Rating:

Explicit

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

MDZS/CQL

Relationship:

Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian

Series:

Part of the i did something bad series

Tags:

dark fic, dubcon, friends with benefits, minor character death(s), rough sex

Stats:

Posted on:

2021-01-19

Words:

7,788

Lan Zhan and Wei Ying are university classmates, but don’t share much in common except for some really large lectures. Yet they know who the other is because they’re the only ones who got a perfect score on their entrance exam.

Also, Lan Zhan finds Wei Ying attractive.

(Wei Ying knows Lan Zhan is hot.)

They are not on each other’s radar except for that, but. Lan Zhan watches. He watches Wei Ying stride into lectures several minutes late, aggress the guys who harass their female classmates, sneer at the rich kids who look down on everyone else. Lan Zhan knows Wei Ying is moralistic. And pretty.

*

The first time a convicted murderer dies of a heart attack in their jail cell, no one thinks anything of it.

A week later, when it happens again, it’s almost innocuous enough. It gets brought up in lecture.

Wei Ying says, “What difference does it make? They’ll die one way or another.”

It doesn’t happen in a pattern, the heart attacks. It starts slow, once another week later, two more spread over the next three weeks. But they’re always heart attacks. Always convicted murderers. Convicted murderers who get their faces and names discussed on the news, Lan Zhan notes.

It’s not… talked about, really. There are whispers of how it’s weird, coincidental, but no one wants to discuss it in a public space. Wei Ying always has a smile teasing at the corner of his lips, and Lan Zhan wonders what he knows.

Then, two happen in quick succession—but they’re not prisoners.

They’re not heart attacks, either; Wen Xu and Wen Chao die brutally in their own office building. A freak accident, some might say. But the news is so on the scope of deaths that it doesn’t escape anyone’s notice.

It’s terrifying. What’s happening? Why do people keep dying? Lan Zhan knows who the Wens are. Who Wen Xu and Wen Chao are, specifically—that they were high power business execs that could buy people’s silence with hush money, or worse. There are rumors that they were responsible for the sudden deaths of Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan a few years back.

Only rumors, of course.

Some people celebrate the Wen brothers’ deaths. Others are horrified at the way an elevator can just unhinge like that.

Wei Ying shrugs, when some of his friends talk about it after a lecture. “Who cares?” Lan Zhan overhears. “They only wanted to make money and take away people’s livelihood. Maybe the world is better off without them.”

Lan Zhan can’t help himself. He cuts in, “That does not mean they deserve death.”

Wei Ying glances at him, eyes playful. Piercing. “I didn’t say they deserved it, but it’s not a bad thing it happened. Don’t you think, Lan Zhan?”

Of course, Wei Ying is not the only one who says things like this. But Lan Zhan does some digging, through the magic of the internet and connections—he discovers that, briefly, Wei Ying was in the Jiangs’ care, before their death. But of course that doesn’t mean anything, right?

Still, he watches Wei Ying. But Wei Ying is no different than before, aside from that he wears his beautiful smile more than ever these days. He attends lectures just as late, argues with assholes on campus, and even sometimes takes notes diligently in his black notebook.

It’s still weeks before another heart attack, though. And shortly after that—a guy on campus, a serial harasser, gets hit by a bus. The university calls it a tragedy, but many people are relieved. Secretly, they whisper their thankfulness at deities, at fate.

Meanwhile, Lan Zhan wonders.

*

Wei Ying is a classroom debater, argumentative, especially in their moral/philosophy lecture. However, when the professor brings up the campus death in a crude manner, Wei Ying doesn’t say a word, just doodles in his notebook.

Lan Zhan comes up to him after class. “You did not contribute,” he states.

Wei Ying seems surprised; still, he smiles. “What does Lan Zhan expect me to say? I believe you know my stance.”

Lan Zhan considers. “Would you like to discuss it over lunch?”

He’s not the type to be so bold, but there’s something about Wei Ying—in the back of his mind. He lets it stay there.

Wei Ying is thrown off, but beams. “Of course.”

“My treat,” Lan Zhan adds.

So they go to a cafe for lunch. They talk about death, and punishment—Wei Ying does confess that he does not think death is the worst thing in the world. That there are other things, other solutions.

“But all things considered,” Wei Ying adds. “Would the world protest when horrible people die? Would you protest, Lan Zhan?”

“No,” Lan Zhan admits.

“There!” Wei Ying says, like he’s won.

But Lan Zhan adds, “Common people have no control over such things. No one does.”

“Indeed,” Wei Ying agrees.

He offers nothing more than that. He changes the topic, and they discuss their classes. Food. Sports. Wei Ying has an opinion on everything and is chatty—bright and thoughtful, still leaving a 50% tip even when Lan Zhan pays for their meal.

At the end, he tilts his head at Lan Zhan. “Was this a date?”

Lan Zhan is the one thrown off this time. But he replies, “Would you like it to be?”

Wei Ying blinks at him, opens his mouth. He’s got his backpack slung over his shoulder (where his black notebook lives), and his gaze flickers to Lan Zhan’s mouth.

Lan Zhan has watched Wei Ying. Has a feeling about him, that might be bad. It’s something, but nothing’s looked more tempting in his life than Wei Ying and his bitten red lips.

