stufftippywrote

[stufftippywrote]

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tagged by @after-the-end-times

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[stufftippywrote]

fic tease (Junjou Romantica)

Gonna post this either later today or tomorrow on AO3.

Sunao ni Nare (Be Honest)

Fandom: Junjou Romantica

Pairing: Misaki Takahashi/Akihiko Usami

Summary: Misaki knows he should express his feelings more often. It’s just that it’s hard to get the words out.

-----

“We should tell Takahiro about us,” Usagi says, apropos of nothing, in the middle of an otherwise normal Sunday. Misaki is reading Za Kan manga on the couch and Usagi is floating somewhere nearby, alternating between pretending to do work and looking over Misaki’s shoulder. When he speaks, Usagi leans down and plants the words right into Misaki’s ear.

Misaki flies to the other end of the couch in a hot second. “W-what?”

“He should know,” Usagi says bluntly. 

This is the worst possible idea that Usagi could ever come up with, even in his already-zany universe of ideas. “Why? We’re doing fine as-is. Why would he need to know?”

“I read,” Usagi says, “that it’s good if you have someone you can talk to about your relationship.”

Dread sinks like a stone into Misaki’s stomach. “Usagi-san. Please don’t talk to my brother about us.”

“Not me. You.”

“Me what?”

Usagi reaches out and draws his fingers through Misaki’s hair, tousling it. “You should have someone to talk to about our relationship.”

Misaki gets suspicious. “So that you can ask my brother what I’ve said about you? No, thank you.”

“I swear I will not ask him,” Usagi says, and oh shit, he’s serious, isn’t he? Usagi honestly thinks this is the best course of action. For Misaki’s sake. How could it possibly be?

“Uh, what did you read that gave you this idea?” Misaki asks, a little afraid to know the answer.

“An American novel. It was rather tragic.” An air of gloom sees to rise around Usagi. “The characters kept their love affair secret and the woman died from stress.”

Misaki wrinkles his nose. “That’s depressing … but more important, that’s American! They’re weird about love in America. Japanese people don’t need that.”

“The suicide rate in Japan is twice that in America,” Usagi says, with the same air of gloom. “It could be because Japanese people don’t talk about their feelings enough.”

“So move to America!” Fuck, what is with the depressing shit today?

“If you want to move to America, I will go with you.”

Misaki hits him with a throw pillow.

Usagi seems to get the hint and heads back toward his office. But just before he enters, he stops and turns. “Ii kagen ni sunao ni nare,” he says. “Let yourself be honest already. Even if it’s not with me. With someone.”

Like this post if you'd like to read the rest!

[stufftippywrote]

Netflix & Chill chapter 4

(There's no smut in this chapter, just lovey dovey lovies.) Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

[you didn’t think I was going to time skip after that chapter, did you?]

“Wei Ying, what’s wrong?”

Lan Zhan’s hand, gentle, on the back of his head. It just makes Wei Ying want to bury his head further in Lan Zhan’s chest and burst into tears. “Nothing,” he mumbles, and sniffs back another flood. God, he’s so confused. When did this happen? When did he start to fall for Lan Zhan? Why didn’t he feel any of this before?

Did you? a voice inside him says. Did you really not feel anything before?

He has three and a half years of memories to interrogate about this. Their first meeting, Lan Zhan telling him not to drink so much. Wei Ying deciding he was fun to tease. Their argument calming into a sort of banter. Even then, Wei Ying was terrible to him. He didn’t try to see Lan Zhan’s side of things, he just kept poking, like Lan Zhan was a child’s toy with big colorful buttons to push.

Was I fascinated by him, even then?

Fast forward. They’re friends by now. Lan Zhan has bought him dinner. Wei Ying is talking animatedly about something that happened in his sociology class. He keeps laughing at his own jokes. Lan Zhan gives him an appreciative chuckle now and then but otherwise stays silent, just gazing at him with those eyes that glint golden in the light. From the way Wei Ying is talking on and on, Lan Zhan might as well not be there at all.

I’ve really been a terrible friend. 

“What’s wrong.” Lan Zhan asks again—no, it isn’t an ask. It’s a demand. Wei Ying has to say something. He opens his mouth with no idea what’s about to come out.

“What are we even doing?” is what he hears, in his own voice, sounding a bit too plaintive. “What is this?”

Lan Zhan answers as Lan Zhan always does: straightforwardly. “You called it Netflix and chill.”

Wei Ying has to laugh a little, a bitter sound. “I did, didn’t I?” he says. “What an idiot I am. Lan Zhan, you know what that means, right?”

“I looked it up.”

“So you get that it means that we’re just fooling around. We’re not. You know. Boyfriends or anything.”

He nods. “I am aware.”

“And that’s okay with you?”

Lan Zhan doesn’t pause. It’s not a pause. But it’s the barest whisper of a shadow of a pause. “I am okay with whatever Wei Ying wants,” he says.

Can he infer some hope in that not-quite-a-pause? A part of Wei Ying’s brain wants to go there. But whenever he thinks he’s ready to say something, his mind rebels. You’re not good for him and you know that. He deserves so much better.

Wei Ying doesn’t have low self-esteem, as a rule. But right now he just wants to shrink down into the couch cushions and stay lodged there forever, like months-old gum. 

There’s warmth on his cheek. Lan Zhan’s hand is there. He’s turning Wei Ying’s face upward, not letting him hide in the comfort of his chest. Wei Ying is trapped, staring at him, those golden eyes burning into his own. His heart is pounding, and he’s acutely aware of every plane and angle on Lan Zhan’s face. Something about it loosens his tongue.

“Suppose I wanted--” he starts.

At the same time, Lan Zhan says, “Is this what--”

Silence. Any other time, Wei Ying would laugh, declare a jinx, tell Lan Zhan he owes him a dollar. Now, he can’t. The spark of courage that had momentarily opened his lips has died out.

Thank God, Lan Zhan is willing to go on. “Is this what you want?” he asks. “Do you want something else?”

His thumb rubs a slow caress into Wei Ying’s cheek. IT’s just enough encouragement, just enough to lift a glittering piece of hope into his chest.

“Yeah,” he says, “I don’t know. I was just thinking. What-- what if we tried being a thing?”

He expects Lan Zhan to repeat a thing? with a blank expression. But Lan Zhan stays silent, thumb going still on Wei Ying’s cheek. His whole body has actually gone still; Wei Ying’s not sure if he’s breathing.

Agh, the tension! Wei Ying regrets saying a thing. “Ah, but I’d be no good at that sort of thing,” he declares, painting a grin onto his face. “Forget it, forget I said anyth—”

The scent of Lan Zhan surrounds him. Lan Zhan is holding him, both arms thrown around him trembling. Lan Zhan buries his head in Wei Ying’s shoulder. “I would like it,” he says, sound vibrating into Wei Ying’s bare skin, “very much, if we could be a thing.”

They have touched so, so much since this whole thing began, but nothing has been more intimate than this embrace. Happiness is bursting like a sunrise through Wei Ying, an effervescent emotion that’s extending to the tips of his toes and up through to the top of his head. How could he have doubted he wanted this? He wants it so much. He wants to be with Lan Zhan. He always has. The knowledge blooms through him like heat, spilling everywhere.

But… but! “Why?”

He’s pushed into Lan Zhan’s chest so firmly the word almost doesn’t make it out. But he doesn’t understand. He has to know. “Why?”

Lan Zhan’s embrace loosens, and he pulls back enough that they can look at each other. “Why do you ask why?” Lan Zhan says, and he really looks as though he has no idea. 

“Because … because .. because look at me, Lan Zhan.”

“I am looking.”

Okay, yes, he is, but it’s a rhetorical look-at-me. “Stop that. You know what I mean.”

“I don’t.”  He’s having fun interrupting, isn’t he? Damn it. If only that weren’t so cute of him.

Still. Enough of that. “Well if you’d let me say something—” and for once, Lan Zhan does. “Look, what I mean is, look at me! I’m not even a good friend to you. Why would you want me to be a boyfriend?”

This time, Lan Zhan really doesn’t seem to understand. “Wei Ying is the best friend,” he says, unironically, without a single shred of doubt in his voice. 

It makes Wei Ying feel like an absolute heel.

“How?” he bursts out. “I don’t even remember your birthday. I do nothing but talk about myself. I don’t ever ask you any questions about your life. How could you possibly want to be with me? I’m the literal worst.” He buries his head in Lan Zhan’s shoulder, which is also the worst possible thing to do, because it’s just using Lan Zhan again after he’s just confessed that he uses Lan Zhan.

Above him, Lan Zhan’s voice is soft. “Do you remember when I was sick, sophomore year?”

Wei Ying pulls away, blindsided. “What?”

Is Lan Zhan smiling, just a little? “Do you remember?” he repeats.

Wei Ying wracks his brain for the memory. Yeah, that’s right. Lan Zhan got sick, so Wei Ying headed off campus to his apartment and climbed up the fire escape to sneak into his room. And then he—

He flushes. “Yeah, I remember. I made you eat that super spicy soup, and you nearly choked on it. I made everything worse.”

“You came over to take care of me,” says Lan Zhan.

“Yeah, and I sucked at it!”

“You came over,” Lan Zhan says again slower, “to take care of me.”

Okay. So yeah, he did, he can’t deny that. But it takes more than one bowl of soup and too much sriracha to be a good friend. “All right,” he mumbles, pouting a little. “That was one time.” 

Lan Zhan doesn’t miss a beat. “Does Wei Ying remember when I missed the last train?”

That was this year. Last month. The subway doesn’t run all night, and Lan Zhan was in the computer lab perfecting his project. 

He goes on. “You told me to come over, and you slept on the floor.”

Lan Zhan’s getting at something, Wei Ying knows, but he’s wrong. “Yeah, well, you didn’t have a place to stay. What else was I supposed to do?”

“You slept on the floor.”

“I’m good at sleeping in weird places. You’re not. Of course I would let you have the bed. Lan Zhan, would you cut it out? Okay, so I was passably nice to you a couple of times. It doesn’t change the fact that most of the time, I’m kind of a crappy friend.”

Lan Zhan puts a hand on the crown of his head as though admonishing him. “You are not.”

“So, what, you’re okay with me going on about myself all day? And talking so much you can’t get a word in edgewise? And bragging about—”

Pat, pat, goes the hand on his head. “Yes.”

“Why?” Wei Ying catches his gaze. 

The tenderness in Lan Zhan’s eyes bring him to a complete standstill.  He sucks in a breath and holds it. 

Lan Zhan’s hand drifts down from the top of his head to his hairline, his ear, his cheek. “Because I love you,” he says.

