Thank you so much for my dear beta: Blind_Alchemist! Not only I made her depressed over my stories, I think I made her lost her sleep too TT_TT. I am so thankful!

Summary: A boy who never depends on other was forced to give his trust to a very suspicious stranger. Could he, really? Dominant Play.

Warning: AU (Alternate Universe); Mature theme.

Pairing: Arthur X Yao.

Dedicated to all my wonderful readers: Ka_Yakusoku, Blind_Alchemist, wickedhpnerd, Nutty Emmy, Iggychu, and all of you! Especially this wonderful person Panda Aru who gave me the leeway to cheat out of its constant messiness.

Enjoy!

He was being followed.

His feet started to walk faster. His senses sharpened even more, making him even more aware of the person following his back. His feet started to run, his chest started thumping louder and louder. Wondering whether he was still alive, he turned back.

The shadow of a man. It was pitch black, but weirdly, he knew that the man was grinning behind him.

He ran faster. Through the woods, sometimes through long corridors, sometime open roads. But he was always alone, except for the man following him. And he was always being chased.

He couldn't speak. He wouldn't speak. His pride was too high to render him to ask for any help. So he ran. Ran and ran. But the man's breathing came closer and closer. Always faster than his steps…

And then he felt two arms catch him and hug his hips closer.

"…" the man whispered.

Yao opened his eyes, panting. It was the dream again. Being chased, always by the same person. A man. Not much taller than him. Just tall enough for Yao to stand and put his head on the man's chest. The man was always shrouded in pitch black, like some kind of shadow. And Yao always woke up when his hips were captured.

He felt vulnerable. He seldom dreamed. But every time he dreamt about that dream, his day turned unbearable. And he could already see how—it was Monday, the first day of the week. He needed to be back at work.

Yao looked at the small digital watch beside his bed. It was three a.m. in the morning. Sighing, he rose from the bed and went to the toilet-slash-bathroom. He knew it was pointless to try and return to sleep. He couldn't go back to sleep no matter how hard he tried. He guessed it was because of his own fear of having to face the same dreams again.

Yao looked at himself in the mirror. Golden eyes stared back, watching his small nose and rosy lips. Yao bit his bottom lip. No matter how many times he saw himself in the mirror, he just couldn't get used to the fact that he got his mother's face. He disliked it because everybody looked down upon him because of his face. His lithe and petite build didn't help either. Everybody always thought, silently, that it was a waste Yao was born as a boy. He wasn't that short, but since Yao never got his growth spurt, he was always being mistaken as a girl from the back. And he felt haunted by the face, as though his mother suddenly returned from the dead and was watching him every time Yao looked into the mirror.

He hated the face so much.

But his looks sometimes helped him, although Yao felt it was ironic. Because of his looks, he was able to get the scholarship in his university. Because of his build, many of his professors desired him and Yao was able to get high marks or prolonged assignment-making periods without a hassle. It wasn't as though Yao wasn't smart enough, but with so little time and so many things to do, sometimes there just wasn't enough time to finish his assignments.

He lived alone. It had been that way ever since he had first developed enough self-consciousness for thought. He had been born in a very traditional family where family pride was everything. And he had been born from the mistress of the head family's master. Naturally, he wasn't accepted into the family. His mother was severely emotionally harassed by the first wife, propelling the woman into channelling her misery and suffering and inflicting these onto her own son.

Being loved one second and hated the next by one's own mother made Yao grow into a harsh and cold boy. He took care of his mother, while receiving harsh insults and gentle kisses from the crazy woman. His mother seemed to be forgetting the fact that he was her son; that Yao was a child, when she was the one who was supposed to be protecting him. Between her episodes and bouts of hysteria, Yao tried his best to take care of them both, keeping their small apartment liveable and finishing his school peacefully.

Granted, being a bastard son with a deranged mother made him the target of bullies. Children were cruel. They bullied the weak, suppressing those who couldn't fight back. Yao was the perfect target, since he had nobody to protect his back. And thus, Yao was forced to mature way faster than he should. He tried his best to skip grades, just to free himself from the gangs of immature children around him. It was easy at first, but as he entered junior and senior high school, jumping grades became harder. In the end he succeeded into graduating from high school when he was only fifteen.

And graduation year, ironically, became a literally life-defining year. His mother committed suicide, cutting her own wrist while Yao was away at school, attending the graduating ceremony. So Yao graduated both from being a student and a child at the same time. In some way, he was relieved, for this meant he could finally be left alone.