He doesn’t ask, just winds a hand around the back of Wei Ying’s neck, tilts his head up, and drags him into a ragged kiss.

(And Wei Ying, who’s felt larger than life these past months, who remembers the thrill of the news of the Wens’ death, whose black notebook is burning into his back, has never felt smaller than in the hands of Lan Zhan, intelligent and quiet and graceful. And a damn good kisser.)

When they break apart, Wei Ying’s eyes shine with mischief.

“Wanna come back to my apartment?” he says, and Lan Zhan does.

*

Lan Zhan takes him apart in his kitchen, drives three fingers into him in the living room, and fucks him rough and steady in his bedroom.

*

The notebook stays in Wei Ying’s backpack.

*

(It’s not that Wei Ying hasn’t thought of Lan Zhan much—he has, but they’re just classmates. Equally brilliant, but Wei Ying was the one who found the Death Note, who picked it up, who read through the rules and decided to use it. Perhaps Lan Zhan would’ve done the same, if he were the brilliant student who found it instead. But it’s in Wei Ying’s hands.)

*

Lan Zhan didn’t think that this mere encounter with Wei Ying would end up with them sweaty and sated in Wei Ying’s bed, but it’s—good. Wei Ying is just as beautiful a sight panting next to him as he was crying on his cock.

Perhaps, Lan Zhan thinks, coincidences are just that. Coincidences.

“That was good,” Wei Ying gasps.

Lan Zhan’s gaze flickers. “Good?”

Wei Ying laughs. “Okay, that was amazing.”

They go another round; Wei Ying offers Lan Zhan dinner; Lan Zhan fucks him against his refrigerator. Wei Ying sees him out with a rakish smile, and Lan Zhan hopes.

Three prisoners die of heart attacks that night.

*

(Wei Ying feels like a god, immortal—he’s taken Lan Zhan’s dick so many times today, nothing can stop him. His feelings for Lan Zhan begin with “he’s hot and smart” and end with “he’s got a big dick”—and as long as they don’t discuss the deaths any more than normal people do, he has nothing to worry about.)

*

They’re not boyfriends—Wei Ying makes that clear when they’re texting a few days later, after having traded numbers, and says, “I’m not looking for something serious.” Lan Zhan isn’t, either, and they hardly know each other. But they begin sitting together at lectures, and sometimes get lunch. And fuck.

*

Then Wei Ying introduces him to Jiang Cheng.

“My half-brother,” he jokes.

Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes. “Yeah, for like a year when we were seventeen.” He doesn’t go to their university, but Wei Ying visits him on the weekends.

Lan Zhan didn’t know he was still close to a Jiang. But it’s not like he can ask Jiang Cheng what he thought of the Wens’ deaths.

Then Wei Ying says, “When’s jie’s wedding?”

“Next month,” Jiang Cheng replies.

“That peacock,” Wei Ying scoffs. “At least it’s not his cousin, though.”

Jiang Cheng shudders. “Ew.”

“Wouldn’t complain if Zixun dropped dead,” Wei Ying comments.

But there’s still no connection there, Lan Zhan tells himself. Just because Wei Ying is close to a Jiang—the Wens were inadvertently responsible for a lot of people’s deaths. Of course Wei Ying wouldn’t complain—most people aren’t. And Wei Ying is a good person, always has sound opinions about morals and systems.

Also, he’s a wild little fuck in bed. Tight and energetic and breathless, moans when Lan Zhan bites him too hard, scratches down his back when Lan Zhan’s thrusts get relentless. Pinks easily, hungry for whatever Lan Zhan gives him—unleashes on him. Lan Zhan’s never really had a relationship like this before (has never had a relationship, period) but it’s like he and Wei Ying are made for each other—he can go as rough, manhandle Wei Ying around as much as he wants, and Wei Ying will take it. Wei Ying moans and cries when Lan Zhan smacks him, and begs for more.

So they’re not boyfriends, and it’s ideal, as horrible prisoners die, CEOs of large corporations die, despicable politicians die. They don’t watch the news—though Lan Zhan comes to Wei Ying’s apartment for a booty call to Wei Ying flicking his tv off—and they don’t talk about it more than anyone else.

*

A couple of weeks after Lan Zhan meets Jiang Cheng, Lan Zhan is at Wei Ying’s for another one of those booty calls. Blindfolded Wei Ying, then tied Wei Ying’s wrists together, making Wei Ying yelp with delighted surprise. When they’re done, after Lan Zhan has unbound Wei Ying, Wei Ying traces characters (names) on Lan Zhan’s chest.

Wei Ying asks, “If you had the power to… punish someone, who would you punish?”

Lan Zhan blinks down at him. He had just told Wei Ying when he could come, so—“Other than you?”

“What!” Wei Ying laughs. “No, why would you—”

Lan Zhan runs a hand over his bruised ass cheek.

“Ah, no,” Wei Ying laughs again. “I meant, y’know. Not sexually.”

Lan Zhan thinks. “Why would I punish them?”

“I dunno, you tell me!” Wei Ying says. “What’s like, the worst thing someone’s done to you? Someone who’s wronged you.”

Lan Zhan pinches Wei Ying’s ass gently and Wei Ying gasps. The worst, he considers. But his life has been pretty simple. There’s just—

“After I took my entrance exam,” he says. “I had a classmate who did not think it was possible for anyone to get a perfect score. He insisted that I was cheating. I had to take the exam 3 more times.”

