For the first time in a long time, Wei Qing isn’t up for any teasing when they get home. He doesn’t want to strip into bed or play with his food or straddle Yue Fei on the couch. He’s still skirting around, as if waiting for some delayed response, some punishment that can’t be seen by other people to come out. Even his kisses are quick and shy, as if he thinks Yue Fei is going to avoid him. As if such a thing is possible.
Yue Fei is a little lost.
He’s not sure how to approach this, beyond what he’s already done. The idea of forcibly expressing his continued passion while Wei Qing is so skittish leaves a bad taste in his mouth, but Wei Qing isn’t responding to his more cerebral insistances either. So they wash up and he sends himself to his boyfriend’s bed, to wrap around him and match the patterns of their breathing and to desperately search his memory for anything that can be applied to this kind of situation.
Fucking Gao Zhong.
He’d just wanted a nice surprise for Wei Qing. They’d spent so long in those rooms, looking at explosions of color and inky clouds of soothing darkness and he’d wanted something, to start to build a houseful of memories with one another.
And art is for buying, right? For all her clout as the wife of Long Shoujia, their host isn’t particularly well-known, so her prices aren’t completely unreasonable. There’d been one canvas in particular, like a softly stirring universe, that both he and Wei Qing had stopped at for such a long time…
He just wanted to buy his baby a gift, something that they could hang up in their home and think back on as a memento of their first proper event as a couple. As a callback to the sky from the first time that they’d made love. He’d been excited for it, imagining Wei Qing’s face softening in that sentimental way of his. Slipping away for fifteen minutes to arrange it hadn’t even needed thinking about.
And somehow, in the middle of such good intentions, Gao Zhong had managed to drill in. Had ruined the night for Wei Qing. Maybe had even ruined the canvas that would be packed up tomorrow for delivery. Yue Fei’s not even sure he can give it to Wei Qing now. Not that it’s important, not in comparison.
When he’d returned to the roof, it was to the sight of Wei Qing’s trembling back and Gao Zhong’s clawed hand on his darling’s neck, forcing him. Yue Fei arrived right before Wei Qing lost his drinks, and all he could hear was the chipping sound as ice crackled through his heart. The freezing sense of violation worsened as Wei Qing got sick all over that asshole’s face and chest.
Wei Qing isn’t the type to throw up after drinking, not unless he’s already past the point of being able to stand up. Yue Fei knows this, better than anyone. Knows what must have triggered that sickness.
What he’d seen was–
Wei Qing must have been so horrified. So violated.
So confused.
Before tonight, Yue Fei knew that Gao Zhong was a monster, but Wei Qing didn’t. Wei Qing was willing to give him up and Wei Qing knew that Gao Zhong was ambitious and fair-weather in his affections, but his core (flawed) understanding had still been that they shared a pure if temporary first love. That for all his flaws, Gao Zhong was a gentle person, who cared for him.
And now he’d been forced, and embarrassed, and if that wasn’t enough–
Gao Zhong had stared at him over Wei Qing’s shoulder like a snake and clearly tried to provoke a fight between them. It wasn’t enough to strike like a viper– he also wanted to inject some slow-acting venom before letting go.
To move from heaving to plotting again so quickly really proved his poor moral character.
And Wei Qing had worried it would work.
Is still worried, if his demure pliability and silence are any indication. Yue Fei prints kisses on the back of his neck and focuses on making sure that their bodies are in contact, from the soles of Wei Qing’s feet to the lovely bones of his back. Yue Fei hates the thought of Gao Zhong trying to taint their connection to one another. Loathes him trying to assign blame to Wei Qing, just for being the kind of person who freezes when pushed past his endurance.
Is that a crime?
Even if Yue Fei is annoyed, it’s overwhelmingly at Gao Zhong’s presumption and his own failure to block for Wei Qing, not Wei Qing’s panicked response. After all, throwing up over someone touching you shows the same clarity as a fist to the face. Might even be more memorable. And anyway, taking care of Wei Qing, and blaming himself when he fails, has been baked into his bones long before their relationship evolved. But Wei Qing won’t believe him. No matter what he says or does, Wei Qing thinks he’s judging him. Or thinks he should.
Yue Fei is distressed by both options.
The rock weighing down Yue Fei’s heart continues to press down and he finally comes to a decision.
