After that, for a frighteningly long time, it was all smooth sailing.

Or, rather, in the words of Janey:

[jjcool]: fuck, i can’t even say anything to you these days

[XiErXi]: ??

[jjcool]: glowing so hard it makes me sick

[jjcool]: aren’t you just meeting like once a week at most?? How’s it that you’re smiling like you’re getting fucked every fucking night, huh???

[XiErXi]: well~

[jjcool]: UGGGHHHH just don’t even

[XiErXi]: you see~ when I stream~ a certain little jiong gets excited~

[jjcool]: …kill me now

[XiErXi]: it’s only kindness to take care of him afterwards, you know~

[XiErXi]: you’d do it too, if you were me~

[jjcool]: what fucking kindness

[jjcool]: there’s a 99% chance you’re just jacking off to his voice every fuckin time

[XiErXi]: what can I say, ah~ you’re right ah~

[jjcool]: this jiongjiong disease of yours… *nods* yup, it’s terminal. Terminal.

[XiErXi]: correct~ correct~

In truth, Xi did not feel that he was in so obvious a good mood, at least not in a way readily apparent to fans on his stream. Perhaps he smiled more than usual, but then, that was also how he was at the start of summer proper, when the evil sun’s blistering rays and the city’s constant, muggy heat gave him free reign to devote himself to making easy salads, grilling various meats and turning out ice cream and other cold desserts by the bucketful.

So, for his stream fans, that smiling, relaxed time had perhaps come around a little early and a little out of season, but, other than that? Everything was normal.

> Fan ZZ: demanding to know! Just who is the scoundrel dazzling our good god Xi!!!

> Fan ZZ: how can us poor peasant fans withstand these smiles, these demonic smiles ah!!!

> XiXi: eh? I’m not smiling that much, though?

> Fan B is Fun B: but the power is higher, it’s definitely high this time ah

> swearmouse: petitioning to know~ petitioning to know~

Naturally Claire had been overjoyed by Xi’s carefully casual, detail-light announcement that he was indeed now seeing someone, an announcement he wouldn’t have bothered to make if Bertram hadn’t maliciously spilled the beans in chat the very day after Xi and Jiong’s first date. Since that time, if it wasn’t Claire bringing up the existence of Xi’s gorgeous mystery boyfriend, it was Bertram, or even Janey.

Claire and Bertram’s purpose in doing so was obvious: they relished the fact that Jiong never chipped in to ask for more details, and often went rather pointedly silent when everyone in chat was teasing Xi about the topic. Janey, on the other hand, much as she might pretend to cough up blood1 at Xi in their private chat, was also clearly relishing the fact that both Claire and Bertram had no idea that the man they were bullying and the man they were celebrating were one and the same.

Xi, happy as he was with the present state of things, could not help but feel somewhat reluctant to ever have to see the kind of reaction those two would have when they found out the truth. As it was, even though his meeting Jiong on the weekends to roll in the hay with him was starting to feel like a settled, established thing, Xi could not help but be acutely aware that it was all temporary, all a thing of coincidence (their randomly happening to get to know each other due to Claire being on just the right team) and their surprising sexual compatibility (shamefully self-explanatory). He had no idea if he would still be seeing the other man in a couple months; he didn’t even know if they were seeing each other exclusively at the moment.

Good as it felt to sing and cook and laugh and putter around on stream, knowing that Jiong was watching and waiting, looking forward to their heated post-stream entanglement, Xi could not feel completely at ease. That he hadn’t dated in months didn’t mean that he’d cast off all sense and start hoping uselessly for things he couldn’t have, but keeping a light, carefree heart in this kind of situation was easier said than done.

[MrJiong]: tired?

It didn’t help that Captain Jiong—and didn’t it just sting that Xi found it so natural to keep calling him that? It didn’t help that, win or lose, rotten or not, this fucking guy was so very reliably attentive.

[XiErXi]: only a bit

[XiErXi]: puff pastry can be such a fucking pain lol, especially when it’s this hot

[MrJiong]: did you have to make it yourself this time?

