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
- murder
- arson, short descriptions of being burnt alive, somewhat graphic, but not detailed
- suicide adjacent incident involving a character feeling honor-bound to die
- referenced off-screen torture, not described in detail
Thanks in advance to everyone reading. The next update will be nicer.
Nightless City, Seven Years Ago
Waiting, as it turns out, is the hardest part. Every day Wei Wuxian has no opportunity to use the medication he’s lied for feels like another day spent waiting for a bomb to go off.
He continues to be brought to Wen Ruohan’s feasts, continues to catch Wen Ruohan’s eye. He is always torn between behaving well in order to get close to him and doing everything he can to stay away from him. Wen Chao clearly resents having to share his favorite target. Every time he drops Wei Wuxian at Wen Ruohan’s feet, good son that he is, he practically gnashes his teeth.
All he can do is more of the same, but it will break him if he’s not careful, this waiting, this sameness, this slow trust he’s building in Wen Ruohan, letting him think, in his hubris, that he’s reshaping something fundamental to Wei Wuxian’s character.
It begins to pay off when he tells Wen Chao, who has become sullen and pathetic, at one of these meals that he intends to keep Wei Wuxian for the night. There is nothing special about the day. It’s a whim, nothing too serious, but a whim that will lead to so much more. Wei Wuxian will wonder occasionally if Wen Ruohan recognizes the importance of what he’s done, that, by taking special interest in Wei Wuxian, he has made himself vulnerable, too. In his final moments, however Wei Wuxian brings them about, will he realize what he’s seeded by trusting his own ability to bend a submissive to his will?
“You truly have learned how to behave, haven’t you?” Wen Ruohan says, once he’s been put on his knees in the center of Wen Ruohan’s bedroom, as bleak and miserable and gauche as the rest of Inferno Palace. “I shouldn’t have let my son have you. He’s never known what to do with a true submissive.”
Wei Wuxian fights the urge to spit in Wen Ruohan’s face.
Pinching Wei Wuxian’s chin between his fingers, he turns Wei Wuxian’s face this way and that, then nods in satisfaction, in expectation.
Wei Wuxian realizes he is supposed to do something now, though he’s uncertain what that might be. Still, he does his best. Bowing over his hands, he presses his palms to the ground and braces his knuckles against his forehead before rising again, posture perfect.
“You’ll look beautiful on my table, A-Ying,” Wen Ruohan says, patting the top of his head.
The night passes in fits of pain so egregious, Wei Wuxian can’t even truly comprehend it, and follows with periods of blessed unconsciousness that offer no true rest.
He learns that Wen Ruohan likes it when he tries to muffle the screams that want to tear themselves from his throat.
In the morning, Zhao Zhuliu is the one who collects him. Though it hurts to move, he almost laughs once they’re alone, limping back to Wen Chao’s residence, Zhao Zhuliu’s arm braced around him. This situation, it’s truly too ridiculous.
“Did you know…?” he says, voice wavering on a laugh. “Did you—”
Only one person in that room got hard, and it wasn’t Wen Ruohan. No matter what he did to Wei Wuxian, it didn’t make a single bit of difference.
Punch-drunk, stupid on the protective batting of his endorphins, he dissolves into a fit of giggles. “Did you know he can’t get it up?”
Zhao Zhuliu says nothing, which only makes Wei Wuxian want to laugh harder, laugh until there’s nothing left of him. What the fuck is wrong with him? How could he have reacted that way? His laughter dries itself out on the sob he can’t quite choke down.
Zhao Zhuliu’s grip on Wei Wuxian’s body gentles. “Quiet.”
“Why? What’s the point? I’m just going to—” He doesn’t remember everything, but he certainly remembers the keenness of Wen Ruohan’s gaze, the hard, glinting light in his eye. He’s a dog who’s found a new favorite toy to rend in two.
With a sharp, sudden tug, Zhao Zhuliu pulls him into a hallway leading to who knows where. Hell, maybe. With one twist of his arm, he’s been brought into another dimension entirely. “You will have a chance if you keep your wits about you now.”
“Oh, really? Are you going to help me?”
“No,” Zhao Zhuliu says, painfully honest, “but you will not be hindered either.”
Again, he grabs Wei Wuxian, pulling him along, his feet unsteady as Zhao Zhuliu guides him back.
“Why?”
Zhao Zhuliu remains silent.
From his memory, he dredges up the last time he saw second mother, what she’d demanded of Zhao Zhuliu at the gate to hell he was about to enter. He hasn’t held Zhao Zhuliu’s word in high regard over the years. Who would consider him well-card for? Not even second mother would. “You made a promise to her,” he says, voice kept low.
