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SUMMER TEST DRIVE MEME
⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ TEST DRIVE MEME:
Welcome to RUBILYKSKOYE — a dark, horror-smut game where player choices will drive a mod-run storyline about the world and its NPCs. This test drive meme provides a medley of prompts evoking the game's general tone.
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the coming event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: nudity, D/S mechanics, public sex, aphro, death, missing persons.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
FAQ ✧ SETTING ✧ CALENDAR ✧ RESERVES ✧ APPLICATIONS
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the coming event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: nudity, D/S mechanics, public sex, aphro, death, missing persons.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
IN THE WOODS SOMEWHERE
The chirping of partridges in the treetops rouses you. Light barely filters through the canopy, just enough to suggest daylight. By the time it reaches the forest floor, the light has taken on a sickly green. You lie amongst the frost-covered mosses and ferns, the frozen soil cold and just a little damp on your bare skin. Wherever you were before this moment, whatever you were doing or wearing, when you awaken in this forest, you find yourself naked and helpless as the day you were born. As you sit up and get your bearings, aside from a brief wave of disoriented nausea, you seem to be no worse for wear than you last remember.
You seem to be alone. The gnarled oaks and moss suggest no sign of civilization or sentient life. Just flickers of movement from curious squirrels or brave lizards emerging from a temporary retreat from the wintry weather. With your feet under you, and you'll find the wood is filled with berry bushes and nut trees, though much of the fruit has been picked clean. The freshwater stream that runs north-south, populated by both poisonous toads and delicious crawdads, is running actively again as the weather warms back up from the recent snowstorm.
As you explore, you may run into others with stories just like yours. Some may have already formed clumsy nudist groups, others may still be processing their confusion, with no memory of how they got here. Now is a good time to overcome any hang-ups you have about modesty; it's going to be a long hike, and the weather isn't quite amenable to your lack of.
Turn your back to the darker, shadowy parts of the forest and eventually the glow of manmade lights and the curve of a dirt road may come into view. At the edge of the wood, you'll find a town surrounded by a fifty-foot wall of beige stone. The only entrance is an iron gate positioned on the southern edge. When you arrive, the gate is already open, welcoming people inside.
This quaint, historic town of five-thousand has cobbled street and signs lit by gas lamp. Wooden shutters protect otherwise open-air windows on the buildings, which are all under three stories with gabled roofs. A number of businesses hug the main street — a clockmaker, a cobbler, a grocer — while residential homes sprawl outwards towards the wall. At the far end of the main street, visible about a mile to the north now that the trees and the enormous wall is out of the way, sits a castle with three towers.
When you enter, the streets are full of people, but despite any efforts on your part to hide or make excuses, they don't seem offended by your nakedness. Even families with children don't gawk or look twice. Those determined to find proper clothing regardless will find that modern clothing stores aren't available — the closest this town has is a tailor's shop and a stand in the central marketplace selling scarves and blankets.
breaking and entering
If you intend to have your character break into someone's house or yard to steal some of their clean laundry, please review the info about game laws on the FAQ and give the mods a heads up HERE.
Fortunately, the people of the town are very generous! Anyone who ask the locals will be directed to the boarding house for both clothes and a place to stay. Accessible through an embellished iron garden gate and obscured by hanging plants, trees, and vines, beyond an overgrown yard in the residential sprawl of the town is a bright-red door, which opens to a spacious cottage of several stories. Parts of the house still bear the dust of disuse, gathered on various furnishings — bedding, sofas, curtains, wooden tables. However, it's already full of people! Anyone who's already appeared in the village just as you did today lives here. Once inside, you may notice patchwork repairs have been made, and some scorch marks still linger from a recent fire, and some furniture is still lying around in splinters.
Tonight, a few of the townspeople will help out with the new arrivals. They stock the kitchen and prepare a communal dinner of parsnips, pheasant, and squash. During dinner, they (and those outsiders who've already begun to settle) sit down at the enormous wooden dining room table and help orient the newcomers and answer their questions.
finding roommates
Don't spend too much time in the dining room going for seconds, though. You'll want to claim a bedroom quickly because each one only has two full-size beds, and there aren't enough spaces for everyone. The last people upstairs will need to double up to squeeze in. Roommates will not be mod-assigned; players should coordinate directly with one another to determine their living arrangements.