[XiErXi]: supermarket didn’t have my brand today [crying]

[MrJiong]: which supermarket?!! How dare they offend the son of heaven!!! 2

[MrJiong]: such useless filth, God-Emperor Xi should allow this servant to punish with a thousand deaths!!!!

[XiErXi]: …haha

[XiErXi]: it’s fine~ it’s fine~

Sometimes, Xi hardly knew what his former self from three or four months ago would think of his laughing off things in this manner. But he couldn’t help but care a lot less about whatever shitty manner Jiong wished to use to forcibly fawn on him, not when enduring it a little (okay, okay, enduring it a lot) could mean such direct and delicious profits.

[XiErXi]: can you see me?

[MrJiong]: [blushes] [blushes]

[XiErXi]: this disrespectful servant!!! Tell zhen3 clearly if you can see, or else—!

[MrJiong]: [blushes]

[MrJiong]: this lowly servant is wicked… can the emperor please punish…

[MrJiong]: seeing the dragon body4 has made this lowly servant so excited…

[XiErXi]: let zhen hear you then. If your voice can please zhen, zhen may pardon your wickedness!

Let’s not look too closely at how Xi was adding to the problem here. It was Thursday night, which meant that Sunday was coming soon, but not soon enough, and last night had been a no-go due to a rash of extra team practices insisted on by management. Xi wanted—no, needed satisfaction tonight, and he was willing to do whatever it took to get it.

[XiErXi]: I want to see you too

XiErXi is requesting to talk to MrJiong on [video link]

[MrJiong]: your servant accepts~ your servant accepts~

Said ‘servant’ was already half naked, his strong chest exposed, the low light in his narrow, spartan dorm room adding a touch of forbidden intimacy to the whole scene. The sight of him spread across Xi’s HUD, obscuring the window of their private chat, obscuring everything in the room around him.

“You look delicious,” Xi said, his voice low and rough, and for once, he just couldn’t bring himself to worry about how he looked, whether his floating cam was in the right position, whether the way he was staring at Jiong was being properly conveyed. Saliva gathered in his mouth, forcing him to swallow; his already hard cock ached. “Open that fucking mouth.”

“What, you don’t want jiongjiong to take the rest of this off?” Jiong’s voice was just a little fuzzy due to the link distortion, since he’d been too cheap to lay out much for better software or anything more than a basic cam. What’s the point? he’d said, when asked. I’d rather save that money for the times I can actually see you and touch you. “Doesn’t Xi-er want to look at all of jiongjiong?”

“If you want to expose yourself so badly, just go ahead and do it,” Xi said, his voice trembling half from annoyance, half from excitement, his hand already stroking his own aching cock. “Just, your mouth—lick your lips, do anything—”

“Xi-er wants to use my mouth?” Clearly Jiong was not in a cooperative mood tonight; as he spoke, he smiled, and he certainly wasn’t hurrying to skin out of his trousers, his fingers unzipping and unbuttoning at a leisurely pace. “Is that all?”

“You fucking know it’s not,” Xi said, sullenly. “Fuck, I don’t know what’s fucking wrong with me this week, nothing I do to myself seems to help…”

“Oh, so you’re in heat?”

“Fuck you, what fucking heat? Sirens don’t—”

“So you’re telling me you don’t need it in your ass right now?”

“I’m… hn, I’m not…” God, there was something wrong with him, that just hearing Jiong’s poisonous voice made everything better.

“You need to get fucked, don’t you? You need to be fucked really hard.”

“Yeah…”

“So doesn’t that just mean you’re in heat? Are you really going to deny it again?”

“I…” Xi swallowed. Sometimes he hated this part of himself, the part that, with just a little teasing, became weak-limbed and eager and weak. “I’m in heat.”

“Good boy,” Jiong said, his voice low, his breathing just a little unsteady. Xi, focusing once more on the video, could now see that he hadn’t even bothered to do more than open his trousers and take out his cock. “Finger yourself.”

