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When Kuai Liang dreams, Hanzo is there. Alive and well and greying far beyond his years. He smiles in that way he only learned how to in the last few months before his second death, and he takes Kuai Liang’s hands in his as if they are a treasure.
It feels like embers on his skin, the touch, like plunging his fingers into burning needles. But Kuai Liang never pulls away. He can’t bear to.
Instead he allows Hanzo to examine his palms, and run his thumbs against the fat and muscle and the lines of his veins, and he savors the feeling of his calluses and the soft scrape of his skin. Even when his fingers sting so deeply Kuai Liang has to grit his teeth not to scream. Even when he cannot move in return. Even when he knows this gentleness is not something he is owed.
He allows it because he has to. He allows it because if he doesn’t, he knows he will regret once more that he ever pulled away.
“You haven’t changed,” Hanzo murmurs, the words thick on his tongue. “Look at you.”
Those eyes tilt up, deep brown and tired but weighing lighter, the crease in his brow not as furrowed, not as hard. Kuai Liang’s chest tightens, and Hanzo takes his hand and brings it to his cheek. He says something sweet to the air then, something Kuai Liang does not hear, too caught by the soft burn of Hanzo’s beard and the pricks of light that tear through his fingers. Hanzo hardly seems to notice.
“How long has it been?” he asks. It is an idle thing, the words blissful in the air. Kuai Liang swallows, keeping his mouth shut.
He never talks to Hanzo here, in dreams. He wishes to, of course, but he never does. How could he? When his tongue has been bitten clean through and all the apologies he could give have been relinquished to the empty air of his bedroom many times over. Again and again, like a bitter prayer.
I am sorry for leaving, I am sorry for loving you, I am sorry for loving you and never having the words to say it, I am sorry for ever loving you at all, I am sorry for leaving—No… Kuai Liang cannot bear to speak with him. He does not deserve to. But… the touch… that, he will allow. He is only human after all.
Hanzo huffs, eyes crinkling as he glances down in amusement. Despite the warmth, his face remains stiffer than most; the movement subtle, the smile at the edge of his lips well worn.
“Beloved…” he says, “be in this moment with me, please.”
It is a stern thing, soothed by the way his hands move up to card into Kuai Liang’s hair. The soft feeling slips under the skin and peels back his scalp along with it, and Kuai Liang’s jaw tightens, blood thumping in his ears and heart squeezing at the rush of pain that drags over his skull. He remains still as Hanzo steps closer, their noses the same height, his wrinkled forehead knocking against Kuai Liang’s own in question.
What a selfish thing, he thinks suddenly. The memory of Hanzo pauses to push a stray strand of hair from Kuai Liang’s eyes, equally silver in this threadbare vision of a future. What a selfish thing to dream of him like this. To imagine still that he would love me.
Or that he ever loved me at all comes a quiet, bitter voice, but Kuai Liang retreats from it as quickly as possible.
“Some days I still wonder what happened to you,” Hanzo muses, and his fingers curl against Kuai Liang’s nape, the touch smooth and soothing and bringing a pain so intense that against his best intentions, Kuai Liang flinches. His hand jerks up, meant to catch Hanzo’s wrist and urge it elsewhere—somewhere kinder, somewhere warm—but in the process, he disturbs the careful image laid before him.
The scenery swoops, folding outwards, and Hanzo melts away into whirling dust motes and sparking blots of light. Kuai Liang twists through a breath of nothing, body light and immaterial, until a line of fire rakes up the side of his ribs and he is grounded back into the weight of a bed and the presence of another body behind him.
He winces, blinking away the dizziness to find himself staring out at the shifting shadows of a small room. A groan rumbles against his back, deep and breathless, and Kuai Liang jerks at another rush of pain, this one different from before. He glances down, finding his body bare atop the sheets and his legs crooked, the heavy, firm, shape of Hanzo’s arm slung over his side and his fingers digging into Kuai Liang’s stomach as their hips rock together.
