spread out on the bed in only his inner robe, plainly debauched, while Mo Ran’s hands roam over his body. What he must look like from the outside...he wants to draw his robe closed and curl up under the blankets and will the rest of the world away, but he doesn’t. Mo Ran is still touching him.
He once thought that he would be protecting Mo Ran by refusing to allow Mo Ran to touch him. That determination didn’t last very long, did it? Mo Ran has always been so good at talking his way into things, and Chu Wanning has always been so weak for him. Maybe he should have been stronger, but he’s glad he wasn’t.
Mo Ran presses soft kisses to the side of Chu Wanning’s face, to his temple. He wraps himself around Chu Wanning from behind. His arms are tight, strong. They make Chu Wanning feel...soft. Safe. Protected. Not things Chu Wanning ever thought he needed to feel, but apparently he had.
Mo Ran still doesn’t leave. He hasn’t been sated by just once, and Chu Wanning can’t pretend when he is woken to the hard press of Mo Ran’s cock against him that he isn’t as hungry for it as Mo Ran is. Mo Ran presses his forehead against the back of Chu Wanning’s neck, whispering sweet words to him, asking him if he’s ready, if he wants to. Chu Wanning wants to. Chu Wanning thinks that he always wants Mo Ran inside him now. It only took feeling it once to know that he would want to feel it every day for the rest of his life. Even though it hurt. Even though it was strange, and humiliating, and different from anything he’s ever experienced. Everything good about it outweighed the bad.
He’s being dramatic. He’s tired, he’s just woken up, he’s not thinking straight. He turns his head to allow Mo Ran better access to his neck, and he whimpers, accidentally. He doesn’t recognize himself. Mo Ran curses under his breath, and he slides in, shockingly easier than before, fitting perfectly against Chu Wanning’s back like this, lined up, their skin pressed together. As close as people can be to each other. Is there a way to be closer? If there is, Chu Wanning wants it.
“Yes,” Chu Wanning says, because he’s tired enough to do it, tired enough and willing enough to beg for it. “Please,” he tries, and Mo Ran curses louder and slams into him, and Chu Wanning accepts him, wants him, pushes his hips back needily. He knows that he would never be like this if he was more awake, and so he takes advantage of it. He can pretend, later, that he didn’t even know what he was doing. That he was asleep. Maybe Mo Ran will believe him.
Not that it matters. Mo Ran doesn’t give him any space to think. Chu Wanning feels full, feels impossibly full, feels Mo Ran’s cock inside him, hot and hard and forcing him to admit that he wants this, he likes this, he enjoys this feeling of fullness. He wants this forever. His own cock is hard as well. He wants to wrap his fingers around it. He can’t. He grips the sheets beneath him, and he waits, and Mo Ran does it for him, those perfect fingers wrapping around Chu Wanning like they were made to hold it. Chu Wanning nearly sobs, nearly breaks down, and thanks Mo Ran, like some kind of desperate fool. But Mo Ran doesn’t hate him for it, doesn’t laugh at him or shun him or pull out of him and leave him vacant. Mo Ran swears and bites into the side of Chu Wanning’s neck, and he says something that Chu Wanning can’t understand, because Mo Ran’s tongue is pressing into his skin, his teeth digging in deeper with every muffled word. It doesn’t matter, Chu Wanning doesn’t think. It doesn’t matter what he’s saying, because Mo Ran is showing whatever he’s saying with the way his hips speed up, the way his movements get deeper, harsher, and Chu Wanning wants all of it.
He wishes that he had the right words to describe the way it feels, the right thoughts to describe everything that’s going through his mind. He keeps thinking about before, when Mo Ran was his disciple, bright-eyed, his smile adoring and soft. He shouldn’t be thinking about that. He shouldn’t be thinking about how Mo Ran chose him, how Mo Ran wanted him, how Mo Ran found him again.
How Mo Ran forgave him.
Forgave him.
He shouldn’t think about these things, but he does, because he thought for so long that Mo Ran would never look at him as anything except the teacher who failed him, and now Mo Ran is behind him, fucking him, whispering words of love into his ear and into his skin.