“H-how many?”

“As many as you can fucking take,” Jiong growled. “Spread yourself. Let me see it clearly, okay?”

Just who is the supposed emperor in this relationship, Xi thought, grumbling internally, but of course he was already doing what he’d been told to do. Two fingers to start with, because he’d been too horny and hasty to bother to prepare before getting naked. The camera floated closer, something Xi had definitely not ordered, and it only made him more excited; Jiong didn’t often use the control Xi had given him over the camera’s operations, but whenever he did, it was always for subtle moves like this.

“More,” Jiong’s voice commanded. “I know you can take more.”

Teary-eyed, panting, Xi spread his thighs a little further, making a deliberate production of what he was about to do. He let go of his cock, reaching down to squeeze his balls and lift them just a bit, as if he wanted to make sure what he was going to do would be unmistakeable. Then he pushed his two fingers a little way in, and rubbed the third around the tender rim of his hole, probing carefully.

“Do it!”

“I’m—I’m not, I don’t have any lube there yet, I can’t—”

“Don’t let me tell you again.” Jiong never spoke like this to him in person; it was as if he couldn’t bring himself to really let loose when Xi was definitely within reach, and thus available to be hurt. “Do it.”

Xi whimpered. He trembled as he forced the third finger inside himself. Just once, he found himself thinking, I wonder what it would feel like, if he hurts me just like this…

“You lying little slut,” Jiong was saying now, his voice unsteady, his harsh tone distorted by his panting breaths. “Look how easily you took it. I know you can take it, put in another one right now.”

“I can’t,” Xi sobbed. He was so keyed up already that even the distraction of taking it deliberately slow to tease his partner hadn’t worked. He could feel the warm drips of his own precum spilling onto his stomach. He knew he shouldn’t be rubbing his prostate, knew he should be keeping to light, shallow strokes to prolong things, but he couldn’t help himself, couldn’t stop himself from—from— “I’m going to come…”

“Then fucking do it,” Jiong snapped. “Bullshit that you aren’t in heat.”

“Sorry…”

“Did I ask for a fucking apology?”

“No, b-but—hghn—fuck—”

“Look at that,” Jiong said, his voice low and angry, yet somehow still gloating, a tantalizing counterpoint to the feverish surge of pleasure ravaging Xi from the inside out. “Look at you. Look at how fucking easy you are.”

For a long, long moment, Xi couldn’t get the breath to respond. He’d spilled come all over himself, and it was dripping and running all over, and he knew it wasn’t enough. “I s-said sorry already,” he managed to say. “I don’t know what else to do.” Which was an outright lie, from the way he was starting to work his fingers in and out of himself again; he really, really hoped Jiong was in the mood to continue watching him. “What should I…?”

Jiong’s dark, mocking chuckle sent a pleasant shiver through him. “Why ask me, when you’re already doing it?”

“Sorry, I—”

“If you can think well enough to apologize,” Jiong said, gently, “you can add another fucking finger.” Then added, after Xi let out a protesting moan: “The only apology I’ll accept is watching you come again and again tonight until you fucking die.”

Needless to say, though death was definitely not on the agenda, Xi was worn out by the time the captain declared, in a hoarse, satisfied tone, that there had been sufficient punishment visited upon him for his unforgivable sins. “What fucking sins,” Xi grumbled. “I bet you fucking recorded it so you can wank to it tomorrow.”

“Xi-er knows me so well,” Jiong said, with a direct, devilish smirk. “Jiongjiong did well tonight, right? It’ll be good for God Xi-er’s future use…?”

“Fuck off,” Xi said, flushing, and hurried to exit out of the link. He didn’t know what he was going to do when this cursed relationship was finally over; he couldn’t imagine the Captain Michael Star being trusting enough to leave behind any shred of recorded material in the hands of a former lover. Xi planned to do the usual, courteous thing, a mutual exchange of all materials followed by supervised, simultaneous deletion, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t mourn the fact that he’d have to do it, have to lose such good, reliable wank fodder to the dusts of time…

A month into their not-quite-relationship, things suddenly hit a snag. First, Dom-V’s adequate but unexceptional performance in the standings took an abrupt dive, and the online storm whipped up as a result of that meant that Xi had to go without his dose of jiongjiong for two Sundays in a row.