Because I love you. 

No drama, no pain, no longing. Just a simple fact. Spoken as evenly as if it were the sky is blue.

Lan Zhan loves him. Simple as that.

The happiness, that euphoria that Wei Ying had tried his best to subdue earlier, comes roaring back like thunder in his ears. He can’t hold it back now, and the emotion puts a grin onto his face that he can’t suppress. His eyes are watering. The tears he can hold back; the smile he absolutely can’t. He throws his arms around Lan Zhan’s shoulders, presses his face into his neck. “Lan Zhan,” he says, “Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, are you for real? Do you mean it?”

Lan Zhan’s lips brush his skin. “Yes.”

“You love me? Like, like you’re in love with me?”

“Yes.”

“You were in love with me this whole time? Like, while we were Netflix and chilling?”

Lan Zhan’s hand rests on his upper back stroking back and forth there in a wonderful wave of warmth. “Yes.”

“And…” oh, there comes the despair again, but Wei Ying can’t sustain it this time, can’t possibly make himself miserable when he’s so damn happy. “And I said we weren’t boyfriends, and you were okay with that too, because you loved me?”

“Yes.” Lan Zhan kisses his cheek, his chin. Wei Ying leans back and Lan Zhan captures his mouth in one brief, hot kiss that means everything. “Will Wei Ying please be my boyfriend?”

Wei Ying might very well explode with happiness. 

“Yes,” he says, and kisses Lan Zhan’s mouth again. “Yes, yes, yes,” a kiss with each yes, Lan Zhan’s lips pursing against his, the heat starting to rise between them again. “Lan Zhan, I love you too—I didn’t know it���but I do—and I do.” Lan Zhan ravishes him in a kiss so deep and searing that Wei Ying thinks he’ll break apart. Lan Zhan’s tongue in his mouth is so sweet and strange, that big muscle licking into him in a way that sends excitement spiraling into his core. He’s hard again, he wants Lan Zhan to lay him down and do whatever to him, but his heart is also singing with a kind of magic that makes everything seem fuzzy and sweet. If this is love, he might die of it.

“Lan Zhan,” he whispers, over and over, half of his words blunted with kisses. He tries to wriggle away, but Lan Zhan’s holding him tightly. At last he has to take both palms and push against Lan Zhan’s chest to break them apart. “Lan Zhan, will you give me ten minutes?”

Those gorgeous, talented lips of his are slow in relaxing. “Ten minutes for what?” he asks, the words coming out between labored breaths.

“I am going to get dressed,” Wei Ying says, “and I am going to go out, and I am going to get the stuff we need, and then I am going to come back here and get undressed again and you are going to fu—” He stops himself. “You are going to make love to me. Okay with you?”

Lan Zhan pauses. Then he smiles in a way that can only be called beatific.

It’s a stunningly beautiful smile. Wei Ying wants to snap a photo and frame it and put it on his bedside table to look at every day.

“Yes,” he says, one more time.

[stufftippywrote]

whatever you do, don't tell him.

The Haus kitchen on one late fall day. Muffins in the oven. Bitty has the Lemonade album on, because classics never go out of style.

Dex peeks around the corner into the kitchen. ”Bitty …” he stage-whispers. “Can we talk?”

For a long time now, the kitchen has served as many things: sometimes courtroom, sometimes therapy space, sometimes bar. Bitty wears a multitude of hats in this room. “Of course,” he says lightly, sensing that some tea is about to be spilled but keeping his voice and smile light.

Dex sits backward on one of the chairs near the table. “It’s about Nurse.”

This is not the biggest surprise in the world. “Oh?”

“You know he gets on my nerves.”

“Oh, no,” says Bitty, “what did you two get into it about now?”

Dex grumbles. “Nothing,” he says. “It’s not that.”  And before Bitty can inquire what it is, Dex gets up from the chair and pokes his head out in the hallway, looking in both directions as though trying to check if anyone’s in earshot. Satisfied, he returns to the chair, sits on it properly this time, and leans toward Bitty furtively. 

“Bitty,” he mumbles, “I think I might kind of like him.”

Oh, this is much better than Bitty was expecting. “Well, that’s good!” he says. “That’s progress. You two should try to be friends.”

“No, no.” Dex’s cheeks are a faint pink. “I don’t mean as a friend.” He lowers his voice again as though he didn’t just check to see if they were alone. “I mean I might like him like him.”

Bitty has learned that at Samwell, any expectations one might have of others’ sexual orientations should be chucked out a window upon arrival. He didn’t see this one coming, but maybe neither did Dex. “Oh, okay! That’s good too, I guess. So … was there something you wanted to ask me about it?”

“I don’t know.” Dex’s hand, resting on the table, tightens. “I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to say it out loud to somebody. I don’t know.”

He looks like he’s going to say I don’t know a dozen times, so Bitty decides to direct the conversation. “Well, how did you figure this out?”

The hand on the table clenches into a fist. “It’s so frustrating! I just happened to pass by one day and he was just sitting there, under a tree, reading. It was sunset and something about the light—I don’t know! All of a sudden he looked hot. Why is this happening to me? What crime did I commit in a past life?”

Bitty hasn’t told the team about him and Jack yet. He feels a swell of pity for Dex, who is not responding to this liking-someone thing the way Bitty really feels he should. “Now, now,” he chides, “Liking someone should feel good! Try not to stress. Try to … enjoy it? If you can.” 

The timer for the muffins goes off then, and Bitty turns to the oven to check on their progress. Behind him, he can practically hear the gears of Dex’s mind turning, grinding over and over trying to process the idea. At last Dex grumbles, “Sounds fake.”  A moment of silence, and then— “But I’ll try. Just, Bitty?”

“Mm-hm?” 

“Whatever you do, don’t tell him.”

----

Two days later, Bitty enters the kitchen to discover Nursey there, running his fingers through his hair so obsessively it’s getting unkempt and frizzy. He does not look at all like his usual “chill” self. “Something bothering you, Nursey?” Bitty asks as he pulls some ingredients from the cupboard. 

“No,” answers Nursey immediately. Followed by “Yeah. Kind of.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No,” he says again. “Maybe. Yes.”

Bitty pours out a measure of flour into a glass bowl. “Well, go ahead!”

“It’s about Poindexter.”

A sense of deja vu stills Bitty for a minute. He opens the sugar canister. “What about him? Did something happen?”

“No. Um…”

Bitty can’t help but smile. “I’m starting to have trouble believing you when you say no.”

“N… uh.” Nursey frizzes up his hair again. “Yeah. So. We’re in the showers after practice this morning, right?  And I’m not, like, looking at him. I just kind of glance over and you know, it’s Dex, right? He looks like Dex. Not super ripped, but his shoulders are just.. Anyway, I’m still not looking, but he’s got his eyes closed and he’s smiling a little like he’s got some kind of a secret and…”

Nursey trails off. Bitty waits a beat, then asks tentatively, “...and you want to write a poem about him now?”

“No! Stop making me say no when I don’t mean it.” Nursey leans forward and bangs his frizzy head on the table. “Anyway. He just looked hot. Like, even his dumb ears looked hot.”

He looks at Bitty as if pleading for the next words to come from him. Bitty, meanwhile, is trying very hard to keep from laughing. “So, in other words…” he begins.

“NO!” It’s the loudest no yet. “I’m gonna say it myself.” 

Getting up from his seat, Nursey juts out his chin and looks pointedly at a spot just behind Bitty on the kitchen all. “Anyway. I thought. Thought maybe I like him. There, I said it. Got it off my chest. Chill. Thanks, Bits. Whatever you do, don’t tell him about this. Chill. Bye.” 

And before Bitty can say another word, Nursey is gone like the proverbial wind.

----

Dex corners him outside the locker room and hisses. “Bitty. Did you see his takeaway at the end of the first period there? What am I supposed to do? He keeps on being hot.”

It takes a moment to realize Dex is talking about Nursey. “Well…”

“Agh. So frustrating!” Dex punches a wall. “Don’t tell him anything, OK?” And he’s stalking down the hall and gone.

----

Nursey sidles up to him in the dining hall. “Yo, Bits, did you see Dex during that charity skate? How he was with that little girl? Man, I’m telling you, he was so stupid cute. The way he smiled at her… anyway. Don’t tell him I said anything.”

----

Dex, the day after a kegster. “Bitty, I can’t seem to get rid of this stupid crush. The taddies got so drunk last night and Nursey like deposits them on the couch and then takes each one of them home last night on his back. Like fucking Superman.”

Bitty consults his severely lacking comic book knowledge. “Does Superman take home drunk college students?”

“Like SUPERMAN,” Dex repeats. “How am I supposed to stop liking him? He can’t do anything normally. Shit, it’s like, hard to breathe around him sometimes. I’m gonna give myself an asthma attack.”

“Maybe,” Bitty ventures, “you should..”

“Anyway. Thanks for listening. Don’t tell him.”

----

Nursey, pulling Bitty aside after team breakfast. “Bitty, I am so fucked! I am so motherfucking fucked!”

“Dex?” 

“You’re goddamn right, Dex! After the game yesterday he told me my forecheck was ‘pretty fantastic.’ He used those words! My heart was beating like a million miles an hour! But also I had just been on the ice for over a minute. Still! How do I stop liking him more every time I see him?”

Bitty tries not to sigh. “Maybe you should think about…”

“Okay. Okay.” Nursey pushes out three breaths like he’s a woman in labor. “It’s good. I’m good. Just needed to say that. Thanks, Bitty. Don’t tell him.”

----

When Dex enters the Haus kitchen next, he sees Nursey sitting there and points at him like he’s picking a suspect out of a lineup. “What’s he doing here?”

Bitty slaps a wooden spoon against his open palm. “Listen, you two,” he declares. “I am not going to say a thing. I’m going to leave this kitchen and the two of you are going to have a conversation and say what’s on your minds. Got it?” He smiles. “Okay, good luck!”

And he marches out of the kitchen and toward the front door. As he goes, he overhears:

“Bitty, how can you do this to me?”

“Bitty, you traitor—”

“Wait. Wait, what have you been saying to him?”

“Me? What have you been telling him?”

“Uh.”

“Um.”

“Shit.”

-------

About fifteen minutes later, Bitty doubles back toward the Haus and sneaks up to the kitchen window. He takes a peek past the turquoise curtains, smiles, nods in satisfaction, and continues on his way.

[stufftippywrote]

you are so good

It’s a tough game. Tough loss. Jack had a giveaway that led to a shorthanded goal. He’s shaking in the shower afterward, he’s shaking in the car on the way home. He tries to calm the voices, but they’re constant, hounding him all the way home and as he makes his way up to his apartment you’re a failure. you’re a disappointment, you’re not worth anything, you’re bad, you’re BAD. 

