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Baizhu is first and foremost a doctor.
As a consequence of his contract with Changsheng, he often feels as though he is more healer than man. He forgets that he has a body that can be harmed beyond the diseases and the pain he takes from his patients. He approaches it all ready to potentially sacrifice his life to heal them by sipping from the poisoned chalice of his contract. This patient is no different.
It is the dawn of spring and a strange sort of sickness has been moving through Liyue.
Men have been presenting to Bubu Pharmacy with rapid heartbeats, elevated body temperatures, agitation, and priapism. All of these patients have come from outside the city, and all have reported contact with the pollen of an unusual green whopperflower before being overcome with what they had uniformly described as uncontrollable sexual need. None of the treatments Baizhu has attempted have worked, save for sedating them until their symptoms have passed. One patient had been able to sate his lust by coupling with his wife, but his was the exception that has tested and proved the rule. With how aggressive the other patients have been, attacking women and men alike in order to satisfy their urges, sedation has in most cases been the only viable way to provide them any treatment at all.
Tonight, the patient presenting at his doorstep with these symptoms Mr. Zhongli, the unfailingly polite consultant from Wangsheng Funeral Parlor and Baizhu’s longtime friend. This is a surprise, but only a very small one: after Baizhu had mentioned the oddity of these patients at a recent dinner with Zhongli and Hu Tao, Zhongli had expressed his own curiosity in the hitherto unknown and unprecedented phenomena. As knowledgeable as Zhongli is, it must be very irregular indeed to encounter something he has never before heard of.
Things had begun cordially enough, as always. Zhongli’s face had been a little flushed, his coat unbuttoned and his gloves missing, but had displayed no other outward symptoms as he stood calmly under the light of the lamp that hangs beside the door.
“After my encounter with it,” he had said, “I can say with some certainty that the plant is actually a young but mature regisvine. Its pollen is indeed very potent, and as suffused with dendro energy as you had suspected. On a related note, I do not feel very well. Or very much like myself. May I come in, perhaps to request a sedative?”
Baizhu had agreed readily, commenting on how lucky they both were that he had come back downstairs after settling Qiqi in bed for the night and thus had heard Zhongli’s knock, and invited him in.
Now, there is no longer anything polite at all about the man that has followed him into the pharmacy’s back room.
Baizhu takes a step back. He frowns as Zhongli matches it with two steps of his own, crowding into his personal space. Another step is met with the same result. They have never before touched on purpose and now here they stand practically nose-to-nose, their chests pressed together as they breathe the same air.
Zhongli smells like the outdoors. Freshly turned soil and the sweet aroma of spring flowers.
“Please,” he says, “Mr. Zhongli. The sooner you are in bed, the more comfortable you will be as your body works through this illness.”
Zhongli’s eyes are hazy and unfocused as he inhales sharply through his nose. “You have the power of an adeptus within you,” he says, as though he had not heard Baizhu speak to him at all.
Does Zhongli somehow mean his Vision? They have known one another for years; its presence should hardly be a surprise. “I assure you, I will only use whatever power I have to help you heal. Did you not come here to get better? Allow me to do my job and help you.” Baizhu takes another shuffling step back and earns no space from it as he is pursued.
“I came here to…” For a moment, the haze in Zhongli’s eyes seems to fade. He looks frightened, maybe even horrified. “Coming here was a mistake.”
Then, something about him changes—his eyes seem to darken, his expression hardens—and his hands are suddenly on Baizhu’s shoulders, shoving the doctor down onto the very same bed he had been attempting to lure his patient to.
Baizhu cries out in surprise, but Changsheng beats him to actually speaking.
“Morax,” she hisses, “stop this at once.”
Zhongli’s eyes narrow and flash the golden color of geo. “Sleep now, Herblord.”
Changsheng goes limp.
Zhongli’s expression reverts once more from its imperious coolness, back to the fright from only a moment ago. Unrestrained and vulnerable, even as his presence and the position of his body are both a restrain for the man he has cornered like prey.
Baizhu feels for the briefest moment as though he is nothing more than a single leaf, floating on a breeze somewhere just outside of his body as he stares up at Zhongli and processes these two insane pieces of information: First, that Changsheng must be the long-presumed-deceased Herblord of Chenyu Vale. Second, that the humble and kind Mr. Zhongli is in actuality Morax, also known as Rex Lapis, the equally deceased Lord of Geo.
When he returns to his body there comes a third realization as well, born not of words but of the way Zhongli is rutting against him and tugging at his clothes:
The Geo Archon is most likely going to attempt to rape him.
He finds his hands pinned with supernatural speed before he can do more than twitch in an attempt to fight back, held together above his head in the solid grip of a single palm. Something long and thick and impossibly hard continues to grind into the soft space at the junction of his hip and belly, shockingly present even through their clothes.
“You are my patient. Please allow me to help you before you do something you may regret.”
Zhongli leans in and bites savagely at Baizhu’s neck, just above where Changsheng’s limp—(sleeping, sleeping, please only be sleeping)—body lies. It is only the high collar of his shirt that prevents the man’s teeth from breaking skin.
“I regret this already.” Zhongli’s voice is lower than Baizhu has ever heard it, a rockslide cresting in an impossible wave with each word. The rhythmic grinding of his hips stills and he seems to tremble as he holds himself still. “I cannot control myself. Her—your adeptal energy… I had not anticipated this reaction. Stop me. Please.”
How, Baizhu wonders frantically. Trying to struggle against the god’s grip is like struggling against the weight of a mountain, and Baizhu is hardly a physically strong person to begin with. Fighting this supernatural force is beyond him.
But. Maybe he doesn’t need to fight in order to treat him. Maybe, if he allows it to happen, provides Zhongli the relief he needs with his own body…
“Perhaps I do not need to stop you,” he says.
He feels another low rumble against his throat. A growl. “Doctor Baizhu, I will harm you.”
Baizhu gathers all his strength and flexes against the god’s grip, succeeding in going nowhere. He already knows that his wrists will be bruised after this. “I cannot escape you and yet I will be harmed regardless by the attempt. If I can heal you by allowing this…”
“You do not know what you are offering.”
Embarrassment brings a rush of blood to his cheeks and he cannot help but cringe away from the animal way Zhongli drags the flat of his tongue against the suddenly heated flesh as though he is trying to taste it. Having never had any sort of intimate partner beyond a few kisses stolen as a youth, Baizhu has even less firsthand knowledge of this than what the other man must be assuming. Even so… He understands the academic theory surrounding the matter. And surely, submitting himself to his god and enduring some pain in order to heal the man can be no worse than the illnesses and the injuries he has already endured for other patients.
This will merely be another form of taking on the burden of their disease.
“I will be harmed regardless,” he repeats.
Zhongli’s grip tightens even further as he presses his body close. “I cannot… My control wears too thin. If you can stop me yourself, do not hesitate.” It is an order. One that Zhongli does not wait for Baizhu to acknowledge whatsoever, much less speak or nod or do anything else that might indicate agreement. There is a ripping sound as the wide belt Baizhu wears around his hips gives way to Zhongli’s tugging hand, followed by the solid thump of his dendro Vision falling to the floor.
A thought occurs to Baizhu, that he would have an easier time obeying that order and fighting the man off if he hadn’t just taken Baizhu’s Vision away. It is followed by another, one that is equal parts hysterical and academic: Did that Vision not come from the power of the Archon on top of him? Of all the beings in all of Teyvat who might prevent him from using it, surely this man is the most appropriate.
Zhongli pulls back the slightest bit. Looking down at Baizhu like this, he seems every bit the towering Archon that gazes dispassionately down at his subjects from the great height of his statues. What is a human to an ancient god of war and gold and earth? Clearly something, given the flash of anguish in his expression even as his hand claws at the waistband of Baizhu’s pants.
How is it that someone with such immense power has been so affected by this… pollen? Disease? Why is it causing him to behave like this, with moments of lucidity between seemingly uncontrollable actions?
There is just enough space between their bodies for Baizhu to struggle again, to perhaps get away long enough to reach for his Vision. He bends a knee and finds himself not flexible enough to kick at Zhongli. He arches his back, trying to twist away, and might as well be trying to fight against the force of gravity itself.
When Zhongli releases his wrists and uses the space between them to roll Baizhu onto his front, Baizhu attempts to crawl across to the other side of the bed. Zhongli takes advantage of the movement to tug Baizhu’s pants down, exposing his ass and the tops of his thighs, before following him further onto the bed and pinning him there. He only succeeds in capturing one of Baizhu’s hands, but that hardly feels like a victory as Baizhu realizes he can use the free one to reach nothing at all of substance. Only blankets, his glasses, his own hair…
His glasses are knocked askew as Zhongli suddenly grabs the back of his head and forces his face into the bed. Baizhu bites back a pained noise at how the edges dig into his cheeks.
“Please,” he gasps. “Please. Changsheng. Do not crush her.”
The hand releases his head. His hair pins are pulled from his hair and tossed noisily aside. Oh. Whatever savage instinct has overtaken Zhongli must have realized they might be used as weapons at the same time Baizhu did. Baizhu exhales in relief as Changsheng is no longer in danger of being flattened between the bed and his own laryngeal prominence.
Then, Changsheng is pulled from his neck. He watches her limp body fall to the pillow with a feeling close to despair.
“I am sorry,” Zhongli says, the words a fierce exhale. Baizhu does not know if Zhongli is apologizing to him or to Changsheng.