Second, the date of Xi’s annual, over-elaborate karaoke live performance had crept up from being months in the future to being two months away and then to being three weeks away. As a result, his free time had completely evaporated; when he wasn’t baking, cooking, streaming or working, he was taking the train up to the karaoke bar he’d booked for the fateful performance to do rehearsals. None of it was anything he was being forced to do, or even anything he didn’t want to do, but…

[XiErXi]: I’m going to go fucking insane

[jjcool]: *pats*~ *pats*~

[XiErXi]: OMG can you like actually empathize???

[XiErXi]: I burnt something today! I fucking burnt some shitty fucking buns!!! I can’t do this!!!!!

[jjcool]: so…… take a break?

[XiErXi]: …

XiErXi is requesting to talk to jjcool on [link]

[jjcool]: no can do, sweetie

XiErXi’s [link] request has been denied.

[jjcool]: I’m in a serious meeting rn, can you maybe call me later?

[jjcool]: or just say it here?

[XiErXi]: QAQ I can’t do this in chat, feels pathetic

[XiErXi]: wait, serious meeting? Serious as in work serious??

[jjcool]: …yup.

Suddenly, Xi’s internal maelstrom of bun-and-karaoke-related self-recrimination came to a screeching halt.

[XiErXi]: is everything ok?

He could count on one hand the amount of times Janey had ever refused to talk to him on link like this—citing work, without citing specifics. The last time she’d done this, her talent agency had been pressuring her to switch genres, and she’d ended up showing up at his place after all was said and done, smiling, victorious, but also clearly half-destroyed from stress.

[jjcool]: it’s

[jjcool]: haha, fuck. Would you believe I also can’t do this in chat?

[XiErXi]: *hugs*

[XiErXi]: call in an hour?

[jjcool]: your stream starts in thirty min though

[XiErXi]: fuck that. I’ll push it back a couple hours

[XiErXi]: these fucking buns can’t be shown anyway

[jjcool]: …

[jjcool]: save me some?

[XiErXi]: sure, no problem

Still, Xi didn’t expect that, just about an hour and a half later, while he was punching down the dough for another, entirely unnecessary batch of cinnamon buns, Janey would key in to his flat, alone.

“Are you live?” was, as usual, the first thing she asked. Followed by: “Ooh, can I have one?”

“Bottom’s burnt,” Xi said, without bothering to look. Then, after he’d decided he really didn’t want to rush ahead and try and roll these out tonight after all, and had covered the bowl and stuck it into his perpetually overloaded fridge, he turned round and saw Janey actually finish a second bun, and knew that something was very wrong. “Jane—”

“Let me have this,” she said, her throaty, distinctive voice muffled by the food in her mouth. “Fuck, Xi, just. Let me.”

Alarmed, Xi walked up to where she was, edging around the kitchen island and grabbing a bun himself on the way. He was even more alarmed at the fact that Janey wasn’t crying, even though she’d scrunched down into a defeated ball in the entryway, leaning back against the free patch of wall between the coatrack and the temperature control screen. “What’s happened?”

Janey shook her head. She licked her fingers, studiously avoiding his gaze. “Don’t freak out?”

“Okay…”

“I’m, I’ve quit.”

Xi paused, drawing in a fortifying breath, very thankful that he’d swallowed his last bite before giving her the go-ahead to say anything. “Okay.”

“You can’t just say that,” Janey said, eventually, her voice low, her tone artificially calm. “I quit.”

“You’ve said that.”

“Fucking hell, Xi! I walked, I’m, I’m retired, I’m nothing now, and you—”

“You want another bun?”