“Ew,” Wei Ying says, crinkling his nose.

Lan Zhan nods. It had been annoying, but not necessarily difficult. “My acceptance was put off for weeks. This classmate had always been kind to me, so I was unsure why he was suddenly accusing me of cheating.”

“What’s this guy’s name?” Wei Ying asks.

“Su She,” Lan Zhan replies.

Wei Ying repeats the name. Draws it on Lan Zhan’s chest.

“Wrong She,” Lan Zhan says, and draws it correctly along Wei Ying’s back.

Wei Ying beams. “Thank you for telling me something so personal, Lan Zhan,” he says. “Now let me tell you something personal! I’m afraid of dogs. Especially if they try to bite me.”

“And yet,” Lan Zhan says dryly, “you do not protest when I bite you.”

“Well, you’re not a dog,” Wei Ying points out, and Lan Zhan bites his neck, his mouth, his wrists and thighs again.

After another round, Wei Ying’s phone rings. Lan Zhan wonders if he should go, but Wei Ying keeps him in bed as he picks up.

It’s Jiang Yanli—his jie. Another Jiang. Lan Zhan tries hard not to let his thoughts stray as she asks Wei Ying if he’s attending her wedding, if he’ll bring a date.

“Maybe,” he says, glancing at Lan Zhan.

Yanli, his jie, sounds happy at this. And she discusses the deaths too, to which Wei Ying hums and offers his hypotheses—maybe it’s karma, an illness, something. It’s normal, Lan Zhan thinks, for Wei Ying, another civilian, to think like this.

Yanli says that someone died mere mins ago, while they were having sex. It feels no longer like a shock to anyone, more of a wonder of who it’s going to be next. How this is happening. Who’s doing this.

But it can’t be Wei Ying, because Lan Zhan was making him sob around his dick just minutes ago.

*

So they fuck a few more times; and then a few days later Wei Ying asks “casually” if Lan Zhan is doing anything on the weekend of Jiang Yanli’s wedding. Lan Zhan says no. Wei Ying asks if Lan Zhan might want to attend a wedding with him.

Lan Zhan says yes.

During the wedding he meets Jiang Yanli and her husband. He also meets Jin Zixun, who gives him shit for not touching his champagne.

“Alcohol is disagreeable with me,” Lan Zhan explains.

Zixun sneers. “If you’re a pussy you can just say so. Someone’s gotta drink you champagne.”

“Fuck off, I’ll drink it,” Wei Ying says, and does exactly that.

Lan Zhan thanks him by fingering Wei Ying to oblivion in a restroom stall. During the reception, another billionaire dies. Wei Ying gets tipsy and cries when Jiang Yanli says she’s missed him. Lan Zhan feels a bit out of place, but also—not. He and Wei Ying are so good in bed together, he’s glad that their lives are, too.

Afterward, they go to Lan Zhan’s, which Wei Ying has been to plenty of times—insists on it, actually, since Lan Zhan’s apartment is a bit closer and he’s sleepy. (Another prisoner dies.) They’re both tired from the food and alcohol and socializing, so they sleep in Lan Zhan’s bed, together.

In the morning, Lan Zhan kisses Wei Ying awake. Wei Ying mumbles sleepily, “Put it in.” Lan Zhan huffs under his breath, does. Slowly, his thick, rough thrusts bring Wei Ying back to consciousness. Wei Ying comes with a surprised gasp, groans and relishes at the feeling of Lan Zhan’s own release rushing into him.

After, Wei Ying looks up at Lan Zhan, strokes his cheek with his thumb.

“What we have is pretty good,” he says Lan Zhan kisses his thumb in response “And maybe I’m just being sentimental because of my jie’s wedding yesterday, but. Be my boyfriend?”

Lan Zhan’s heart soars. “Yes,” he says, and kisses him senseless.

*

So what had not meant to be serious turns into something serious—or, between them fucking and studying (and Wei Ying scribbling names and hacking police archives) there’s a promise of something more, long-lasting. The deaths do not affect them, Lan Zhan thinks. They are as powerless as everyone else.

Especially when Wei Ying goes on a family hiking trip having been invited by Yanli and her husband, and comes back early, shaken. They all are; when Lan Zhan asks what happened, Jin Zixuan manages to explain that they were on a hike when his cousin—Zixun—slipped and fell to his death.

(He and Wei Ying had been arguing; Wei Ying had been up ahead, snarking without looking back. When he heard a scrape, a small shout, he turned around—Zixun screaming, falling off, is burned into his brain.)

(It’s a good sight.)

(The hiking trip was Zixun’s idea, anyway.)

Wei Ying comes back shaking and wracked with guilt. Yanli and Zixuan insist they don’t blame him—and they shouldn’t, Lan Zhan agrees. But Wei Ying is still trembling in his arms, tear tracks down his face, so Lan Zhan takes him to bed, tucks him in, makes him eat and drink over the next several days.

Wei Ying sniffs. “Lan Zhan is too good.”

“Only what Wei Ying deserves,” Lan Zhan replies.

And thinks of his suspicions before, and bats them away—if Wei Ying is like this, how would he kill other people heartlessly? Never mind the method—Lan Zhan is a realist. Wei Ying wouldn’t, and even if he would, he can’t.