Baizhu is still wearing most of his clothing. His shirt remains in place. His white coat, though rumpled, still hangs from the clasps at his shoulders. His left hand, pinned by Zhongli, is still covered in his glove; his right forearm still bears his bracer. One of his shoes has fallen off as he struggled, but the other is still on his right foot. Though his pants have been pushed down, the only parts of his wardrobe that have been fully removed from him are his belt, his vision, and his hairpins.
He is still wearing most of his clothing, yet he feels terribly naked without Changsheng draped around his neck.
Baizhu tries to focus on the minute rise and fall of the snake’s breathing instead of whatever Zhongli is doing with the fastenings of his own pants.
The sudden press of Zhongli’s very erect penis into the cleft between his own cheeks is alarming.
It feels larger than should be possible. Even just resting against his skin, still on the outside of his body, Baizhu’s flesh is pushed aside and reshaped around the space it demands. And the length of it… It stretches from its base near his hole to the tip all the way up at his tailbone, where it drips with something hot and slick. Pre-ejaculate, he assumes. Hopefully Zhongli is a man who produces a lot of that; Baizhu doubts there will be any other lubrication for this encounter. Blood, perhaps. He will need to treat himself later for potential infection.
Zhongli’s body cages him against the bed as he rolls his hips, fucking into the space between them instead of penetrating Baizhu’s body directly.
Maybe this is all he will need, Baizhu thinks.
Then Zhongli snarls, an animal noise of frustration, and reaches down between them.
✧
Zhongli is relieved to not have to look at his friend’s face as he does this, glad of his foresight in turning Baizhu onto his front so that he does not need to see the Herblord’s eyes staring up at him from the face of the man he is violating.
He had only wanted to purchase sedatives so that he could rest in oblivion until this problem resolved on its own. How indulgent and shameful. How foolish.
Foolish, to investigate the strange plant alone. Foolish, to have not locked himself away immediately in an abode where he could harm no one. Foolish, to have not anticipated the way the dragon sleeping inside him would react to the snake’s adeptal energy—the energy of new life and growing plants and the fertile seeds of magic. Foolish, to have not considered that seed and soil are meant for one another.
And now it is Doctor Baizhu that is paying the price for that foolishness.
Zhongli feels more animal than he does either god or man, barely able to hold back from sinking his teeth into Baizhu’s neck as though he is mating with another divine beast and not a fragile, mortal human. A fragile, mortal human who wants this even less than he does. Who will be irreparably spiritually harmed by receiving a dragon’s mating bite. He has already tried once and is grateful the high collar of Baizhu’s shirt and the dullness of human teeth had prevented him from drawing blood and beginning the exchange of energies.
Zhongli knows that Baizhu is likely going to bleed no matter what, from the invasion of his cock even if not from his teeth. It is larger than a normal man’s should be, a bizarre and grotesque organ that is neither human nor dragon. He hopes that it will not transform further, that it will stay human enough to avoid the ridges and bulbous base of his true form, but hope has so far done him no favors tonight. He feels the sharp points of claws where his hand is wrapped around himself.
Despite the horror he feels at what he is doing, he is no more stop able to himself from seeking to bury himself in a mate’s body than he is able to stop roots from widening the cracks in the rocks they grow from.
He takes himself in hand and presses the head of his cock against a hole that feels so small and so tight that it might as well not even be there. His precum eases the way somewhat, making the skin beneath him slick enough to smoothly allow the glide of several rough and unsuccessful attempts at shoving inside.
Maybe it won’t fit. That would certainly be among the better outcomes for this situation. Maybe his body, warped and altered by the reproductive instinct that is taking over, is simply too incompatible with a human’s. Maybe, hopefully, his uncontrollable efforts will be for naught and he will merely rut against the man and spend himself outside. Unpleasant, unwanted, but not quite so physically damaging.
The tip of him grows subtly less human, becomes more pointed, and catches against Baizhu’s hole as his hips jerk savagely forward.
✧
Baizhu screams.
This is… It is horrible. Even as he tries his best to relax and simply allow the penetration to happen, his most intimate and private of places are still torn apart as Morax forces himself inside.
It hurts. It hurts a good deal more than he had been anticipating.
As the involuntary sound that has been torn out of him ends, he cannot draw in enough air for another. The man on top of him—inside of him—is like a weight that compresses his lungs into flat sheets of paper, useless for their true purpose.
Then, Zhongli pulls back only to thrust in once more, this time deeper, and Baizhu finds that he is capable of crying out again after all.
He manages to keep his shout wordless. The plea—stop, please stop, Geo Archon, Rex Lapis, Morax, Zhongli, do not—dies in his throat where it belongs. Zhongli is his patient. What sort of doctor would he be if he denied his patients their treatment only because it was too taxing for him? Baizhu has always taken pride in the lengths he will go to in order to provide a cure and he will not allow this to be any different.
Zhongli’s teeth briefly scrape along the edge of his shoulder as he bites at Baizhu’s coat and the shirt beneath it. They are men of similar heights, yet the body above him now feels impossibly larger than the one that bore him down onto this bed mere minutes ago.
Baizhu blinks through the tears clouding his vision and sees that the hand pinning his wrist is dark not because of the gloves the man usually wears but because his skin isn’t quite human anymore. It is black and leathery, dusted with scales of brown and gold. Claws the color of cor lapis have taken the place of his fingernails.
What must the rest of Morax look like right now, if this is only his hand? Is Baizhu being taken by a man at all or is there a dragon inside him? The ancient progenitor of all geovishaps, attempting to make his seed take root in a mere human.
He wishes that he could see. Catalogue the changes as a point of research. Baizhu has the odd, detached thought that he knows a scholar who would enjoy hearing about the details. It feels out of place, and only a second later does Baizhu connect the thought and the feeling and remembers that the scholar he is thinking of is Zhongli.
After several hard thrusts that feel unbearably deep already, Baizhu feels something inside him shift. The pain and the wrongness of it make him nauseous. He knows anatomy and understands exactly what has just happened as his insides reshape themselves around his Archon’s cock. The button closure of Zhongli’s pants digs into the soft skin at the top of Baizhu’s right thigh as the invader presses all the way inside, past the bend that no longer stops him. Sharp hipbones draw flush to an equally sharp pelvis. Distantly, Baizhu is aware that they are both too thin. He ought to make a recommendation to eat more as part of Zhongli’s recovery.
The pain of its withdrawal hurts nearly as much as the pain of the initial thrust that carved out this space inside him. It is like something snags on the place inside him that used to bend, then again at his entrance. Maybe several somethings, all too far down the shaft to be any normal part of a human’s body.
The scent of blood that comes with the motion is unmistakable.
Zhongli’s teeth release the grip they had on his clothing. “You are bleeding,” he says mournfully, and Baizhu almost laughs.
A sudden, deep thrust robs him of any words he might have used to respond. I know, perhaps, or Of course I am. Disrespectful words he should not say to someone who seems to be slowly shifting into the form of a deity.
Minutes ago, he had not known that his longtime friend and business acquaintance was an alias for the god he has prayed to with every contract he has ever made. Now, he is serving that god with his body. He silently prays—to Changsheng, to his Herblord, not to the man on top of him who might actually hear—that this service will heal Zhongli. That it will return him to himself.
“Rex Lapis,” Baizhu wheezes when he pulls back again, voice strained and choked with pain. “Morax.”
Another hard thrust in and he loses whatever else might have followed the god’s name.
“Zhongli,” Morax growls, insistent. His breath is hot against the sliver of skin between Baizhu’s shirt collar and his hairline. Another withdrawal, another thrust. The bumps and ridges that catch on his entrance seem larger, more plentiful. Baizhu cries out and Rex Lapis growls. “Humanity. Remind—“ His words falter as another thrust makes Baizhu shout.
Remind Zhongli of his humanity?
Baizhu can do that. Or, he can certainly try.
“Zhongli,” Baizhu agrees out loud. The name is more air than it is a voiced sound and the constant at the start isn’t quite right, but he hopes he will be forgiven considering the circumstances. Pain traps his next words inside of him. It feels as though he is being torn apart and he has to remind himself of the other man’s humanity before he continues. “My patient—ah! Who I am—unh. I am treating.”
✧
Zhongli sags forward, his forehead pressed to the back of Baizhu’s neck as he drives into him.
Despite the gasps and pained grunts that leave the human with every movement of Zhongli’s hips, what he says is grounding. It’s not quite consent for this irredeemable act but it sounds more like permission than Zhongli feels comfortable accepting.
My patient, who I am treating.
That Baizhu should still manage to be so selfless and forgiving even as he is actively being harmed… It is astounding that such crushing guilt does nothing to smother even this unquenchable arousal.
The body beneath him, the body that he is brutalizing and making bleed, feels unbearably good. The thrum of the energy woven into every part of Baizhu’s very being, fresh and full of life and entirely untainted by Celestia… He wants more, wants to crawl inside, wants to fill him and breed him, repopulate the world with their perfect progeny—
Oh. Fuck. This is not a good line of thinking at all, is it?
Morax forgets why he has been holding back. For a brief, bright moment, all he knows is bury, bedrock, soil and fuck, mate, breed. A long-dormant need that is being fulfilled.
His teeth—sharp; monstrous; a dragon’s teeth—have torn through his mate’s shirt and into Baizhu’s flesh before Zhongli returns to himself.
✧
Baizhu intends to live forever. He will cure his own mortality and he will be Changsheng’s final contract.
The razor-edged teeth tearing into his neck, perilously close to both jugular veil and carotid artery, are suddenly a very real and present threat to those plans.