Every month, his mother's family sent him money, as a form of compensation, for his. When they heard that his mother died, they offered some extra money for the funeral. But Yao opted to cremate his mother's body, saving the extra money for his university fee. Because of his immature maturity, Yao knew that he needed to plan his own future and take care of himself. True to his expectations, the flow of money from the family stopped once Yao's mother's body was cremated and submitted to nearby small temple. And so Yao started to support himself by getting part time jobs.

And so, he struggled between jobs and uni. Between the two, he had so little time for himself, and he used it all to rest and sleep. His days passed peacefully enough, and all Yao wanted was to finish his medical degree in five years and work as a specialist. He needed the money. He needed the prestige and reputation. He wanted to show the world that he was able to achieve success, so he could laugh at all the children who used to bully him, and so he could look down upon the family who made his childhood hell.

He wanted revenge. But he held grudges for everything, so he needed to be perfectly successful before he could secure his perfect revenge.

"…and so, I don't think I can grant you another week to do this assignment, Mr. Wang."

Yao's face stayed impassive, but his head was sneering in disgust. He disliked having to lick his anatomy professor's arse, but the man loved Yao's body so much that he used every chance he got to trap Yao and make the petite boy sleep with him.

"Unless," the professor smirked underneath his neatly trimmed, snowy moustache, "you can spare your… weekend, and I will be your supervisor. I can give you… some instruction to help you finish the assignment. You know I want you to receive the highest grade possible. You are a very remarkable student."

Yao closed off his emotions and passively nodded at the suggestion. He knew that the man just needed a lick and he would purr like a kitten in Yao's hand. The perverted professor was a neko (as in, bottom) and he couldn't forget the way Yao made him cum last time. The man had a boy fetish; he loved to be done by a young boy—despite his ripe age—from the back, and Yao's body fulfilled his every desire.

The professor nodded. "Then, I expect to see you in the lab this Saturday at 10 pm?"

Yao tilted his head and smiled meaningfully. "Yes, professor."

Yao pretended he didn't notice the growing arousal in the front of the man's front pants.

The night was calm, and there weren't many customers in that high end Chinese Palace restaurant. Yao let himself rest against the chair, pretending to wipe the table while watching the lack of customers. Of course, it was Monday night and nobody would want to spend their night outside. Everybody wanted to rest early from the rush of the first day of work.

Yao saw the time on his small, old mobile phone. It was almost eleven o'clock, and his shift would be finished in another half an hour. He would go home and study for the weekly test next week and then sleep for five hours before waking up to attend tomorrow's practical class in the university hospital. He needed to be sharp since he had no time to rehearse the lecture content. He forced himself to memorize most of the things he was told from the very beginning of each class, thus eliminating the need to rehearse right before exams.

And then his stomach grumbled. Yeah, he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast.

"You haven't eaten dinner yet, have you?" suddenly a voice asked him from behind. Yao held his breath and turned around, to find a blond, Caucasian man standing right behind him. Yao swallowed and composed himself.

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Sit with me and eat."

"I am really sorry sir, but it's inappropriate…"

The said man smirked and waved at the manager of the restaurant. The manager came and bowed deeply, "Yes, Mr. Kirkland, anything I can help you with?"

"Release this waitress and let her sit with me for dinner tonight."

Upon hearing the request, Yao felt his face burn in anger and shame. The man mistook him for a woman! Was the man blind, or moronic enough to ignore the fact that Yao was not wearing a waitress' uniform?

"Yes, sure." The manager bowed even deeper and turned to Yao. "Yao, accompany this gentleman for dinner."

Yao felt insulted but kept quiet. He nodded and put down the cloth in his hand. The Caucasian smiled and put his hand on Yao's shoulder, possessively. Yao felt like kicking the moronic bastard, but he held himself from doing something that could render him fired. The hourly wage in that restaurant was twice as much as at other places.

So he held his calm, as well as his charm. The man in front of him must be influential enough to actually make his manager bow deeply and comply with his request. Yao followed the blond into one of the private rooms, waited until the man took his seat, and took the seat directly across the man in return.

The man chuckled. "I am not that scary, you know. Come and sit beside me."

Yao nodded. He moved to the seat directly beside the man, and noticed how the Caucasian followed his every move like a hawk. Yao held his composure and smiled.

"Thank you for inviting me to dinner, sir."

The man nodded. "What's your name?"

"Yao. Wang Yao, sir."

"Weird name."