Thank goodness for Bitty. Thank goodness for him.

Bitty’s there when he comes in the door, and his arms are wide open. Jack goes straight into them, falling to his knees, and Bitty curls his hands around Jack’s shaking shoulders and kisses the top of his head over and over again. “Jack,” he says, “Jack, Jack, it’s okay. It’s okay, you’re home now, you’re home, you’re safe.”

“Bits,” Jack murmurs, looking up at Bitty with huge, searching eyes.  “Tell me… tell me I’m good.”

“You’re good, you’re so good, Jack,” Bitty soothes, his voice like a comforting blanket sliding over Jack’s back. He holds him another minute, but Jack’s trembling doesn’t ease. Bitty sighs and holds Jack’s face in his hands, looking down at him. “Do you want me to take care of you, sweetheart? Is that what you want right now?”

“Yes,” Jack feels like he’s begging. He’s so ready for reality to drop away for a while. “Yes. p… please, take care of me. Bits.”

“Okay. Okay.” Bitty helps him to his feet and slings an arm around his waist. Jack leans heavily on his shoulders as they walk into the bedroom. 

“How do you want to start?” Bitty asks.

“Want you to tell me what to do,” Jack says. The tremolo in his voice is so pronounced right now. He’s a wreck. Bitty will take care of him, though. Bitty knows how.

“Okay. Why don’t you go back down onto your knees for me, honey.”

Jack sinks to the floor immediately. He looks up at Bitty with expectation.

Bitt reaches out and touches his face with one hand. “It’s going to be all right, honey,” he promises. “I’ll take good care of you.” Silence falls in the apartment as Bitty caresses his face, runs his fingers through Jack’s hair. Jack can only hear his own gasping breaths, trying to slow them down, to calm his racing heart. Every caress, every scratch of Bitty’s fingernails in his hair, lulls him into the place he wants to be. “You’re beautiful, honey,” Bitty says. “So beautiful and perfect, ready for me like this.”

When it’s like this, Jack doesn’t have to do anything. He doesn’t have to think. He can simply look to Bitty, and Bitty will guide him. The weight begins to fall off his shoulders.

Bitty leans down and presses kisses to Jack’s hair. “Do you want to use your mouth on me?” he asks. “I would love to have your mouth on me.”

Jack swallows. He nods. 

“No hands,” Bitty says. “No touching me or yourself. Just your mouth. Okay?” He unzips his pants and hikes them down to his knees, then kicks them off, one leg at a time. His cock is hard, flushed a beautiful pink-red. Jack’s mouth waters. He pulls his hands behind his back and opens his mouth, inviting. Bitty gives a little shudder. “Oh, yes, honey,” he murmurs. “So beautiful like that.” He edges forward until his cock is at Jack’s lips. “Color?”

“Green,” Jack mumbles, and Bitty takes another half-step forward, and Jack’s mouth sinks down onto him.

It’s wonderful, it’s the most delicious tension, with the weight and warmth of Bitty in his mouth and the way his own body tenses to stay up on his knees and his hands twitching and Jack knowing he can’t move them. He relishes this, the back and forth between I want to and I mustn’t, and it’s like a small victory every moment he manages to resist the call of his own instinct. He moves his lips up and down on Bitty’s cock, keeping his mouth open and slack and wet for him, until Bitty is moaning softly and pushing his hips forward slightly to meet each movement. 

Jack’s getting hard himself, and his hands ache to pull down his own slacks, to grip himself and find some relief from the heat that’s building there. He doesn’t. He mustn’t. He concentrates on Bitty, giving Bitty everything he needs, and that floaty feeling is coming upon him now, taking his brain away from the physical moment and into a place where he can almost look down at himself and watch. 

Bitty works a hand into his hair and pulls slightly. “Fuck, yes, Jack,” he hisses. Electricity flows down to Jack’s toes, and he shifts and whines around Bitty’s dick, the heat in his body rising until he’s dizzy with it. His hand comes forward despite himself. Bitty gives a small laugh buried inside a moan, and reminds him, “Just your mouth now, honey.”

Jack can’t help a groan of frustration and heat. His lips slip off Bitty’s dick. “Please.”

“You’re so sweet to say please,” Bitty says. “But no, not quite yet. Soon, baby. Soon.”

It’s awful and wonderful at the same time. Jack refocuses himself on pleasuring Bitty, sliding back onto his cock and sucking. Bitty gives a broken, choked-off noise and grabs Jack’s hair with both hands. He moves Jack’s head now, pulling him further on and then letting him relax, and Jack is nothing but a slave to Bitty’s need, he needs nothing else but for Bitty to keep groaning and keep pulling him close. The rest of his body doesn‘t even exist, just this beautiful singlemindedness. He’s sublimated into something else altogether. 

Bitty pulls off of him, panting, his cock slick with Jack’s saliva so it glistens in the low light. He breathes hard for a few seconds, and then says, “Get naked and get on the bed, sweetheart.”

Jack can’t comply fast enough. He shucks off his shirt and slacks, pulls off his boxers and socks, and lies down on the bed. He reaches instinctively for Bitty’s hand to pull him down on top of him.

Bitty slaps it away. “I said no hands yet.” His voice isn’t cold. It’s just firm, and Jack relishes being told he’s done wrong, relishes being corrected. He’s back in his body now, being exposed like this, his cock standing at attention. Every single atom of him begs for relief, but not now, not yet, not until Bitty has decided he’s ready. 

Rounding the bed, Bitty pulls something out of a drawer. It’s a vibrating dildo, one of their more often-used toys. “Open yourself up and put this in,” he says. “You can use your hands for that, but no touching your cock.” He turns the switch to on and sits on the end of the bed, watching.

Jack reaches for the bottle of lube on the nightstand. He pours out a bit and coats his fingers, then angles his legs up so he has better access to himself. The first finger goes in easily, and Bitty says softly, “That’s it, sweetheart, you take it so well, keep going.” His words are like fire.

Jack pushes in his second finger and starts scissoring outward. His muscles relax as he knows they will. They’ve done this a million times before. A third finger, then he turns to Bitty. “I’m ready.”

Instead of moving to put in the dildo, Bitty leans forward, and the expression on his face softens. “Color, darling?” he asks.

“Green.” Jack answers almost before Bitty is done. “So green.”

“All right.” Bitty gives him an almost beatific smile. “Put your legs up.”

Jack obeys. Bitty reaches over and takes hold of the dildo. Its buzzing noise fills the room. It’s like white noise, like the hum of noise-canceling headphones, and the sound puts Jack in a trance. When it sinks into him, slowly, inch by inch, the sound transforms into a sensation, sending shocks through his prostate, into the base of his cock. He lets out a strangled noise, concentrates on his breathing so he doesn’t go insane at the feel of it.

Bitty eases off and guides his legs back down. “Feel good, baby?”

“So good—Bitty—my hands—”

Bitty doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he takes hold of his own cock, still hard, and gives himself a few strokes. His eyes sweep over Jack’s body, holding eye contact with him, then lowering to watch the jerks and shudders of Jack’s helpless hips and the violet flush of his cock. Jack can feel the look like a touch, and tears rise to his eyes as he says—begs— “please, hands, please.”

Bitty strokes himself a few more times, letting out loud, musical groans that ring in Jack’s ears. “All right,” he says, “but don’t come before I do. Can you do that for me, sweetheart?”

There’s no room for protest. There’s no saying no. Jack nods.

“Good. Go ahead.” Bitty rises up onto his knees and positions himself between Jack’s legs, continuing to stroke his own cock. Free at last, Jack curls his palm around the base of his dick. It’s almost too much, he feels ready to come already, with the feeling of his own hand and the vibrations sinking into him like ripples and the sight of Bitty above him and the sound of Bitty’s moans. Afraid of losing control too quickly, he squeezes hard and tries a tentative stroke.

It’s very nearly too much. Shudders wrack his body. He cries out, wordlessly, and he holds fast to the tip of his cock to quell the sensation. Breathing as slowly as he can, he waits for the wave to recede before he tries another stroke. His eyes catch Bitty’s, and he knows it’s written on his face, how overwhelmed he is, how stimulated, how much he wants.

Bitty sees it. “Good, baby,” he says. “Nice and slow.”

“Slow,” Jack mumbles, a soft echo. He tries a slower stroke, holding on tight. The sensation is more manageable now, heat washing over him in a gentle tide. Only the vibrator is merciless, pulsing inside him at the same fevered clip. Jack thinks he has found the right tempo now. He continues stroking, reveling at the washes of heat, as excited by the sound of his own crescendoing moans as he is by the noises Bitty is making.

“So good, darling,” Bitty says as he palms his cock, sometimes with a hard squeeze, sometimes with thumb and forefinger, sometimes playing around the tip. “You look so good there taking it for me. So beautiful. You’re such a good boy. Wait for me, honey. You just keep waiting for me.”

Those wonderful words buoy Jack in the sea of pleasure that he’s drowning in. He can breathe, but only barely. The sensation is rocketing up in him too fast again. He can feel the tears welling up in his eyes. He throws his head back and moans aloud, then whispers, “Bitty, please…”

“Soon, baby,” but Bitty’s voice has lost its calm. He’s breathing raggedly, palming his cock furiously,  “So close, baby, hold on…”

Jack doesn’t know if he can. “Please…” The tears are spilling from his eyes now. “Please!”

Bitty jerks his cock once, twice, three times more, and then he gives a broken shout and comes, spilling all over Jack’s exposed stomach and legs, grasping himself desperately as his hips jerk forward and back and forward again. “Aaaah,” he cries, “ah… ah… ah…”

“Please,” Jack sobs.

“Yes, darling, yes, now…”

Jack lets go, pleasure exploding through his body as he comes harder than he has in a long time, the world blacking out around him as he spurts uncontrollably, tears streaming down his face. He’s touching forever, he’s in heaven, he wants it to go on and on. When his hips jerk forward one more time and the sensation falls away, he feels like a snowflake drifting to earth, soft and melting. His body is a mess of his come and Bitty’s, all mixed up. His breath is coming in slowing gasps, and the tears are hot on his cheeks. He doesn’t know if he’s lying still or flying away.

Bitty’s arms, around his shoulders. Bitty’s lips pressing against his ear, his cheek, his jaw. “Oh, honey,” he breathes. “Oh, you were so good for me. Oh, I’m so proud of you. Just beautiful, wonderful, I love you so much. I love you, baby. You were so good.”