Compared to the pain of Zhongli still moving inside him, the bite is nothing. A clean slice instead of the repetitive, tearing push-pull. Easier and better than the thrusts that have grown steadier and swifter and no less horrible. The feeling of it barely registers.
But the fear….
The sudden fear that this may actually end his life makes Baizhu cry in earnest.
✧
Zhongli is panicking. It is a very surreal experience, to panic while his body knows only bliss and his soul finds a home within the garden of its mate. The disconnect of it grants him more than enough clarity to be horrified by what he has just done.
This is likely the most profound and thoughtless mistake he has made in a very, very long time.
During his 2,000 year tenure as the Geo Archon, Morax had never once felt the urge to lay with a mate. The taint of the Gnosis that took the place of his heart had left him something less than truly alive, even as it had elevated him from godhood and into something beyond. Now he is alive once more, and free from that power. Free from the chain that held him tight in the alien grip of the Heavenly Principles. What was formerly his Gnosis now belongs to the Tsaritsa, given away to be someone else’s problem for once. He has been returned to himself: a man, a dragon, a god, something wholly a part of this world.
His freedom from Celestia had not seemed to come with a return of all his natural impulses. Yes, he now sleeps to rest and eats for sustenance, but it has already been years since the loss of the Gnosis and none of the changing seasons have brought with them any stirring of the ‘normal’ needs felt by other adepti or other dragons. No desire whatsoever to breed or to mate had returned to him, not even as a shadow of the force that had gripped him occasionally for the first 4,000 or so years of his interminably long life. He had foolishly believed himself too old. Immune.
Until he had breathed in an unimpeded lungful of that dendro-soaked regisvine pollen. Even then, until he had been foolish enough as to seek out a doctor’s comfort, he had thought the desire brought on by the flower to be manageable. An annoyance he could turn into a vacation. A good night’s sleep and a day off work.
And now he has taken that doctor for a mate without his consent. Without even telling him what that means.
Baizhu’s blood, rich with the pure power of dendro, coats Zhongli’s lips. Baizhu’s tears, salty with the minerals of the earth, flow in shifting rivers down his cheeks. Zhongli greedily licks up both, sustenance and succor and vitality.
A dragon does not take a mate for eternity, but a dragon does take a mate for what a human would consider a very long time. Long enough to nurture their merged elemental power into a new life that can sustain itself. Decades at minimum, but most likely a century or more. Longer than any mortal lives.
Between great heaving sobs, desperate and heartbreaking, Baizhu gasps out a sentence, a prayer, that feels like a well-deserved slap to the face.
“Please, please, Lord of Geo, do not kill me.”
✧
Baizhu does not fully understand what is happening.
Maybe he is delirious from blood loss and pain. Maybe he is hallucinating. It cannot possibly that his patient, his god, his would-be murderer has responded to his embarrassing plea for life by gathering Baizhu into his arms and soothing him like a lover might.
Zhongli has not stopped fucking him, though some of the animal ferocity seems to have gone out of the act. They are curled on their sides, Zhongli’s still-too-large body pressed against Baizhu’s back. The arms that hold him are not human, but nor are they the claw-tipped limbs of a dragon. Hands of warm flesh, patterned like black granite and woven through with veins of molten gold, hold tight to Baizhu’s own.
“Sorry,” Zhongli breathes into the tangle of hair that has come loose just behind his left ear. His lips brush against the arm of Baizhu’s glasses, which have somehow remained on his face even despite how half of it is pressed into the rumpled and tearstained bedcovers.
Each smooth glide of Zhongli’s hips is agony, but his own sobbing is almost a relief. He breathes in as the god’s too-large cock pulls its ridges back over torn flesh. Then he cries out a sob as another thrust forces them in again. Catharsis. Freedom, even as he is trapped like this, arms tight to his chest and legs tangled with Zhongli’s like a pair of twining serpents. Caught in the thorns and the tumbling rockfall of this embrace.
“Sorry,” Rex Lapis says again. “I am so sorry.” It is a confusing litany, baffling in its tenderness despite the way his movements speed up.
What is that phrase Baizhu has read before, in the erotic novels Changsheng likes to pretend she isn’t reading over his shoulder? ‘Chasing his release’? He hopes that is what Zhongli is doing. Let this treatment please end soon.
He is very, very dizzy. He must be hallucinating the way the world around him begins to glow.
✧
Zhongli holds Baizhu close, instinct driving him to prevent escape even as it is made painfully clear that the other man has chosen complete surrender.
It would have been better, if Baizhu had been able to stop him before this began. If he had been able to stop himself. He had not, and Zhongli had been both foolish and terribly weak, and the punishment for that is apparently this painfully lucid awareness of his actions. Actions he still cannot make himself cease.
At least Baizhu is no longer bleeding. The wound on his neck has closed, skin knitting over with a network of roots made from geo. Leaf and stem and root and soil and rock, combined with the catalyst of his bite, the mixing of blood and saliva, into a bond, a betrayal, that will heal Baizhu and keep him alive. Even if Baizhu is left not quite human by the process.
Zhongli had known that he would hurt the doctor. Even back at the start, when he was out of his mind and terrified. When he found himself facing down a man who could not fight him off, who had been content to allow himself to be assaulted, to be raped, as long as the terrible act would carry with it the possibility of healing his patient… Zhongli had done all of this, having known that Baizhu would come to harm.
Baizhu had known it too. Baizhu had consented, if obly to avoid a worse pain. I will be harmed regardless.
A contract entered into freely like the one between Baizhu and the Herblord… That is ill-advised but consensual, with both parties knowing what they have to both gain and lose. This exchange now has been nothing but a perverse corruption of that one. Surely Baizhu had not expected the harm that would be done to him to come in the form of the prime adeptus corrupting his human life force with the immortal endurance of stone.
Baizhu is as bound to him now as he is bound to Changsheng, and likely for much longer than he would ever wanted.
This clarity about their situation makes his end further away than it had felt when he was still in a more animal state. Heat still coils in his belly but orgasm feels horribly far off, despite how the need for it continues to inexorably drive him.
Fuck, fill, mate, breed. A horrible, pounding refrain in his body, even as he continues to whispers his apologies.
“You are my patient,” Baizhu sobs, the first words he has said in several long minutes. “I am healing you.” The words are a spell, another prayer, unintentional and so pure. A pair of branching horns sprout from the crown of Zhongli’s head, tipped with budding leaves and wild cherry blossoms. A tail erupts from the base of his spine.
Zhongli—Morax—Rex Lapis—Zhongli cries out, a low and guttural exultation, as he buries himself deep and finally finds release.
✧
✧
✧
Baizhu wakes, groggy and confused, to the sound of a whispered argument taking place at a distance that cannot be more than a hand’s breadth behind his head.
“—ssstupid! And to put me to sleep! A betrayal, Morax!”
“I am not Morax any more than you are the Herblord!”
“You will always be Morax! His god! And you have failed him in your duty of care!”
There is a strange, unfamiliar pressure and an ache deep in his belly. A fullness he cannot explain, like the need to defecate has been somehow made inexplicably sexual. He becomes aware that the sexual nature of the feeling is likely a product of sustained pressure against his prostate several seconds before he finally remembers how he came to be in this situation.
Baizhu’s entire body jerks with the shock of that realization and his eyes fly open as he scrambles to pull himself free.
A sharp pain in his anus stills him as swiftly as the warm arms of living stone that are wrapped around his chest. There is something still lodged within his body, thick and pulsing with heat. It is that pulsing that lights up the nerves in him and sends a complicated, unfurling-burning-blooming sort of pleasure through him. This something is, presumably, Zhongli’s startlingly inhuman penis.
His pants are still pushed down around his thighs. His shirt is still on; his coat still rumpled; one of his shoes remains on the floor. In front of the blurry outline of his glasses, which apparently have been removed from his face and set aside, Changsheng comes into view. She slithers close enough that she is almost in focus and Baizhu nearly cries in relief to see her awake.
“Baizhu,” she says, voice calmer than it had sounded only moments ago when he had first awoken. “How do you feel?”
“How do I—“ He cuts himself off with a quiet, disbelieving laugh that then turns into a soft groan as it makes his body clench around the length buried in it. Hah. Fuck. Wow. “Changsheng, I worried you had died.”
“Hardly. Your new pet lizard could not kill me any more than he could kill you now.”
Behind him, Zhongli has gone completely still. Other than a small and likely involuntary twitch in reaction to Baizhu’s laugh, he has not moved at all since Baizhu awoke. He is barely breathing.
“Zhongli?” Baizhu asks. A seed of concern takes root in his chest, sprouting into worry in the unfamiliar ground it finds there. It feels like something has happened just beyond his awareness, something that he does not understand.
Changsheng answers him. “Awake and ashamed but not nearly as cowed as he should be. He is stupid. You are stupid. Your idiocy makes a fine pair. Never do something like that again.”
“I rather think our bodies are still in the process of doing it,” Baizhu mutters. Then he raises his voice once more to a normal speaking volume and adopts the professional tone he uses with all his patients: “Mr. Zhongli, please, how are you feeling? I am not currently in a position to check your vitals.”
“He is fine. Morax, do not answer him.”
“Changsheng, please do not interrupt when I am checking in on my patient.”
“Your patient,” Changsheng repeats, incredulous.
“I am… mentally present,” Zhongli says. “My affliction appears to not yet run its course, but my faculties have almost entirely returned thanks to your care.”
“Yet we are stuck together.” Baizhu intends it as a question. Instead, it leaves his mouth as something of an accusatory statement.