Get a good night's rest. By the light of day, locals will help get the new arrivals set up on the coal stove with breakfast. You may notice they're dressed in a way you would almost call normal — at least, in a manner befitting 19th century Eastern Europe. As you find your way around town to get your bearings, folks are eager to help you find a place to apply your skills so you can contribute to your new home.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try: naked hiking, acquiring clothing or other inventory items, asking questions at dinner/orientation, or staking your claim on a bedroom!
THE FESTIVAL OF SUMMERTIDE
Summer is in full swing, which means it's time to take advantage of the warm weather! Around the town, various games are being played, some sport-based and some more concerned with creativity, problem-solving, sex, or 'fun'. Each round begins with a prayer to the Duchess. Not bowing your head in prayer may get you a few stares from locals, or worse-- opponents may be extra motivated to defeat someone so disrespectful to her Grace.Each Thursday, buildings are festooned with wreathes of wildflowers, tables are laden with food and drink, and everyone is given colored sashes to wear over their clothes. Festival goers are not allowed to enter the main events unless they wear a sash, and to get a sash they must reveal their curse marks. Those marked with the curse of Wilk receive blue sashes, Diabel get red, Skala receive green and Niez are as ever adorned with grey.
Summertide, the locals are eager to explain, is a festival about adapting to the needs of others, and accepting things as they are. What perhaps isn't explained nearly so well is the expectations placed upon festival goers. Each event has a goal to be achieved, balanced on the point of competition or participation.
Tables overflow with refreshments, especially drinks and chilled fruit to cool the summer heat. Rubeans traditionally spice their foods with aphrodisiacs, something that is so culturally normal to them that they don't feel the need to mention it.
Throughout all of this, some of the implementation of these games may occasionally come across as either overly cruel or overly kind. The common people of Rubilykskoye are of two minds when it comes to the treatment of newcomers: some think you are beneficent, sent to fix their problems and free them of your woes. These people, called Blackguards, will do their best to make sure your participation in the games is not marred by cheating, excessive violence, or pain. But others, called the Zlatniki, think little of the outsiders coming into their lands, and will do their best to twist their native traditions toward cruelty and vindictive unfairness when it comes to the Void-touched.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try participating in events, having your characters go against opponents, be drafted into the games against their will, or watching others perform!
NIGHT OF THE HUNTSMEN
Rumor moves through town quickly: two nights ago, a hunting party went out into the wood, and no one has seen them since. Anyone who wants to prove their worth to the community is encouraged to join the search parties going out to look for them; in Rubilykskoye, those who provide food for the community are highly prized, especially when they brave the woods to do so.You see, the woods aren't entirely safe. Near the town, it's nothing to be alarmed by, and of course the search parties find nothing there. They must delve deeper, and that's where you end up. At the outer edges of the forest, shadows grow long and the air grows thick. Though the sun never grows warm red-gold with sunset, the wood darkens. Birdsong is replaced by the click of mandibles and the skitter of many legs. Anyone who ventures out this way will soon find it difficult to see before them, even in the middle of the day — eventually, even the brightest magical light source or darkvision cannot stretch further than a few inches.
Many peel off, going back to the town proper. The searchers become fewer and fewer. Maybe some of them are going back home, but maybe they're getting lost. Eventually, you walk around a large tree, and you're alone. It's just you and the Void.
The air feels heavy, as if it were not air at all but some more solid mass. Almost like liquid-smoke, it presses down upon you. Slowing your movements. Characters who push too far into the void may stop being able to move at all, and find themselves given over to insanity if they collapse, unable to draw themselves out. This is just one of many dangers.
Monsters thrive this far out. Huge, blood-red spiders the size of hunting dogs drop from the treetops. In addition to their venomous bite, which contains a fast-acting paralytic, these creatures are clever: they attempt to use their webbing to entangle any trespassers, binding limbs together or to trees. If you're unfortunate to become fully cocooned, you don't have long before this forest will be the last thing you see.
Those who seem lucky enough not to run afoul of the monsters here are in for a worse fate. The void can play tricks on your senses. As madness sets in and you lose all sense of direction, you may also lose control of your body — what is that steers your hands to turn against your friends? Why does it sound like your own voice whispering?