Still trembling minutely, Jack closes his eyes and lets the words wash over him. Bitty keeps talking, keeps telling him he was good, and it’s like an anchor. His mind clears slowly, and he finds his way back down to reality. His breathing slows and he turns to Bitty, cups his face with a gentle hand. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you, Bits. I … needed that.”

Bitty turns his head toward that hand and kisses it softly. “I will always give you what you need,” he promises. “My good, good boy. You are so good.” 

You are so good.

And Jack, thank goodness, believes him.

[stufftippywrote]

i want to write another omgcp ficlet for y'all, but the only thing i'm inspired to do right now is smut, and y'all don't seem to care for that. so if anyone has a prompt to throw my way tonight, please put it in the comments. I can't make any promises but you never know! ETA: Anon, I got your prompt and am intrigued! We'll see what I can do!

[stufftippywrote]

Netflix & Chill chapter 3

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Lan Zhan doesn’t get in touch with him the next day, so Wei Ying does what Wei Ying does, which is stew in his own juices until he’s made a fine pot roast of himself. Is Lan Zhan not enjoying himself? Is he doing this for Wei Ying’s sake? Is Lan Zhan, possibly, in love with him? Wouldn’t that be the worst, if he was? Then Wei Ying would literally be using him for sex, stringing him along without wanting more.

If Wei Ying doesn’t want more, which he is starting to be unsure about.

Anyway, that can’t be it. Lan Zhan would have said something before now if that were the case, right? Or if he didn’t say anything, he would have made it abundantly clear. He would have written a poem, or sent flowers, or dueled someone for Wei Ying’s honor. Something like that. 

Either way, they should probably talk about it.

So Wei Ying texts him with, we should probably talk.

Lan Zhan’s response is, About what?

Like he has no idea. This dumbass. Dumbass with a 4.0 GPA, but dumbass nonetheless.

Meet me for dinner, he texts back.

So they meet in the dining hall of Wei Ying’s dorm, and Lan Zhan greets him with that soft smile of his, and asks him how his day has gone. He asks specifically about both of Wei Ying’s classes today, because he knows Wei Ying’s schedule. Wei Ying has no clue about his schedule, but again, this is one of these inequalities that Lan Zhan seems perfectly fine with. Wei Ying is starting to feel self-conscious about these little things. There seems to be so much that isn’t equal between them. Lan Zhan is the giver, and Wei Ying is the taker, and Lan Zhan has never so much as complained about it. Wei Ying doesn’t have a clue why, but he’s starting to feel really bad about letting things stand like that.

“So,” he says, when they are seated at an otherwise empty table in the back of the dining room, “yeah, I thought maybe we should talk.”

“About what?” Lan Zhan asks again.

“You know!” Wei Ying can feel the blush rising. Already. Before he’s even said a word. “About what we’ve been doing. About Netflix and chill.”

“Oh.” Lan Zhan’s hand stills in mid-forkful. “What about that should we talk about?”

“Well, it’s kind of a big deal, don’t you think?” Wei Ying feels a bit like he’s talking to a brick wall. Why is Lan Zhan not having a reaction?

“You told me it was not a big deal,” Lan Zhan observes. “You told me it was just for fun.”

“And—and you’re okay with that?”

Lan Zhan still looks completely unruffled. “I am okay with whatever Wei Ying wants to do.”

Wei Ying lets out a little wail. “Give me more than that, Lan Zhan! Give me some information, at least, some input.”

“I don’t think I understand,” Lan Zhan says. “Input about what?”

That is a very good question. Wei Ying is not very sure himself. “Are… are you enjoying yourself, at least?”

And finally, finally, Lan Zhan gives him a reaction.

He leans in and says, his lips quirking upward:

“Immensely.”

All the blood in Wei Ying’s body plunges south.

“Oh,” he says. ‘Oh. Um, do you want to come up after dinner? There’s not a new episode, but we could. Um. Study.”

“That would be nice.” And Lan Zhan refocuses his attention on his dinner, leaving Wei Ying not just stewed but boiling.

--

They take the elevator to the tenth floor, where Wei Ying’s room is. Wei Ying stares at Lan Zhan’s back while they���re in the elevator and wonders. What would happen if I just slipped my hand in his right now? What would happen if I grabbed him and started kissing him in the elevator? What if we made out all the way to the top?

When they get into Wei Ying’s room, Lan Zhan sets down his backpack and pulls out some books and notebooks. Wei Ying watches him helplessly, once again amazed at what he is seeing. Does Lan Zhan just not feel like fooling around right now? What is he thinking?

Lan Zhan glances at him and frowns. “What?”

“Uh—” Wei Ying is still flailing internally. “What are you doing?”

“I thought you wanted to study,” Lan Zhan says.

“Okay. Okay.” Wei Ying waves his hands in the air as he tries to find words. “So. Some ground rules, then. From now on, when I invite you up here, it probably isn’t to study. Or to watch TV. And even if it was—” how am I supposed to concentrate on that for long, when I spent the whole elevator ride looking at your ass? he doesn’t say.

Lan Zhan sets the books down and straightens up. “Oh,” he says slowly. “Oh. I see.”

“I mean, do you want to study?” Wei Ying asks helpfully. “What do you want?”

A pause. “Do you really want to know?”

What? ”Yes, of course, why wouldn’t I…?”

“I want to see Wei Ying naked,” Lan Zhan says. 

Oh. 

If Wei Ying was flushing before, he must be tomato-red now. Something about the way Lan Zhan said that, like an order, like he was commanding him, has his heart beating double-time and his breath coming faster. “Okay,” he says. “Oh-okay.”

He waits. Lan Zhan does nothing. Or, rather, he doesn’t move. But the way he is looking at Wei Ying all of a sudden feels like he is devouring him.

Pulling his shirt off is easy. Unbuttoning and letting down his pants is not as easy, but it’s not awful. When he’s in his boxers, he spreads his arms as if to say, like this?

Lan Zhan still does not move. Lan Zhan still stares.

Wei Ying suddenly realizes he means naked naked. He kicks off his socks. Then, slowly, he hooks his thumbs under his boxers and looks to Lan Zhan for confirmation.

Lan Zhan nods. Very slowly.

Wei Ying lets out a puff of breath and slowly lowers his boxers to the floor and steps out of them.

He is …. he is naked, totally naked for Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan is just appraising him. The phrase like a piece of meat flashes in Wei Ying’s mind, but that’s not even close to true, because Wei Ying doesn’t feel objectified, he feels desired, he feels wanted, and he can also see the jut in Lan Zhan’s pants very distinctly and boy that feels awesome. “What now?” he asks, his voice trembling a bit more than he’d like it to.

“Get on the bed,” Lan Zhan says.

Holy crap. Wei Ying goes hard as a rock in an instant. He swallows and nods.

He sits on the edge of the bed, then swings his legs up so he’s lying on his back. 

“On your hands and knees,” Lan Zhan says.

Oh. Oh god. “Lan Zhan, what are you planning to—I don’t have any—” does Lan Zhan intend to fuck him? Like, for real? In the ass for real? Wei Ying starts to hyperventilate. it’s not the act that’s freaking him out, he doesn’t think. It’s the way Lan Zhan is still just standing there, watching him, as he climbs onto all fours and puts his ass in the air. The way Lan Zhan kept speaking to him, his voice almost cold, like he intended to retaliate if Wei Ying wouldn't agree.

Freaking out, but also kind of thrilling.

“Are—are we about to scene?” he asks nervously. “I’m not—if we are, we need to talk about it first…”

Lan Zhan falters. “No,” he says. “I didn’t mean to—” He looks at the floor. “I just wanted to see you.”

Wei Ying’s heart melts. “It’s okay,” he says. “Whatever you want is fine with me, Lan Zhan, it’s just—if we were going to-—you ordering me around was kind of hot—”

“No,” Lan Zhan says again, firmer this time. “I want to do what Wei Ying wants.”

“Just with me naked.” Wei Ying can’t help the grin. “And on the bed instead of the couch this time.”

Lan Zhan approaches. “I will always,” he says, “listen if you say ‘no.’”

A flood of affection wells up in Wei Ying. That’s his Lan Zhan. Always the most courteous guy he knows.

But Lan Zhan isn’t his. And from the way he speaks, authoritative and unwavering, Wei Ying has to wonder if he has a multitude of other lovers he’s done this with before.

He doesn’t know much about Lan Zhan’s romantic inclinations, come to think of it. Lan Zhan has never talked about a partner. Wei Ying is usually the one babbling about whatever attractive human being has caught his eye that day. It’s only now that he’s realized he’s attracted to Lan Zhan that he’s even thought about it. Come to think of it, how did he go this long without realizing how attractive Lan Zhan is? Aesthetically, he knew, but it never used to leave him tongue-tied and breathless before. How did that happen?

While he’s sorting through this in his mind, Lan Zhan has seated himself behind Wei Ying on the bed. He touches Wei Ying’s thigh, draws his hand up the inside of it in a movement that makes Wei Ying tremble. When Lan Zhan cups one of his ass cheeks, squeezing slightly, Wei Ying swallows a hard lump in his throat. What is Lan Zhan hoping to do? Whatever it is, Wei Ying wants him to just do it already and stop taking his time. A little whine escapes him, and his hips roll back into Lan Zhan’s touch.

Lan Zhan runs a hand up his back next, seemingly deaf to Wei Ying’s impatience. “Wei Ying,” he murmurs, And then, more words than Lan Zhan usually says at once: “Did you know you’re beautiful?”

Wei Ying’s heart is pounding in his throat and his cock is hard and throbbing. “Lan Zhan,” he answers in that same whining tone.

Behind him, Lan Zhan rises up to his knees on the bed. He pushes his groin up against Wei Ying’s ass, and good God he’s hard and Wei Ying wants with everything in him. “‘m sorry,” he mumbles, “don’t have stuff. Next time.”

“Next time?” Lan Zhan says, and there’s a hoarse note to his voice that rings in Wei Ying’s ears like the clamor of a symphony. His hips surge against Wei Ying’s ass.

Fuck fuck he wants to fuck me goes Wei Ying’s incredibly helpful brain. “Next time.” He whispers it, because his own throat is too dry at the thought to make sound.

“For now,” Wei Ying goes on, because the silence that follows is too much to bear, “for now, what do you want to do to me?”

Lan Zhan sucks in a breath, as though he’s thinking. “Touch yourself for me,” he says at last.

Wei Ying doesn’t quite understand why Lan Zhan does not want Wei Ying to touch him instead, but also the idea of doing this in front of Lan Zhan is so exciting he has to bite his lip to keep from moaning. He pushes his face down into the pillow to release his arms and circles his own cock with a fist. He can’t see a thing, but he can hear Lan Zhan raggedly breathing behind him. He starts to stroke, his ass waving in the air, beyond turned on by the provocative pose he’s making and the knowledge that Lan Zhan is watching him.