“A quirk of certain forms of adeptus biology. That it has happened with you is ikely an effect of the pollen I inhaled, though I cannot be certain. The infusion of pure elemental dendro energy into a being made nearly entirely of geo is unpredictable at best and I have never before coupled with someone while in such a half-form.”
Changsheng hisses unhappily. “He has never taken a human for a mate before yet look at you both now. You were not meant to prolong your life like thisss, Baizhu. Idiots.”
A mate? The sprouting worry blossoms into dread. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that when Rex Lapis bit that awful scar into your neck, he gave you his energy in equal exchange for what he took from us. Except while our energy has limits, his is among the most ancient and powerful in the world. Your foolish quest for immortality may be nearing its end, if you can convince him to stick around for another exchange when thiss one wears off in a century or ssso. Or the poison you use to heal will taint him too and we will all die together. It is unprecedented.” She draws out the ‘c’ in that final word into a long, angry ‘s’.
“Doing this to you was never my attention,” Zhongli says softly. “Ultimately, I was unable to suppress the reproductive instinct to claim a mate. I am truly sorry.”
Baizhu considers that for a moment. He is not entirely certain what Zhongli means, but he is beginning to develop to a rather intriguing assumption about it. That he could be a fitting substitute mate for someone as ancient and mighty as Rex Lapis… Well. It is quite flattering.
Perhaps his previous patient’s wife had felt similarly to how he does now, once her husband’s fever had been calmed by her body. There is a certain sort of warm satisfaction to it. He is rather proud.
“I cannot regret any of our actions if you are healed by them.”
“Are you still in pain?” asks Zhongli.
He is not. He is also very glad for the way his coat has been arranged to cover his lap—and, therefore, to cover his semi-erect state. The position of the coat is Zhongli’s doing, he assumes. The erection is certainly also Zhongli’s doing. “Nothing hurts now,” he says, “no. Why was I asleep?”
“Because you are an idiot,” Changsheng says, just before Zhongli answers: “You gifted me a great deal of your energy in the form of a novel spell. A prayer, one might call it, to your own emergent divinity.”
What a poetic way for Zhongli to phrase things. A prayer for healing? To himself? Baizhu does not at all remember attempting that, nor does he know how such a thing would even be possible. It is an embarrassment that he can confront when the rest of the practicalities at hand have been dealt with. Or, perhaps, he can simply deal with the practicalities and ignore his humiliating loss of composure. Yes. That seems like a very appealing plan of action indeed.
“Do you know for how long I was unconscious?”
“Less than a few minutes. Only enough time for me to rouse Changsheng and arrange us more comfortably on the bed.”
Ah. Well, that explains why they are now lying on it in the proper orientation, as opposed to their near-sideways arrangement from before, with legs and elbows practically falling over the sides. It does not explain how rested and healthy he feels, or why he is not in pain. Baizhu distinctly remembers the scent of blood. When he looks down, the shoulder of his shirt is stained and crusty with it; the place where his body is joined to Zhongli is likely in a similar state. His laundry will be a messy endeavor.
He remembers his insides ripping, rearranging. He remembers teeth tearing into his neck.
“How can I have healed in mere minutes?” he wonders aloud, perplexed.
There is a moment of silence in response to the question. Changsheng’s tongue flicks out of her mouth as though she is tasting the discomfort in the air. She seems to be waiting for something.
Zhongli’s arms around him tighten in an almost-imperceptible twitch of movement. They relax immediately but not entirely, the action of a man holding onto an animal he feels guilty for caging and yet cannot let go. “I have been filling you with my own energy.”
“Adeptal ejaculate,” Changsheng clarifies.
“Adeptal…” Baizhu cannot stop the hysterical little laugh that bubbles out of him at the sheer absurdity of the statement.
That laugh sets off something of a chain reaction.
First, as before, his body clenches down on Zhongli. The movement caused by that contraction of muscle sends a bright, hot surge of pleasure through him, one he cannot resist arching back into in search for more. That shift of his hips brings him closer to Zhongli, who groans and shudders.
Zhongli’s grip lands firm and steady on Baizhu’s hip. It is only when his movements are thus halted that Baizhu realizes he had not restrained himself to a single subconscious press backwards. No, he had continued to seek out more of the pleasant sensations that accompany the fullness he feels.
How humiliating. He will never be able to look Mr. Zhongli in the eye again.
“Ah,” he says. “I apologize.” His voice sounds unfamiliar to his ears, somehow both lower than he is used to and almost absurdly breathy.
“Nnnnn,” says Zhongli, not quite as elegantly articulate as usual.
“If you two are going to continue actively copulating, I will leave. Find me in Qiqi’s room after sunrise.”
Watching Changsheng slither off the bed, Baizhu despairs. “I need to examine you. To be certain you are well.”
“Examine me when you are no longer otherwissse occupied!” Amazing, how Changsheng is the smallest speaking being he knows and yet often manages to sound the most judgmental. “And once you have bathed!”
The white snake leaves the room, somehow closing the door behind her. She would probably have slammed it, were she in possession of hands.
Baizhu finds himself left alone with Zhongli.
✧
Zhongli is perhaps not as in control of himself as he had implied. He has declared himself mentally present, but had he not been mentally present while his hands had shoved the doctor down? Had he not been mentally present and yet entirely unable to stop himself?
He can feel every rapid beat of Baizhu’s heart. Every involuntary twitch of his muscles around where Zhongli remains buried inside. He can feel the way Baizhu’s fragile chest expands and contracts inside his one-armed embrace and he can feel the sharp jut of his naked hipbone beneath the clawed hand he cannot quite seem to make himself lift.
The taste of Baizhu’s blood and tears still feels fresh on his tongue. It is vital, amazing, life-giving, and horrifying.
They lie there together, silent and still. Zhongli takes slow, steady breaths and counts the timing of each inhale and of each exhale, instead of counting the flutter of Baizhu’s pulse beneath his fingers and around his cock. With each breath he tells himself that he will let go of the other man’s hip, that he will relax his claws, that he will become a man again. With each breath, he does not manage it.
Then, Baizhu wiggles his hips again, tugging at the rigid swelling of Zhongli’s body that still locks them together.
Zhongli’s next measured breath leaves him in a rush.
“This is not human anatomy as I understand it,” Baizhu states. He does not sound unaffected, and a horrible, primal part of Zhongli feels a disgusting curl of pride at how his body is clearly making its mate feel good. “Are you still experiencing orgasm, or is this an incompatibility of our forms that prevents you from withdrawing?”
He takes stock of how he feels. Acknowledges the twitching pulses in his abdomen and the vicious pleasure that he has been steadfastly ignoring.
“Perhaps both,” he admits.
Baizhu moves to shift his left arm and Zhongli holds himself still as stone in order to allow it. In order to not let instinct win, to keep it held tight to his chest so his mate cannot escape before their bodies are ready. It helps that they are still laying on their right sides, that his right arm is partially pinned beneath his Baizhu’s fragile ribs and his left hand has still not released Baizhu’s hip. It helps, but it does not help as much as Zhongli would like.
Baizhu uses his free arm to move the coat Zhongli had clumsily spread over his body. He pushes it back to partially drape over Zhongli’s waist instead, exposing his own pale hip held in Zhongli’s shamefully draconic hand. Exposing the tacky, drying blood that smears between them. Exposing—
Rex Lapis lifts his head slightly for a better view and finds that he cannot look away from the soft swell of Baizhu’s belly, right above the human’s own evident arousal, pink and half hard and shiny with glistening drips of fluid.
The sight is perfect. It is too much. It is not nearly enough.
“Oh,” says Baizhu, clearly oblivious to the way such a sight is making the dragon feel. The primal creature of instinct still afflicted by the pollen and the need to fuck, breed, fill. He runs a hand over his taut skin and Zhongli imagines he can feel the motion through the man’s abdomen. “Fascinating. But you must be growing dehydrated.”
This time, the moment of inappropriate laughter belongs to Zhongli. The giggle surprises him as it forces its way out of his throat, completely unbidden and entirely uncalled for.
Even laughing, he cannot take his eyes off the bulge in Baizhu’s abdomen. Full of his cock, his seed. With the right applications of adeptal arts, it could be full of their actual offspring. They are already on the right path for it.
He swallows his mirth along with his arousal. This is not a situation for such things. “It is touching that your concern is with my health and not the unnatural things I am doing to your body.”
“I am your doctor,” Baizhu says, comfortingly calm and far too forgiving. “Besides, I believe this sort of swelling is in fact quite natural, given the situation. I am a thin man; I suspect it would take a smaller intrusion than you have provided to cause a bulge, even before the addition of ejaculate.” It is a well-reasoned argument, one that moves unimpeded through the suddenly hollow cavern of Zhongli’s mind like a gust of wind as Baizhu flattens his hand and presses down on the bump.
He is not proud of the sound he makes. He is even less proud of the way his hips shift forward into that delicious pressure, forcing a breathless moan out of Baizhu as he mindlessly seeks to plant new life inside his mate.
He lets the weight of his horns pull his head to the bed and is grateful for the way it breaks his line of sight.
“I apologize,” he gasps, feeling oddly ragged. How many times has he already apologized over the course of this ordeal? He will likely never be able to apologize enough. “My mind is clear, but my body… It has not felt these instincts in a very long time. I am ill prepared to control them.”
Baizhu’s soft, considering hum would sound more at home at the dinner table than it does in this situation. It is a sound of patience and a quiet, intellectual curiosity. “Little has been written on the reproductive habits of adepti, and I have read none of it. Perhaps you have some insight to offer, Mr. Zhongli?”