Yet the further you go, the more convinced you become that the missing hunters are near by. You're sure you can hear them on the wind, their voices calling out between the trees. Did you just see something out of the corner of your eye? You have to find them. You have to make all this darkness worth it.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try fighting a monster, hallucinating your worst nightmares, and/or attacking a friend or stranger! Feel free to find the bodies of the missing hunting party-- or hallucinate that you did.
RELEASE YOUR INNER BEAST
Something's wrong here.
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
Early one morning, alarm bells are rung. The people of Rubilykskoye are quick to explain while boarding up their windows and locking their doors: The Szymanskiy brothers have all transformed! Their inner beasts - duchozweirz, the natives call it - take the form of creeping, skeletal horrors. The beasts hunt and to kill, ripping their prey apart, but that's not all they can do.
Those who are lucky enough to escape one of the Szymanskiy triplets will leave feeling... changed. The psychic residue these monsters give off cause the afflicted to seek out danger with reckless abandon; they will run toward the monster, into fights, and refuse safety when offered. They must be restrained in a secure location to wait for the pheromones to wear off.
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
someone else transforms
Early one morning, alarm bells are rung. The people of Rubilykskoye are quick to explain while boarding up their windows and locking their doors: The Szymanskiy brothers have all transformed! Their inner beasts - duchozweirz, the natives call it - take the form of creeping, skeletal horrors. The beasts hunt and to kill, ripping their prey apart, but that's not all they can do. Those who are lucky enough to escape one of the Szymanskiy triplets will leave feeling... changed. The psychic residue these monsters give off cause the afflicted to seek out danger with reckless abandon; they will run toward the monster, into fights, and refuse safety when offered. They must be restrained in a secure location to wait for the pheromones to wear off.
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
you waited too long
At first, as you hide yourself from your darker impulses, a subtle itch develops under your skin. An irritability that makes you snap at the person who bumps into you on the stairs because all those fleeting emotions that you've been repressing bubble to the surface. Every dark thought you've had about being here, all the fears of never getting home, of being surrounded by ticking time bombs, the anxiety of wondering who you might hurt or what relationships you might betray by doing what you have to do. The anger. Oh, the anger.
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
no subject
("It takes more than dead men to fool me.")
He draws in a shaky breath, steels himself for what he is about to do, and steps back into Lan Xichen's space. Close enough that he could tuck himself into the warmth of his side, if he wished to, rest a cheek against his chest. Close enough that there's nothing to prevent him from taking Lan Xichen's wrist in his hands, pleading, "Forgive me," and then tenderly sealing his spiritual power.
When the strength goes out of him, Jin Guangyao is of course there to catch him before he can go to his knees. But it is much, much easier at that point to whisk the Gusu Lan's peerless First Jade away from the edge of the Void. The huntsmen will just have to take the long way home. ...Probably courtesy of the Duchess's spiders. Eventually.
no subject
The latter doesn't do much with the former sealed.
Mercifully, Xichen's bout of unconsciousness is dreamless. He's also a fair bit lighter than he used to be (when Jin Guangyao gets him into the light, Xichen's uncharacteristic gauntness and sickly pallor will become far more obvious), and so he is whisked away, his task a resounding failure.
(He's getting used to that.)
When he finally comes round, his meridians have long since cleared, though his thoughts remain clouded and jumbled. For a moment he thinks he's back in his bed in the Cloud Recesses, returned to his quiet seclusion.
But the bedding is too soft, the blanket too heavy, the floral scents all wrong, and there is a lingering, familiar scent that he knows cannot be there because...
His vision swims into focus and above him is a man he knows to be dead.
Because he killed him.
Dazed, Xichen only lays there, staring in disbelief. Once more his hand raises reflexively to Jin Guangyao's cheek, though this time it is only a light brush of his fingers before they settle on his pulse.
Warm, impossible life drums beneath the pads of his fingers.
"I'm dreaming," he breathes, "or I've gone completely mad."
At least he's taking it well.
no subject
Jin Guangyao has pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and is quietly perusing a book of Rubean poetry while waiting for Lan Xichen to awaken. The second he stirs, he quickly closes the book and sets it aside, then fixes Lan Xichen with an expression at once filled with joy and warmth, and no shortage of restrained outrage.