The direct insult didn't hurt Yao. He knew his name was weird in foreigner's ears. So he nodded. "Yes. It's a unique name even in Asian societies, and I don't expect a foreigner like sir to understand the beauty of its meaning."

The Caucasian stopped smiling and squinted his eyes in disgust. "…You dare to insult me?"

"No, not even in one's wildest dreams, sir. I wouldn't dare." Yao batted his long dark eyelashes as an apology. "I am sorry if you feel…. insulted."

The man smirked. "I see. You are …different. But I should have known. Why aren't you wearing a waitress' uniform? Aren't you a girl?"

Yao scowled for a split of second before smiling. "I am sorry to crush your dream, sir, for I am naturally and have always been a male."

"Interesting."

The man didn't speak any further because the food came. Yao watched as his colleagues put some of the signature dishes of the restaurant in front of them. It was too much for the two of them to eat, let alone by the man himself. Yao wondered whether the man was just a glutton or a flashy spender. Each dish, equivalently, cost almost five hundred dollars.

The man took a pair of chopsticks. Yao noted that he used them without difficulty and that showed the man had been spending much time in Asian-cultured countries. Yao watched as the man took some meat and pointed it at Yao's face.

"Open your mouth."

Another insult. Yao held his breath. The man wanted to spoon feed him like a baby. Yao's head started to spin from anger and from a growing headache. What did he do that made the man take his damned interest in Yao? But he kept his calm and took his own pair of chopsticks.

"I can feed myself perfectly fine, sir."

"I never said you could take it by on your own, Wang Yao. Here, don't let this nice piece of Peking duck keep hanging in the air."

In the end, he opened his mouth and leaned forward to accept the food. The man smirked when Yao closed his mouth and chewed. Really delicious, especially when he hadn't eaten anything since a slice of bread in the morning. Yao chewed slowly, savouring every taste.

"You have potential."

The man's words snapped Yao's consciousness back to the reality. Yes, he was inside a room with a weird Caucasian who insisted upon hand feeding him. Yao tilted his head carefully asking.

"…Potential for what, sir?"

"Do you want more money?"

The question alarmed Yao. "I am perfectly content on my current wage, thank you very much."

"I am not asking you to do a risky job. But you need to put your trust in me before you work for me. Here, take some more meat."

Yao took the meat and chewed while staring at the man closely.

"Working in this kind of place must be tiring. And you still work until this time of the day. If you accept my offer, you will get twice of your average weekly wage with only one day job. And you can do it on weekend. How's that sound?"

Yao weighed the offer in his head. It was, honestly, a very intriguing offer. If he could collect that much of money in just a day, he could rest more and do better in his studies. Better yet, he could finish all his assignments and not need to spend his night fucking an old-as-dirt professor.

"…What's the job, aru?"

The man smiled, knowing that he had already picked Yao's interest. "My name is Arthur Kirkland."

Yao rolled his eyes. The man answered Yao's question with his own name, as if the name was important enough for everybody to know. And of course, Yao never heard of the name. The man might be a celebrity or something, but for Yao, celebrity status was useless.

"I am sorry, sir. I am not really familiar with these kinds of…"

"Ah. Refreshing." Arthur chuckled and sipped his tea. "I like you already. I really want you to work for me. Just a question, are you comfortable with nudity?"

Yao's mind flashed to the memories of parading without clothes in the lab, for his professor to see. Yes, of course. Yao felt comfortable with nudity. But the question made him even surer that the job was illegal.

"I am not a whore, sir."

"I am not asking you to do any sexual acts. It's perfectly legal, in the name of art." The man answered as if he could read Yao's suspicions.

"…Are you an artist of some sort?" Yao asked gently, not wanting to be pulled into a mess just because of a generous offer. He knew better than to recklessly take a suspicious offer. He had nobody to help him if he failed or fell into trouble, so Yao needed to always put his guard up.

"I think I am." Arthur smiled. "So… yes? Or no?"

That explained the eccentricity of the man. Yao looked down on his plate, calculating whether his answer would make him lose a free dinner or bring him a calamity.

"…I will answer you once I finish this dinner, sir." Yao cunningly answer, and proceeded to take some vegetables from the dishes spread in front of them. Arthur stopped smiling and laughed.

"Fine. Let's enjoy this dinner, purely. I really like you already. You are a challenge, Wang Yao."

Yao ignored the man's chattering and filled himself with as much food as he could. The chance to have that kind of fancy dinner was too good to pass on.

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