This appeal to his mortal persona is either a kindness that he does not deserve or a jab he very much does. He grasps at the lifeline regardless.
✧
“As you know, the gods and adepti of Liyue take many forms. You are from Chenyu Vale, are you not?”
“Yes,” Baizhu confirms, unsurprised that this is something Zhongli knows and wondering where it could be going. “Though I left my hometown with my master after a plague took my parents. I have returned many times since, albeit not to live.”
“The story of the snake and the carp, now considered to be folktale in that region, is particularly relevant to our current situation. They were adepti, and servants of a god whose name has been long lost to time.”
Baizhu considers asking if Zhongli remembers the name of that unknown god. He quickly decides that it would probably be rude.
“During the Archon War, that god attempted to flooded banks of the Bishui river and drown the whole of Chenyu Vale, and Rex Lapis with it.” Zhongli exhales through his nose, a sound that is half laughter and half grunt. His hips twitch forward, clearly involuntarily, and Baizhu struggles not to gasp. “I am only used to speaking of these things as a historian, never as one who lived through them. It is strange, to be trying to tell the true story from my own perspective, after so very long.”
“I am honored to listen,” Baizhu says. He is not ignorant of the fact that this is clearly Changsheng’s story, and something the snake herself likely does not remember.
Honored to listen or not, it is remarkably hard to focus on Zhongli’s words while torn between so many wonderful physical sensations. Still, Zhongli is a fantastic and knowledgeable speaker and this information is quite literally priceless. Baizhu makes a serious effort to pay attention.
Zhongli is silent for a long moment. “Rex Lapis—I was not drowned, and Chenyu Vale still prospers. The snake and the carp had both grown close to humanity and could not bear to see so many lives ended. They fought against their god at great personal cost. Their god was the anemo god of the wind that strengthens the trees, and the powers of these adepti were derived from the hydro and dendro of the region’s water and plants. A storm tore apart the snake’s body, reducing it to shreds empty of memory, and the carp found that she could no longer breathe above the water.
“Chenyu Vale would have been lost without the unexpected intervention of a third being, fighting against the god. The suanni Lingyuan was their friend, and she had never taken a human form or even been particularly close to them, preferring her own solitude. Neither adeptus nor god, she was the product of a joining of the two: wind and water, possessed of a divine nature that could stand against the roaring gales and the threat of the flood and lead the people of the land to safety.”
“The carp’s child with the god,” Baizhu guesses.
“Perhaps,” says Zhongli. “Perhaps not. The god was usually known a woman, as is Fujin, but gender for such beings is a more malleable thing. Our bodies are driven to reproduce not by the contrasting nature of male and female but by the contrasting nature of our elements.”
“You could impregnate me.” He is less surprised by this than he might like to be. It certainly explains Zhongli’s odd reaction to seeing his distended abdomen.
No, nearly the entirety of Baizhu’s surprise right now comes from learning the names of Changsheng’s oldest friends, learning the sacrifice she had made of herself. He has always had so much respect and love for her, but now it is as though his heart swells with it. He trusts that Zhongli is telling him the truth and he deeply appreciates that this is how he has decided to go about explaining their situation.
“Yes. Though not without considerable preparation and effort. This, copulating with you, using my bite to claim you as my mate and impregnate your spirit with my energy, would be the first step.”
Hmm. “Would be, or has been?”
“Has been,” Zhongli says, clearly correcting himself. “The next step, you gifting some of your own dendro energy to me, has also already occurred.”
Ah. So there will be no ignoring what Zhongli had said about Baizhu’s prayer after all. A pity. “I do not remember what I could have done,” he admits, one last attempt to avoid the subject. Perhaps he is simply mistaken, or misunderstanding.
Zhongli is silent for a long moment. Baizhu focuses on keeping his own breathing easy, on ignoring the pulsing pleasure inside of him, on staying very still so as to not further embarrass them both with his body’s uncharacteristic neediness. He lifts his hand from his belly, intending to remove that potential distraction for them both, and finds himself not sure what to do with it—a problem that resolves itself quickly when he finds his wrist suddenly bound by something warm and… furred?
A tail. Or—no, not a tail. This is the tail of Rex Lapis.
It is a nearly perfect representation of the tail of the great creature that had fallen from the sky during the Rite of Descension almost four years ago. Fine brown skin and scales, the same as had appeared on Zhongli’s hands as he held Baizhu down, the same that currently holds tight to his hip. The end is tipped with fur the same cor lapis color of the dragon’s claws, unspeakably soft even though it seems to be composed entirely of filaments of stone. Nestled within those filaments are small, white five-petaled flowers that slowly unfurl before his eyes.
As a product of his occupation, Baizhu is very familiar with plants. Their medical uses, the associated symbolism…
These delicately blooming flowers are the blossoms of wild cherry trees.
A tea brewed from these blossoms and the buds of violetgrass would be used to encourage the longevity of a pregnancy in a person experiencing trouble carrying to term. Two mature fruits that share a stem could be covered in salt and buried in the soil of a fertile field over the growing season, then consumed by a pair of would-be parents at harvest time to improve the chances of conception. A tincture made from the tree’s bark, sweet flower stems, and qingxin roots, administered as three drops beneath the tongue, might prolong the life of a baby failing to thrive.
These cherries are for fertility, new life, and longevity. He stares at the petals, feeling rather at a loss for words.
“I can feel that I have horns as well,” Zhongli murmurs, voice quiet. “Your energy gave them to me. The infusion of your energy is what caused me to swell and joined our bodies together. Dendro, life, planted in my bedrock of geo.”
For the first time since he was moved onto his front, only shortly after this encounter had begun, Baizhu turns his head to actually look at the man behind him. Zhongli lifts his head off the bed once more to meet his eyes.
Zhongli is, as always, beautiful.
This is far from the first time that Baizhu has had that thought. He has eyes, after all. They may require the aid of glasses to see the details anything farther away than the width of a piece of paper, but he is rarely without them. A not-insignificant number of times in the past, Baizhu has looked across the dinner table and thought to himself that his friend is very attractive indeed. The other man’s beauty has even struck him at more inopportune times, such as while sending off the dead inside that quiet cottage in the heart of night. In those solemn moments, just as in this, Zhongli’s warm eyes and the gentleness of his countenance and the steadiness of his voice are ever a comfort.
Baizhu is not wearing his glasses right now, but he does not need them. Not with Zhongli’s face so close to his own. The amber eyes staring at him seem to glow, their corners creased with an unreadable expression, those faint cobweb lines extending out between scattered gold and brown scales like the spreading roots of a tree. It is the only part of his face that does not seem far, far too young to belong to a thousands-of-years-old deity. Only the blood fits, rusty smears on his chin and lips marking Zhongli as a fierce and terrifying warrior. His dark hair hangs loose, longer than it is usually, streaked through with glowing strands of gold. If Baizhu tilts his head just right he can indeed see a branching black-brown-gold horn, from which sprouts more of those same blossoms along with several small green leaves.
As Baizhu tilts his head just a bit further, arching his neck for a better look, Zhongli’s eyes close. His expression becomes clearly stricken, conflicted, pained. “Please,” he says. “Your neck…”
“You still have the urge to bite?” Baizhu asks, curious. He does not move.
“Yes,” hisses Zhongli through nearly closed lips. “Doctor Baizhu, please…”
He can feel the itch and tug of dried blood flaking off his skin. He can very clearly remember the slice of teeth through his flesh. It is much less terrifying now, knowing that the intent of the bite was not to kill at all but instead to give life.
“What will happen if you do?”
✧
Zhongli can still almost see Baizhu, even through closed eyelids.
The other man cannot possibly know the picture he paints right now. A snake’s eyes, slit pupils blown wide, glowing with the ethereal green of sunlight filtered through a canopy of leaves. Pale skin flushed with blood, with life, with arousal. His lips, parted as always with a too-insightful question. And beneath his sharp jaw, a torn shirt collar and that golden geo scar in the shape of Zhongli’s own teeth. He is beautiful. Something beyond beautiful, maybe. If they continue with what they are doing, his divinity will be something amazing to behold.
They should not continue.
Zhongli wishes—
No. They should not continue.
It occurs to Zhongli that he is currently still very intimately connected with this man, this friend he has known for many years, that he has taken pleasure from his body and supped of his blood and tears, and yet he has not even kissed him on the mouth. It seems an improper order in which to do things, at least for humans. He wonders if this is upsetting to Baizhu. He staunchly refuses to consider that doing this in such an animal way has been upsetting to himself.
“If I bite you again, I will be giving in to the instincts we are both attempting to subdue.”
“Will it not feel better to give in?” Baizhu asks, tone inscrutable.
His tail, still wound around Baizhu’s wrist, moves without receiving any sort of permission to do so from his brain. It tugs the man’s arm forward, until it is reunited with the other still held against Baizhu’s chest. Zhongli’s claws dig into the soft skin of Baizhu’s hip and he tries unsuccessfully to steady himself with deep breaths as he cradles the other man to his front like some sort of unwanted, awful lover.
“It will hurt you,” he bites out, “if I give in. I will take my pleasure in you again, I will drink of your blood, I will fill you with more of my seed. The more we indulge, the more intwined we will become.” It is tempting. Terribly tempting, horribly tempting. In his mind’s eye, he can already see how Baizhu might look as the divine consort of a god. He cannot allow himself to be tempted by this. “I am aware that you want more life, a longer life. But I swear, honestly and sincerely, that you do not want this.”