There’s nothing else for it. He bites and sucks against Wei Qing’s neck before rolling him to the side and caging him in his arms, using his body to express his ardor. Thinking about Gao Zhong is making him too annoyed to actually go all the way, but he can certainly kiss and rub and whisper praise and apologies against the shell of Wei Qing’s ear.
Watching Wei Qing go so red beneath him and feeling his body responding, even if he still ducks the praise and parrots back the apologies, proves a better balm than any of Yue Fei’s internal arguments had. Anyway, it’s a pleasant way to reclaim the night. Soft and slow and innocent.
After half an hour of slow kissing and oddly non-sexual grinding, Wei Qing reaches his limit.
“Yue Fei, can’t you hold me responsible a little bit? Or do you really think I’m so hopeless?” Through the haze, he sounds genuinely concerned. Yue Fei takes a break from flitting over his chest to respond.
“I’m not a saint, and I’m not made of stone. If you went messy places, if I saw you kissing or touching others, if you acted ambiguously–” Yue Fei stiffens at just the mental image. “I’d be… tormented. Crushed. I’d know I couldn’t keep you, that I wasn’t good enough. I’d probably blame myself in an equally foolish fashion as you’re doing now.” He kisses his forehead. “But that person tonight, I know it wasn’t that. How could I blame you?”
His voice drops lower and lower as he continues– now he’s the one who isn’t willing to make eye contact. Wei Qing surges up and wraps his arms around his neck, having stored up all his reciprocation into one flurry of rather desperate kisses.
“As if I could ever-”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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—
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About grief and control and societal expectations of masculinity. It’s uncomfortable and feels like a cop-out, but she’s… tenacious in leading and probing, despite him feeling like he’s doing most of the talking. Shrinks. Can’t live without them, can’t trick them into not noticing your issues…
Wei Qing had intended to blow her off, but– beyond his desire to pretend and avoid, he wants to get better. He’s fine feeling like shit, even prefers it sometimes, but he doesn’t want Yue Fei to have to work so hard to reassure him. Surely it’s not good for his circadian rhythm, to stay up so late praising and pampering and pandering to him.
Wei Qing loves being protected, but he doesn’t want to need it. He wants to be strong enough to assert himself, to avoid bad people, to stand his ground. To not repeat that night on the roof with Yang Wushe, or the one with Gao Zhong. He wants to be free and clear, so that he doesn’t have to worry about some predatory pecking order, or his own lackluster response to force.
Vomiting and throwing yourself off of buildings don’t lead to happy endings, he’s pretty sure.
And until he gets stronger, he wants to be emotionally healthy enough that when he does screw up, he doesn’t compound his mistakes by making Yue Fei take care of him. He doesn’t want his own fragility to take away Yue Fei’s right to be pissed or disappointed. He’s pissed just thinking about it!
Yue Fei’s allowed to have negative emotions too, to not always have to baby him. So Dr. Maki ends up hearing all about it, as he coos at the pigeons flying past the balcony and curses his own failings and listens to the soft thumps of Yue Fei on the treadmill two rooms away.
Even after the call, he sits and feels the sun and shrugs his shoulders, and rubs his neck, as if he can still feel an unwanted hand on his nape. It’s only his fondness for the sun and the softly thudding reminder of Yue Fei’s presence that allows him to overcome his queasiness and focus on anger instead.
Really, the fucking nerve.
Dr. Maki’s right! Even if he’s weak, what gives Gao Zhong the right to take advantage? Who is he to show back up and try to carry on, as if Wei Qing’s been waiting for him all this time? As if he’s someone that can be put down and picked up at Gao Zhong’s convenience? How can the end of a relationship look so different to the two people in it? How can Gao Zhong think that he would-?
As if Yue Fei isn’t a hundred times better than him. Than them both!
Even if he’s a mess, he’s a mess that Yue Fei is interested in, and that means that Gao Zhong should keep his paws and his shitty kissing technique to himself! Whatever the opposite of rose-colored glasses are, Wei Qing is now wearing them, and it makes him want to discredit their entire prior relationship.
Everything from Gao Zhong’s gift-giving to his technique in bed is now being disdained by a certain infuriated ex. This compulsion, combined with Yue Fei telling him not to look at the guy and Wei Qiwan blocking in front of him– it makes Wei Qing more sure than ever that his sweet first love wasn’t actually any sort of good thing.
After all, he knows that with the exception of Yue Fei, he’s never had much talent for picking men.