It’s too much. It’s too much. Every single bit of his body is afire. He wants and wants, and he can have, and he’s drunk off the feeling of it, of the simple fact that he is allowed, and wanted in return.
At some point in the night, he falls asleep again, Mo Ran's arms wrapped around him tight, and Mo Ran is whispering I'm sorry, I'm sorry into his ear, or maybe that’s just a dream. Chu Wanning isn't sure what he would have to be sorry about.
He's awoken again when it's still dark, light just starting to filter in, in the way it does when it's not quite dawn. Mo Ran kisses him awake, and Chu Wanning thinks again? with a scandalized incredulity he's glad he doesn't say aloud. But Mo Ran is leaving, sneaking off into the early morning to complete whatever acts are required of him by Taxian-jun. He lingers, though, one knee on the bed, turned towards Chu Wanning, drinking him in. Chu Wanning thinks that perhaps he should be ashamed of everything that happened, but he's not. He looks up at Mo Ran, and he can feel the open adoration on his face. He's too tired to be ashamed of it.
Mo Ran nuzzles his cheek against Chu Wanning's hair, and again Chu Wanning feels small, safe, protected. Things that make him want to whip himself to death. He knows that Mo Ran is leaving, and that he will be alone again, and that it will be difficult to be alone again, but he finds that he doesn't mind or worry the way he might have in the past. He sits up in bed and watches Mo Ran leave, and he's smiling. He can't seem to stop.
It is a slow day, without Mo Ran to keep him company. Servants deliver him his meals, but they don’t talk to him. They don't even look at him. Chu Wanning tinkers with the Holy Night Guardian, but every so often he is struck with a violent memory of the things he and Mo Ran did in this bed last night, and he needs to sit down and wait for his face to cool. Once, the memory is so real that he decides to bathe in the cold pond out front, and he sits there slumped in the water up to his nose, glaring at the mountain in front of him, trying to will away the thoughts of Mo Ran.
It doesn’t work.
At night, he eyes his bed with an expression of suspicion and contempt. How is he supposed to sleep in there alone? And how is he supposed to face himself after thinking such a shameless thing?
He sleeps curled in on himself, the way he always does, the blanket pulled around his shoulders because he suddenly feels cold, without the warmth of Mo Ran at his back, which is a pathetic way to be, surely.
In the middle of the night, he’s startled awake.
Rough hands grasping him, pulling him. He tries to fight them, but they suppress him easily. He’s taken through the Red Lotus Pavilion. Drugged again. He can feel his head lolling on his neck, can feel the way his limbs refuse to respond. A creature with its tendons cut.
He’s blindfolded, not allowed to see where he's being taken, but he recognizes the damp, earthy smell of the place where he was questioned by Taxian-jun before, and the chains with which they bind his wrists are familiar, too.
He’s left there, kneeling, for quite a while. He dozes. The drugs they gave him make him tired, and he doesn’t feel enough fear to keep himself awake. He’s too used to this. He wonders what Taxian-jun wants this time. As long as it’s not about Mo Ran, he doesn’t fear any of the emperor’s questions.
He hears the door creak open, and through the haze it doesn’t seem to matter at all.
It’s only when the person speaks that he realizes that he was wrong in his assumptions.
He assumed it would be Taxian-jun questioning him, but it’s a woman's voice, soft and lilting. Not Ye Wangxi, with her straightforward way of speaking. This is a woman used to using her charm, used to getting the things she wants out of people. Someone who survives because of it.
"How did you do it?" she asks. Her voice is calm and curious, as if they are two friends discussing some trick that Chu Wanning pulled, but he has never met this woman before, and he doesn’t understand what she asks.
"What?" He tries. His voice rasps painfully on the word. His tongue feels too large and ungainly in his mouth. He tries again. "Who are you? How dare you?"
She doesn't like that. Pain explodes across his face, on his cheek. Not much. A hard slap, nothing more. Still enough to shock him further awake.
"You will tell me what I want to know," she says.
She asks him questions.
Questions that he has no way of knowing the answers to.