As—
…
As their—
Kuai Liang stiffens, mind plummeting into a fit of panic as the reality of the dream settles in, each sharp connection of skin, each white hot scrape of nails along his torso. It ignites a frenzy in his gut he can neither quell nor escape, and his mouth falls open in a broken moan of pain and pleasure as fire courses up his spine. Hanzo shifts behind him— inside him, he thinks with terrifying clarity—as if responding to the sound, and Kuai Liang shivers as dark hair ignites against his cheek, red hot lips pressing down along the side of his face and moving towards his throat. Delicate like blown glass.
“Hahh…” he breathes, his first attempt at a word lost to the groan that overcomes it. “Haannzo…!” he keens.
Hanzo grunts against his jaw, the grip around Kuai Liang’s middle tightening. His tongue is heavy in his mouth, his lips chapped and raw. Fullness strikes behind his gut, punching deep and boiling bright, and Kuai Liang hisses.
“Hanzo!” he exclaims again, his pledge of silence broken as his eyes squeeze shut and he claws for purchase at the body behind him. He finds a full, scarred thigh and a more eager pace of rutting, chin curling down to his chest to grit against the increasing burn and the mounting rush of his own thoughts. Hanzo follows, humming into his cheek with a deep sigh and a continued string of kisses. Kuai Liang whimpers at the action, and—mortified—bites down on his tongue again.
How perverted he must be to imagine this, he thinks. How perverted he must be to imagine something so violently tender and violently impossible at the same time. These are the dreams he truly dreads, the ones so perfectly crafted to make every inch of his being ache. The ones where he wakes up wrapped in Hanzo’s love and is bestowed with intimacies that they never shared and never will. It is like his own mind is taunting him. Even with all the power in the universe, Kuai Liang knows he will still wake up cold.
“Kuai Liang,” the apparition mumbles, the same breathlessness in his voice that he used to have while training, the same desperation for a decisive end. “Beloved, I…” The words seep out like honey, too gentle for how Hanzo would say them, but so perfectly right in Kuai Liang’s mind. Hanzo groans before he can complete the sentence, his hips stilling to a constant rocking, and Kuai Liang feels a bloom of molten heat spread between his legs, the sensation sparking something so intense in his chest that he feels the world around him untether again.
His teeth shake between his gums, blood pooling where he tears at the inside of his cheek, and he wants so dearly to call Hanzo’s name in return, to say something, to urge him further, but he knows this dream has gone too far already. He has stayed too long. He cannot savor everything.
A clock ticks somewhere in the make believe room, the sound rippling out far past when it should, and Hanzo’s hand suddenly springs up to the front of Kuai Liang’s chest, solid and warm even in the fading throes of fantasy.
“Don’t—” he pants, “don’t go again. Kuai Liang, we—”
But it is ended. It is done.
Hanzo’s nose brushes forward again, another kiss hissing sharply against Kuai Liang’s skin, and then the room bursts into shapeless smoke, and Kuai Liang’s eyes slip open.
Darkness. A quiet ceiling. An empty bed.
Kuai Liang squints briefly, gaze dragging slowly to the open window and to the sloping cliffs of the Arctikan mountains outside. His new era is inching forwards as always, it seems, the night monotonous and silent.
He sighs to himself, breath pluming pale and weary into the empty air.
Sometimes… it truly feels as if he is back with Hanzo. His Hanzo. Dead Hanzo. But that is… an impossibility. Unless the Hourglass somehow changes its nature, and unless that which is unmade can somehow be re-made, the world will remain as it has. And as it always will.
Still… the imagination is a powerful thing. And how tortuously the mind can wander sometimes.
Kuai Liang turns onto his side, away from the window, away from the moonlight, and pulls the blanket further up his torso. There is no use in grieving now, he knows. There is nothing left to miss, nothing left not of his own design to long for. He made this world, it is his to live with. As much as he may sometimes wish for an alternative.
Kuai Liang sighs again, bones heavy and soul long worn, and for the third time that night, tries his very best to sleep.