"You very nearly did go mad." He shakes his head, incredulous. "Er-ge, the Void will drive you out of your mind if you venture into it."
He turns and reaches for a little clay pot positioned on the bedside table, picks it up, and pours a portion of its fragrant contents into a cup. Then he turns and offers the cup to Lan Xichen, his soft brow bent into a surprisingly stern frown. He doesn't have to say 'drink' for the message to be clear.
no subject
...Right. Jin Guangyao sealed his power.
Again.
Though this time it was to save him.
The scolding drags him back to reality and Xichen, despite himself, laughs.
Well, it's more a quiet exhale than any proper laugh, but the corners of his lips have turned upwards, and he takes the offered cup gladly.
"Once again, this one is in A-Yao's debt."
no subject
(Two hands, Lan Xichen might note. Two hands and eyes that are not clouded with quite as much guilt and regret as he might remember. The man sitting beside him is young, his path not yet set in stone.)
He takes in Lan Xichen's gaunt appearance, his brows drawing together above his expressive eyes. "When did you arrive in Rubilykskoye?"
no subject
"A few days ago. I have not been here long."
His gaze lingers on those hands. Jin Guangyao, hale and whole.
He doesn't know how to feel about that.
Relief, certainly. But there are other more complicated emotions stirring under it.
"A-Yao looks... younger than I remember him," he finally says, because the youthfulness of the other man's face is striking.
He'd never looked particularly old to Xichen - even with A-Yao's limited cultivation, he'd retained his good looks. But there were lines etched into his face that are now absent, and missing scars that he'd grown used to catching glimpses of however A-Yao tried to hide them.
A thought occurs to him, because Xichen is not a stupid man, however naive he may be on some matters.
"What is the last thing A-Yao remembers...? Before coming here?"
no subject
But he would rather not acknowledge it, either, and so he does not.
"Before my arrival?" He blinks his wide brown eyes in a subtle but nevertheless tactical display of thoughtful innocence, before looking to the side as though to consult his memories. (It is not precisely a lie so much as a bit of genteel obfuscation; he recalls all too clearly the pain and humiliation of what Nie Mingjue had just done to him before all of Jinlintai, his life saved only by Lan Xichen's own timely intervention. But discussing it here... He must proceed with caution.)
He lowers his eyelashes and thoughtfully smooths the fabric of his robes, then sighs past his nose. "We had been at work together on the latest revisions for the watchtower proposal, in hopes of winning my father's approval." It takes great effort to keep the bitterness from leeching into his voice, but he manages. "Before Da-ge's--interruption." He risks a glance at Lan Xichen's face, then away; he loves this man above all others, but he does not wish to receive another well-intentioned but nevertheless utterly blind lecture on not 'provoking' Nie Mingjue's anger. "I returned to my rooms to clean up before Qin Su could see the blood, and then..." A little gesture with both hands. "I awoke here."
no subject
He didn't want to see it.
"So da-ge has not died yet," he murmurs, and the grief is all too apparent in his hollow expression.
Hasn't been murdered yet, one traitorous thought corrects. Another interjects; And how many times did he try to murder A-Yao...?
He remembers that night clearly and he wants to throttle his past self. He should have realized the animosity between Mingjue and A-Yao had reached a boiling point, he should have taken responsibility for Mingjue's care; Wangji was on the mend, he didn't need Xichen hovering over him like a broody mother hen anymore!
He didn't want to admit his childhood friend was dying.
"...I remember."
His fists clench in the sheets, his pale knuckles going a stark, bone white.
"I should have done more sooner to intervene."
no subject
And so he lies again. Sort of.
"Da-ge has died?" The shock in his expression is real, at least, because the contingency plans he'd set aside (in the event he could not find some way to reconcile Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangshan's desires) had not yet been put into motion. "How did it happen?" The sheet music for the Song of Spirit Turmoil remains safely tucked away in the archive of his perfect memory, but he'd yet to put any spiritual power into the amended sections of Cleansing while performing it. Was it possible something else had happened to him first?
