Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - BDSM, Biologically Determined Dom/sub Roles, BDSM, Bad BDSM etiquette, Sadism, Masochism, Past Sexual Abuse, Sexual Slavery, Self-Harm, BDSM as a Form of Self-Harm, Minor Character Death(s), Arson, Shades of Black Widow Wei Wuxian, Extremely Dubious Consent, Rape/Non-Con Elements, Normalized Homosexuality and Bisexuality, Normalized Polyamory, Nonsexual BDSM, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Pining Wei Wuxian, Jealous Wei Wuxian, Touch-Starved Wei Wuxian, Professional Dominant Wei Wuxian, Sex Worker Wei Wuxian, Gentle Dom Lan Wangji, Mean Dom Lan Wangji, Oblivious Lan Wangji, Past Wen Chao/Wei Wuxian, Minor Jin Guangyao/Wei Wuxian, Mentioned Wei Wuxian/Others, Emotional Infidelity, Angst with a Happy Ending, Endgame Wangxian, Mo Xuanyu Also Gets a Happy Ending, the tags are scary but i promise there's some lightheartedness too, wangxian love one another so much, wei wuxian is healed by the power of nonsexual bdsm and friendship, and then gets bdsm'd quite sexually and happily by the love of his life, Additional Warnings In Author's Note
I am so very sorry for how long this author note is going to be, but I’d like to clarify a few things I’ve tagged to make sure everyone is comfortably aware of what to expect. If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to me for clarification.
First off, this is a biological BDSM AU and not just an AU with BDSM in it. If you don’t know what that is, you can read up on it on Fanlore, but the short version is they’re similar to omegaverse, except that characters present as Doms, subs, or switches. Polyamory and bi/pansexuality are the norm in society.
This is also a very fantastical take on BDSM. As such, it does not necessarily follow SSC, RACK, or other best practices. Please don’t take this as a guide on safe BDSM. On the flip side, most of the BDSM and/or sex scenes in this fic will be consensual and loving in nature. Scenes of a more negative nature are mostly alluded to or will play out in truncated form in flashback sections. Specific warnings will be included in relevant chapters.
One of the main plot drivers in the story is a contract Wei Wuxian was forced into as a youth that makes a lot of what follows in his life coercive/dubiously consensual at best. Though Wei Wuxian finds a lot of it unpleasant, the worldbuilding normalizes it to a degree that only some of it truly registers as coercive to him. The majority of this is also largely alluded to or plays out in truncated form in flashback sections. Take what care you need. Though technically under the same contract while he’s in Lan Wangji’s care, once Lan Wangji is the contract’s holder, Wei Wuxian is never pressured or coerced.
I’ve tagged for emotional infidelity based on the status of Lan Wangji’s feelings for Wei Wuxian while he is with Mo Xuanyu and his own reaction to those feelings. By Mo Xuanyu’s standards and the standards of society, he is not cheating by having those feelings in any way, shape, or form, and Mo Xuanyu is not unhappy with the development. It didn’t feel fair to not include it, however, since Lan Wangji does experience conflict about it and it does flavor the story, but if you’re worried about Lan Wangji being a cheater or Mo Xuanyu being hurt in this way, it doesn’t happen in this fic.
At several points, impact play is used as a form of self-harm. I will warn in relevant chapters.
The past sexual abuse tag alludes to experiences Wei Wuxian had while with Wen Chao. I will also warn when relevant, though as much as possible is left off-screen.
Jin Guangyao is Wei Wuxian’s client in the first several chapters, but they have no further relationship.
As the fic continues, I may find more things to warn for. In that case, tags will be updated.
If you got through this monster author’s note, thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy the fic.
Most of the submissives employed by the club splay themselves across decadent piles of pillows or sprawl across the laps of the Dominants who have chosen them as their entertainment for the evening. Dressed in light, diaphanous silks in myriad jewel-toned shades, they laugh and play music and simper for their clients. Decorative gold collars sit loosely around their necks, the sort Dominants love to rip off of them while fantasizing that they alone can break their submissive’s contract with the club and thus truly own the one they favor. Let it never be said Madam Yang, the proprietor, does not encourage the wildest of dreamscapes in her establishment.