Questions that make no sense.
It’s Taxian-jun again. Some imagined crime. A refusal to believe that he had nothing to do with it. She’s vague, at first, but the questioning draws on long enough that she grows frustrated. Her questions become more specific. Leading, as if he has forgotten his half of a script and is letting her down.
Finally, she comes right out and asks.
She asks him how he discovered the flower.
She asks him how he removed it.
Chu Wanning doesn't answer, even once he understands that he is yet again being accused of something he had nothing to do with. He lets her incriminate herself further.
She speaks of a Master working in the shadows, someone who cursed Taxian-jun and then found his plans overturned, presumably by Chu Wanning’s intervention. She speaks of being contacted by that Master, drawn into a plot to help him. She is rapturous about it in a way that feels vaguely unhinged. She doesn’t seem to consider that Taxian-jun could have discovered the flower on his own. She talks about this Master as if he is some genius, like he’s half a god, like it’s impossible that he would have failed to anyone but the great Chu Wanning. It’s an odd mix of flattery and threat. Maybe it would be more effective on a different sort of man, but Chu Wanning feels no compulsion to answer her at all.
“You’ve done a good job of hiding your success from everyone,” the woman’s voice says, smug and irritated and angry. Chu Wanning wants to laugh, but he can’t. “My Master is forgiving. He will rescue you and bring you away. Some of the changes to Taxian-jun’s nature can’t be reverted. He’s not safe to be around. You’ll be safe with my master. We both will, if you can just tell me how.”
She grows more desperate. She pleads with him, calling Taxian-jun a cruel husband and saying that she doesn’t want to fail her master. She doesn’t even seem to notice that she has outed herself as the Empress. She tells him that her master has been waiting for him. She tries to seduce him. She tries mocking him. She orders his fingernails pulled out. He stays silent through it all.
He doesn’t know how long it is before the blindfold is ripped away. He’s tired, feverish. The tips of his fingers hurt with a pain that is gnawing at him far more than his empty stomach. He has been hollowed out by need. So many needs. Song Qiutong hasn’t returned to the cell in quite a while. He thinks she must have fled, after days passed without getting what she needed from her prisoner.
He blinks against the light, which comes in from the open door. Mo Ran is kneeling in front of him. Pale and frantic.
“Shizun,” he breathes. Beads sway in front of his face. Chu Wanning understands. He thinks perhaps he has known for a while, or at least suspected. There were too many things, too many moments...he just didn’t want to look more closely at any of them.
Mo Ran rips the bracelets off his wrists, and Chu Wanning feels the circling of the spiritual energy within his veins. He feels whole again, in a way he hasn’t since Mo Ran left.
Mo Ran. Taxian-jun. He understands now.
He thinks he should probably be afraid. He was afraid of Taxian-jun once, wasn’t he? He isn’t anymore.
“Mo Ran,” he murmurs, before he loses consciousness.
When he wakes, he is in his bed. Warm, comfortably surrounded by blankets. He can feel weight on his fingertips, a soft and gentle kind of weight, and he knows that they have been carefully bandaged. Nothing hurts. Drugged again, maybe, but at least this time it is pleasant, a floating feeling that makes him smile up at Mo Ran without hesitation.
Because Mo Ran is there, of course, sitting beside his bed. Looking down at Chu Wanning nervously, like he thinks he won’t be welcome. Clearly he doesn’t realize just how far gone Chu Wanning is for him. Maybe that’s a good thing. In his drugged state, it doesn’t feel like one. Chu Wanning wants him to know.
“Mo Ran,” he whispers.
“Shizun,” Mo Ran replies. His voice is serious, mournful. He’s no longer dressed in the ornate brocade robes of Taxian-jun, but the light blue armor of Sisheng Peak. Chu Wanning supposes, if the rumors are true, that Mo Ran lost the right to wear it, but something tells him to wait for an explanation.
Something, like it’s nameless. No, it’s trust. Trust tells him to wait. He doesn’t know Taxian-jun, but he knows Mo Ran.
“Why?” he asks. Mo Ran’s face twists down into a desperate frown, and he looks at his own hands, curling and uncurling.