He tries to reach into the depth of his heart to recover what remains of the affection that he once felt for Nie Mingjue, to lean on it and allow it to fuel the dismayed expression he affixes to his face. It's a very good one; the best deception always stems from a bit of truth. "Er-ge, I am very sorry to hear it."
no subject
But ever since that night Wangji and Wei Wuxian had come to him with their accusations, Xichen's heart has been in turmoil, and what emotions break through the numbness boil much closer to the surface than they used to.
"Surely A-Yao can already guess!"
As quick as his anger comes, it dissipates just as quickly, swallowed once more by the chasm of despair Guanyin Temple opened in him. It was Xichen's anger that had led to his greatest regret. He's not sure he can survive piling on any more.
He's not sure he's even surviving these.
"There is no more need for lies."
no subject
(Afraid of who he himself has become.)
He curls his fingers tight into his sleeves; an old, familiar self-soothing gesture. "Permit this humble one to apologize," he murmurs quietly. "This one is being truthful. Da-ge was alive when I last saw him."
A good place to end the thought: straight forward and simple. An easy story to keep straight. But perhaps Jin Guangyao has begun to acclimate to the culture of this place--or perhaps he's simply spent too much time around white American boys who can't keep their mouths shut, and it's rubbed off on him a little. He cuts his eyes back at Lan Xichen beneath his eyelashes, but his expression is anything but coquettish. "Er-ge, he wanted to kill me."
no subject
And the worst part is, if he had to choose between his sworn brothers, between who lived and who died...
The very worst part is Xichen knows exactly who he would choose.
Even after everything, he's not sure he'd hesitate.
"I'm glad he didn't."
no subject
It's the direct acknowledgement of a dark truth. And hearing it mirrored back towards him strangles the remaining irrational hope he'd still held out, for their Da-ge to love him again. Jin Guangyao exhales softly and closes his eyes, shocked by the depth of his own furious despair. He's known this himself for years; what difference does it really make, hearing Lan Xichen agree with him, out loud?
(It makes all the difference in the world. He just cannot unpack all the reasons why.)
He forces a smile and says, "As am I." When he opens his eyes again, there's a bit of wetness at his lash line, but he stubbornly ignores it, clears his throat and reaches for his composure. "Well, now Er-ge knows what I remember. What is the last thing Er-ge remembers?" Time to deflect and redirect so he can pull himself together.
no subject
He has yet to take even a sip - not because he doubts the safety of the drink. But the thought of consuming anything right now makes his stomach turn.
Xichen considers asking A-Yao if he really wants the answer to that question. But he also cannot simply say there is no more need for lies and then turn around and keep things from A-Yao.
Then again, how fair is it to dump these truths on the shoulders of a (relatively) innocent man...? Da-ge yet lives, and all of Jin Guangyao's darkest deeds are well ahead of him.
He cannot blame A-Yao for what he has not yet done. Or may not do at all! How writ in stone is the future, truly...?
How fair is it that A-Yao unwittingly keep his future killer in the warmth and safety of his abode...?
Xichen spends a long, long time turning this questions over in his head. When he finally comes to some conclusion, his voice sounds miles off.
"This one entered seclusion nearly three years ago," he says. "However, this one would caution A-Yao about asking further questions, unless he is certain he wants the answers. I will not lie, but it would be wrong to lay such burdens on you unbidden."
no subject
("It takes more than dead men to fool me," Lan Xichen had said. Lan Xichen had said--)
"Don't." His whisper is little more than a breath of air. He shakes his head once, tight and controlled. "Don't tell me. Er-ge, your face tells me enough to be afraid of what I might hear."
no subject
His touch doesn't linger - he doesn't dare, he has no right to reach for the other man - but his fingers curl, as if to hold that precious warmth, the reminder that A-Yao is alive and well, in the palm of his hand.
"This one will say nothing on the matter then, until A-yao asks him to."
I missed you, he thinks desperately, and for a moment, Xichen looks ready to fall apart.
And then, impossibly, he rallies the last of his strength and manages to muster some veneer of his usual serene dignity. His exhaustion is still apparent, but he will not lay this at Jin Guangyao's feet until the other man is ready.
He finally takes a sip from the cup.
"...It's good," he says shakily.
no subject
"Thank you." That veneer of genteel serenity renders Lan Xichen beautiful in the same way a dead bloom preserved by a snap frost in the spring is beautiful. He looks like a ghost of himself, and Jin Guangyao finds it difficult to look at him. Or to look away from him.