He’s good at this, he knows how to make the waves of arousal crest and recede in himself, but he’s super sensitive right now and it feels too good too soon. He pants, slows, squeezes to keep himself from losing control. Lan Zhan’s name falls from his lips, a plea to help him keep control, and heavy breathing follows. Lan Zhan is touching himself too, Wei Ying realizes - the slide of skin on skin, the heavy breathing-- and Wei Ying has to squeeze his eyes shut tight to keep from going over the edge at the knowledge.

A wicked idea seizes Wei Ying. “Do you like it?” he breathes, trying to sound seductive. “Your Wei Ying, here on this bed, jerking off for you?”

“Fuck.”

He is not sure he has heard Lan Zhan utter a swear in his whole entire life.

Wei Ying pauses, holding onto the base of his cock to keep the feeling from surging too quickly. His breaths are coming loud and ragged. There’s warmth at his thigh—Lan Zhan’s hand, sliding up, and the touch is like an electric shock, sending sparks straight to his cock, making him twitch in his own hand. Lan Zhan cups an ass cheek, and wow, Wei Ying didn’t know how good that would feel. He imagines the two of them pressed together, Lan Zhan kneading his ass, puling him in closer with those strong hands.

Lan Zhan‘s fingers sneak to the center and then oh—

the brush of his fingers against—

Wei Ying jolts, letting out a cry. That—that should not feel like that, that should not feel that good, holy shit. “Lan Zhan, again—”

He does it again. Just the barest whisper of fingers against Wei Ying’s hole, and Wei Ying is trembling. He strokes himself once, unable not to, feeling in a haze of perfect lust, and then Lan Zhan’s finger touches him there and stays there, playing around his rim, pressing as though he’s about to go in but never quite doing it, and Wei Ying jerks himself desperately, slave to the sensation that courses through his body like lightning. 

Lan Zhan’s other hand comes up to hold his hips in place. He teases him again and again like that. Wei Ying doesn’t even recognize his own voice in noises he’s making. Lan Zhan hums in approval. The teases and touches get more intense. Wei Ying’s mind is a constant stream of holy fuck, holy fuck holy fuck, “Lan Zhan, I’m gonna, I’m gonna—”

“Mn.” And just then, just the tip of his finger darts inside—

“Fuck,” declares Wei Ying passionately, and he comes, body jerking and stuttering uncontrollably, making a mess all over himself and the bed, wave after wave of pleasure shooting through him like bullets. Fuck he’ll have to change the sheets, but more importantly fuck that was intense. Minutes later and he’s gasping still and trying to calm his unruly heartbeat, warm aftershocks rocking him every few seconds, and Lan Zhan keeps his finger inside, just barely, until it’s clear Wei Ying has found his breath again. 

When Lan Zhan pulls his finger out, and resumes stroking himself, groaning, Wei Ying whirls on the bed. “No, you don’t,” he says. “On the couch. Come on. I owe you.”

“Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan can’t possibly miss his meaning, right? But when he obeys Wei Ying’s order and sits down on the couch, and Wei Ying kneels between his knees, his eyes go wide like he wasn’t expecting it at all.

Wei Ying’s dick is still vaguely aching, and his head is still swimming, but he knows exactly what he wants to do. He grips Lan Zhan’s hard cock at the base and greedily pulls him into his mouth, all at once. Lan Zhan cries out in what starts as surprise, but midway through it narrows into an ah of pleasure. Wei Ying couldn’t be more pleased.

Oh. Okay, this is good. A dick in his mouth is good. It’s hot and thick and fills his mouth right up. Does every guy have this much girth, or is it just Lan Zhan? Wei Ying pulls off, fastens his lips around the head of Lan Zhan’s cock, and sucks. Lan Zhan makes a helpless nngh noise that goes right to Wei Ying’s head. He’s the one making Lan Zhan feel good, Lan Zhan is trusting him, and when Wei Ying bathes his tongue around the head and sucks again, Lan Zhan says his name and makes another sound. That’s all the inspiration Wei Ying needs to start bobbing up and down on him, taking in his shaft and sucking and then pulling off and running his tongue up the underside oh God this is fun.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan half-whispers, “stop teasing.”

Wei Ying pulls off him. “Oh? Was I teasing?”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, and his head tips back. Wei Ying watches those shoulders go up and down, up and down again as Lan Zhan’s breathing accelerates.

“Okay,” he says at last, “okay, Lan Zhan. I won’t tease you anymore.” He fits his mouth over the head of Lan Zhan’s cock again and slowly slides down onto the shaft. Lan Zhan reaches down and grabs his shoulders with hands like clamps, and now Wei Ying can’t move except to keep his mouth sliding back and forth on Lan Zhan’s cock. Why is this so hot? His own cock twitches despite being physically unable to do much more than twitch right now.

Those hands on him might bruise, and Wei Ying is one thousand percent okay with that—the dull pain is like a prod urging him onward. He squeezes with his hand and sucks, moving faster and faster, so much so that his neck is starting to ache (also one thousand percent worth it). Lan Zhan is groaning aloud now, oh and nngh mixed with the occasional “Wei—Wei Ying,” and Wei Ying feels so powerful, like he could lift worlds. Come on, he thinks, come on, Lan Zhan, come for me, I want to feel it, I want to taste it. I want you to lose control.

A bitten-off “Ahh—” and Lan Zhan’s thighs tense around Wei Ying’s head—and all of a sudden he’s almost choking him, like he just got bigger—and Wei Ying sucks for all he’s worth.

“Wei Ying, Wei—Wei Ying—”

Lan Zhan’s voice, the most calm, down-to-earth voice in this universe, breaks violently.

Wei Ying’s mouth is suddenly full of liquid, salty and hot. He swallows around Lan Zhan’s cock, feeling like a general who’s just conquered a nation, waits for his mouth to fill again and then swallows again. Oh God this feeling is heady, the knowledge that he did this, that he drove Lan Zhan over the edge. Wei Ying pumps with his hand, not wanting to pull off until he’s sure he’s gotten every drop. Lan Zhan’s come isn’t the greatest thing he’s ever tasted in his life, but on the other hand, maybe yes it is. He’s never had a meal quite this satisfying.

He pulls off when it’s clear Lan Zhan is finished. On impulse, he kisses the inside of Lan Zhan’s knee. Then he leans against Lan Zhan’s legs and just breathes as Lan Zhan calms above him.

He wants to do that again, and soon.

But he also wants to climb up and cuddle against Lan Zhan’s shoulder, have Lan Zhan’s arms around him, to lean into his neck and just smell him, and none of that was in the memo, none of that is classified under Netflix and chill, and Wei Ying doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to stuff like that. 

Because even if he wanted something more-- a relationship, even, does he want a relationship?-- even if Lan Zhan felt the same way, which Wei Ying is pretty sure he doesn’t, Wei Ying would really be the worst boyfriend known to man, and he can’t inflict that on Lan Zhan. 

Look at what he’s done to him already, how he’s taken advantage. Lan Zhan listens when he talks. He does things like buy him dinner and come over to take care of him when he’s sick. He’s even letting this happen, even though Lan Zhan said he was enjoying it, but what is Wei Ying doing but using him for a little tension relief every so often? What has Wei Ying ever given him in return?

Wei Ying embraces the label of “shameless” that Lan Zhan gives him every so often. He always has. But this is something not unlike shame that he’s feeling now, curled up at Lan Zhan’s feet, staring down at the floor because he cannot face his best friend knowing acutely all the things he hasn’t done for him. 

“Wei Ying. Come up here.”

He doesn’t really have a choice. Lan Zhan leans down and picks him up by his shoulders. He’s being hauled onto the couch and into Lan Zhan’s arms. Lan Zhan pulls Wei Ying in to rest on his shoulder, and both his hands are on Wei Ying’s back and Wei Ying weirdly feels like crying. He doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve Lan Zhan’s kindness after how terrible a friend he’s been. And he doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want kindness. He wants something else, and he’s almost sure he can’t have it.

Why does he feel this weird and emotional? Is it some kind of sub drop, after Lan Zhan gave him orders or was holding him down? Wei Ying doesn’t think so. He thinks-- he thinks-- it’s something else.

Oh shit… I’ve caught feelings.

He hides his face in Lan Zhan’s chest and shoulder and tries really, really hard not to cry.

[stufftippywrote]

If Past Is Prologue (COMPLETE)

Rating: T Words: 40,009 Fandom: The Untamed/CQL/Mo Dao Zu shi/MDZS Pairings: Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian, side Jiang Cheng/Wen Qing Novelist Lan Zhan moves to a small beach town where he once spent the best summer of his life.

I've been working on this fic for five years. Your eyeballs, kudos, and reblogs are really, really appreciated. https://archiveofourown.org/works/63144655/chapters/161711824

[stufftippywrote]

yeah. I wrote the smut.

This is the smut portion of at arm's length. Go and read that, and stop at the three asterisks and come back here and read this.

“We’re going to get caught,” Jack says worriedly as they ascend in the hotel elevator.

“We’re not,” Bitty says confidently. “The boys’ll all still be out celebrating. It’s not often we notch a win against y’all.” 

“Don’t you have a plane to catch?” Jack hopes he makes it back in time to catch his team’s plane early tomorrow morning. He has the feeling he’s spending the night.

“Yes, at some godforsaken hour of the morning.” The more Bitty talks, the more his Southern accent comes out, and Jack’s about ready to kiss those lovably rounded words off his lips, elevator cameras be damned. “Don’t worry, we’ll make it.” 

He doesn’t have to wait long. The minute the hotel room door swings shut, Bitty is in his arms and they’re kissing, short, hot, heavy kisses that send fire blasting through Jack’s whole body. Bitty’s lips are every bit as soft and sweet as Jack had imagined, and he’s a little ball of heat, his hands feverish on Jack’s back, his chest burning against Jack’s.

“I don’t, ” Bitty breathes between kisses, “do this often.”

“Neither do I,” Jack says. He bites Bitty’s lower lip and Bitty moans.

“Tell me you felt it.” They make their way over to the hotel bed and Bitty climbs in his lap, breathing hard in his ear. “Back on the ice… oh… when we were fighting…”

“Yes.” Jack feels like he’s drowning, the bed inviting underneath him, Bitty a welcome weight on top. “Yeah. I felt it.”

Bitty stops kissing him long enough to ask, “How do you want to do this?” “Up to you,” says Jack. “I switch.”