The enactment of such deliciously brutish fantasies will, of course, take place behind closed doors. Until then, these submissives are free to enjoy being doted upon, payment for the treatment they’ll happily—and sometimes not so happily, for the ones who prefer pain to pleasure—endure later.
Their trilling words, rote after years spent listening to them, grate against the bubble of calm inside of which Wei Wuxian has cocooned himself. It never takes long for their sighs and sweet nothings to pierce it, but he usually reaches his clients’ tables before his marrow aches with the need to drop to his knees for one or more of the frivolous orders being flung around the room.
When he finds himself envying these coquettish submissives, he knows it’s not going to be one of his better nights, which means he has to be careful. Licenses for clubs of this sort are rare and face tough scrutiny. If anyone were to suspect Madam Yang’s most-prized Dominant wasn’t the real deal, she’d be accused of licentiousness, of harboring deviants, or worse. Though Wei Wuxian probably wouldn’t face the most severe penalties for impersonating a Dominant, he’d likely face legal trouble and his contract would definitely become a jail sentence. Even taking too graceful a step across the main floor could draw unwanted attention.
He has to focus.
Tonight, his job is to attend to a man by the name of Jin Guangyao. As with every member of that family, he is exorbitantly rich, but unlike the rest of them, he is not a Dominant, and Wei Wuxian is meant to flaunt that fact, to show the men Jin Guangyao is with that it’s a submissive who secured the deal they’re celebrating tonight. Not a Dominant. Not even a null.
Jin Guangyao must be very good at his job, and he must have very specific tastes if Madam Yang pulled Wei Wuxian to service him.
Reluctantly, Wei Wuxian admires his boldness. Most of Wei Wuxian’s clients—some famous, many powerful, all rich—would rather hide themselves behind masks and degrading pet names when they come here, the kind of overwrought performative anonymity that the wealthy and easily embarrassed excel at. Detestably, they will do anything to pretend they’ve not been burdened with the desires they crave, and then make it Wei Wuxian’s problem, forcing him to become the method of punishment by which they can experience the perfect distillation of what they are.
Unlike them, he doesn’t have a choice, nor has he had the opportunity to enjoy the sweet taste of such catharsis.
Jin Guangyao, at least, has chosen to take the opposite path. He is demure and polite in a way only submissives can be. He cedes control of the conversation to others, pours liquor for the entire table even though at least three have their own submissives to do that for them, and he lowers his gaze just a hair too soon. As a result, his business partners have clearly written him off as little more than a decorative element at the table, ignoring him even while they congratulate one another with toasts. That kind of humiliation must burn, even for a submissive who wants Wei Wuxian’s help.
One could be forgiven for assuming he enjoys it, if one were to judge by the charming smile spreading across his mouth.
Whether he truly does or not hardly matters to Wei Wuxian. He’s just here because he has to be. Whatever damage Jin Guangyao is hiding, he’s not being paid to care.
Two seats remain empty, one next to Jin Guangyao and another on the opposite side of the circular table Jin Guangyao has reserved for the night. He’s still serving rounds of liquor when Wei Wuxian takes the bottle from his hands, splashes a healthy portion into Jin Guangyao’s glass, and pinches it between two of his own fingers.
“Congratulations on the merger,” Wei Wuxian says, using information Madam Yang helpfully included in the dossier she compiled for him earlier in the evening. A hefty sum is being made tonight as a Jin subsidiary marries itself to one of the many Lan holdings ripe for plunder. Swigging the overpriced liquor he’s purloined, he looks around the table. “I’ll be drinking for A-Yao tonight.”
The only mouth that doesn’t smirk is the one that belongs to a face so familiar that Wei Wuxian’s heart kicks against his sternum. “Xichen-ge.” With his thoughts in chaos, he still manages to incline his head in a manner befitting a younger Dominant addressing an older one. Holding Lan Xichen’s gaze for an appropriate amount of time—about a second too long for Wei Wuxian’s comfort—he hopes Lan Xichen won’t expose him for the fraud he is. “A long time.”