“I...there is a lot to tell, Shizun,” he says.
“Tell it all,” Chu Wanning replies, and Mo Ran flinches as if he has been struck, and he nods.
“Yes, Shizun.”
“Mo Ran.”
Mo Ran looks up, finally, at that, his gaze vacant, not at all defiant. Chu Wanning’s stomach clenches.
“Yes, Shizun?” Mo Ran asks. Chu Wanning wants to sit up, but it’s as if his bones have turned pleasantly to jelly. After days of suffering, growing more and more sick as the infection set in to his injured hands, he got used to the discomfort. To be comfortable again is a treasure. He smiles, and he frees one hand from the confines of the blankets, and he carefully nudges it into Mo Ran’s. Mo Ran looks down at it as if he doesn’t know what to do with it.
“Tell me everything,” Chu Wanning says, and he tries this time to sound more...careful. More like the teacher he should have been. Less like an executioner, since Mo Ran is looking at him like he is one.
Mo Ran’s expression crumbles. He still doesn’t seem to believe that anything good will come of it, but he doesn’t argue. He begins to speak.
He starts with hate. With anger. With raw, frightening feelings that grew and pulsed inside him, a dissatisfaction that made him seek out more and more decadent things until he was unable to find pleasure in anything at all. He speaks of how his every good feeling was focused on Shi Mei, and so Chu Wanning understands the ending to this tale long before the beginning is finished, but he sits silently, and he holds Mo Ran’s hand, and he watches Mo Ran speak, and he listens.
Mo Ran took over Sisheng Peak. He killed Xue Zhengyong and Madam Wang. He named himself Emperor of the cultivation world, and everyone feared him.
And he was alone.
“I tried to master Rebirth, to save Shi Mei,” he says, his expression blank and his voice dead, and hating. “It didn’t work. I tried everything. Nothing...nothing worked. I tried to find you. I thought you would be able to teach me, that I could make you teach me, but you...you had disappeared.” He takes in a sharp breath and squeezes Chu Wanning’s hand gently. “I was...drunk, one night. Despondent. I had slaughtered the Rufeng Sect already, and I didn’t care. I had few regrets, but one of them...Ye Wangxi. She stood against me. She was brave. I killed her anyway. I regretted it, later. Some...pinprick of conscience, maybe, or maybe I thought that she could help me, or maybe I was just tired of everyone fawning over me and I wanted someone to fight. I was very drunk. I don’t know if I was thinking at all. I went to her tomb, to talk to her. I don’t know why I thought...there must have been some part of me that suspected something, or remembered.”
“You used Rebirth,” Chu Wanning says, when Mo Ran can’t continue.
“I used Rebirth,” Mo Ran confirms quietly. “The technique I’d been trying all that time. And it worked.” He laughs, then, shaking his head. “I was so surprised. I didn’t think...maybe I couldn’t think about it. I didn’t see the obvious at first. I just thought I had solved it. Ye Wangxi, I took her back to Sisheng Peak with me. She hated me, then, but I was so excited. I just wanted to have someone to share it with.”
“It didn’t work on Shi Mei,” Chu Wanning guesses, and Mo Ran smiles.
“Of course it didn’t work on Shi Mei,” he confirms.
“Because Shi Mei isn’t dead.”
“He wasn’t.”
Chu Wanning looks up at Mo Ran with surprise.
“What?” he asks.
“These last few days, I was...setting a trap.” Mo Ran sighs. “I’m getting ahead of myself. Once I realized that something else was going on...I started trying out Rebirth on others.” He swallows heavily. “It worked sometimes. Other times, it didn’t. I started to think that maybe Shi Mei was just beyond my reach. Or maybe his body had been taken. I still…I still hated you so much. I decided that you were the one who took his body. I could feel nothing for you but hate, and suspicion. But I was fixated on you. I was sending people to find you. I knew you were out there somewhere. It was Wangxi who...who started looking into it more. I think that she felt sorry for me. Or maybe she just realized how mad I was and thought there had to be a reason for it. In any case, she was the one who convinced me that there was something else going on. She approached the remnants of the Medical Sect, and working together, they found an answer.”