A smile crawls across Bitty’s face. “Oh, good,” he says, “I pretty much always bottom, so that works out just fine.”

Jack’s cock throbs. “I want to take you out of your clothes,” he says. 

“Ohh.” Bitty’s voice is breathy. “Okay.”

Jack stands, pushing Bitty back to his feet as he does. Bitty’s tossed his jacket on a chair, but he’s still in a button-down and tie. Jack loosens the knot on the tie and pulls it free, and Bitty exhales, as though the tie was trapping a breath inside him. Jack turns to his buttons, undoing them one by one, then pulling his shirt back to reveal an expanse of smooth chest. He’s as beautiful undressed as he was in the suit, and Jack can’t help running his hands down Bitty’s bare sides and enjoying the shiver he elicits.

“Like what you see?” Bitty asks. In answer, Jack cups his ass and pulls their bodies together so Bitty can feel how much he likes it. He tucks his head into Bitty’s bare shoulder and presses his lips there. Bitty throws his arms around Jack’s waist and gives a moan. “I want you, Jack,” he near-whispers. “I really want you.”

Jack mumbles a wordless assent. He steps back, a dull ache where Bitty’s body has been; they wriggle out of the rest of their clothes and Jack pulls Bitty to the bed and down on top of him. They kiss like lovers who are destined to be parted. Bitty feels so familiar and right in Jack’s arms, it’s hard to believe they just met that day. Jack wants to know everything about this man. He wants to be so close to him that their blood runs together. He’s intoxicated, fascinated. The bed creaks underneath them as they move together, cocks slotting against each other, both groaning.

“I have … stuff in there.” Bitty manages between desperate kisses, pointing to his suitcase. Jack rolls off the bed. Every second he spends looking for the lube and condoms is agonizing, but at last he finds them, and rolls a condom onto his own cock, so stimulated by now that even the touch of his own fingers is nearly torture.

Bitty’s already on his hands and knees on the bed. “Come on, Jack.”

Jack scrambles to get some lube in one cupped hand. He runs the other hand down one of Bitty’s thighs. Muscled and smooth and Jack wants to lower his mouth to there and press sucking kisses along the line of it.  He works Bitty open instead, listening to Bitty’s gasps and small moans and encouragement (“another, Jack, another—God I want you”). He’s hard as hell and his mind is teasing him with images of what Bitty is going to be like under him, all smooth pink skin and soft groans.

“I’m ready, Jack, I’m ready,” and that whining tone sends fire anew through his blood.

Jack steadies himself and sinks in slowly. Bitty takes him like he was meant for it, opening easily, then clenching tight around him. Jack completes a thrust and stays there, just marveling. Breathing hard as Bitty encourages him. “That’s it, Jack, so good, you can move.” 

Jack holds onto his hips and starts to move. Each thrust is staggeringly good, all velvet and muscle, and Jack tries to stay in a regular rhythm and not lose himself. When he’s steady enough on his knees, he reaches one hand around and takes Bitty’s cock into his hand. Bitty lets go with a loud nngh when he does, and then he starts talking, “yes, yes, just like that,” and Jack is thrusting and stroking him and listening to those ecstatic sounds fill up his ears. It’s too good. He’ll come too soon.

“Can you … on your back?” he asks, hoping a change of position will slow him down.

“Yeah … yeah, okay,” Bitty says between rapid breaths. Jack pulls out and Bitty flips on the bed and raises his legs. Jack can’t believe what he sees, this gorgeous, willing man beneath him, all hard muscles and soft skin. He lines up and pushes in again, leaning as far over Bitty as he can manage, just able to press kisses to his collar and his neck. Bitty strains upward so they can kiss mouth to mouth and then lowers his head to the pillow, arching upward as Jack fucks him.

This is crazy, he’s just met this man, but it’s like Bitty is made for him, like someone molded him just for Jack. Everything about him is making Jack mindless with want. The way his skin feels against Jack’s. The way he keeps talking, “feels so good” and “harder” and “more” streaming from his lips in soft tenor tones. Jack doesn’t want to just fuck him. Jack wants to take him home and keep him, that honeyed voice speaking to him every day, those beautiful eyes there to look at him always.  

It isn’t long before Jack can feel his rhythm breaking up. “Gonna…” he murmurs.

“Yeah, yeah, Jack, please…”

Jack lets go, losing his rhythm and thrusting erratically until the sensation rises up like a tidal wave and crashes over him. He comes harder than he has in a long time, probably harder than he ever has with any previous partner, seeing white spots as he clings to Bitty and takes deep gulps of breath. Beneath him, Bitty arches up against his body until he shouts and loses control, coming between their bodies in a wet blossom of heat. He locks his arms around Jack, and they gasp and come back down to earth together. 

Jack feels like he and Bitty have been doing this forever. It was impossibly, effortlessly good in a way Jack’s not used to. His mind is blown. He buries his face in Bitty’s neck and gives a long, uncontrolled groan.

“Oh, God,” Bitty murmurs. “Oh, Jack.”

“Yeah,” is all Jack can say. “Yeah.”

“That was … that was. Oh. So good.”

Bitty sounds the way Jack feels, all strung out and wrecked. His voice is sweet as honey in Jack’s ears. Jack picks up his head and captures Bitty’s mouth in a kiss, tender and lingering. He doesn’t want to let go.

But let go he does, long enough for Bitty to go clean himself off, and when he returns Bitty settles himself down onto Jack’s chest and breathes a long, satisfied sigh.

“Jaaaack.” He draws out the word, laughing as he does. “How was that so good? That may have been the best I’ve ever had.”

Jack curls a hand into Bitty’s blond hair and runs his fingers through it. “Me too,” he says, meaning it.

They lie there for a minute, unspeaking. Bitty angles his chin up. “Jack? Can I ask something that might be kinda strange?”

If Bitty asked him to marry him at this point Jack would probably say yes. “Yeah, go ahead.”

“Was that… oh, God, this sounds so stupid.” Bitty sits up and looks straight at Jack. Their eyes catch, and Jack’s heart thuds. “Was that just sex?”

Jack knows exactly what he means. “No,” he answers readily. “Not just sex.”

A grin spreads across Bitty’s face. “Yeah, I think so too,” he says. “I really want to know more about you, Jack.”

Every time he says Jack’s name it’s another twinge of his heart. Jack reaches up and touches his cheek. “Yeah.”

Bitty leans in to his touch and gives a little shiver. “Oh, Lord,” he says, “my heart is gonna beat right through my chest!”

Jack knows love isn’t something you just fall into, that it takes time. But he is falling really hard in like right now. “Bitty,” he says, and then—just trying—”Bits. I feel the same way.”

“Bits.” Bitty’s grin is brilliant. “Yeah. Call me that.”

[stufftippywrote]

miiiiight write the elided smut part of that ficlet from yesterday maaaaaaybe? *sly smile*

[stufftippywrote]

at arm's length

a Four Nations Face-Off AU. For those not aware, the US played Canada in Montreal last week. There were three fights within the first nine seconds, after Canadian crowds booed the US national anthem.

Jack Zimmermann is in the starting lineup for Canada. No sooner does the puck drop against the US then half his teammates drop the gloves and multiple fights are underway. Jack is a skill player and not a tough guy. He stands back and lets it happen and doesn’t get involved.

Except—

—except the next thing he knows a US player roughly the size of a thimble is trying to punch him in the face.

“No offense,” says forward Eric Bittle as he tries and fails to land blows. “It’s for my country, you know?”

It’s fairly easy to hold Bittle at arm’s length. “What are you doing?” Jack asks him, because he’s genuinely curious. “You’re not a fighter.”

“Fight me back and you’ll find out, sweetheart,” Bittle says. Even his voice isn’t tough — a wavering tenor.

“Yeah,” Jack says, “I don’t think so.” He tries not to laugh as he keeps Bittle at arm’s length, and Bittle keeps trying and failing to punch him.

They end up in their respective, crowded penalty boxes anyway. Jack watches, amused, as Bittle’s teammates congratulate him heartily on being such a tough guy.

“You’re a good sport, Mr. Zimmermann,” Bittle hollers at him over the space between the boxes. He takes off his helmet and shakes his hair free of sweat. With his short-cropped hair framing his face, Jack realizes, he’s really, really cute.

“Nice try, Bittle,” he calls back, unable to keep from poking fun.

Bittle’s cheeks, already rosy from the ice and the exertion, flush a bit more. Damn, he really is cute. Jack has no business mooning after the enemy but he can’t help imagining Bittle in his arms. In his bed.

Jack doesn’t think about sex a ton, as a rule. His mind is usually all hockey, all day. But something about this Bittle teases out that usually dormant part of him. There was something in the air when they fought, or attempted to fight. And even now he keeps stealing glances over during the interminable five minutes for fighting.

It’s a not-very-well-kept secret in the NHL that folks who are in penalty boxes don’t always scream at each other through the duration of the penalty. In fact, conversation between the two participants in a fight can get downright friendly at times. Somehow, between the three guys in his penalty box and the three guys in theirs, a get-together over beers gets planned and a suitable location here in Montreal hammered out. And then they get out of the box and go on to play an actual game of hockey.

The US wins. Handily. It’s an embarrassment, and while the Americans are jubilant, Jack sits with Nathan MacKinnon in the locker room and sulks a little. “We’ll get ‘em in the title game, eh?” Jack offers. Nathan shrugs and gives a noncommittal yeah. Other guys are less gloomy, but overall the mood in the locker room is not the greatest. Jack is suddenly really looking forward to that drink.

In the car on the way to the bar, he asks his car computer to tell him about Eric Bittle. He’s a Boston Bruin, about two years younger than Jack, from the unlikely-to-spawn-a-hockey-player state of Georgia. Turns out he attended the same college Jack did, but a few years behind, since he played in the minor leagues a bit between highschool and college. Jack had already graduated by the time Bittle came to school.

He rolls up at the bar and discovers he’s the last of the six to arrive. Bittle and the Tkachuk brothers are already in an argument with Jack’s countrymen over, from what Jack gleans, the Canadians booing the US national anthem. “The way I see it,” Bittle says, “y’all brought this on yourselves.”

“We weren’t booing,” Hagel says. “The crowd was booing.”

“You were enjoying it,” says a Tkachuk (which one is which?).

“It’s disrespectful,” Bittle says, and he turns up his nose, and oh damn, he’s still cute.

Jack saunters over. “Some people say you’ve lost that respect. By electing him.”

The Tkachuks look like they’re ready to throw down. Bittle speaks up quickly, as much to placate them as to argue, Jack suspects. “However you feel about him, a country’s bigger than just a president, don’t you think? You can’t all tar us with the same brush.” His nose wrinkles. “Tar us? Tar and feather us? No, that seems wrong…”

Jack smiles despite himself. “Fair point.”

