Author's Notes: Standard disclaimers apply. Also, please note that this fic contains yaoi. Slash. Homosexual content. Thou dost not like, thou shalt not read, and we can all be happy.Okay? Okay!

The Aftermath of the Heat

Even as Liu Bei steps into the bath, he knows that he will never be rid of him. He can scrub himself until his skin is red and raw and still feel Mengde, as if their essences have been burned together. He can sense him all along the tingling in his skin, which he's been foolishly trying to convince himself is due to the bathwater. He can smell him in the steam, and hear him in the sound of his own breath. It seems as if Mengde is laughing. Mocking him, almost.

He hates that he always lets this happen. After preaching countless times to his people about taking their destinies into their own hands, he thinks himself a coward- a hypocrite- for allowing it. Yet he cannot help but think he no longer has a choice.

Those he meets on his daily wanderings through the vast estate tell him that he's lucky, given his own room and fed only what the Master has tasted himself. They joke among themselves, calling him the most well cared-for prisoner there ever was. He only smiles, thinking to himself that they have never been unfortunate enough to see what goes on behind the bronze lock and key of the Master's bedroom late into the night, when all others have gone to sleep.

They have never been taken as quickly and easily as a common harlot, and at a much cheaper price. They have never thought they wanted it.

"You are marked as mine," Mengde has always told him, in the aftermath of the heat, the only time he can muster some semblance of affection for the other man. "You always were."

He wonders if there is a possibility, however slight, that the Lord Cao Cao loves him. It's what drives the thought of food from his mind, leaving all his meals uneaten. Amid the scalding water and the steam of the bathhouse, it's what makes him forget to mind that he won't ever be truly clean again. And, when the evening bell tolls the midnight watch and he is thrust again into their world of half-muttered words, hands fumbling with clasps and silk brocade, it assures him that there will be something beyond the pain. It is his lifeline, his one hope.

And, believing in it, he forgets how easily hope can be extinguished.

Fin