The compliment about the tea, at least, puts a faint smile at the corners of his lips. He dips his head slightly and says, "I will convey your compliments to Ningguang-guniang." It's as he's straightening his head that he remembers, that he realizes--
Ah. He draws in a careful breath. "Er-ge, there are other important matters we must speak of. About the Void, about," and here he self-consciously flicks his gaze up to Lan Xichen's again, and then away, "about my time here."
no subject
He almost begs his friend to spare him a little longer if it can wait.
But he stops himself because he has been spared too many painful truths before, and look how that all turned out.
He can't be kept in the dark forever.
About my time here.
His head shoots up, a worried crease between his brow.
"A-Yao? Has something happened? Are you alright?"
no subject
(It's sincere enough; however, given the subject they were just discussing, calling it warm would be a stretch.)
"I am fine." He's fine now, anyway. "Please, Er-ge," he goes on, reaches out to touch his arm again, "be at ease."
Where to even begin? He purses his lips, silent for a thoughtful second or two. Then: "Have you found your curse mark on your body, since your arrival? Is it like mine?" Deftly, he rolls up the sleeve of his sword hand to reveal the black wilk mark spidering up the inside of his wrist.
(The location of that mark doesn't have any significance to Jin Guangyao himself. It probably will for Lan Xichen.)
no subject
There is a tightness in Xichen's throat as he stares down at A-Yao's sword arm; still intact, still lovely and pristine as ever.
He runs his finger over the mark, just to feel that pulse of life under his friend's skin once more. It grounds him, warms him, settles some of his nerves.
"Mine was not too hard to locate," he says, pushing aside his curtain of hair to reveal the skala mark on his forehead. "Though I haven't had an opportunity to ask many follow-up questions. The hunters -"
He hangs his head, and withdraws his hand, letting it settle in his lap.
"I suppose there is nothing that can be done about it now."
no subject
Gently, but with certainty, he says of the hunters, "They will be recovered by the Duchess's spiders, in time," gently squeezes his hand on Lan Xichen's forearm one more time, and then withdraws his touch. His gaze lingers on the location of that skala mark, and it is so easy to picture the Lan forehead ribbon wound there instead.
"The curse marks." He shifts his wrist, drawing his sleeve back across the mark to hide it from view again. "Naturally, they indicate that we are cursed, us and the Rubeans alike. Each month, we must take steps to..." Heaven and hell, this is difficult. Jin Guangyao makes a delicate gesture with one hand. "...sate the demands of the curse, or risk transforming into the very creatures you and I were tasked with eradicating in the jianghu, as cultivators." So far, so good, right?
no subject
He watches the other man's face now, reads the discomfort in his features, and Xichen's worried furrow makes a return.
"A-Yao," and his tone is plaintive and gentle all the same, "what are you not telling me...?"
no subject
He breaths out and steadies himself. "You must sate these demands--zadza, is what the Rubeans call it--every month through violence, or..." His words taper off, and he raises his eyebrows deliberately. "Through intimacy."
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There are The Rules, of course. The Wall of Discipline looms over Xichen even so far from home. But he has been known to bend or break the rules when he deemed it necessary. There are many, many rules Xichen would break for A-Yao, had the other man only ever asked.
(Not anymore, of course. He has no right to even think of his friend in such a way when he betrayed so, so much.)
"I imagine by violence, sparring alone would be insufficient. And by intimacy, A-Yao does not mean just a hug or holding hands."
There are other implications there too, ones Xichen knows if he dwells on for any length of time, he may crumble into dust.
Maybe...
Maybe being some beast and disappearing into the wilds would be easier.
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The other implications hang heavy in the unspoken words he doesn't share, in the cautious way he eventually risks meeting Lan Xichen's eyes. It's rather obvious, of course; Jin Guangyao sits before Lan Xichen, hale and healthy, not sporting any evidence of monstrous transformation. The home around them is one that he has clearly made himself comfortable in over the last several months. (There are some personal effects around this guest bedroom, too; a woman's comb on a vanity by the window; a man's coat that is far too long for Jin Guangyao's slight frame.)
He studies Lan Xichen's expression carefully. Gently, he offers, "Er-ge may ask me any questions that he wishes."
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