Ruan Nanzhu only ever looks vulnerable in sleep—face relaxed, breathing slow, heartbeat steady. When awake he is a force to be reckoned with, the hard-cut lines of his jaw and the emotionless set of his eyebrows rendering him completely and utterly unapproachable. He is the type of person Lin Qiushi would admire from afar, watching his slender fingers as he picks locks with ease, moving with such fluidity and grace that his real gender would never be exposed.

Qiushi is nothing like Nanzhu. He’s plain, normal-looking, with an unremarkable face and nothing of value. Besides his cooking abilities, the only time Qiushi has ever felt seen was when Nanzhu first looked at him, dark eyes peering at him beneath fluttering eyelashes, snow softly drifting down the well-trodden, cobbled path, picking him apart with his eyes like a predator stalking its prey.

Ruan Nanzhu is dangerous. His quick, sharp tongue can get him out of and someone else into trouble with just a few simple words. His lean, clean-cut silhouette looks deceivingly fragile, but he can end a fight in two moves, swift and efficient. He scares Lin Qiushi, which is why Lin Qiushi would have preferred to maintain a distance from someone like him. But it is hard to ignore him, with that slow, seductive smile of his, the weighted comments he throws around so flippantly—”I need you”, “You’re an exception”, “We are fated partners”.

Qiushi wants to tell him to stop, to tell him to swallow his words like a bitter pill instead of releasing them as a cold, sharp breath, one that leaves him winded each time. But despite knowing how dangerous he is, how quickly he can make a decision to abandon Qiushi and leave him for dead, and how soon Qiushi would be gone if that ever were to happen, Qiushi doesn’t seem to care. He hangs on to Nanzhu’s every word like it’s a lifeline and he is drowning, because he is. Drowning under the weight of iron-leaden words that look—deceivingly—like they would float, gasping for air, clutching onto the only thing of familiarity.

Ruan Nanzhu is far from Lin Qiushi’s type. Cold, aloof, capable, he exists in a completely different world from Lin Qiushi’s. He lives in a world where death is commonplace and betrayal lies in wait around shady corners like a panther prowling the plains at night, silent, soft-footed, and lethal. Ruan Nanzhu trades information for safety, experience for money, and others’ lives for his own. In his world, competence comes first, because the cost of being wrong is your life. Constantly going into the door world isn’t a livelihood, it’s his life.

Qiushi knows nothing of what that’s like. He’s lived 26 long, uneventful years without the presence of the doors. With no family to speak of and hardly any friends, he’s gotten used to a life of solitude, where the only thing that helps him keep track of the time is the work he does for a living. His life is boring, but at least it’s safe—nothing like the world Nanzhu is accustomed to.

Ruan Nanzhu has known nothing but the door world. Ever since the age of eighteen, since his fateful first door, he has never had the experience of a normal life. Whatever semblance of a loving family he might have had was cruelly stripped away from him, forcing him to grow up before he had a chance to live out his youth, and now the only remaining sliver of it is the way his eyes light up when he sees Lin Qiushi.

Qiushi barely knows what he brings out of Nanzhu. His first impression of Nanzhu was the flirtatious girl lacking decorum or a sense of propriety, subtly hinting that she knew more than she let on, yet so stunningly elegant and cold. It took him weeks to realise that Nanzhu was only ever that flirtatious towards him, that Qiushi was the sole exception.

Ruan Nanzhu is a pillar of strength. For Obsidian, for the people who are now his family, he has to be. Stoic, strong, unshakeable, Ruan Nanzhu is the foundation on which Obsidian stands. His roots run deep, immovable and almost permanently joined with the group, as steady in the wind as a tower built to weather earthquakes.

And irrational though it may be, Qiushi wants to be that for Nanzhu—his pillar of strength, his place of comfort, a quiet place for Nanzhu to rest his tired head, a place where he can sink into sleep without worrying what will become of his family. Qiushi wants to be the only one that Nanzhu relies on, for the ever-independent, detached leader to be his to protect.

Ruan Nanzhu would let him. This everyone knows, except maybe Lin Qiushi. But on the nights when it gets really bad, when the nightmares plague his vision as he tries valiantly to sleep, when Ruan Nanzhu crawls into Lin Qiushi’s bed in the real world and pulls the covers over them, reaching over Lin Qiushi to pull his waist towards him, when the familiarity gets so overwhelmingly sweet Qiushi can scarcely breathe, Lin Qiushi learns that Ruan Nanzhu wants him just as badly, if not perhaps even more, than he wants him.

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The well-toned muscles of his back ripple with every thrusting motion he makes. The thin robe he'd been living out of for the better part of the fortnight is pooled around his waist. Fabric dark with the dampness of sweat.

Under him, their darling Chen Shi. Biting down onto his fist, it does little to quiet the soft whines that escape him as their General fills him up.

Li Bing would be jealous if he didn't already know he'd be shamelessly abandoning every other plan he had, just for a taste of that cock in him.

"Starting without me?" Li Bing calls out to his lovers, locking the door behind him as he enters. "How cruel."

Without missing a beat, and ridiculously not even remotely breathless, Qiu Qingzhi laughs, hauling Chen Shi up by his hips and with a swift move, flipping him around face up. Grabbing their little lover by the ankles, he speeds up his thrusting. Driving his hips mercilessly with half-bitten grunts of pleasure.

"Well, don't stop on my account," Li Bing coos, climbing into bed to press his kisses to the corner of Chen Shi's parted and panting lips. He smiles, tilting his face to his own and claiming his mouth fully.

Li Bing tastes the euphoria on Chen Shi's lips at the same time he hears the tell-tale sounds of their General reaching his own precipice. Chen Shi kisses back, sloppily so, licking and humming when Li Bing allows him to arch up into him.

"Where's mine?"

Qiu Qingzhi's pouting when Li Bing turns to him. Adorably, it takes little to nothing to coax him back to smiling when Li Bing pulls him down into a kiss of his own. "Hello," Li Bing purrs. "Did you miss me?"

"Neither one of you kissed me goodbye when you left," Qiu Qingzhi complains, pulling away to slide an adoring brush of his lips to Chen Shi's softly giggling ones.

"Our mistake," Chen Shi chirps. His clever fingers card through Qiu Qingzhi's undone hair.

Li Bing smiles at the lazy way they exchange easy ardency. Contentment warming him from the inside out. Flicking his gaze down their body, the languid heat burns a little sharper at the sight of where Qiu Qingzhi's still rolling his hips into Chen Shi.

"Are you going to pull out of him and let me eat him out, and clean you off? Or am I going to be treated to part of the show I missed earlier?"