Our first published story!
Kathy and Lin wrote the basic story idea and the framework and Adeline took it from there and wrote it up.
He sits by the window, leaning his face against the open air. His eyes are closed, but in the undulating parts of his mind, he can clearly hear the grating of the stars dragging along the sky.
So the chaos is over. The wars have ended. The plowmen put down their beaten pikes and return to the fold of the earth. Earlier, he had laid his swords and weapons outside on the ground like offerings to an angry god. But he could not bring himself to leave them. He wonders if the artifacts of war dream metal dreams.
But he is glad that finally the storm has ended, or at most, he is relieved. He is glad like a man sick and weary to his heart, like a farmer peering over devastated lands and thinking, 'At least I am still in one piece. At least I still have my life.' Perhaps glad is the wrong word. What he feels is nothing akin to happiness. His sense of relief is the kind felt by a tortured prisoner when he finally falls and feels no more. Man's heart is not made to endure. A hero's heart is made to go in one glory, explode like a supernova, and wither and perish like dust. But sitting in the oily darkness of his room, Xiahou Dun does not feel anything like a hero. He has never considered himself anything more than one man in the world. But he can do what heroes cannot: he can endure.
Slip. There is nothing but a shimmer in the dusky confines of the room. Yet, as deliberately as a stone falls, a single line of light crosses the room, making a line down the man's back before falling outside into the night.
He does not need to look. "Cousin."
"Dun-Dun! You know me by my opening a door?"
"Have you come to say good-bye?" His tone is respectful and demure as always, but it is clear his question is a direct accusation.
"How did you know it was me?"
"Maybe you should have just left. It might have been easier." His tone is blunt but oddly hurt. He does not mean what he says, but he does not know what else to say.
"Now, don't be cross with me, Dun-Dun!" his lord says sweetly, using his pet name. "What, do you want me to turn around and go back?"
"No!" Before he realizes it is only a ruse, he throws himself around, revealing a trembling face. "I am sorry, Lord Cao."
Cao Cao sighs and sits down, patting his thigh. It is permission for Xiahou Dun to come lay down on his lap, which the general takes with a sort of solemn surrender.
He moves to get comfortable, then puts a hand on his cousin's knee like he always does. Slowly, Cao Cao moves a hand and begins to stroke Xiahou Dun's hair and mustache.
"A lot of people will take it hard. It is such irony that you, who takes it the most painfully of all, is the only one to predict this."
Xiahou Dun says nothing. He could beg to accompany Lord Cao, but he is needed here still. He could beg his lord to stay, but his lord is needed under the open skies, wandering the earth alone. He pushes his face against the soft silk shirt, inhaling the spicy-warm scent as if he could keep it there forever. "I don't want you to go."
"I know you don't."
"I don't want to never see you again."
"I know you don't."
"So why?" He already knows why.
"If I remain, my vision for this country will never be. What we have been fighting for will never take root. You don't want that, do you, Dun-Dun? You wouldn't want that?"
He remains silent. He has never doubted priorities. But his cousin's glorious vision for a self-renewing world, is it truly worth more than something very important, something say, love?
"I wouldn't want that either," Cao Cao says soothingly, continuing to stroke his cousin's hair. He has taken the silence as assent. "After all our sacrifices. If they were to be in vain, that would be a terrible thing."
What about the sacrifice now? "This hurts quite a lot."
Cao Cao gets up, and Xiahou Dun think he is leaving. To his surprise, his cousin comes to lie down next to him, facing his back. Slowly, a white arm comes to wrap around Xiahou Dun's body.
"I am sorry, cousin," Cao Cao breathes, his nose brushing the general's ear. "Truly, I am sorry, for myself and for you."
Xiahou Dun's stillness and silence is as close to surly defiance as such as man as him can get.
A hand presses up over his heart. Whu-pump. Whu-pump. Press it harder, please, feel through the thin silk and rough cotton. Xiahou Dun thinks that if his cousin pressed a hand against his bare skin, then Lord Cao would feel the slow, ripping cracks of a heart breaking.
Angrily, Xiahou Dun curls his knees up to his chest and stays silent.
"Come now! Yuanrang, are you angry at me?"