“Do you know the name of the contract I have with Changsheng?”
How is that relevant? Zhongli wonders.
“No,” he says. “I do not.”
“It is called ‘Way of the Dragon-Dragging Jade Snake.’ I am not a stupid man, Mr. Zhongli. If there is a chance that receiving your divinity may invoke that dragon and purge any of the poison I have taken on in her name, then I want that very much.”
The air is pulled from his lungs as Baizhu, without so much as twitching any external muscle that he can feel, clenches his body around Zhongli’s cock. Before Zhongli can gather his wits at all, he relaxes and does it again. And again. A slow, torturous, wonderful pulse of pressure.
“You say it will hurt me,” says Baizhu, voice soft, low, breathy. “I am not in pain.”
Torn between fierce arousal and a petty, mean vindictiveness, Zhongli holds Baizhu still as he jerks his own hips backwards. His ardor had begun to calm as he recounted the tale from those thousands of years ago. The swelling has begun to subside, which finally allows him to pull partly out, dragging stiff, inhuman ridges past tender human flesh.
He expects this to cause Baizhu to cry out—and it does, but the cry is not one of pain at all. It is absolutely replete with pleasure.
He freezes, shocked.
Baizhu takes clear and immediate advantage of this shock by pushing himself backwards, not stopping until Zhongli is fully seated inside of him once more.
Zhongli shudders, fighting the desire to continue moving. “Baizhu. I made you bleed. Do not make me draw your blood again.”
“I am content to bleed again, if I must. Our bodies both want this. Let us couple once more in pleasure instead of pain.”
“You—“ Zhongli huffs, cutting himself off, horribly overwhelmed. He feels Baizhu shiver as his breath gusts across the other man’s cheek. “You are asking too much.”
✧
Those words are like ice water down Baizhu’s back—an odd sensation, given that his back is in actuality still mostly pressed flush with Zhongli’s very warm body. He is suddenly and acutely aware of the position they are in: curled together on their sides, still nearly fully dressed aside from the notable exposure of Baizhu’s posterior. He is held tight in Zhongli’s arms, in the unyielding embrace of his tail.
He turns his face away once more, unable to bear seeing the look on Zhongli’s. Not wanting to waste the emotional effort of deciphering it.
The rejection stings. Humiliation is not a feeling Baizhu is accustomed to, and right now it is made all the more strong by the clear evidence of Zhongli’s state of arousal. That makes this a true rejection of him. Him as a person, instead of a rejection of his frail and unattractive body. One coming from a friend. From a business associate he will have to see and interact with for years to come, if this does not sow ruinous salt onto that field.
“Then I ask that you let go of me so that I may get up and leave you the room. You may take however much time you need here to fully return to your senses without me. Previous patients have recovered fully in about two days, but given that you are Rex Lapis, I feel that may not be a proper basis of comparison.”
“I cannot.”
Baizhu bristles. “Excuse me? You are my friend, Zhongli, and even if you were not, I would accept your rejection. But you cannot have it both ways. Release me, please.”
Zhongli hesitates. He does not move except to rock his hips ever so slightly, a torturous tease of friction. He probably does not even know he is doing it. “I believe you may have misunderstood.”
“Educate me,” Baizhu hisses.
“I do not wish to hurt you. That does not mean I do not desire you. Neither does it mean that my instincts have calmed enough to let you go. I did not wish to hurt you before, and yet I did, with hands and teeth and a body I could not control. Your asking me to do that again, to relinquish control of my body, to have you regardless of your consent—that is what is too much.”
Baizhu lets out a breath, caught between surprise and relief. “But I will allow it. Is that not me giving my consent? You will not hurt me. Our bodies are slick enough now from our joining, and I am miraculously healed.”
He feels more than hears the frustrated growl that rumbles just behind his ear. The grip on his wrists grows so tight that he feels his bones creak. “Miracle? That is what you think of what I have done?”
“Is it not?”
“It is a corruption of your human spirit. And the more times we couple, the more deeply that corruption will root itself. You said ‘once more’ as though it is a simple thing and not the beginning of…” Zhongli huffs. “Instead of being burdened with my divinity for decades, you will be burdened for centuries.”
Is he serious? Baizhu turns his head, seeking Zhongli’s gaze, and the ferocity in his golden eyes is surprising—as is the pain in them. This, Baizhu realizes, is not a kind man attempting to let his friend down easily. Nor is it a selfish god trying to hoard his power. Zhongli must truly, genuinely believe that he is harming Baizhu instead of revitalizing him. That will not do.
“Are you implying that I am not made inhuman already by my contract? To live out my days a sorbing the pain of others?” He pauses, gives Zhongli time to reply, then pushes forward when no protest seems to be forthcoming. “To couple with you this once more, or a dozen more after… At least with you I will have pleasure, and that pleasure will give me centuries. What you for some reason see as corruption, I see as a gift. A blessing.”
Zhongli’s lips crash down onto his in a fierce, unexpected kiss.
✧
Something in Zhongli’s chest cracks as he hears Baizhu call his burden a blessing.
Zhongli is old. Very, very old. He is well aware that he might be the oldest living being in all Teyvat. After so many thousands of years, it has become something of a matter of course that everyone Zhongli meets will die before he does. Even other ‘immortals’… He is the only one left alive. As time has passed, he has begun to envy them. Death is harder for the living.
He has long known of Baizhu’s search for immortality. It is an open secret between them. Zhongli has watched with curiosity as Baizhu studied the secrets of life and death, had tested and probed their boundaries. An endeavor as seemingly futile as it was fascinating.
Once, perhaps five or six years ago, around the time Baizhu had taken in Qiqi as his daughter, Zhongli had asked the young doctor why he was so occupied with preventing the inevitable. He had phrased it as a lighthearted remark, but he remembers that Baizhu had surprised him with the seriousness of his response: ’I have seen the way a person’s death can destroy those left behind. I will willingly take on their burden of grief so that those who love me shall never need to suffer in that way.’ And then Baizhu had, as Baizhu often does, lightened his words with a besides and a wink, as though his serious motive was merely a cover for a more nefarious plan. He had followed this with his own joking remark about making a hobby of chasing the young Director Hu’s ire, and the distraction had worked. Zhongli had put the entire curiosity out of his mind, until remembering it at this very moment.
I could have helped him before now, Zhongli thinks. Then: I would have never thought to provide help in this way.
An elemental god cannot properly join like this with a normal human. They are from different realms entirely. But Baizhu is not a normal human, is he? He has not been since making his deal with the Herblord, and it has nothing to do with his Vision.
Zhongli has known Changsheng is—was—the Herblord since near to the time Baizhu’s master’s master had taken on her contract. He had not been Changsheng’s god and so he had not had any influence on the initial making of the contract itself, but this is still Liyue. No contract is made here without it eventually coming to the attention of Rex Lapis—at least, not one of such import. While he does not know the details, he knows that it is there and that it is powerful.
He knows that contract between doctor and snake has made Baizhu only a step removed from the inhuman nature of the adepti.
He had not realized that Baizhu might know this too. Had not known, not dared to consider, that he would accept being pulled closer still.
And so. All of his jumbled thoughts, leading back to the strange and incomparable wonder of the present:
As he hears Baizhu’s words, a blessing, his rocky heart lurches dangerously behind his granite ribs—and then, as he kisses Baizhu, that rock splinters, a cracking geode spilling its brilliance, and from it pours a river of trees.
The kiss breaks with the need for air. Baizhu murmurs, breath hot against Zhongli’s lips: “I feel good. Because of you, I feel healthier than I have in years.”
That geode heart splinters again.
Does Zhongli not wish to have the responsibilities of a man instead of those of a god? Let him make mistakes in lust and love as that ordinary man might. No lives hang in the balance of this decision but their own, and is Baizhu not clearly giving consent?
“My lungs do not ache,” Baizhu breathes. “My joints do not hurt. My mind and my body are clear. Give me more.”
His rocky hand tightens its grip on Baizhu’s hip and he wonders if there is a chance that someday it will be made from stone too.
The first drag of his cock out of Baizhu’s body after Zhongli makes his attempt to discard his guilt is indescribable. The following thrust in is even better.
And the noise that Baizhu makes—
✧
Baizhu would like to keep talking. To continue telling Zhongli all the myriad ways he is most definitely not hurting him. Apparently, unfortunately, it is nearly as difficult to speak when being penetrated feels good as it is when it does not.
All that escapes him are soft noises of ecstasy. Involuntary gasps and moans that feel foreign in his throat and sound embarrassing to his ears. Each is swallowed up by another of Zhongli’s kisses, as though maybe the dragon is trying to resist the urge to bite into Baizhu’s neck by capturing his lips instead.
That Zhongli would kiss him at all is a surprise. It is more tender than he expected. More human. Though, had Zhongli not asked to be reminded of his humanity?
Unfortunately, the position is beginning to hurt his neck. Baizhu does not know when the hand not on his hip, the hand belonging to the arm still curled beneath his body, had moved from gripping his wrist to holding his head still to deepen their kisses, but it is making turning his head into a better position rather impossible.
“Zhongli,” he tries, the word disappearing into the other man’s mouth. “Zho—ahhhn!”
It’s that cry—as a ridge inside him seems to grow and the push-pull of it over Baizhu’s prostate nearly overwhelms him—that gets Zhongli to release his jaw.
And, oh. The look in Zhongli’s eyes.