Wei Ying needs to talk about it, he thinks. He tells Wei Ying that it’s okay, even though Wei Ying is reluctant at first—but then Wei Ying exhales.

“It’s like, I think I saw it happen. The moment he went from being alive, to being dead. Before his body hit the ground, the light in his eyes. It was like he knew it was the end.”

Wei Ying’s voice sounds mystified, sad, almost wondrous.

He clears his throat. “I didn’t like the guy, but.”

Lan Zhan knows what he’s talking about. He doesn’t think about Su She from high school often, or ever, but wouldn’t wish death on him. On anyone.

Falling to your death is a horrible way to die, they both agree. Wei Ying says that he wouldn’t want his to be a direct consequence of irresponsibility—that, and being cannibalized, he adds with a little chuckle.

“What about you?” he asks Lan Zhan.

Lan Zhan does not think about death, how he would not want to die. Still, after a moment, he considers.

“I would not want to see it coming,” he says. “I would rather the moment I knew, be gone afterwards. Or simply not know at all.”

“Smart.” Wei Ying nods. “No fear, you’re just gone.”

*

Eventually, Wei Ying recovers from his trauma. There are always new murderers, greedy people, horrible people, who die in the meantime. Lan Zhan leaves Wei Ying alone in his room, except when Wei Ying begs for his company, begs for Lan Zhan to fuck him so he forgets, forgets everything but Lan Zhan hot inside him.

And so they finish university, talk about their futures. Wei Ying wants to be a software engineer, sets his eyes on building and improving police/surveillance software. Lan Zhan wants to do academia. After university they move in together, and nothing has felt more right.

They pick out the furniture together for their living room and bedroom; Wei Ying has a bit more technical knowledge to pick out the furniture for their kitchen, and study room. A desk for each of them, when they need to work from home. (And Wei Ying makes some modifications for his thin black notebook.)

The first time they say “I love you” is about a month after moving in—Wei Ying is staying home for work while Lan Zhan has to go out to TA or something. When Lan Zhan picks up his keys, kisses Wei Ying, heads towards the door, he absently says, “Love you.”

Wei Ying automatically replies, “Love you too.”

Lan Zhan takes a step out the door, then stops. Backtracks. Goes back home.

Wei Ying is sitting there, paused at his laptop, in a similar state of shock.

Lan Zhan says, facing Wei Ying, “I love you, Wei Ying.”

“I…” Wei Ying touches his lips. Stares at his computer, then up to Lan Zhan. “And I love you too.”

They had fallen together so naturally as had their lives that apartment shopping, furniture shopping hadn’t really hammered it in. But this is.

“We’re in this for the long haul, aren’t we?” Wei Ying says.

Lan Zhan goes to him, kisses him squarely on the mouth. “I am,” he confesses quietly.

Wei Ying says against Lan Zhan’s lips, “I am too.”

And when Lan Zhan keeps kissing him, starts biting him, slips a hand under his shirt to stroke at his belly, Wei Ying lets out a breathy giggle. “Go, you have work.”

“I have you,” Lan Zhan breathes.

“You’ll have me when you get back. And I have work too.”

(Lan Zhan does blow Wei Ying under the table, though, and walks into his meeting late and a bit too pleased with himself.)

*

(Internally, Wei Ying has a crisis. He can’t—well, he’d thought about doing this forever, can’t let Wen Ning down. But he hadn’t thought about this part, how Lan Zhan, brilliant and quietly funny and a beast in bed staying by his side forever.)

(But he’s made it this far.)

*

The heart attacks decrease; but people die, as people always die. In a variety of ways—but many of the murders end in murder-suicides. Overall people have been a bit better, but no number of deaths that fall upon the greatest sinners, accidental or not, can purify the human heart. Sometimes people die before their names or faces are shown on the news, though they exist in computer systems. Surveillance cameras. Online records, everywhere.

*

And so years pass, and they continue with their lives. Come home to each other, have crazy sex on every piece of furniture, love each other. Lan Zhan proposes a month after Wei Ying gets a promotion, and Wei Ying cries, accepts and kisses him so much they almost forget to breathe. Two more people die overnight.

They set their wedding in the spring. Lan Zhan has been composing a wedding present for Wei Ying after, but Wei Ying teases that he has one too. “Oops,” he giggles, as if he didn’t mean for it to slip out.

Lan Zhan wonders what it could be, when Wei Ying already brings so much light into his life.

Lan Zhan opens his lunch box one day at work to Wei Ying’s messy handwriting with “got a surprise when you get home!” Quietly excited, Lan Zhan continues with his day, wonders what it could be—jewelry, a drawing? Wei Ying is amazing at drawing. Maybe something sexy, he considers.

They’re both out to work today but Lan Zhan gets home first. Absently, he turns on the tv as he shucks off his jacket, puts his keys away.

“…Noted academic researcher Su She was also found dead this morning, alongside his murderer, his proclaimed stalker,” says the news anchor.

Lan Zhan freezes.

“…colleagues report Su She’s paranoia, but hadn’t taken him seriously…”

Lan Zhan’s head is swimming. He—this has to be a coincidence. But it can’t, when—when Wei Ying knows. Knows that Lan Zhan used to harbor that resentment, despises the idea of foreseeing one’s death—

—And the old suspicions are coming back, the Jiangs, the Wens, Who would you punish? The world wouldn’t miss them. A surprise for you when you get home…

Lan Zhan feels sick. This can’t be real, except. Except it’s not a coincidence anymore, a pattern, pointing, screaming Wei Ying’s name.