He spends longer than he intends, sprawled out on the balcony, hesitating over whether or not to stew longer or badger his brother into confessing exactly what’s wrong with that shitty first boyfriend of his. Yue Fei breaks his stalemate by pressing a sweaty kiss into his hair and dragging him in for a shower and a little relaxation.
It’s very effective.
—
The key to Wei Qing’s heart is not his stomach, but his feet. That’s the conclusion Yue Fei comes to, as he and Wei Qing play footsie on the couch and footsie at lunch and footsie in the lounge of his Vice Presidential office at Wei Securities. He’s no fetishist, but if the feet are attached to Wei Qing…
Yue Fei’s not opposed.
The normalcy of heading back to work, with the innocent sweetness of hooking one another’s ankles and sliding across each other’s calves is exactly what the doctor ordered. It soothes Yue Fei’s desire to hover around his partner and is a gentle enough affirmation of love that Wei Qing doesn’t overthink it.
Plus, even spec sheets on robots are cuter when introduced by someone shyly rubbing their toe against your instep. Yue Fei almost learns something, which… given his ambivalence towards most technology, is really saying something.
The day gets better when dinner together turns into dinner with Fang Yichen. It’s proof positive that Wei Qing’s whole world isn’t a fight for power, that even when he was with Gao Zhong, there were people that just… liked him, without needing benefits or having expectations attached to it.
Well, only cute and disarming benefits. They’re at a grill-your-own meat outfit with warm booths and gentle music. Nice lychee cocktails too– Wei Qing knows that those are 70% of the reason Fang Yichen always chooses this place when it’s his week to plan. Boring, comfortable, perfect.
“Be honest. You’re using me to get out of monthly reports!”
“Ah? Ah–” Fang Yichen fishes out a shrimp like he’s storing up for winter before waving his hands in defeat. “-ai, can’t you at least let me get a full meal before you expose me? What if my boss hears and pulls me out by my ear?!”
“Your boss has nothing better to do than spy on you at dinner?”
“Given who I’m having dinner with? Yes!” Fang Yichen leans back and pats his non-existent potbelly. “Honestly, it’s like that big man has turned into my second mother, only instead of trying to match me with the cousin of the sister-in-law of the accountant downstairs, he’s trying to cultivate feelings between the two of us!”
Fang Yichen gulps his cocktail and looks hunted. Whispers like he’s telling a ghost story.
“Do you know, he called me Xiao Chen?! At a meeting?! In front of God and everybody? I swear, I thought his skin was being worn by a particularly out-of-touch alien. I almost wanted to check my paternity before, in the next breath, he mentioned yours and my connection.”
“Should I be expecting a scandal?” Wei Qing cooks a slice of Kobe and places it on Yue Fei’s plate.
“He wouldn’t dare! He’s just– you know, the old guard, think all business is just handshakes and shared interests. Talent is good but talented friends are better, and you’re just too eyecatching. I feel like an imposter, but no matter how I explain, he keeps winking and calling me a good seed!”
“Awww, I’m Xiao Chen’s friend?” There is more footsie. Poor Fang Yichen has no idea.
“Not if you keep looking like that! If my boss sees, he might really start to dare!”
Wei Qing snorts and steals some cola from Yue Fei’s straw, batting his eyelashes at the indirect kiss under a certain oblivious friend’s nose. Friends. Yue Fei knows how much it means to Wei Qing. Even if a little of that friend’s passion is related to avoiding end-of-month reports, Wei Qing’s not put off.
He might even like it, like being relied on like he was back in university, where just his name was enough to get study passes and special consideration. He knows Wei Qing likes being needed, likes being someone that people want their subordinates to make connections with. Knows it makes him feel like his old self again. And anyway, reports are monthly, but the dinners or lunches are weekly. Yue Fei knows that Wei Qing has carefully protected each meeting, growing more and more at ease with every non-missed appointment.
He’s even at ease enough to steal a kiss when Fang Yichen goes to the bathroom.
To broach a forbidden subject when Fang Yichen comes back.
“Hey, YiYi~”
“Uggggggh, whyyyyy?”
“Ahem, honorable Mr. Fang?”
“Worse!”
“You who hoards lychee like a hamster.” Wei Qing tosses a balled-up straw wrapper at his face.
“Tough but fair.”
“Did you ever get the sense that Gao Zhong was off? Or had… I don’t know, weird motives?”
“Huh?”