“Quite,” Lan Xichen replies, too distracted for the moment to implode Wei Wuxian’s identity. Wei Wuxian notes the lack of a submissive between his feet and the way his attention lingers where Wei Wuxian so briefly touched Jin Guangyao’s hand. Eventually, Lan Xichen’s attention shifts. A look of relief flashes across his face. It mirrors the relief Wei Wuxian feels within himself. Maybe Lan Xichen doesn’t care.
Standing abruptly, Lan Xichen lifts his hand in a subtle gesture, drawing more pressing trouble to Wei Wuxian’s attention. “Wangji,” he calls, not so subtly, as though he hasn’t the least bit of shame in announcing his own brother’s arrival at a place such as this. Upon hearing those syllables, every cell in Wei Wuxian’s body revolts. If he were not held to this table by his contract, he’d run in a second.
Lan Zhan, here?
Dread drags its ragged talons down Wei Wuxian’s spine with all the finesse of a dull, serrated knife. Weak in the knees, he takes the seat next to Jin Guangyao and clenches his jaw until it aches, scraping and clawing for the emptiest expression in his repertoire.
It’s an excellent thing Jin Guangyao is an inveterate masochist. Though Wei Wuxian typically loathes how much work they are, he’ll at least be able to use Jin Guangyao to burn off the turmoil churning within him.
The last time he saw Lan Zhan, Wei Wuxian wasn’t at his greatest. He is, at the moment, experiencing a great deal of turmoil. You could end me, he thinks, unable to fully resign himself to whatever fate awaits him. He is so close to freedom, but he cannot stop this, and he will not be able to save himself.
“Wangji.” Lan Xichen is all smiles as he says his brother’s name again, and shows equal pleasure when he gives over another: “Xuanyu.”
Of its own volition, Wei Wuxian’s gaze flicks toward the pair of bodies entering his line of sight. Lan Zhan’s body, his profile, the incongruous suit, his scent even, these things, he’ll never be ready for, but that lack of preparation has nothing on the shank that lodges between his ribs upon catching sight of the man at Lan Zhan’s side.
He is a textbook submissive, one who’s been lovingly cowed by Lan Zhan’s particular brand of fussy Dominance. His clothes, his hair, even the perfect manicure he sports, the lacquer clear and unobtrusive, they all speak to the meticulous care Lan Zhan has shown him. And that’s fine. Lan Zhan can and should do what he wants. What opens a wound within him, the sort he’d tongue until it ulcerates too painfully to keep poking at, is how wrong Xuanyu is for him.
Lan Zhan likes beautiful things, but he’s always liked them strong, hasn’t he? Xuanyu is not strong. In fact, he looks like ninety percent of the professional submissives here could push him around if they wanted to. The suit of armor Lan Zhan has tucked him into—expensive, tailored slacks, a blazer that broadens his shoulders, impenetrable layers of lace beneath for propriety and perhaps to keep it from looking too much like he’s playing a silly game of dress up—can only do so much to mask his delicacy.
His long, artfully mussed hair speaks to how well Lan Zhan has enjoyed him anyway.
But the real betrayal, the thing that will send Wei Wuxian into a tailspin if he tries to understand it, is the giant fuck-off collar wrapped so lovingly around his throat. Wei Wuxian is pretty sure it connects to a posture trainer like the ones Lan Zhan always tormented him with back when they were young and stupid and just figuring out the boundaries of their preferences, not sexual precisely, but not quite nonsexual either. At the conclusion of nearly every one of Cloud Recesses’s many etiquette classes, they’d played under the entirely innocent—and plausible—guise of disciplinarian and contrarian. More of than not, it involved Lan Zhan lacing him into one.
Which is to say, Lan Zhan sometimes made up reasons to punish him, and he sometimes misbehaved on purpose. As a result, he’d reached the conclusion that Lan Zhan’s tastes ran a bit rare, that he, in fact, would one day want a submissive like Wei Wuxian.
Maybe Wei Wuxian himself, if Wei Wuxian played his cards right.
Why else did he not stomp irrevocably on Wei Wuxian’s fledgling attentions, if Wei Wuxian had no chance?
But the collar Xuanyu is wearing, it’s of the sort a Dominant would give to their spouse, a serious declaration. There’s no arguing the meaning. It’s not casual. It’s not subtle. And it doesn’t belong on anyone’s neck except Wei Wuxian’s, whether his cards were played or not.
