big feelings

“I used to be rich,” he says, into the dark. Xie Yuchen has his head on his chest and is breathing into his skin–long, deep draws of wet air. It was the first year, when they had to have shared jobs as an excuse. At that time they had, in wordless agreement, stayed back after the rest of the team and Xie Yuchen had called down to the front desk to say actually, I’ll be staying through til Monday, and they’d kissed like teenagers until the sun set some uncertain time later. Before taking off any clothing. 

Xie Yuchen makes a curious noise. 

“I had a car. An automobile. In winter if I saw a girl I liked I could offer to drive her home, in the warmth. Or to the theater. I went to the theater a lot. I drank more. I didn’t care about what anyone thought of me.”

“You still don’t.”

Hei Xiazi chuckles. 

“Confidence with money behind it is a different kind of confidence.”

He is remembering the road up to the theater, and catching sight of a young man leaving from the back stage door with his things wrapped in a silk bundle. In the memory, the boy is turning back to laugh at something someone is saying inside, his face lit up and splashed with light. Makeup that reveals his true stage self for a moment in the alley. Hei Xiazi wants to share this with Xie Yuchen, because the memory has been with him so long that it is soft and fading and now when he thinks about it, he sees this boy instead of that one. 

“Before I was imprisoned,” he says, and feels Xie Yuchen tense and then relax. “I was a patron of the arts.”

He suddenly rolls Xie Yuchen over and licks into his mouth. It’s easier to say the rest if he stokes up a fever to sweat it out. Xie Yuchen opens for him and they kiss, wet and slow, and then he moves further down his body, leaving little marks on his chest and the soft swell of his stomach, right before his dick. He doesn’t fuck around. He sucks him down easily and Xie Yuchen gasps and his hips stutter up, up. 

Xiazi does it lovingly and deep for a bit and then, panting, he licks him and strokes him more so he has room to speak, into his body.

“I would have made you mine. Everyone would have said Jie Yuhua has a daddy and she’s kept and I would have gone to every performance and fucked you like this in the dressing room. Then driven you home to have you in our house.”

“Our house?” Xie Yuchen says, breathless. “You think I’d live with you?”

“You wouldn’t have a choice,” Xiazi says. He’s crazy for it and he is thankful Xie Yuchen can’t see him like this, covertly rubbing himself while he sucks at his balls. “I’d kill anyone else who wooed you. I’d buy the theater.”

He imagines, as he has many shameful times, Xie Yuchen in a long silk dress, wrapped in fur. In these decadent fantasies they are on the street, holding hands. When people see them Xie Yuchen is so beautiful they are forgiven the indiscretion of young couples. Xiazi is handsome and doesn't have nightmares where his eyes used to be and he doesn't know any of what he knows now. In this fantastic youth, he is all blessing, no curse. 

“I’d run away.”

Hei Xiazi rears up and pushes him down, a redundant motion as the boy is already flat out, helpless, despite his wild look. Then he climbs on his hips and sits on him, a thick slide into fullness that makes them both groan.