Incandescent gold stares down at him, bright enough to be casting a reflection of its radiance onto Baizhu’s own cheeks. More god than man, and yet the expression in them…
“Keep moving,” Baizhu complains, upset that Zhongli has slowed the rocking of his hips to a near standstill. Out of concern, maybe? Touching. Slightly annoying. “Do not dare stop. But let me…” He turns his head to face forward, immediately mourning the loss of those eyes. Immediately relieved as well, as he both feels and hears the joints crack as the tension in them eases.
He feels Zhongli’s soft chuckle against the side of his face. “Oh,” Zhongli murmurs. “My apologies.” Thankfully, blessedly, Zhongli does not sound very genuinely apologetic at all. No, he sounds amused and… and fond. Baizhu decides right away that this is a wonderful thing to hear from a partner in bed. He hopes to hear more of it.
“If I am your—“ He gasps as Zhongli snaps his hips forward, the friction of it so perfect as it sends a hot shock of pleasure through him. Although he is only half-hard, and although has been only half-hard at most this entire time, it feels as though he is nearing a precipice. Is he about to orgasm from prostate stimulation alone? How deliciously thrilling. Such a thing has never happened to him before.
“If you are my…?”
It is several more slow, delicious thrusts before Baizhu remembers that he had been trying to say something.
“Your mate. Will we—“ His breath hitches, words faltering. “Will we do this again?”
✧
Zhongli very briefly considers that perhaps this is death. Perhaps he was poisoned by the pollen of the regisvine and this entire experience has been a dying hallucination. A hellish nightmare that has yet somehow been lifted into heaven.
The man in his arms feels real. Hair; skin; bones that creak in his grasp; a pulse that flutters beneath his palm. He takes that hand, the one belonging to the arm that is still partially pinned between Baizhu and the bed, and smooths a path down Baizhu’s front until it rests on the taut skin of the man’s slightly rounded belly. So much cum has already leaked out, easing the friction of their joining, but Baizhu is still so full. Of his cock, of his cum, of their combined energies and the seeds of new life.
He has not taken a mate in centuries. The purely elemental beast inside him revels at having one now. Having one for years to come.
“Again?” he asks, made breathless by the mere idea. He knows it is likely still the pollen driving him, and yet… That idea of an again… Reality, not horrible threat… “You wish to lay with a dragon again? Willingly? To continue to sup of my energy as I have supped of your blood? To bear our progeny? To let me make you a god?”
“Hhh—aahhhn…” is Baizhu’s very articulate response. He follows with a hissed reply, something much closer to an actual word than a blissful moan: “Yessss.”
He shoves in deep and remains there, pressing his palm down on Baizhu’s abdomen at the same time. Baizhu’s entire body twitches, his free hand scrambling to pull at Zhongli’s wrist, his other still held captive in the grip of his tail.
“Stop! Stop, please, or I will come,” Baizhu gasps, sounding almost panicked.
Zhongli ruts into him without first withdrawing, feeling with his hand where his cock presses impossibly deep in Baizhu’s body. They both shiver as he resumes thrusting again, deep and slow and impossible to stop. “I cannot,” he confesses, apologetic. This is part of what he had warned Baizhu of, when he accused him of asking too much. There is still a beast inside of him, controlling his limbs, that only knows desire and mate and breed.
From the corner of his vision—otherwise filled with a cascade of messy, bloodstained hair and sprouting leaves—he sees the way the other man’s jaw moves as he tries to speak.
✧
Baizhu does not speak.
Baizhu cannot speak. Not with the way his lungs sieze, the way his body convulses. The way he is completely filled and torn asunder with an overwhelming pleasure. It is not merely in his genitals, or in the part of him forced wide by Zhongli’s cock. His limbs feel alive, his skin over sensitive—even his mind briefly fades as his unfocused eyes see the room around them as nothing more than a burst of color.
This is surely going to forever be one of the best, and the most emotionally confusing, nights of his entire life. The pain of earlier, the genuine fear for his life, and yet now…
He is barely aware that what he has just experienced is an orgasm until it is nearly over, until the push-pull friction rubbing past his prostate goes in an instant from perfect to far too much.
“Wait,” he gasps, the word a desperate whisper.
Zhongli’s breath is hot on his neck. “I cannot.”
Well. Baizhu had consented to this, had he not? He is certainly not withdrawing that consent now. But he had taken Zhongli’s warning and thought only of possible pain. He had failed entirely to consider that single most important tenet of his profession: the dose determines the difference between cure and poison. He had not thought of the effect of pleasure when there is too much.
This will be a most wonderfully educational experience, should his sanity survive.
He closes his eyes and sees sunlight.
No sooner has Baizhu accepted the feeling of too much than it seems to crest again, a burning beneath his skin that makes him shake. The thing filling him up is simply too much, too good, too perfectly formed for rubbing against the exact right parts of him. Biology, driven to make the continuation of the species as enjoyable as possible. Baizhu wonders what that species might look like, if Zhongli’s seed were to take root inside of him. The strength of ironwood trees grown from the most solid of bedrock. A snake with a dragon’s limbs.
Zhongli seems to grow thicker inside of him. Each withdrawal is more difficult, each thrust more filling. And yet they continue, deep and swift and perfect.
“Yes,” Baizhu gasps, entirely unsure that he can actually handle it. “Yes,” he repeats, completely certain that he could no longer survive if Zhongli were to stop. “If you cannot st—aanh—cannot stop then, more.”
✧
Even as he is lost within his own pleasure, Zhongli has just enough space in his mind to wonder if Baizhu knows that he is hissing. That his s’s have elongated into sounding more like Changsheng than Baizhu himself.
Zhongli’s body is larger right now than it usually is in this mortal form, his limbs and spine longer. It allows him to raise himself partially on one elbow, to gaze down upon the glorious creature before him. Baizhu’s face is contorted with pleasure, his eyes shut tight, his lashes and cheeks wet with tears. The tongue that peeks from beneath his lips is just too long and too thin to be human. The shining points of his eyeteeth are just too sharp.
He considers for what must be the third or the fourth or the thousandth time that Baizhu will someday be the most glorious of gods. Those remaining among Celestia’s lowly archons will weep at his earthly splendor.
Zhongli leans forward and licks up the salt of Baizhu’s tears.
“Yessss,” Baizhu whimpers again.
He presses his forehead to Baizhu’s temple and feels the tiny bumps of a snake’s scales. He snaps his hips forward and feels Baizhu’s body shudder and clench, he hears Baizhu sob, and he fucks the man through his second orgasm, or possibly his third. The way Baizhu cries out for him is so pretty, so divine.
“I will tie with you again,” he breathes, an apology and a warning and a promise. “I cannot stop it.”
“Pleassse,” is Baizhu’s response.
“I wish to bite,” Rex Lapis moans.
Instead of using words, Baizhu arches his neck to make room.
Sinking his teeth into Baizhu’s flesh, reopening the scar he left earlier, is the easiest thing in the world to do. He fills his mouth and his soul with verdant life as his body finally stills and fills Baizhu’s with his seed and with the luminescent power of geo. Unlike before, he does not feel horrified at himself and what he is doing. He does not feel frightened or out of control.
He just feels… good. And isn’t that quite nice?
✧
✧
✧
This time, Baizhu is not confused as he comes to his senses. Through the entire slow process of returning from the bright world of bliss, he knows exactly what has happened. He is aware of the rigid length pulsing slowly and pleasurably inside of him. He is aware of the warmth at his back. The arms wrapped securely around his body. The clothing tangled around them both. The tail draped over his legs. The absolute mess of drying ejaculate they are laying in.
When he opens his eyes and looks down at himself, he is somewhat surprised that his abdomen seems to be suffused with a golden glow.
“Well,” he says, voice unexpectedly hoarse. “That is new.”
“Hmm?” comes the response from behind him, a lazy and sated rumble. And there is that pride again, the same as he has felt earlier: a glorious satisfaction at being able to sate the instincts of Rex Lapis himself.
“I suppose it is geo energy,” Baizhu muses aloud. “I wonder…”He lifts his right hand from the bed, the limb feeling sluggish and heavy, and it takes him a moment to gather enough coordination to place that hand on top of his glowing skin. He does not quite manage to gather enough coordination to place it gently, and both he and Zhongli gasp at the pressure, Zhongli shifting his hips closer, pushing himself just that much deeper. The burst of good too good too much too much is distracting, but his little experiment was a success and Baizhu is fascinated by the way the his gloved hand only partially blocks the light. “Zhongli, do your testes glow when you are in this sort of in-between form?”
There is a small, deep chuckle. Zhongli’s breath is the movement of rocks in a landslide, tumbling over one another and down Baizhu’s spine. “I do not know.”
“Hmm.” He traces a finger idly over his own skin while he thinks, imagining that he can see swirling vines and the patterns of leaves instead of something so banal as the shadows of his own veins. “Might you let me examine you, next time?”
“Next time,” Zhongli repeats. His tone is inscrutable and that makes Baizhu worry.
“Yes,” he hurries to clarify, “next time. A little while ago, we said…” But some of that languid satisfaction is wearing off, and Baizhu now feels somewhat embarrassed. Perhaps Zhongli did not mean what he had said in the heat of the moment. Perhaps Baizhu misunderstood.
Zhongli’s embrace tightens, his nose nuzzling into Baizhu’s hair. “Before making plans to examine me, you ought to examine yourself.”
“I am not,” begins Baizhu, intending to finish the sentence with ’injured’, but. Oh.