The adrenaline rushing through his body finally fails him.
All that remains is exhaustion, bleak and bone bright.
“I did,” Zhao Zhuliu says.
“You haven’t kept it very well.”
Zhao Zhuliu stares at him, through him, waits until they’ve reached the skybridge separating Wen Ruohan’s residence from his son’s, and says quietly, “How would you know?”
*
Zhao Zhuliu comes to him early in the day, a surprise visit. Perhaps Wen Chao is bored and wants to toy with one of his castoffs. If he’s searching for someone useful, he’s out of luck. No one else is awake yet after the desperate debauchery of the night before. As far as Wei Wuxian can tell, it’s never boded well for whomever is chosen anyway, not that that stops them from begging.
He tells Wei Wuxian that he’s expected to attend a small family gathering at their retreat outside of Xi’an. “Only trusted companions and favorites are brought along.”
“Wen Chao can’t possibly feel that way about me.”
“He does not, but Wen-xiansheng does,” he points out. Just the reminder makes Wei Wuxian shake with rage. He doesn’t love what it means to be Wen Ruohan’s favorite or to be trusted by him. “He will want to impress and please his father. You are expected to go.”
He opens his mouth to argue, to demand even a modicum of fairness in his life. Those rare occasions when the family have gone are the only chances he’s had to breathe well in years. And now he’s expected to give that up?
And then he stops; he thinks.
He only remains still for two or three seconds, but he feels it pass as a lifetime. An entire plan spools itself out in his mind.
“Where?” he asks.
“A forested retreat in the mountains,” Zhao Zhuliu replies. “Isolated. We are leaving now. A bag has already been arranged for you.”
He turns away conspicuously, giving Wei Wuxian time to tuck the packet of medication into his loose-fitting trousers.
“You don’t give people a lot of time to plan, do you?” Wei Wuxian asks.
Zhao Zhuliu says nothing.
*
The drive is interminable, with Wen Chao alternating between complaining about the journey and snoring fitfully in the seat next to Wei Wuxian’s. When he was brought to the overpriced SUV that Wen Chao has claimed is his pride and joy, he’d been surprised to discover Wang Lingjiao wasn’t haunting the cabin. In the driver’s seat, Zhao Zhuliu is silent, expectant, eyes occasionally glancing back at them in the rear view mirror.
It could be worse, he tells himself.
It could be better, too. Sitting in the front seat would have been good. For a start, he might have been able to see the exit numbers they take on the drive. As it is, he can only tell that they cross through several small towns and villages once they’re off the highway. He doesn’t dare ask Zhao Zhuliu for specifics.
As Wen Chao rouses, groggy and childish, abandoning the two of them to the area in front of the property, Wei Wuxian realizes how easy it would simply be to run, far and fast, right now. He’s young and mostly fit, though his years with the Wen haven’t treated him kindly. And if he were to die, it couldn’t be any worse than going back if this plan fails.
He has nothing to lose by running except the chance to take useless revenge, and everything to gain.
And yet, he does not run.
He reminds himself that Jiang Cheng needs to be protected, that there’s no one else to help him if Wei Wuxian doesn’t do it.
To buy time before he’s once again locked up inside, he stretches the ache from his legs and back, and keeps his eyes lowered meekly as he eyes the compound. It’s smaller than he might have expected it to be. Given their tendencies, he would have assumed it would be an affront to the environment.
As another SUV begins to drive up the long, thin driveway into the clearing that serves as parking, Wei Wuxian steps inside, caging himself.
The packet of medication bites into the flesh of his palm. He is as prepared for the consequences of what he intends to do as he’ll ever be.
*
“A-Ying,” Wen Ruohan says once he has settled, Wei Wuxian kneeling next to him. It turns Wei Wuxian’s stomach that he can be so secure in his belief that he alone controls this tiny universe of his. “Why don’t you make drinks for everyone?”
It’s a little like the heavens are on Wei Wuxian’s side, wanting him to succeed in this evil deed of his, but he hadn’t expected his chance to come so soon. His heart, pained, beats against the cage of his chest. He’s not ready. He’s not ready.
Wei Wuxian inclines his head in acknowledgment, rises smoothly, goes into the kitchen. As he orients himself to this space, finding the cabinet where the liquor has been placed, finding glasses, a tray, finding his courage amid the exhausted ash of his anger, he feels every moment he delays is a chance to make someone suspicious out there.