“The flower,” Chu Wanning says.
“Shi Mei was a Butterfly Boned Beauty Feast. His mother spent her life hoping that she would be able to help others like her. She cultivated the flower in secret, and when she died, Shi Mei vowed that he would use it. He had a plan for me. I don’t really care much what it was.” Mo Ran frowns, looking down at Chu Wanning’s hand in his again. “I did not like to kill him, but you should have heard some of the things that he said…”
“I’m sorry, Mo Ran,” Chu Wanning manages, and Mo Ran meets his eyes at last.
“I’m not,” he says. “The flower...it made me into a monster, Shizun. I can remember everything that I felt when I was under its influence. When they removed it, they told me…they didn’t know if I would ever…if I would stay the way I was. Empty and hating. They said that the flower warps a person’s memories, warps their personality. I wasn’t the same person I am now. I’m only grateful that you were hidden away for the worst of it, because if you were here… I don’t know what I would have done to you. I became convinced that your disappearance meant that you were the one who had planted the flower in me. I was so sure that I had to find you and figure out why and kill you if you wouldn’t tell me. But the people from Guyue’ye removed the flower, and…the more time passed, the more I remembered. There were things that the flower stole from me. Good memories. From all the reading Wangxi did about the flower, we thought those memories would be gone for good, but some of them started to trickle back. Half-formless, at first. I thought maybe that they were dreams, but they weren’t. But it was...a slow process. I was still angry, irrational, at first. I didn’t always make the right decisions. I named Wangxi as my second in command in part because she was one of the only people who could always get through to me.” He sighs. “By the time those men found you, I was...not entirely free of the curse, but free enough to want to make sure that I was right before I harmed you. Wangxi was the one who convinced me to approach you as Mo Ran, not Taxian-jun. You can probably guess that she wasn’t the one who suggested the wedding.” He smiles a little wryly.
“I still don’t...understand that,” Chu Wanning admits. Mo Ran groans, and some humor comes back into his tone. Chu Wanning can’t help a small smile at him, and Mo Ran’s expression lights up, as if Chu Wanning has given him so much more.
“I wanted you,” he says. “I see it now. I thought I wanted to humiliate you, but you don’t know how much willpower it took not to just...visit you here, that night. Blindfold you and fuck you as Taxian-jun, and then come back and take care of you as Mo Ran. I thought about it so many times, those first few days.”
“Mo Ran,” Chu Wanning hisses, and inwardly he hisses at himself not to enjoy the idea too much. Mo Ran smiles again, a little softer. He seems to be able to hear Chu Wanning’s inward self-recrimination.
“I loved you,” Mo Ran says slowly. “Even then. I loved you when I was a boy. I loved you so much. I...Shizun, even with the flower in my heart, even when I was convinced that I loved only Shi Mei, I was looking for you. Seeking you. I wanted you with me. I told myself I hated you, I told myself that I wanted you to suffer, and that’s why I wanted you. But that wasn’t it at all. I just didn’t realize it. The love was still there. The flower couldn’t destroy it.”
He’s too intense. Chu Wanning has to look away, down at their joined hands.
“I...all right,” he manages, awkwardly. “That’s...very impressive.”
Mo Ran barks a laugh at that, and he brings his free hand up to his forehead, rubbing at it like he’s resisting the urge to do something else. Chu Wanning wishes he wouldn’t resist. He’s pretty sure that Mo Ran wants to kiss him.
“It’s sick. I stood outside the Red Lotus Pavilion so many times in those early days, convincing myself that it would be the worst thing to do, to fuck you. Sometimes that made me want to do it more. Knowing that you didn’t want me. Knowing that I wouldn’t have you any other way. I was horrible to you. I wanted you to hurt.”
“You thought I had done something terrible to you.”
“I was horrible to you even before then.”