She was crying now, her silent tears failing to ruin her perfect, smear-proof makeup, her desolated gaze somehow frightening. “I quit,” she mumbled, again, as he headed for the kitchen, but when he brought back the entire pan, she immediately grabbed the one with the best spread of icing.

“Oh, come on—”

“Fuck off, I just quit, okay?” And then, moments later, she added, in a muffled, somewhat hysterical tone: “I quit, I quit, I quit.”

Xi, still worried, squatted down opposite her, loathe to interrupt. It took the rest of his bun and half of a new one for her to finally meet his gaze again. “So?”

She shook her head again, but there was something more resolute about it. And indeed, instead of burying herself back in her half-finished bun, she delicately set it down in the clear area of the pan, well away from the other uneaten ones. “You know I’ve been… tired, since the thing about switching genres.”

“Shit, Maxwell brought it up again?”

“No, no, it was just… fuck, it wasn’t even anything. It was nothing, just minor crap, some manager of some shit boy group whining that I’d poached an ad or something, you know?”

“Did you have to give it up? The ad?”

“No, it was just… I won, you know? I played the game, I made the usual, I had Erie make the usual hints, re me winning on merit and the shit group, or shit boy in shit group, losing because he didn’t have what it takes, etcetera.”

“Right…”

“And at the end, during the shoot, I just thought, is this it?” Her tears, which had slowed a bit earlier, burst forth again. “Wasn’t even difficult! No one was rude, no one leered, no one felt me up, but I looked around, and I just, I felt so tired.”

Xi bit his lip. This wasn’t the first time Janey had expressed her disillusionment with the system she’d clawed and practised and strived to get into, but every other time, she’d started her rant with ‘I’m taking a fucking break’, or, more often, ‘I can’t take a fucking break because…’ take one of any number of fucking reasons, and then afterwards, she’d dry her eyes and go back out and endure until she could have her cherished breath of fresh air. And then Janey’d flutter off halfway through, energized by some urgent call from Erie, her longtime agent, and then there’d be a rapturous new project to lose herself into, and he wouldn’t be able to reach her for weeks on end because of it.

She’d confessed to feeling exhausted, but not like this. Not like it was terrifying, not like her tiredness was something she could no longer seem to get away from.

“I slowed down,” Janey muttered. “I tried that, but it didn’t—in the end, all I could think was, was that I just wanted to be done.”

“Okay,” Xi said, blinking back tears himself. “So it’s done.”

“Fuck,” was all she said, before covering her eyes with her wrists. “Fuck.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, no it fucking isn’t, it’s—it was my dream, and I had it, and now I can’t, I don’t even want to do it anymore and I—”

“Fine, it’s the end of the fucking world, but Janey, you will be okay.”

Janey let out a weak, protesting sob, but latched onto the slightly sticky hand he’d offered her. Her grip was tight, and he felt the occasional teardrop spatter onto his hand, but that was all right. An upset Janey that wasn’t crying was much more terrifying to him. “I don’t know, Xi. I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“Well,” Xi said, with forced cheer, even as he moved to sit right by her, his arm pulling her close, “you’re always welcome on my stream.”

A weak, snorting chuckle was his reward. “Terms?”

“Oh, we’re mates, any terms you like.”

“Payment to be in…?”

“Buns.”

“Fuck off, they’re all burnt, you’re cheating me.”

“Alright, then I’ll just, it’ll just be icing. Piped straight into your mouth, any flavour—”

“Lemon swiss buttercream?”

“Well now you’re cheating me…”

Cough up blood: Chinese, metaphor for venting/expressing extreme emotion or being really upset.↩

Son of Heaven: the traditional English translation for ‘tian zi (天子)’, the sacred imperial title of the Chinese Emperor.↩

Zhen: Chinese, generic first-person pronoun used solely by the emperor in ancient times. Comparable to the royal we.↩

The Dragon’s body (long ti, 龍體): ‘long (龍)’ was a prefix for things related to the emperor, and ‘long ti’, literally ‘the Dragon’s body’, meant the emperor’s health.↩