Bittle gives him a smile back, and it is such a winning expression that Jack’s heart thumps in his chest. “Anyway, it’s all well and good now, right? We got the anger out. Also, we clobbered you, so there’s that.”

“Wait till the title game,” Jack returns easily.

“You assume you’ll be in the title game,” Tkachuk 2 says. (Jack’s resorted to numbering them at this point.)

“We’ll be in the title game,” says Bennett, and the argument erupts anew.

Somewhere in the fray, Bittle touches Jack’s hand gently and nods in a certain direction, a come with me. Jack follows.

Bittle sets his mug of beer down on a table in the corner. “Listen. I feel the same way about that guy you do,” he says. “To tell you the truth, the atmosphere’s awful lately.”

“That’s what I hear,” Jack says. A couple of guys on the Falconers have expressed similar sentiments.

“Still. We get caught up.” Bittle sighs. “I’m sorry I came at you like that.”

The idea of apologizing for a hockey fight, especially from someone whose arms are so short he can’t even land a decent punch, strikes Jack as funny, and also endearing. “It’s hockey,” he says. “You don’t have to say sorry, Bittle.”

“Consider it the Canadian in me,” Bittle says. “Call me Bitty. Everyone does.”

Bitty suits him so perfectly. Jack’s honestly enthralled. “Bitty, then. Nice to meet you.” He holds out a hand to shake and Bitty takes it. His palm is cool from the touch of the beer mug. “That was a nice goal there, at the end.” It was one of the prettiest goals Jack’s ever seen, but he doesn’t want to lay it on too thick. His heart is already being unruly, just sitting here at a table for two with this attractive guy.

“Thanks,” says Bitty. “Anyway, yeah. The atmosphere is rough. Especially for guys like me, especially in sports. You know what I mean?”

Bitty looks straight into his eyes at that, and yes, Jack knows exactly what he means.

“Do they know?” he asks.

“Those guys? No way.” Bitty laughs ruefully. “I’d be hanging from the top of a locker by my underpants. Some of my teammates back in Boston, though. Brad knows.”

“Yeah. It’s the same here.” It doesn’t feel like coming out, necessarily. He has the feeling Bitty already knows. “A couple of my teammates. But no one on staff, nobody else. Doesn’t really matter, since they call me hockeysexual to begin with.”

“Hockeysexual!” Bitty laughs louder this time. The smile on his face is like the sun.

“Yeah.” Jack can’t help an answering smile. “My friend came up with that a while back and it stuck. Always felt pretty accurate.”

“But you’re not, right?” Bitty says. “Hockeysexual, I mean.” His eyes have gone half-lidded. In the low light of the bar, his lips look so soft. Jack longs to touch them.

“No.” Jack feels like he’s under some kind of spell. He looks into Bitty’s eyes and lets the feeling wash over him. “Not all the time.”

Bitty puts his hand on Jack’s. It’s warmer now. “Jack,” he says softly, “if I asked you to come back to my room, would you still hold me at arm’s length then?”

* * *

The Canadians do, in fact, make it to the title game. It’s held in Boston. 

Jack and Bitty leave Bitty’s apartment together and drive to TD Garden. When they get there, Bitty ushers them into a dark corner.

“Good luck, Mr. Zimmermann,” Bitty murmurs as Jack takes him in his arms.

“Same to you, Bitty,” Jack says softly against Bitty’s lips.

They share a long, lingering kiss and promise to meet later. Then they head off to their separate locker rooms and prepare to do battle one more time. (I wrote the smut that happens between scenes - check it out here)

[stufftippywrote]

If Past Is Prologue (Chapter 5 of 8)

I've deeply enjoyed talking with you all today and getting your input! Chapter 5 of If Past Is Prologue is up!

😍 The search for A-Xian begins in earnest!

😍 Lan Zhan plays Wangxian on his guitar!

😍 Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing have ... a mature conversation?

😍 Is Lan Zhan starting to feel at home?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63144655/chapters/161711824

Read from the beginning ....

[stufftippywrote]

If you find the inspiration and joy to write it, I would love to read a new fic of yours that was zimbits, sterek, or nurse/dex! Honestly, everything I've read of yours I end up loving, I'll probably never unfollow regardless of what fandom you are writing for lol!

Oh, you are a darling! To be honest my Sterek muse was short-lived, but I can definitely find my way around a Check Please fic or two! I will think about these pairings today, and of course if you have a prompt they're always more than welcome! Thank you!

[stufftippywrote]

May I ask a question of those who still follow this account? What would you like me to write? It's obvious there are very few of you who care about mdzs fics. Do you want me to be writing Jack & Bitty fics right now? I know that audience response shouldn't be the point of writing but I'd very much like to write something FOR you guys who are so kind to still follow me. Please reply and let me know!

ETA: And let me be clear, right now I'm a fic machine and I could write anything, any fandom, and as much as yeah I do miss getting more notes, can't hide that, I also just sort of want to put this writing machine in motion toward also pleasing people who aren't just me, you know? So it would make me happy. I see one of you says Check Please already. If you have a prompt please let me know!

[stufftippywrote]

If Past Is Prologue (chapter 4 of 8)

Wei Ying, water splashing, sunshine. Lan Zhan’s heart leaps, alive and vibrant as a dolphin breaching the surface. What would his day have been like without Wei Ying there to invite him out? Would he have been trapped in his own mind for another day if Wei Ying hadn’t appeared, smiling, pulling him from what could be into reality? He’s suddenly, infinitely grateful that Wei Ying is in his life. He hasn’t felt this in a long time, this sense that the world is wider and brighter for one person’s presence in it.

But you’re thinking about the wrong person, his inner voice says, sneaky in his ear like a spy. Lan Zhan pushes the thought to the side. This day, this moment, he’s enjoying the life he has. Read more | Read from the beginning

[stufftippywrote]

Netflix & Chill, chapter 2

Start at Chapter 1

Wei Ying’s heart is buzzing. Thumping. Not behaving itself at all. Because tonight is GBBO night and Lan Zhan is coming over.

And while they did make it through two episodes for the show last time around, the last time Lan Zhan came over they—

they—

“We had sex,” Wei Ying says to the empty room. “I’m pretty sure that counts as sex.” If you had asked him two weeks ago, he would have laughed out loud at the idea. Sex? With his best friend? The guy who’s been patiently by his side since the first year of college, putting up with everything Wei Ying threw at him, gently chiding when necessary, smiling slightly when Wei Ying did something that amused him? Barely ever talking about himself but always, always there?

OK, he sounds like a good boyfriend when you think of it like that, but no! That’s his bestie, it’s his brother from another mother, it’s his—

his friend who, apparently, comes with benefits.

Is that all they are now? Friends? Or are they something else?

Lan Zhan didn’t ask him. He acted like nothing had happened at all after—Jesus, it makes Wei Ying hot even to remember it—after they’d pawed each other on this cheap-ass couch until they were gasping and coming all over each other—

God, Wei Ying wants that again. He really really wants it again.

Is Lan Zhan going to want the same thing? Or was it a one-off, never to occur again? 

This is why Wei Ying’s heart isn’t behaving itself.

Lan Zhan shows up with Chinese takeout (American Chinese, of course, but it’s got an appeal all its own). He sets it down on Wei Ying’s desk and pulls out sesame chicken, green beans and tofu, white rice in a white-and-red container. “Wei Ying should eat,” he says, and stands there like a supervisor as Wei Ying wolfs down the chicken. They chat about class—well, Wei Ying chats, Lan Zhan makes appropriate gestures and nods as he listens, and occasionally offers an interjection. That’s just the way their friendship goes. Lan Zhan has never offered to say more. But their friendship never feels lopsided, Wei Ying doesn’t think, anyway. Maybe Lan Zhan thinks differently, but if he does, he has plenty of opportunity to say so. It’s more like, he’s content watching over Wei Ying. Letting Wei Ying make the stupid mistakes and being there to pull him in like a boat being moored to a dock, with gentle, quiet patience that Wei Ying treasures.

They eat in this way for about a half an hour, and then Wei Ying motions to the couch. “Wanna get started?”

Lan Zhan nods and moves to the doorway to turn off the lights in the room. Wei Ying settles on the couch and turns on the TV.

This time, he doesn’t lean in and snuggle right away. He wants to, but he’s afraid. (Of what? Lan Zhan rejecting him for the first time in three years?) Instead, he sits there an inch from Lan Zhan as the episode starts up, feeling sure his blush must be glowing in the dark, stealing little glances at Lan Zhan, who seems singularly fixed on the episode. “I suspect he will win,” Lan Zhan says at one point when a particularly pretty-looking baker is on screen. At another point, he frowns at the TV sand says, “That’s not enough time to prove.” But other than that, they’re just … sort of sitting and watching the show. Netflix, with no chill attached.

The technical challenge comes on. Wei Ying hides his face in his hands. “Ah, this challenge always stresses me out,” he says.

For the first time tonight, Lan Zhan turns to him. “Do you want to skip it?”

“No, no, it’s okay, I just can’t watch.” He peeks out from between his fingers to see that it’s one of those challenges where the bakers are given a grand total of two instructions. “How do they always do this?”

“You seem upset,” Lan Zhan says. “Are you sure you don’t wish to pause, at least?”

“Nah, nah, it’s okay.” You could offer to distract me, Wei ing thinks. The bakers fumble around and make bad choices, and Wei Ying squirms. “Why does the narration have to tell us exactly what they’re doing wrong?” 

“If you’re not enjoying it, we don’t have to watch it.” Lan Zhan reaches over him to try to grab the remote. His body crosses Wei Ying’s, and Wei Ying inhales and gets a whiff of Lan Zhan, how does he smell so good? Better than good, he smells intoxicating. Wei Ying’s breath comes faster. How can Lan Zhan just do this, like there’s nothing in the air between them, like Wei Ying isn’t about to dissolve into a frisson of electricity? “Lan Zhan,” he murmurs, and Lan Zhan halts, face a few inches from his.

Their gazes meet. Lan Zhan is silent. Do his eyes dip down to take in Wei Ying’s mouth? 

“Are you okay?” he says after a minute.

“Stop … stop asking questions,” Wei Ying says, 

“Then tell me what Wei Ying wants.”

Is he taunting? Is he serious? Wei Ying’s words, uncharacteristically, are completely failing him.

He gives a huff of frustration and leans in to plant a kiss on Lan Zhan’s mouth.

Lan Zhan is still for a moment.