“You thought...you thought I had let Shi Mei die,” Chu Wanning manages. In truth, it does still sting, sometimes, looking back on it. “And the flower would have been in you even then. You can’t...you can’t blame yourself for…”
“I can,” Mo Ran says simply. There is a kind of tiredness in his tone. But a steadiness, too. He carries so many things around. So much more than Chu Wanning even realized. “Wangxi tried to stop me from marrying you. She said I was being ridiculous. I told her that I knew I was, but I just wanted to marry my own childhood sweetheart. I resurrected her dead boyfriend so she could marry him. Why couldn’t I marry my first crush?”
“Stupid,” Chu Wanning decides, and Mo Ran laughs.
“Yes,” he says. “I’ve always been stupid, you’re right.”
“No, don’t say that.”
“You said it first, Wanning.” Chu Wanning frowns at his tone, and Mo Ran sighs, and raises Chu Wanning’s bandaged hand to his lips so he can kiss it. “I’m sorry for the way I acted. I understand now that I wanted you. I thought it was the flower’s influence. I thought...I thought the flower was the reason for my bizarre obsession for you. It was supposed to make the target fixated on the caster of the spell, and I was certainly fixated on you. I never guessed that my feelings for Shi Mei were the things that were faked. When you were here, and I realized that I wanted you more than ever...it became my goal to make sure that you didn’t figure out I was free from your influence. When I realized that you had no idea that I was Taxian-jun...we figured that we’d make me available to you as Mo Ran. See if you would try and order me to do anything. If you would take advantage of the connection we had. That way we could try and figure out your overall plot. That part was Wangxi’s husband’s idea. He said that it would be more effective if we could draw you out, get you to let your guard down. If you tried to control me using the flower, maybe we would be able to figure out what your goal was. But you never did. Still, I was paranoid. It wasn’t until Nangong Si located…”
“Nangong Si?” Chu Wanning asks. “He’s alive?”
“Yes?” Mo Ran says, frowning, almost petulantly. “You can meet him later. Is that really who you want to talk about right now?”
Chu Wanning huffs in annoyance, which makes Mo Ran laugh again, fond in a way that makes Chu Wanning’s stomach hurt with affection.
“You said...you said that some people from Sisheng Peak…”
“They’re alive,” Mo Ran agrees quietly. He looks, Chu Wanning notices suddenly, relieved of a burden. The burden of lying, perhaps, or just the burden of keeping Chu Wanning in the dark. “Uncle Xue, Madam Wang. The elders. They’re alive.” Chu Wanning releases a shuddering breath, and Mo Ran reaches out, carefully wipes the tears that have started to spill over Chu Wanning’s lashes. For once, Chu Wanning doesn’t mind that he’s crying again in front of his disciple. “I revived them and sent them to Taxue Palace on Mount Kunlun. Xue Meng was never dead. I was...I was just being cruel when I said that. I was jealous, and I thought you wanted to see him instead of me. He escaped early. He was at Taxue Palace all along, and his parents are there with him now. They’ve been lying low, trying to help me track down the mastermind. Uncle Xue was convinced I was wrong about it being you. He probably won’t be very happy to know the truth. He cared a lot about Shi Mei. But at least he’ll be vindicated.”
“Mm,” Chu Wanning says, unable to say anything else. The tightness in his chest increases. Alive. They’re alive. He imagines Xue Zhengyong’s hearty laugh when he learns the truth. He imagines Madam Wang’s soft smile. Xue Meng’s worshipful shout of Shizun! He feels nearly boneless with relief. With this feeling so opposite of grief.
“They...they have been more forgiving than I probably…” Mo Ran sighs, and Chu Wanning sees that the burden is still there, weighing down on him. Less, but still such a heavy weight for a young man to carry. Chu Wanning finds the strength to sit up further, though Mo Ran’s brow flickers with nervousness when he does, like he thinks Chu Wanning is straining himself, or maybe like he thinks Chu Wanning is going to summon Tianwen.