“Honey, I’m home!”

Wei Ying’s voice pierces through Lan Zhan’s skull. Lan Zhan’s hands are shaking, he realizes, as he picks up the remote to mute the television.

“Was this you?” he asks, turning around.

In Wei Ying’s arms are a big cage. Inside is sitting a cute, white bunny.

But Lan Zhan—can’t, right now. Can’t be distracted, head full of white noise, as the bunny munches on its hay.

Wei Ying blinks guilelessly. “Was what me?” he says, peeking around to look at the tv.

Lan Zhan’s head is buzzing. “Su She was murdered,” he says. “By a stalker, who he—he knew about.”

“Who?” Wei Ying takes a better look at the tv. “Oh! That’s your old classmate, isn’t it? Well ofc it wasn’t me, I was at work all day. And getting this little guy.” He nudges the bunny cage at him. “Surprise! Happy early wedding!”

Mutely, Lan Zhan takes the cage. Sets it on the table. In any other situation would admire how adorable the bunny is—but the old suspicions, the first suspicions are rushing back to him. Why? And ultimately, how? Wei Ying’s always liked it when Lan Zhan roughs him up during sex. How much does that bleed into real life masochism? Sadism? Does he want to feel pain to feel punished?

Lan Zhan’s body feels sluggish alongside his brain. “Take the next two weeks off,” he orders.

“What?” Wei Ying says. “Lan Zhan, what—?”

“You are staying home,” Lan Zhan says. “With me.”

“What do you—”

Wei Ying trails after Lan Zhan as Lan Zhan turns off the tv, locks the front door, rifles through Wei Ying’s bag (does not find the hidden compartment), takes out his keys. Puts both of their keys in his pocket, locks the windows, closes the curtains.

“Lan Zhan?”

Lan Zhan turns to him. “Give me your phone.”

“Lan Zhan, what are you doing? You’re scaring me.”

“Your phone,” Lan Zhan repeats.

Wei Ying hands it over. Lan Zhan puts that in his pocket, too.

“Go to our bedroom,” Lan Zhan directs. He tries not to choke on our.

“Lan Zhan—”

“Now,” Lan Zhan snaps.

Lan Zhan makes Wei Ying strip. Watches as Wei Ying takes off his clothes, turns out all his pockets, orders Wei Ying to put on a loose long sleeve shirt (because it’s winter) and sweatpants. Watches Wei Ying through it all.

“Is this some sex thing?” Wei Ying jokes.

Lan Zhan goes to their nightstand and pulls out handcuffs.

Wei Ying laughs. “So it is a sex thing! You should’ve just said—”

“I do not know how,” Lan Zhan interrupts, “but the deaths that have happened since—several years ago. They are connected to you.”

“What?” Wei Ying looks soft in his clothes, sitting on their bed. “People die all the time, Lan Zhan, what—”

“I do not know.” Lan Zhan feels crazy—it’s impossible, but his gut, since the beginning, the suspicions. He’s seen Wei Ying. He’s watched him. “But it is too coincidental for me to ignore. I apologize if you have nothing to do with them—”

“Of course I don’t! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“But I must see for myself,” Lan Zhan continues. “We will stay here, be bound to each other for the next two—” he reconsiders “—three weeks. I will watch everything you do.”

“Then what?” Wei Ying asks. “What will that prove?”

Lan Zhan doesn’t know. He knows people have died while Wei Ying has been doing other things, but it feels safer, a bit, to monitor Wei Ying. To know what he’s doing.

“I will decide then,” he says, and clasps the handcuffs to Wei Ying, then to himself.

Lan Zhan calls himself out from work, makes Wei Ying call out. Wei Ying is surprisingly receptive; Lan Zhan half expected him to put up more of a fight. Lan Zhan trails him to the bathroom when Wei Ying pisses. Lan Zhan makes them dinner, something simple, watches as Wei Ying takes small, hesitant bites.

“I’m sorry that things have turned out for you to do this to me,” Wei Ying says over his food. “But Lan Zhan, I think you’re overreacting. What will this solve? What will this prove?”

“I want to prove that I am not marrying a murderer,” Lan Zhan retorts.

Wei Ying pauses. “To yourself?”

Lan Zhan turns away. “Eat.” He’d managed a few bites himself, despite his loss of appetite.

Afterward, Lan Zhan watches him.

Wei Ying sighs. “I’m bored, can’t we do something fun? If you’re going to keep me locked up like this?”

“I do not want to be distracted,” Lan Zhan says.

“So is that a no?”

Lan Zhan exhales through his nose. His boyfriend—his fiancé is always full of energy, chatty and finding ways to entertain himself. And with the way they are like this, Wei Ying won’t just. Freely talk to him, when Lan Zhan has him bound.

He grudgingly agrees to play chopsticks with him.

The day passes into evening. Lan Zhan tugs him to bed and they sleep, curled towards each other—but too many centimeters away, not touching. Like a whole ocean. Lan Zhan’s eyes trace over the shadowed lines of his fiancé’s face and wonders if he really is capable of so much murder.

