TIAN GUAN CI FU Fan fic stories

SWEET SACRIFICE

They had been married for one year now and their sex life was great.

Xie Lian smiled down at the turnips he was slicing for the stew. Admittedly, they'd had a bit of a bumpy start, what with both of them not having any experience. Although they had been eager, it had taken a while until they had been able to go all the way.

Often they'd had to stop midway through because one of them had gotten too overwhelmed to continue, or it didn't work out like they had planned or embarrassment had taken over. But then, after many tries, they had gotten used to each other's and their own bodies.

Since then, their sex life had somewhat... escalated. Xie Lian had never before been so close to another person and he loved it. He loved when Hua Cheng couldn't hold himself back anymore, when his breath started to quicken, the pleasure on his face, the way they were so close when they fucked that it was almost like they were one being.

Xie Lian felt his face flush.

Suffice to say, he was very satisfied with their nightly, and often daily, activities. But nonetheless, he had lately been playing with thoughts of something else.

Looking back, it had probably started when they began talking about their shared past and the fact that for Hua Cheng, Xie Lian was not only his lover but also his god.

Hua Cheng had needed encouragement, but eventually, he started talking in a halting voice about how Xie Lian had given him strength and the will to keep going, as a child, as a soldier, in the kiln, in the endless years they had been separated. How Xie Lian had always been someone larger than life for him, and how he had only really started seeing him as the man he was when they met again, eight hundred years later.

Xie Lian had been conflicted as he listened. He felt grateful that his husband trusted him enough to confide in him. But it had been a long time since he had been the Taizi Dianxia of his youth. He, back then, would have felt elated to be regarded like that, to be the object of such endless devotion. He would have done everything he could to be worthy of that devotion.

He now knew how little the devotion one had for their god had to do with him as an individual. Xie Lian was thankful that he had been able to give his husband solace and drive throughout his life, but he found himself appreciating the devotion Hua Cheng gave him as his husband and lover far more.

And yet, since they started talking about these things, Xie Lian had felt some strange thoughts and feelings bubbling up to the surface of his mind.

He was a whole different person from the one he had been in his youth. He was. He had learned of humility and hardship and the limits of what one person could accomplish, even a god. He wouldn't go back to being that idealistic, untainted prince even if he could.

But still, sometimes he wondered. What if he could revive a little bit of that prince? Just sometimes and only for Hua Cheng. Not really, of course, he would still be himself, but like a mask. A little bit of acting.

Xie Lian was fairly sure his husband would appreciate it.

He knew Hua Cheng sometimes blamed himself for their past, that he wished it could have been different. That his husband sometimes wished he could have protected him back then. Their romance would have started earlier, Xie Lian knew. Even back then, he would have been endlessly charmed by a grown-up Hua Cheng.

And it would be nice to pretend. That all the hardships of his life never happened, that they would never happen. He could put on the mask of his younger self, let himself slip into old, but never forgotten behaviour patterns. He could push Hua Cheng around a little, be bratty, take what he wanted. And treat his husband like the lowly worshipper he sometimes yearned to be treated as.