Then Wei Ying has lost control of his body, he’s being pulled in, hot hands all of a sudden on his shoulder and the back of his head. Lan Zhan kisses him hard at first, like he’s trying to crush him, then softer, his hand on Wei Ying’s shoulder moving up to cup his face. Wei Ying’s thoughts are a jumble of oh thank goodness and yes and more. He winds his hands around the back of Lan Zhan’s neck. They kiss and kiss and kiss. At some point Lan Zhan feels for the remote and manages to hit the mute button. With the TV noise gone, the only sounds in the room are their lips moving wetly and the rustles of the couch as they change positions.

Wei Ying tangles a hand in Lan Zhan’s hair and pulls. Lan Zhan growls. He bites Wei Ying’s lip lightly. The slight pain hits Wei Ying like a lightning strike, and he whines and pulls Lan Zhan over him.

“Lan Zhan,” he murmurs, “don’t make me wait so long next time.” He guides Lan Zhan’s head down to his neck and shivers in ecstasy when Lan Zhan starts kissing him there. 

“I did not realize,” Lan Zhan mumbles into his neck, “Wei Ying was waiting.”

Wei Ying wants to follow up on this—so if I had just said let’s fuck, you would have been down sooner?—but also Lan Zhan is kissing his neck, so it’s a bit hard to form words. He moans instead, and at the sound of his moan Lan Zhan stiffens, then starts licking and leaving soft bites with a doubled intensity. 

Lan Zhan hikes up his shirt and moves down to kiss at his chest. His tongue flicks over Wei Ying’s nipple and it’s an instant shot of adrenaline. Wei Ying wriggles underneath him, his jeans say too tight all of a sudden, and plants his hands shamelessly on Lan Zhan’s ass. Okay, so a hot guy’s ass feels pretty good in his hands. When he pulls in sharply, he feels Lan Zhan’s length press gainst his groin and Lan Zhan growls and Wei Ying groans and oh fuck they’re sounding like a porno again, Wei Ying is going to lose his mind.

Lan Zhan’s hands are on his sides and his mouth is on Wei Ying’s stomach. The light from the TV plays against his hair when Wei Ying looks down. There is something so erotic about that light. Lan Zhan kisses at his navel, down to the edge of his jeans. He looks up and the light across his face is even more staggeringly erotic. “May I?” he asks, his voice breathy, 

Anything you want, Wei Ying thinks. “Yeah, y-yeah.”

Lan Zhan undoes the button and unzips Wei Ying’s jeans and hikes them down along with his boxers, and Wei Ying is just completely exposed all of a sudden. It’s hot as hell, the way Lan Zhan just sort of yanked everything down, like he wants it, and now Lan Zhan is breathing on him, hot breath buffeting against Wei Ying’s cock and it’s. just. so. frustrating and Wei Ying is trying not to thrust his hips forward and beg for it but Lan Zhan just keeps breathing, like… like what? Like he likes the smell of Wei Ying?

Wei Ying reaches down and grabs a fistful of Lan Zhan’s hair and gasps, breath hitching, heart thundering. Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, what are you going to do , are you just going to lie ther—

—Lan Zhan pushes forward in one fluid motion and oh oh fuck—

—he’s got Wei Ying’s—the whole thing—he’s just gone right to town in a half a second—

and he hums—ah the vibrations—but he’s not moving—and honestly that’s fine, it feels so incredibly wet buried in his mouth, and it’s so. goddamn. good…

Wei Ying can’t breathe—

A lick of tongue and the retreat of his lips and so fucking wet and Wei Ying throws his head back and cries out—

and then Lan Zhan starts moving, fisting his hand around the base of Wei Ying’s dick and moving up and down on his shaft and Wei Ying is going absolutely insane. Lan Zhan is sucking and his tongue keeps washing over the head of Wei Ying’s cock and he’s relentless, he’s intense in that Lan Zhan way and Wei Ying never considered that his intensity would apply so well to this activity, holy shit. He is not letting up for a minute, not taking a second to breathe. Wei Ying’s breaths are shallow, his chest and shoulders going up and down and up and down as the pleasure washes over him in waves. Every suck, every stroke is just pulling him apart, inch by inch, the pleasure seeming to radiate out to the tips of his toes, the tips of his fingers, the top of his head.

Lan Zhan moans. Around his dick. Like he’s enjoying himself.

Wei Ying loses control of his words. He was silent, just breathing, but when Lan Zhan moans he bursts out with “Holy fuck, Lan Zhan,” and then he can’t stop talking—“Yes, fuck, good, Lan Zhan, there” (where?) and “that’s so good, Lan Zhan” (why does he keep saying Lan Zhan’s name, is this just what a blow job feels like, would it feel this way if anybody did it?) and  “fuck fuck fuck i’m so close” because he’s so, so close.

Lan Zhan answers that with a deeper, longer moan, like the idea of Wei Ying being close is driving him crazy.

Panicking. About to break. “Lan Zhan, I’m gonna—you don’t—ahh ahhhhh”

His orgasm erupts, starting at the base of his balls and expanding out like the shock from a bomb, his dick and his hips and his belly and all of him, and then it all sort of melts into pulsing and trembling and Wei Ying realizing he’s shouting kind of loudly and trying to calm down, but still letting a cry fall from his lips as the aftershocks take him one by one, like the drifts of a leaf settling down slowly to earth. And at last he can breathe and at last he can think and oh shit is Lan Zhan okay because he really isn’t sure what he did at that moment of orgasm, whether he slammed his dick into Lan Zhan’s mouth or whether Lan Zhan spit or swallowed or whether he pulled Lan Zhan’s hair too hard because his hand is still in his hair, he disentangles it. holy shit. holy shit. 

Lan Zhan… appears to have swallowed. There’s no mess, no wetness left on Wei Ying’s stomach, and Lan Zhan is silent, capturing Wei Ying’s gaze and staring. like he wants to eat him alive.

Wei Ying wants to tell him to do anything he wants. but it turns out he doesn’t have to.

Lan Zhan rises up onto his knees, pulls down his slacks in a rough motion, and takes himself in hand. As Wei Ying watches, transfixed, Lan Zhan strokes himself roughly, squeezing tight, his eyes all the while downcast, taking in Wei Ying’s body. His strokes are short and powerful. He breathes hard and doesn’t say a word. It isn’t long before he stiffens up, angles his cock down, and comes all over Wei Ying’s exposed stomach, eyes squeezing tight from the sensation. Spent, he stares down at the mess he’s made, and Wei Ying cannot for the life of him read the look in his eyes.

Then, just as quickly and just as silently, he gets up and heads to the bathroom, leaving Wei Ying lying there mildly confused, but mostly wondering, my God, where did that come from?

He’s back in a moment with a damp washcloth, and he returns to the couch immediately to towel the mess off Wei Ying’s stomach. He wipes the washcloth over himself briefly and then sets it aside, rebuttoning his slacks. He avoids Wei Ying’s gaze. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I couldn’t hold back.”

Is he embarrassed?

Wei Ying wants to laugh, but he restrains himself. It would be too boyfriend-like to get up and put his arms around Lan Zhan, so he speaks from where he is. “Lan Zhan, it’s okay! it’s Netflix and chill. You’re supposed to get off. I don’t mind at all. But it’s kind of a shame—”

“A shame?” Lan Zhan repeats, looking—well, if it’s possible for Lan Zhan to ever look lost, he looks a little lost now.

“Yeah, i was going to return the favor. but i guess—hey, can I ask you something? Did blowing me turn you on? Cause you seemed a little … stopped up there.”

Lan Zhan doesn’t answer.

Sometimes he just doesn’t answer. It’s okay. It’s Lan Zhan.

“Well, never mind,” Wei Ying says, “just curious, that’s all. Do you want to rewind and watch the technical challenge again?”

Lan Zhan is silent again. He looks even more lost this time, like he’s struggling with how to answer. The silence stretches on just a bit too long for Wei Ying to take, and he’s opening his mouth to say something when Lan Zhan finally answers. 

“Whatever Wei Ying wants,” he says, but there’s something in his eyes that makes Wei Ying think maybe this isn’t the answer he wanted to give.

Anyway, it’s the answer he did give, so Wei Ying won’t pry. “Okay,” he says, and pulls his shirt down and his pants up, resumes his sitting position, and restarts the video. Wei Ying is not touching Lan Zhan again. Like they were before they started fooling around, they are a few inches apart on the couch as Paul Hollywood calls things “stodgy” again.

It’s halfway through the showstopper challenge that Lan Zhan, unexpectedly, speaks.

“May I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” Wei Ying says easily, “shoot.”

“Why is Wei Ying not leaning on me?”

Oh. So he noticed. Wei Ying considers saying, well, before i would lean on you all the time, but now that we’re Netflixing and chilling, it seems like too much of a boyfriend thing to do, when we’re not boyfriends, maybe that makes no sense but maybe we ought to draw sort of clear lines in this weird nebulous thing we’re doing?

Instead, he says, “Do you want me to lean on you?”

Lan Zhan’s face relaxes. He says softly, “I like it when Wei Ying leans on me.”

Oh. Okay. Well, in that case …

They cuddle up. Lan Zhan puts his arm around Wei Ying again. They watch the showstopper challenge, accurately predict who’s going to go home, and groan in sympathy anyway when the elimination happens. 

When the episode is over, Lan Zhan says, “May I ask you another question?”

Wei Ying’s heart skips unexpectedly. He swallows. “Yeah, of course.”

Lan Zhan turns to him. “May I kiss you again?”

A grin spreads across Wei Ying’s face. “You want to go again?”

“No,” Lan Zhan says. “I just want to kiss you.”

Wei Ying’s heart does the funny skipping thing again and then launches into full flight, galloping away. Heat floods his face. “Uh, Lan Zhan, don’t you think that’s weird?”

“Weird?” Lan Zhan’s eyebrows twitch.

“I mean, like, we’re not dating. We’re just sort of fucking around. You know, for fun.” Why is he doing this, why is he saying this, it’s like chewing his own arm off, he wants Lan Zhan to kiss him like ninety percent of the time.

Lan Zhan’s brows twitch again, this time knotting in the center like he’s worried. “I understand.”

Stop him Wei Ying, what the hell are you doing, tell him he can kiss you! “I just think—you know, it’s important to set boundaries. I mean, we’re already kind of cuddling like boyfriends. Unless—”

Unless Lan Zhan wants them to be boyfriends?

“I understand,” Lan Zhan says again, and it’s like a shell has closed up around him, putting him at arm’s length from Wei Ying no matter how close he tries to get. When they part that evening, it’s awkward as hell. Shit, maybe Netflix and chill was a huge mistake. Has Wei Ying screwed up a wonderful friendship?