Lan Zhan wakes first—he always does. He checks the news on his phone, but aside from Su She yesterday morning, no other deaths have been reported.

Beside him, Wei Ying sleeps.

And in the kitchen still is Wei Ying’s backpack. With the hidden compartment, with the thin black notebook.

Lan Zhan is not cruel enough to wake his fiancé and lets him awaken organically, though he is ravenous by the time Wei Ying finally blinks his eyes open hours later.

“Oh,” Wei Ying says, lifting his chained hand before rubbing his eyes with his free one. “I was hoping this was just some weird kinky dream.”

Lan Zhan does not reply, just ushers him into the shower. Facing each other, again, but not touching—Wei Ying teasingly asks if Lan Zhan wants to wash his hair for him, and Lan Zhan thunks the shampoo bottle in his hand. “Wash it yourself,” he responds.

There’s breakfast, morning meditation. In the back of Lan Zhan’s mind, a song that he’s composed for months, that used to be part of his mornings—but it makes him feel sick now.

Their days are filled with silence and chopsticks and Wei Ying quietly telling Lan Zhan what the owner of the pet store told him about taking care of rabbits. The rabbit is almost like a truce, except for how Lan Zhan doesn’t want Wei Ying to hold him, is afraid what Wei Ying might do at any moment now. Lan Zhan does not fear for his own life, but is starkly aware of how everything else is alive. people on social media. In the news. His family. Their rabbit.

And there’s no death in the news for days. Lan Zhan doesn’t know how to feel—glad that no one’s dying. Dread that his suspicions are true, becoming real. Does he want to be right? Does he want to prove to himself that Wei Ying is a murderer? Would it have been better if he had not noticed? But he would not have noticed Wei Ying if it weren’t for this, if Wei Ying’s sly, almost proud comments hadn’t made him suspicious in the first place. Lan Zhan wishes he were anyone else, wishes Wei Ying were anyone else, that neither were as brilliant as they are, could have a normal relationship.

Then there’s the morning where news of someone dies.

It’s another prisoner—a despicable one, as they always are, no room for question or protest. Lan Zhan wakes and it’s the headline news on his phone, white light glowing in his face.

And he doesn’t—doesn’t know how to feel.

“Wei Ying,” he says, voice hoarse.

But Wei Ying is asleep.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan snarls, growls, yanks on the handcuffs, jerking him awake.

Wei Ying blinks in the darkness.

“Lan Zhan?”

“How,” Lan Zhan’s voice sounds foreign to his own ears. “How do you do it?”

“What—”

Emotions are rolling through Lan Zhan’s heart. He shoved Wei Ying down, pushes himself on top of him, demands, “How?”

“How what?”

Lan Zhan makes a dark noise in the back of his throat and bends down, bites at Wei Ying’s lip. Wei Ying cries as Lan Zhan shoves his hand down Wei Ying’s sweats, palms him roughly. He’s glad he can’t see Wei Ying now as he teases him, hot and wet, strips off their clothing with his free hand.

Wei Ying gasps, “Lan Zhan,” then, “please—”

“Shut up,” Lan Zhan says, and folds him in half, thrusts in, dry.

Lan Zhan fucks him ruthlessly in the dark, where he can’t see Wei Ying’s face—where Wei Ying is just a warm hole for him. Wei Ying is making small noises of pleasure that Lan Zhan covers with his hand—Lan Zhan feels anger, powerless, confused, like this is the only thing he can control right now. He comes as Wei Ying sobs against his hand, begging for his own release.

Lan Zhan does not want to, but maybe the part of himself that hates that he’s doing this—the part that still wants to believe in Wei Ying, that still loves him—strokes him to release, and Wei Ying splatters into his hand.

When they come down, Wei Ying huffs. “Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan is—tired. He wants to sleep for a thousand years. He doesn’t want to be who he is. “What.”

“Do you still love me?”

Lan Zhan’s mind halts.

“What are we doing this for?” Wei “Ying continues. “Do you even want to marry me? Because all this—it’s not—”

“Would you still want to marry me?” Lan Zhan asks, and his stomach turns at the question. “After all this?”

Wei Ying looks at him in the dark. “I feel like I should say no,” he says.

Their hands cuffed hands find each other on the bed. Their fingers tangle together.

It’s a weird morning, to put it lightly. Lan Zhan does wash Wei Ying’s hair. Even with their wrists still bound, Wei Ying’s phone and keys hidden away, Wei Ying drags a socked toe up Lan Zhan’s sweats over breakfast, grins and blushes when Lan Zhan prods him with his toe back. The chain between them jangles.

It’s—weird. They have sex again, the chains of the handcuffs clacking between them. Lan Zhan bites harder, thrusts deeper and harsher than before. Wei Ying begs into it. Gasps, “Punish me,” between one and Lan Zhan almost loses it, rattling the headboard against the wall, bedsprings creaking.

And the days, well, they pass. It’s easy to fall into this again, nothing real, just sex even though their engagement rings glitter in the low light. No one dies for another several days; and then one does, when Lan Zhan checks his phone after lunch.

He punishes Wei Ying again, Wei Ying choking, sobbing for it.

“Even if I was,” Wei Ying pants, when they’re done, when Lan Zhan unwinds his hand from around Wei Ying’s throat. “Even if I was responsible, would it be so bad? Would you protest the deaths of despicable people?”