“How did you realize it was Shi Mei?” he asks. Mo Ran sighs, and lowers his head. Chu Wanning doesn’t bother to resist the impulse; he runs his bandaged fingers through Mo Ran’s hair. Mo Ran tentatively lays his head against Chu Wanning’s shoulder, looking sideways at Chu Wanning all the while. A dog expecting to be snapped at for getting too cozy. Chu Wanning doesn’t snap at him. He kisses Mo Ran’s temple when Mo Ran’s head is settled against his shoulder. It’s an awkward, sprawled position for both of them. Chu Wanning back against the pillows, Mo Ran laying half across him, his head resting on Chu Wanning’s shoulder. Chu Wanning hopes they stay like this for hours.
“Nangong Si was the one who was able to get the truth serum. I was already wavering, because I was spending so much time with you, and you never seemed like someone who believed that he could control me. I kept losing my cool. I was so bad at pretending not to be angry. And you always just let me say the cruelest things. I thought...it couldn’t be you. But Nangong Si said that I would never believe you unless I knew that you hadn’t done it for sure. Once I knew...once I knew, it was like something that had been blocking me was no longer there. I started to remember things. And I remembered...I remembered taking the flower.”
“Taking the flower?”
“Shi Mei tried to give it to you, Shizun,” Mo Ran admits. “But I asked him to give it to me instead.”
Chu Wanning wants to react to that pronouncement with fury, with anger, with hate, with demands that Mo Ran resurrect Shi Mei so that Chu Wanning can kill the boy himself. But he doesn’t. It might be the drugs, but mostly he’s just sad. Breathlessly sad, like his heart is breaking in slow motion. He asks for details, and Mo Ran provides them, in a quiet, near-dead voice, like he thinks that Chu Wanning will find it distasteful, or like Chu Wanning will be angry with him for having done it.
Instead, Chu Wanning hears love. He hears the love of a boy, hears the unending devotion of that boy, and he hears the love of a man. Strengthened over years. He watches Mo Ran struggle with his words, and he can’t help but smile at him, although Mo Ran is too ashamed to look at him and see how much his shizun loves him.
When he is done telling Chu Wanning everything, Mo Ran looks up, and his eyes are red.
“I wanted to save you,” he whispers. “But I ended up hurting you.”
“No,” Chu Wanning disagrees blithely. He cards his fingers again through Mo Ran’s hair, and for once there is nothing but peace inside him. “No, you didn’t hurt me.”
“I frightened you. I married you to humiliate you. I treated you…”
“You saved me,” Chu Wanning says. “And you saved everyone. Mo Ran, we have asked so much of you, and you have dealt with it. I’m so sorry. This shizun...this shizun should have protected you from that.”
Mo Ran sits up, and they sit like that, facing each other. Chu Wanning isn’t sure what Mo Ran is looking for in his expression. Whatever it is, he allows Mo Ran to try and find it. He doesn’t avert his eyes. Doesn’t try to squirm away from the intensity of the gaze. He lets Mo Ran look. He hopes that Mo Ran can see the truth.
He must; when some time has passed, Mo Ran surges forward, and he kisses Chu Wanning.
The world was never kind to Mo Ran. He should not have been made to deal with the things that life demanded he deal with. But he had dealt with them, starting from when he was very young. He had been so happy at Sisheng Peak. So happy to finally have a peaceful home. For how many days was he allowed to be happy? For how many days before Shi Mei ripped that away from him and turned him into a monster?
But Shi Mei didn’t manage it. Mo Ran cured himself. He found out the truth. He did what he could to repair the damage, and still he wears that expression like he doesn’t think he did enough.
“You did well, Mo Ran,” Chu Wanning says. He overcomes his natural aversion to speaking these things aloud, because he thinks that Mo Ran needs to hear it. “Shizun is very proud of you.”
“There is a lot to do, to make things better,” Mo Ran admits quietly. There’s guilt in his voice that Chu Wanning wishes wasn’t there, but he knows that it will take some time to overcome that.
Chu Wanning is willing to give him all the time he needs.
“Yes,” Chu Wanning agrees. “But not now.”
He pulls Mo Ran into his arms, getting over his embarrassment enough to make Mo Ran cuddle close, heedless of the stinging injuries on his hands. Mo Ran cries against him, allowing himself to let go. Chu Wanning holds him through it.
In the morning, they can figure out the rest.