There may not be any outlines of leaves on the pale skin of his torso, but there are other changes visible in the dim lamplight. Actual changes. His fingernails are just slightly longer and sharper than they should be, poking out of his glove. And when he hurries to finally tug that glove off—
Pearlescent scales, so pale a shade of white as to be almost translucent, curl in delicate whorls up the back of his hand and along his forearm.
“I hope Qiqi is not frightened by any changes Changsheng may have undergone,” Zhongli says. And then: “There are scales on your face as well. You may also have fangs.”
“Fangs,” he repeats dully. His mind catches on how lovely it is that Zhongli is concerned for Qiqi’s wellbeing, but it can only seem to remain there for a moment. “Zhongli, this is not merely the effects of a regisvine or a transference of energy. What has happened to me?”
“You and I are bound together, much the way you are bound to Changsheng.”
He is aghast. “I have never had sex with Changsheng!”
“What—?!” Zhongli sounds equally aghast at the very idea. Then, he chuckles. The rumble of it against Baizhu’s back is very pleasant. “My apologies, Baizhu. I did in no way intend to imply that. I meant that through your contract, you are made slightly more elemental and she is made slightly more human. This is a similar exchange. In theory.”
“Theory,” Baizhu repeats flatly. As in, not in practice? Has he never done this before?”
“Yes, well. While I have certainly heard of such a thing happening between an adeptus and a human, I have never done so myself. I am simply composed of too much elemental geo.”
“Because you are a god.”
He can feel the way Zhongli smiles. “What is the difference between a god and an adeptus but a matter of one’s point of view?”
“Interesting, to be discussing theology while in the midst of copulating with the subject of the discussion.”
“Yes, well,” says Zhongli again. If Baizhu is not mistaken, he sounds almost embarrassed. “I would not call this the midst. As I feel slightly less frantic, the pollen must be running its course. Given that this is far sooner than the two days you estimated, I must credit your skills as a physician.”
The noise that leaves Baizhu is nothing less than a giggle. “One of my previous patients reached his wife before he did my pharmacy. He was able to sate himself similarly quickly. I believe it is your body that deserves the credit, not my skills.”
There is a brief puff of air against the back of his neck. A huff? A sigh? “If we will be speaking that way, the credit is indeed on your body. You have made a sacrifice I will not forget.”
“A sacrifice.” Baizhu sighs, the buoyant nature of his mood crashing headlong into the rocky shoreline that it has always been heading towards. “Yes, a sacrifice that has healed me greatly and brought me to orgasm several times. What more must I do to convince you that I have not suffered for this?”
“You still do not know the full consequences.”
Baizhu takes a slow, deep breath. He has enough logic left in his bliss-filled mind to talk the other man through this, surely. “Will I still be able to care for my patients?”
There is a long pause. Zhongli keeps twitching inside of him in a very distracting way. “Yes,” he finally says, sounding confused.
“Will my life end today? Tomorrow? Has my already short life been further shortened substantially?”
”No,” insists Zhongli, oddly fierce. He must also remember those embarrassing pleas that the bite not kill him. “But you will…” He trails off, sounding uncertain.
“Am I likely to now be pregnant?” Baizhu guesses, at a loss for what else could be concerning Zhongli.
The other man is quiet for a long moment.
Ah. So it is the likelihood of pregnancy indeed. “I do not have a womb,” he cannot help but point out. “Am I to assume that the life will create an organ for itself? I had not been making a joke earlier, when I said I have read none of the scant few texts that exist on adeptal reproduction. I suppose it is high time I get my hands on those that I can…”
It is only when he finally trails off, nervous energy fading into plain nervousness, that Zhongli finally speaks. “It is unlikely that we have conceived already,” he says, and that’s quite a nice way of putting it. We. For some reason, Baizhu likes the sound of that quite a lot. “But should we continue, with this…”
There is another quiet paused as though Zhongli cannot find the correct word.
“Sex?” Baizhu suggests.
Strong arms pull a little tighter around Baizhu’s ribs. Before falling into bed beneath Zhongli, such a tight embrace would have sent him coughing. Now it is merely very comfortable.
“Sex,” agrees Zhongli. “Mating, exchanging our energies. Yes. It is a probable outcome. And the offspring will not be strictly human, Baizhu. You are… okay with this?”
“I do remember what you said before, about the suanni. Do you perhaps remember that my daughter is not quite human herself? I love Qiqi all the same. I share my life with Changsheng and love her too. Should I… I do not know; should I lay an egg, or birth a babe, the only difference to me shall be in what sort of clothes the child wears.” And perhaps in what surgery he may require to assist in the birth, but that is not something to trouble Zhongli with now. “It is worth it, for what I am being given in exchange.”
There is the soft, gentle feeling of Zhongli rubbing his nose against the same little spot of skin behind his ear the other man seems to favor. “You are asking to see quite a lot more of me. If we continue this.”
Baizhu cannot determine what his tone of voice may mean. “Do not think… I would never presume any official… relationship with you, as either Zhongli the man or—or Rex Lapis,” he is quick to reassure just in case, embarrassed slightly by how he stumbles over the name. “I promise you my silence on the—hey!”
Zhongli’s laugh is surprising. He grabs Baizhu tighter, likely involuntarily, as a deep chuckle rumbles through his entire body.
“What is so funny?” Baizhu wants to know. His feelings are beginning to be hurt.
“You bear my mating mark on your neck. Even when your overtly inhuman features fade, to those in the know, it will be entirely obvious you are the chosen mate of Rex Lapis. Not that I mind, of be clear. It will be rather novel, having something new for both Cloud Retainer and Barbatos to hassle me about.” There is an odd note to Zhongli’s voice as he says this, and it does not take Baizhu long to understand: it is a test, gauging his reaction to such a thing. Or perhaps it is a warning, that such legendary figures as Cloud Retainer and the Anemo Archon will be involved in his life.
Well, Baizhu knows someone more intimidating: “Is Director Hu one of those in the know?”
“Ah—“ Zhongli sounds quite alarmed and unsure.
Baizhu presses his fingers to his lips, stifling a laugh. “Perhaps we discuss what to tell people tomorrow? We still have quite the mess to clean up, once we separate. Then I am prescribing a good, long rest for both of us, as well as something for myself to prevent infection, followed by a hearty meal in the morning.”
✧
Something to prevent infection.
Zhongli can hardly believe he had all but forgotten. Was a few happy moments all it took to erase from his mind the way he had made Baizhu bleed and weep?
When considered among all his actions as a god, for Rex Lapis to rape one man and leave him living does not even count when tallied against all the lives he knows he and his armies have taken in times long past. But when counted only among his actions as a man… This is easily one of the worst things Zhongli has ever done under the guise of a mortal.
“Zhongli,” he hears Baizhu say after a moment. “I will ask that you please tell me how I have upset you, instead of lapsing into long silences. At least right now, when I cannot see your face and this ascertain something of your mood.”
“You have not upset me,” he says, though this is a bit of a lie. “And… Ah, wait… I believe I may now be able to…”
Though some bestial part of Zhongli’s very soul rebels at withdrawing from his mate, the human part of him is happy to quash that feeling. All parts of him—save, perhaps, for the one that is biologically aware that it is only a few hours before dawn and he is very, very tired—are fascinated by the noise Baizhu makes as he slides free. Something between a gasp and a moan and Zhongli would like to hear it again. Later.
Separating their bodies enough to leave room for Baizhu to turn around and meet his eyes if he so wishes, he glances between them and finds himself observing his softening member as well as copious amounts of glowing—“Oh,” he says. “I understand why you asked what you did about my anatomy.”
He watches as one of Baizhu’s slender arms reaches back and gathers some of the mess from between his cheeks. Baizhu stares at it as he rolls over to face Zhongli. “Yes,” he says, “though some of the glow is fading already. Astounding.” He brings it to his nose. “Osmanthus, petrichor, and fresh soil.”
“And blood.”
Baizhu’s yellow eyes glance sharply at him. And, oh. The way they glow, the luminosity of his scales… “There will be less of that next time,” Baizhu declares. “At which point I perhaps will be able to safely taste and satisfy my curiosity. It does not smell nearly as human as one might expect, Zhongli. There is barely the faintest suggestion of semen, much less the foul odor of excrement.”
Zhongli finds that he is completely at a loss for words as to what to say to that. He stares at the mess on Baizhu’s fingers, thinking about a dozen different things all at once. Has he always found Baizhu so alluring? What might Baizhu say to the suggestion that they fuck again now? To the suggestion that his beautiful lips can find their way to the fluid’s source, should he mind his fangs?
The intensity of those thoughts feels somewhat foreign. He should probably make Baizhu aware that the pollen is not fully dissipated.
“I,” he begins, not entirely sure how he will continue.
When he looks up from Baizhu’s hand to his eyes once more, Baizhu gaze is warm.
“You should stay another day, to make sure the pollen has truly left your system,” he says, obviously aware of the nature of Zhongli’s thoughts—oh. Perhaps because Zhongli’s tail is now wound firmly around his wrist, keeping his hand and his shiny slick fingers suspended between them. When did that happen? “I will clean up here and then leave one note for Gui and another for him to take to Director Hu. Then we will spend the rest of the night and perhaps much of tomorrow in my rooms. Time together for healing, and for talking, and… for other activities. Regardless of what is said or what happens, you are safe in my hands, Mr. Zhongli. I will take care of you.” His voice is gentle, serious, trustworthy. Steady as earth, unbending as a tree.
“I—“ Zhongli’s voice cracks. He nods, clears his throat. “Thank you, Doctor Baizhu.”