“That is not the point,” Lan Zhan says. “The point is that you should not have that control.”

“What if I didn’t ask for that control? What if it was handed to me?”

Lan Zhan squints at him through the afternoon light. But Wei Ying’s face is blank, curious.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m just saying, hypothetically,” Wei Ying says. “What if I didn’t have that choice?”

“You always have a choice,” says Lan Zhan.

“You had a choice, too,” Wei Ying points out. “Meeting me. Talking to me. Almost marrying me.” He shows off his ring. “How long have you had these suspicions, Lan Zhan?”

Lan Zhan’s heartbeat has never been so loud, against his chest, in his ears.

He trembles, touches Wei Ying’s face. Cups his cheek. Wei Ying closes his eyes, leans into it. He’s warm and alive and Lan Zhan does not think he regrets this. Wei Ying, right now, bathed in the curtained sunlight.

“Will you still love me?” Lan Zhan asks. “After this.”

Wei Ying breathes, “Of course.”

Lan Zhan’s stomach is in his throat. “Since we met,” he confesses. “It is why I spoke to you. Why we are together, now.”

Wei Ying’s eyes twinkle, half-moons. He inches closer from where his head is pillowed. “We might still have gotten together if you didn’t think I was a serial killer.”

“If you are,” Lan Zhan corrects, and swallows. “I don’t know what I’d do.”

“You have time to think,” Wei Ying says, and laces their fingers together. “You have time to draw your own conclusions. But in the meantime…”

His hand travels southward, and then both do not speak for a while.

*

Lan Zhan has convinced himself for so long that Wei Ying isn’t, and now is convincing himself that Wei Ying is, is guilty, and his heart wrenches at the thought. He doesn’t know what he wants—but maybe he does, when the handcuffs chafe against Wei Ying’s skin, slip a little, showing a bit of red.

Wei Ying takes it in stride, murmurs in Lan Zhan’s ear, “Punish me,” taking it rougher, harder as the days go on. And it’s starting to feel less like punishment, every time he takes Wei Ying raw, messing him up inside and out, tears streaking down Wei Ying’s face as he pleads for mercy, for more. Lan Zhan thinks maybe if he can keep Wei Ying on his cock all day, that if Wei Ying is the murderer, maybe he’ll stop, be nothing but his cocksleeve. Wei Ying is certainly close to that now, moaning for it, whispers dirty until Lan Zhan is fucking him so hard that Wei Ying’s too incoherent to remember his own name.

And isn’t that a thought? To fuck Wei Ying so often, keep him hidden away that he has no time for killing, only in Lan Zhan’s grasp, under Lan Zhan’s control. Lan Zhan should feel horrible for it, but he doesn’t, relishes in the power, even as three weeks pass and there’s no deaths; even as an additional two weeks that they call out go by and no deaths of note are on the news. Lan Zhan stops feeling helpless, out of control. Even though the evidence is pointing more and more towards his fiancé, the black notebook having gone unused in weeks. Lan Zhan almost misses it, wants there to be another death in the news, an excuse to punish Wei Ying—and maybe an alibi.

But that thought, too, is slipping away with each passing day.

The bunny feels like the only normal thing between them, but Lan Zhan’s fears cave more into hope. What if Wei Ying is the killer? What if he does have that kind of power? Wei Ying has a strong sense of justice, regardless—and Lan Zhan would not want anyone who’s died be brought back. Wei Ying hands him a carrot above their bunny’s cage and, despite the chain linking their hands, Lan Zhan smiles. This is the man he’s in love with.

And Wei Ying still wants to marry him after all of this, after being held captive him up in his own home. Even if he is the murderer, he is not a bad person. And is Lan Zhan any better? Would he report Wei Ying to the authorities?

The answer to both, he realizes, is no.

No one else would rile up Lan Zhan like this—Wei Ying has acted confused, innocent, but hasn’t fought him. Hasn’t argued or protested. Lan Zhan feels a bit sick for it—but more than that, he feels a thrill. That he’s right, that fiancé has such power. It’s wrong, but it’s Wei Ying. Lan Zhan trusts him.

*

So after days and weeks of no deaths, occupying their time with each other, and sex, and playing with their bunny, Lan Zhan says, “Show me.”

“Hm?” Wei Ying looks at him.

“Show me how you control the deaths,” Lan Zhan says. “It’s been long enough. I know it’s you.”

Wei Ying says, “Lan Zhan, you still—”

“Stop the act. No one has died since we started this.” Lan Zhan shakes their handcuffs.

Then, gentler, “I won’t turn you in.”

Wei Ying’s gaze is unreadable.

“I’ll still marry you too,” Lan Zhan says. “After this. I still love you.”

Wei Ying slowly gets up from where he’s sitting. Pads to the kitchen, and Lan Zhan follows.

Wei Ying takes out his backpack. Lan Zhan watches as he pulls out the notebook from the hidden compartment.

Silently, Wei Ying flips through the rules, the pages filled with names. He hands it to Lan Zhan.