Footsteps scuffle on the bleached white hardwood flooring. A properly trained submissive wouldn’t cower, and everyone here knows it. Forcing his body to relax is nearly impossible, but he has to do it. He turns away, leaving himself purposefully vulnerable.
He quickly recognizes the steps.
“What are you up to, A-Ying?” Wen Chao asks, his voice greasy with loathing. “What’s so hard about bringing everyone drinks?”
Wei Wuxian’s instinct still—always—is to run his mouth, but, so close to his goal, he has to do better than that. “I’m sorry, sir. I was trying to find the glasses.”
Wen Chao laughs bitterly. “You think I don’t realize what you’re doing?”
Fear chills Wei Wuxian, stills him, makes him choke on anything he might say to assuage Wen Chao.
With a derisive scoff, Wen Chao crosses the room, steps loud against the floor, and swipes up the bottle of liquor Wei Wuxian hasn’t yet begun pouring into glasses. He splashes a too healthy glug into one of them and swallows it in one go. He holds it up by his fingertips and drops it onto the floor. Too delicate, it shatters around his socked feet, and Wei Wuxian’s bare ones. “My father will cut you to pieces one day, when he’s bored of you,” he says conversationally. “I hope I’m there to see it when he does.”
What difference would that make, he thinks, when Wen Ruohan cuts him up already, forcing adrenaline bright rushes of arousal through his body before sending him away, his body at odds with his heart and mind.
Wen Chao turns on his heels, flings, “Hurry the fuck up,” over his shoulder, and returns to the living room.
Without much thought, Wei Wuxian crouches, grabs the biggest shard of glass, and shoves it into his pocket. His sweaty palm slips on the sharp edge, nearly cutting his hand and the packet of powder open.
Both are safe when he withdraws them.
He hesitates. Of course he does, but that hesitation doesn’t stop him for more than a handful of seconds. He pours the liquor into a decanter, dumps the powder into it, swirls it around until the powder has dissolved like it was never there to begin with.
There’s no point in hesitating any longer.
He places four glasses on the tray and delivers generous servings into each.
*
Wei Wuxian’s skin crawls as he steps into the living room. If he’d thought about it before, he might have expected the absence of people to be a relief. Instead, he finds it disconcerting to be the only submissive in the presence of so many Dominants. It would be better, maybe, if Zhao Zhuliu were here, but he’s made scarce. A smart move, all things considered. Still, he doesn’t allow himself even a moment to vacillate.
He brings the tray to Wen Ruohan first, then Wen Xu, and Wen Chao last. He feels it deeply when Wen Chao tsks at him, angry that he was the last to be served even though Wei Wuxian was following appropriate protocol. Like in the kitchen, he downs this glass quickly. Fascinated, Wei Wuxian watches Wen Chao’s throat work around the dosed liquor.
It’s over. No going back now.
“A-Ying?” Wen Ruohan says, as though from far away. “A-Ying!”
Startled out of his complacency, Wei Wuxian returns to Wen Ruohan’s side and kneels. From the couch where Wen Chao is lounging, Wen Chao stares at him like he’s grown a second head.
Wen Ruohan pinches Wei Wuxian’s chin between his fingertips, encouraging Wei Wuxian to slip between his legs and then places Wei Wuxian’s jaw on his thigh. He presses the glass to Wei Wuxian’s lips, says, “You’ve worked very hard for this family. You deserve to relax, too, don’t you think?”
Wei Wuxian’s body trembles and his lips compress without his permission. At the flash of impatience in Wen Ruohan’s eyes, he accepts the smallest possible sip and fights the urge to choke. Even if it wasn’t dosed, he wouldn’t want to be intoxicated in the presence of any of them.
“Come now. That was hardly enough to count. Drink.”
He sputters before he can swallow too much, hopes it won’t be enough to affect him.
Wen Ruohan draws the glass away, laughing lightly and patting him on the head. “Alright, A-Ying.”
His vision swims, but he can’t tell if that’s from fear or the medicine. He wishes, inexplicably, for Wen Ning, for Wen Qing, for Lan Zhan, for anyone who will take care of this for him, for someone to take care of him.
Wen Ruohan’s thumb brushes Wei Wuxian’s cheek, comes away glistening with tears. He laughs again and orders Wei Wuxian to pour another glass. This one, he drinks himself, not as quickly as Wen Chao did, but not as slowly as Wen Xu is still sipping his own.
Wen Chao, still upright, rises to his feet and takes up the decanter, pouring more than the usual amount of liquor into his glass.
“Have you considered moderating yourself even a little?” Wen Xu asks, eyebrow arched.