“It’s nothing, he’s just back and acting like a complete creep and it’s making me wonder if, you know, my bad judgment started earlier than I noticed.” Wei Qing’s face is carefully casual, like this is a spur-of-the-moment tangent, but Yue Fei can feel his tension. He massages his thigh in encouragement.
It helps that Fang Yichen is providing his own one-man theater across the spread of dishes.
“Wei-ge, you know that I’m a pure and innocent flower right? Only kissed three times! And you’re asking me about relationships? Ai, alright, alright, don’t get a cramp from backpedaling, let me think… Hmm…”
Another cocktail arrives, Yue Fei plays with Wei Qing’s fingers under the table.
“Ah, I guess… maybe at the start, I wondered if he was as sincere in his affections? Then again, you’re my first gay friend, so maybe I was judging him based on normal relationships? Ah, not that you’re not normal! I-”
Fang Yichen shakes his hands so much that the whole table looks like it’s experiencing a small earthquake, and the deveined shrimp look to be making a conga line. Wei Qing waves off the implication that liking men is abnormal. Small misspoken words like this aren’t enough to ruffle someone who has had a million more (worse) things said about his romances. It helps that he knows Fang Yichen is genuinely well-intentioned, and just… easily flustered by matters of love. He’d bought him an apology cake once, when he walked in on a kiss in college.
Unfortunately, the grass is beaten and the snake startled– no amount of casualness can get Fang Yichen to reopen the conversation on Wei Qing’s ex. If he keeps asking, Fang Yichen will probably drink himself silly trying to avoid it.
At least the food and the company are top-notch. And insincere seems like a perfect description of that person.
—
Maybe Gao Zhong shakes something loose, maybe Wei Qing is just looking for an outlet. Either way, his annoyance at his blacklisted ex is enough to make him want to annoy someone easier to handle. Like Yang Wushe.
Of course, it’s insane to call him easy to handle. In his last life, the man had run him in circles to the point of literally dying. But… Come on! He’s reborn! He knows how to avoid that kind of ‘killing me softly’ substitute game. He can’t remember enough to short the stock market and there’s some dumbass compulsion keeping him from being able to confess his rebirth to his boyfriend, but surely, he can do some face-slapping?
Right? If he can’t even do that much, he’s really going to-
Okay, even if he can’t do anything else, being with Yue Fei is reason enough for rebirth. But he can shake his fist at some underworld manager.
…
Anyway, now that Project Lagan has turned into a packaged and shipped product, he needs something to fill up his time. And who knows. Maybe making Yang Wushe reflect or die or become a hermit in the Arctic will give him back some of the power that he feels like he’s missing.
It’s that or bug his brother, and Wei Qiwan is still too much of a landmine, even before taking into account the way Wei Qing’s thoughts turn to the weirdness with Gao Zhong every time they end up occupying the same space lately.
Despite the odd shiver of paranoia, Wei Qing decides to peek a little bit at Yang Wushe.
Not by contacting him. Fuck that. He’s death-seeking. But by looking into the threads that he’d ignored in his last life, by remembering those articles and keywords on the reports that he’d tossed aside when Yue Fei tried to save him in the past-future. He feels like he’s doing something wrong, something dangerous, but there’s also a thread of excitement, now that his life is smooth enough that he can do things like…
Revenge.
Or at least, fantasizing about it a bit. No harm in that.
So in between bouts of learning to cook and cursing his pulls in his mobile games and trying to recapture the glory of cute little surveillance robots, Wei Qing digs just a little bit. Into the Yang family, who he always thought were mostly above board, into Yang Wushe, who he once thought was genuinely into him, into the impressive suite of security tools that he never thought to use in his last life, because evidently, his brain was broken!
The Yangs–
Shit.
There’s the gray market, but this level of failing to hide it is pretty damn offensive. No wonder Wei Qiwan called him a suicidal little idiot when he defended Yang Wushe and his family as ‘people he was just scared to compare himself against.’
Some things, even if the government tells you that they’re okay, you shouldn’t jump in and accept it. Some money can’t be earned. Extraordinary rendition is scary enough, but in the Wei Securities files, there’s enough references to certain black holdings and offshore properties that Wei Qing knows that the work isn’t gray, it’s black.
It’s… what happens after rendition, when the government can’t do what they want if they hold that person in their hands. When an outside force is needed for the distance and deniability it offers.