How did he even get it on Xuanyu’s neck without breaking at least one of the Lan family’s rules for propriety? Did Lan Zhan flout them entirely by letting his partner out of the house already collared so brazenly or did Lan Zhan arrive late because he’d had to fit it upon arrival, the more discreet option, perhaps in a shadowy corner of the lounge area or in the bathroom or in an alley outside, the night sky swallowing his indecency.
Because he has no answer, Wei Wuxian forms these thoughts—and the vivid images that accompany them—into a tight, dense ball and shoves it into the rusting lock-box of his heart.
For a brief moment, only as long as it takes for Lan Zhan to reach the remaining empty seat, he lets himself hope that he’s mistaken. Maybe Xuanyu is another man’s submissive, making this a disciplinary relationship. Lan Zhan was known once for that sort of thing, whipping submissives into shape, sometimes literally and sometimes not so literally, but never forming a romantic partnership with them. It was something of a hobby when they were younger, or so he’d heard. By then, Wei Wuxian couldn’t have confirmed it personally even if he wanted to.
Then Lan Zhan sits and Xuanyu kneels next to him. As soon as he’s positioned properly, Lan Zhan’s fingers stroke the back of his neck, playing with his nape, which answers his question too well. This is Lan Zhan’s submissive. He’d never behave so intimately toward someone who didn’t belong to him.
Xuanyu’s good. There’s no doubt about that. He tilts his head forward like a proper submissive, not a single hint of vulgarity in the gentle exposure of his nape to his Dominant, no expectation that his Dominant will give him more than that, not even a desperate exhalation when Lan Zhan teasingly strokes the nobs of his spine. Even his hair, which flows over his shoulder in this position, dark and glacier still, hangs with perfect obedience. He would wait patiently until the end of time before begging out of turn.
Compared to the writhing bodies around him, the whorish moans and titillating squeals, compared to how Wei Wuxian would surely needle Lan Zhan should he be the one in Xuanyu’s position, Xuanyu is perfection himself.
This is the sort of submissive any gentleman of good taste would want. Why wouldn’t Lan Zhan want him, too? Maybe it was Wei Wuxian’s imagination that made him believe Lan Zhan would want a livelier submissive than this.
Wei Wuxian remains blindsided until Lan Zhan’s gaze falls on him. At that point, his mind simply blanks. He’s not sure which is better.
One carefully chosen word from him would shred the gauzy façade of this moment. Lan Zhan has always hated liars, which means he will hate Wei Wuxian, who has made his entire life into a lie. Hell, he wouldn’t need to carefully choose anything; he could just tell Wei Wuxian to kneel, the most basic order a Dominant could give, and he’d do more than simply drop to the floor. Whether he wants to or not, he’ll give up his chance at freedom for a single word from Lan Zhan.
He is lucky that Lan Zhan asks for nothing.
“Wei Ying,” he says, inclining his head in the same way Wei Wuxian had done with Lan Xichen earlier. Wei Wuxian is only a few months older than Lan Zhan and he’s obviously not a Dominant, but Lan Zhan is choosing to follow an unnecessary bit of etiquette for his sake. It should gall him to debase himself in that way, to become party to Wei Wuxian’s lie, but his expression remains placid when he raises his head, his eyes clear and without regret.
As gratitude threatens to leave Wei Wuxian a drowned wreck on the shores of this awful fucking club, a thick, acidic wash of bile coats the back of his throat. It’s impossible to speak, so he simply returns the gesture. Though it’s a shade shallower than the nod Lan Zhan gave, he holds it a degree longer than required, an appropriate way to convey his deep respect without exposing himself for the fraud he is.
When Wei Wuxian lifts his gaze, the only change he sees in Lan Zhan is a slight reddening of his earlobes, along with a minute expression on his face that Wei Wuxian can’t parse.
As the celebrations gear up, then wind down, he has no opportunity to speak with Lan Zhan, to apologize or explain or thank him.
For the first time in more years than he cares to count, he wants something more than the chance to submit to someone. Unfortunately, such a hope might be even more impossible to fill than such an opportunity.