“Fuck off,” he answers.
Already, his eyes look heavy lidded, his skin, pale. His stomach might already have upended itself even just from the alcohol with how quickly he’s imbibed, but that doesn’t stop him from downing nearly the entire glass anyway. Satisfied, he throws himself onto the couch, sprawling across the length of it. The empty glass dangles from his fingers and threatens to drop on the floor as he covers his face with the other arm.
The twenty minutes that follow are the longest of Wei Wuxian’s life.
*
Wen Chao lists first, snoring and drooling on the arm of the chair, arm stretched toward the floor. Wen Ruohan is next. Surprisingly, it’s Wen Xu who keeps his head about him enough to narrow his eyes at Wei Wuxian. “What did you do?” he slurs.
“Nothing, sir,” Wei Wuxian replies, eyes downcast.
“You did something,” Wen Xu insists, agitated, but when he tries to stand, he stumbles, woozy, and falls backward into his chair with a thick huff of air. His head lolls . Twisting, he vomits over the side of the armrest. It’s not unlike watching an accident occurring in slow motion, except that the accident is purposeful, and Wei Wuxian is very capable of looking away from it, all the while gripping the shard of glass in his pocket. It keeps him awake, the sting of pain. He might make it out of this.
The front door opens as he waits them out. By now, he knows those steps. He doesn’t fear them, not precisely. “The premises are secure,” Zhao Zhuliu says evenly.
Too bad he’s come back. Wei Wuxian would have let him live, he thinks.
He supposes he still can.
“You should go,” he says hollowly, not daring to turn around. “You don’t need to be here for this.”
Zhao Zhuliu gestures at the blood stain spreading from the pocket of Wei Wuxian’s pants. “Think about how you intend to accomplish this.”
“Listen to me,” he says, ignoring Zhao Zhuliu’s words. “Go. You’re not beholden to these people.”
“This is where I belong,” Zhao Zhuliu answers.
“You—”
“Will you stop before they’ve died?”
He shakes his head. Of course he won’t. No matter how he feels about it, he can’t quit here.
“I cannot hurt you, and so I can’t stop you. Why should I fight what is to happen?”
Wei Wuxian can only stare, uncomprehending.
“I owe your second mother a debt. This is the repayment of it,” he says, making his way to the nearly empty decanter. He picks up the glass Wen Ruohan had been using and carries both toward the hallway leading toward the back of the cabin. He conspicuously drains the glass, fills it again. “I owe Wen-xiansheng a debt. If I can no longer protect him, how else can I repay it than this?”
*
Zhao Zhuliu is right. He needs to find a better way. It needs to look properly accidental.
The things Wei Wuxian remembers:
The frantic search. A book of matches. An old, crinkled box of cigarette. Another bottle of liquor. The plan. The plan. The plan. That, that is the plan. Wooziness as he returns to the living room. Ha, the living room. Nobody will be living there soon.
The splash of alcohol over Wen Chao’s body and the couch, sharp and stinging as it soaks his shirt and the upholstery and pools on the floor.
The half-empty bottle tossed into the crook of Wen Chao’s arm.
The sulfuric belch of a match being lit. The dizzy, curling ribbon of smoke.
The flicker of Wen Chao’s eyes behind his eyelids, as though he might be dreaming.
The cigarette being dropped onto his chest. The cigarette doing nothing, nothing, nothing.
The endless pound of a heartbeat, his heartbeat.
The waiting, endless waiting. Entire lifetimes bounded in seconds.
The ember melting Wen Chao’s shirt, the plastic smell of it, the orange-red violence of it, the eager disgust with which Wei Wuxian watches and watches and watches until finally a spark becomes a flame becomes roiling smoke becomes the couch alight becomes Wen Chao lurching upright becomes a scream becomes panic becomes a lunge becomes—
—hot glass embedded in Wei Wuxian’s hip, burning, stabbing—
—a shove, a roll, the crack of a skull, a crawl across the floor—
—the scent of burning flesh—
—a choked curse—
—so much smoke—
—the crack of the floorboards—
—heat and heat and heat—
—the cool relief of air, as Wei Wuxian drags himself onto the porch, eyes stinging, body tumbling down the handful of steps leading inside, blood trailing in the dirt from the wound he brought upon himself. He coughs as much of the smoke from his lungs as possible, but the house disgorges it in great billows from the windows, the open door. The wind blowing it toward him, as though to ensure he tastes exactly what he’s wrought.
And then darkness, as his body gives out, free of every obligation, free of the hell he’s been trapped in for so, so long.