The use of his style name surprises him, but he stays silent. When a man is hurt, he bleeds. So Xiahou Dun bleeds.
Cao Cao sighs and rolls over to his other side so that their noses touch. Xiahou Dun keeps his eyes sullenly closed, but still, he can feel his lord's soft breath on his face, the tickle of their mustaches brushing, and the unjudging light of the moon. His silence is the closest thing he can get to defiance. Even so, he cannot stop himself from inhaling deeper.
Their lips touch, softly, like clouds parting. First there is a light kiss, then a deeper one, and another, until Xiahou Dun stops his display of sulkiness and returns the favor. Cao Cao's tongue is so limber and firm, and the inside of his mouth is moist and hot it nearly scalds him. Xiahou Dun presses his own tongue into his lord's mouth, tasting the slick oily richness.
"Do you think… That… One more night would make it hurt any less or more?" Cao Cao asks when they slip away slightly to breathe harder.
Xiahou Dun is silent again, but this time, it is an agreement.
The moon heaves sluggishly through the sky, leaving trails of light in the clouds. Below in the world of earth, some people are laughing, some people are crying, and some people wake up, look up, and wonder if here is anything between them and the eternity all around.
In Xiahou Dun's room, two men wind around each other in endless movement, pressing in on each other as if they wished to merge.
The night passes on and hours wind away. Loud moaning filters out from the open window until they rise to shouts and yelps.
Right when the first sunlight blushes, Cao Cao gives a loud grunt and thrusts deep inside Xiahou Dun, who throws his head back and gnashes his teeth in pleasure. Everything is hot and sticky. Their bare bodies are slicked with sweat and fluids, and the carnal sounds of flesh smacking against flesh echoes in the early morning dimness.
It is no wonder that no one desires to rise up this early in the morning. The fog is damp on the ground and the world is trapped in a sort of primordial twilight between gray and mist. It is the time when a man looks around and realizes that he is cold, wet, and all alone. It is the time when past sorrows float before his face.
Xiahou Dun lets out a long, low moan as everything catches up to him all at once. Cao Cao's thrusting shaft pounds him into a sheer senseless orgy of fleshly explosions. He spews, spews long and hard, and involuntarily clamps his rear opening down on his lord.
Cao Cao gasps as his cousin tightens. In the middle of his rolling world, he shouts aloud a question.
"Even the tortoise does not live forever, so is it man's true nature to sink down and disappear forever?"
Lord Cao then releases too, filling and filling Xiahou Dun until white fluid runs down his buttocks. He closes his eyes, willing the moment with his beloved general to go on forever.
Xiahou Dun sinks down with a sigh, suddenly aware of all the aches and pains shooting through him.
But Cao Cao stands up.
Slowly, as the dim almost-light from the breaking morning fills the room, Cao Cao dresses himself.
Xiahou Dun watches him, watches every roll of muscle, every blink of eyes. His eyes are filled with a sort of resignation, a sort of sad acceptance. It is, after all, his nature to endure. He watches, knowing that soon, the departure with come. Parting has two sides as always, to be separated. He knows that soon his lord, his cousin, the man he loves, will ride away, to be swallowed by the open solitude and emptiness of the sky.
He wants to follow. He wants nothing more than to follow, like he has always done and loved. But he loves that man, that Cao Cao, and loves him so much that thought it is pain, he will stay behind and do what needs to be done.
Cao Cao finishes dressing and sits down next to Xiahou Dun one last time. Wordlessly, the general extends and arm, and Lord Cao bares a fingernail and makes a long, deep slit down Xiahou Dun's inner arm, from his wrist to his inner elbow. He then extends his own arm and waits.
Xiahou Dun keeps his nails trimmed short, but with enough pressing, soon, a long red line opens on Cao Cao's arm.
Silently, they press their cuts together and watch the blood run and mingle.
When they both put their arms down, their eyes meet.
What to say? What to describe? Nothing will ever be enough to recall that moment, nothing except for a slow, deep, but accepted cut, past skin, past flesh, past bone, to the heart.
They kiss one more time. It lasts forever. Then, Cao Cao gets up and leaves, closing the door softly behind him.
Even now, he dreams of them meeting again, pressing their scars to each other and searching each other's faces for a sign, any sign, that they might be forgiven.