It’s the son of the opposition politician, who ‘runs away from home’ and is never seen again, whose ransom demand is used as a way of proving corruption before the line goes silent. It’s the female film empress who never marries, but disappears when word of mouth says she threatened someone that was supporting her from a place too high to escape from. It’s the logistics of the oddly familiar faces that appear in brothel busts and the unclaimed ‘vagrants’ that have oddly excellent teeth and noble handwriting.
Wei Qing spends longer than he’d like to admit, heaving fruitlessly in his bathroom after seeing the edges of it.
Wei Qiwan isn’t dumb enough to actually investigate, so the information is limited. It’s more a list of places and people and topics to avoid than any kind of unified surveillance or narrative.
After all, there’s certain water that you can’t step into at all without the undertow dragging you in. But there’s the rough shape of just how filthy money can be, and Wei Qing’s sinking feeling, as he realizes how many of their romantic trips in the last life were no doubt funded by the burned-out bodies and destroyed legacies of those who power deemed offensive.
As he realizes how exactly ‘innocent’ Yang Wushe afforded that apartment and the hotel room he fell to his death from.
—
A cup shatters on the floor, Wei Qing jumps up.
“Yue- A’Fei? What’s wrong?” He rushes forward, ignoring the likely outcome of slippers vs. glass shards, and checks Yue Fei’s hand. He flips it up and down and checks between his fingers and up his wrist but finds nothing. And the other hand just holds–
A phone?
Yue Fei pulls him into a bruising hug, and Wei Qing’s confusion mounts as Yue Fei shivers lightly around him. Leans down and kiss-bites-sucks his neck like they’ve jumped right into all of Wei Qing’s particular fantasies about marks and possession. It doesn’t go any farther– Yue Fei doesn’t want to hurt him.
It’s just-
Gao Zhong was jarring enough. And now, the always-silent internet alert that he’d set almost a year ago, when he was still determined to leave Wei Qing, had been activated. In his email was a dry list of files accessed from the phone that he’d set up for Wei Qing.
All about Yang Wushe, and the Yang family.
Yue Fei doesn’t know how to feel about it, but his first impulse is panic.
Pure panic, that somewhere where his eyes couldn’t see, that person had slithered his way back in. After all, if Gao Zhong could take advantage of his distraction to assault Wei Qing so brazenly, there’s nothing to say that Yang Wushe couldn’t have had a re-do on his dreadful first impression.
Yue Fei slips his phone into his pocket, walks Wei Qing back against the bookshelves in their living room, and loves him thoroughly.
Author’s Corner:
Plot? In my story? It’s more likely than you might expect.
(But softboy hours are also coming along, as with their powers combined, these two learn how to fuck shit up for certain people while focusing on loving one another~ and dragging Wei Qiwan. Obv.)
Ahnnn I can’t tell you how much I look forward to new chapters.
Thank you! For reading and for commenting, I really can’t express enough how much comments mean to me, especially when it comes to writing and posting.
You dont want me to comment on ur chapters. Ask ikstrordinari. They deal with my many comments and I’m skeptically analytical at points. Anyway thx for the novel. I’ll be nice for now 😛
Revenge, what a sweet word!!
What do we want? Revenge!
When do we want it? Between the fluff!
I agree with WeiWei rebirth is for face slapping ahaha !
Thank you for the chapter 🍰
One of my favourite aspects of it!
But does that mean that our boys are FINALLY going to have the Talk?
👀
I also agree with him and funnily enough, face-slapping has to be one of my favorite tropes, which is why it’s a shame that so far it’s been limited in GTF. Wei Qing and Yue Fei are just going to have to figure out how to face slap in a safe way, but even if it’s not as exciting as in against-the-sky power-up novels, I have faith in them.
Thank you for the chapter!
Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment!
Oh no he scared the crap out of himself and Yue Fei with his curiosity! Considering what we just found out, I can’t help wondering what Wei Qiwan could do if he had discovered that Yang Wushe was the one he was looking for earlier in Wei Qing’s past. I was hoping someone would tell him, because even if it didn’t happen this time, we know he did something to someone. Now I don’t want Wei Qiwan getting into it at all!
This actually leads to an ethical issue a bit later in the story (trolley problem? trolley problem!)
That means Wei Qing wasn’t completely paranoid about how close Yue Fei was with Wei Qiwan after he left him – after all, you don’t plan a kamikaze revenge with someone who’s just the help! But he was wrong about their motivation for working closely together. I look forward to the “accident” that takes him out.
A belated comment but it’s funny that Wei Qiwan is already married without him knowing it! 😅😅