It’s almost—unreal, seeing years of prisoners’, politicians’, CEO’s’ names, first short and brief, then getting detailed. Seeing Jin Zixun’s entry, accompanied with “suggests hiking trip,” “arguing with someone in front of him,” “trips on stray pebble,” “falls to his death.” Sees Su She’s, with the note of an equally horrific stalker to do the bidding, creating his paranoia, over nineteen days up to the specific time and date of his death, weeks ago.

Lan Zhan remembers the fury, the realization then, but now it feels like it’s been a lifetime since then.

Now—now he feels almost grateful.

“This is… How?”

“Found it. Back in university,” Wei Ying says. “Say hi, Wen Ning.”

Peering through their floorboards, a gui pops out. Lan Zhan’s heart startles, but Wen Ning eyes him before slipping back.

“He’s shy,” Wei Ying explains. “And you can only see him if you’re touching this.” He taps the notebook.

It feels heavy in Lan Zhan’s hands, burning. This evidence—yet, his fiancé.

“Can you,” Lan Zhan hesitates. “Can you show me?”

“What?”

Lan Zhan hands the notebook back to him. “Tomorrow morning I will check the news. If whoever dies matches the name in your notebook…”

“You want me to kill someone for you?” Wei Ying is amused. “I already did.”

But he writes a name down anyway.

And then he puts the notebook away—hums as he leads them to the study room, unlatches the secret compartment in his desk, slots it in while Lan Zhan watches.

Lan Zhan says, “You kept all this hidden from me.”

Wei Ying rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well, I’m not anymore—” but is interrupted by Lan Zhan covering his mouth with his own. Lan Zhan fucks him on his desk, Wei Ying’s teeth chattering, back scraping against the wood.

*

And the morning—Lan Zhan checks the news, sees a politician has indeed died.

He bites Wei Ying awake, breathing into his mouth, pinching a brown nipple. “Good morning,” he says, after Wei Ying comes.

“Ah,” Wei Ying says, and trudges out of bed to his desk. To the notebook.

The name matches.

“Is it just you?” Lan Zhan asks. “Who can use the notebook?”

Wei Ying’s eyes flash. “Why?”

“There’s a rule.” Lan Zhan had seen it when Wei Ying had first given it to him. “That users of the book will go to purgatory when they die. But only people who’ve written in it.”

Wei Ying’s eyes go soft. “Lan Zhan.”

“Let me use it,” Lan Zhan says between his teeth.

So a couple of nights later, when their wrists are bare and red and matching, when they’ve called back in to get reinstated to their jobs, they do. They pick a politician over their tangled feet and their bunny munching on some celery.

Lan Zhan writes down the name and his gut twists—then immediately unwinds when Wei Ying locks their pinkies together, strokes his foot with his toe, smiles at him.

Lan Zhan fucks him on the dinner table too, straining the wood, Wei Ying’s legs over his shoulders, tight and pliant and pleased.

*

They have their wedding a month later, shrug it off when people ask about the weeks Wei Ying dropped out of contact—sickness, they say. Wei Ying was too tired to do anything.

When they kiss at the end of the ceremony, Lan Zhan feels invincible. Wei Ying is capable of incredible things. They’re capable of incredible things.

Lan Zhan does not ask to write in the notebook again. But sometimes Wei Ying will bring it out, and Lan Zhan will eye him while Wei Ying writes something down, then fuck him when Wei Ying’s done, gasping Lan Zhan’s name.

“Does it turn you on?” Wei Ying garbles when Lan Zhan stuffs his fingers into his mouth. “Power?”

Lan Zhan does not think it’s the power—that it’s Wei Ying, cheerful and charismatic otherwise, eyes slanting when someone gets too loud and rude on the streets, harassing, deplorable. And it might be the same when Lan Zhan slips from Wei Ying’s side, plasters an indifferent expression on and starts a neutral conversation, gets to know the filth. He returns to Wei Ying with muttered names.

It’s not power, but it’s them—it’s Wei Ying, listening to Lan Zhan’s song on his guqin for the first time over their honeymoon, smiling through his tears and then blowing Lan Zhan there on the floor. It’s Wei Ying opening the notebook sometimes and seeing a name already, in his husband’s sharp, more legible handwriting. It’s them watching the news together, or one of them browsing social media, and so casually mentioning a name, a story, or merely glancing at each other and knowing.

Maybe if they were different people, there would be a question of trust. Of being so familiar with the shape of the other’s mouth in their names, memorizing each other’s faces like they’ve been branded on each other’s heart. That either one of them could write the other’s name in the notebook, could open it and find it, could see and do it in turn.

But Wei Ying is gorgeous under Lan Zhan’s body, flush around him. And this is what drew Lan Zhan to him, in the first place—how beautiful he is when people talk of the deaths that he writes, with each stroke in his notebook. The pleasure, the satisfaction, the whispers, the control. And then how he falls to pieces under Lan Zhan’s hands, like Lan Zhan had written his own name down. Lets Lan Zhan destroy him during the nights until Wei Ying himself is nothing but skin and bones, flesh and blood, as fragile as the lives he manipulates. That with each mark Lan Zhan leaves, how Lan Zhan splits him so cleanly in half on his cock, Wei Ying would trust Lan Zhan not only with his life, but with his death.

And that’s what every day is. On the brink of it, the edge of it, waiting for the other, first. Not knowing, not caring, willing to take the other apart at a moment’s notice. It’s every day, together: the thrill, the risk, the inevitability that they both love.