the son and the father

Jiang Cheng is so in love with his new boyfriend, his first boyfriend, that he can hardly believe this is his life. How can this be his life? He doesn’t get nice things in life. He’s never gotten nice things, not since the day he was born to parents who didn’t want him but were too Catholic to do as they should have done and abort him.

It would have saved all three of them so much grief if they’d just sucked him out of Mother’s womb at the start when they learned he was in there, a parasite upon her health. The pregnancy and birth half killed her, as she never tires of reminding him; as for Father, he never tires of reminding Jiang Cheng that if it weren’t for him, the parasite upon his income, he’d still be pursuing his passion as an artist instead of working for the man. Yet neither of them ever mentions the elephant in the room, which is that Jiang Cheng destroyed their marriage. Growing up in his home has been as much an education in spousal dysfunction as in parental dysfunction.

Jiang Cheng has only survived his sixteen years to date by retreating into music and poetry, into melody and lyricism, into beauty—sheer and perfect beauty. And when at the start of junior year sheer and perfect beauty revealed itself incarnate in the tall, striking form of the new boy in school, Jiang Cheng fell in love at first sight.

Jin Zixuan was so beautiful he hardly seemed real.

He was a senior; speculations on why his parents should have moved him to a new city at such a critical juncture in his schooling traveled the halls in whispers more awed than snickering or snide. Jiang Cheng had never known his schoolmates to be a kind bunch or particularly continent in their gossip, but Jin Zixuan’s icy perfection inspired nothing more than it inspired awe. It seemed to shut down all prurience; sordidness dissipated in its light.

“Maybe he was offered a local modeling contract,” Jiang Cheng heard in the cafeteria. “God, what I’d do to see—”

He stopped listening. Instead, he reached into the very depths of his being and found the courage to approach his crush.

“Hi,” he said shyly, daring to meet Jin Zixuan’s cold and beautiful eyes. “I’m Jiang Cheng. I’m a junior, and I’m in love with you. Would you like to take me out?”

What had Jin Zixuan done, then, but blink in surprise—and then smile? He smiled as if he was used to doing no such thing; he smiled as if he was delighted despite himself.

What could Jiang Cheng do in response but smile back?

They stood there, then, two boys in a school hallway, staring and beaming into each other’s eyes.

“Yes,” Jin Zixuan said. “I’d like to take you out, Jiang Cheng.”

And he did. Their first date was a walk in the park on a crisp September Saturday, autumn just beginning to grace the trees with its colors, a chill in the air that led Jin Zixuan to put his arm around Jiang Cheng and draw him into his warmth. How could he be so warm, how could his skin feel so soft, when he looked such icy perfection? Jiang Cheng didn’t know, and he didn’t care. He only knew that he was in love.

“Mozart,” Jin Zixuan said. “Piano Concerto no. 20, because it’s light and glory.”

“Beethoven,” Jiang Cheng said. “The Pathétique, because it’s passion and pain.”

“Has that been your life, Jiang Cheng? Passion and pain?”

Jiang Cheng felt tears leap to his eyes. He tried to blink them away.

“Yes,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. The pain doesn’t matter, because the passion triumphs.”

Very gently, Jin Zixuan pulls Jiang Cheng to a stop in their circling path. He takes a pristine handkerchief out of his pocket, but instead of handing it to Jiang Cheng he blots at Jiang Cheng’s tears himself. Jiang Cheng stands, face upturned toward his heart’s love and his heart’s love, he knows, in his eyes. But Jin Zixuan simply cups his jaw and drops a tender kiss on his lips.

“You’re beautiful,” he says. “You’re sweet and precious. I’m already in love with you. I already feel like I’ll love you forever.”

“Please,” Jiang Cheng gasps. “Please love me forever.”

Jin Zixuan smiles. “Let’s take it one day at a time.”

The days pass, one after the other, until comes Thanksgiving break. Jiang Cheng dreads the day itself. Thanksgiving is, without fail, the worst day of the year in the Jiang and Yu household. Worse than Christmas. Worse than Lunar New Year’s Eve.

“Come to dinner,” Jin Zixuan says. “My parents will be happy to meet and host my boyfriend.”

“Really?” Jiang Cheng asks shyly. “It’s not too soon for them, or for you?”

“It’s not too soon,” Jin Zixuan says, and kisses him. “I’m very sure about you, and they’ll be glad to know it.”

It turns out that Jin Zixuan’s parents are both beautiful people, because of course they are, must be, to have produced him. His mother has a queen’s poise; his father has an emperor’s air of command. They’re very welcoming, and the table’s spread is a feast the likes of which Jiang Cheng has never seen in his life.

Neither, he thinks to himself a ways into dinner, has he ever seen a grown man take such an interest in him. Mr. Jin is looking at him, more and more meaningfully, it seems, as the meal progresses and the bourbon flows. It flows into one glass only, but Mr. Jin holds his liquor—

“Like a man,” he says. “Tell me, Jiang Cheng. Does my son treat you like a man should?”

Jiang Cheng tells only the truth in response.

“Zixuan treats me like a boyfriend should,” he says, “the best boyfriend in the world.”

He reaches for Jin Zixuan’s hand and looks into his eyes, and he knows his own are shining like stars.

Yet something about the exchange seems to displease Mr. Jin. And something in the air gives testament to Mrs. Jin’s displeasure as well. Jiang Cheng can’t fathom it. She’s glaring daggers at her husband, daggers of spite and—is that warning?

Jiang Cheng looks to his boyfriend for answers, but Jin Zixuan himself looks suddenly ill, as if some deep meaning has just penetrated him that his whole being revolts to have had to comprehend.

“Zixuan?” Jiang Cheng says, too alarmed not to ask aloud. “What’s wrong?”

Jin Zixuan seems to gather himself up.

“Nothing,” he says, and joins his mother in glaring at his father. “Nothing at all.”

Jiang Cheng is lost. They are four at the loaded table, and three among them share an understanding, ugly and vicious, that’s lost on him. Before he can voice his confusion, Mr. Jin laughs.

It’s not a nice sound.

Then he addresses his son.

“Zixuan. It seems we understand each other. Need I remind you of what I can have done to Mo Xuanyu if you stand in my way?”

Jin Zixuan looks at Jiang Cheng, anguish blanching his features.

Jiang Cheng is so lost he thinks he might cry. What’s happening? What family dynamic, even more dysfunctional than his own, has he found himself entrapped in?

He’s just made up his mind to stand up from the table when Jin Zixuan grasps his hand.

“Jiang Cheng,” he says, voiced choked, face pained. “I love you. Please believe I had no idea—he’s never even looked at—”

“A boy?” Mr. Jin says silkily. “That happens to be true. But I’ve never seen a boy like this one. Zixuan, I commend you on your taste. He’s exquisite. Tender and rare and exquisite. Every line of his body, of his very being, looks like it was made for a man’s use and abuse.”

Jiang Cheng still doesn’t understand. Or he understands Mr. Jin’s words, but not what they have to do with himself.

Only when Mr. Jin has reached into his jacket pocket, drawn out a bottle of pills, opened it and dissolved one of the tablets in his glass of bourbon, and pushed the glass toward Jiang Cheng, does comprehension dawn.

“Jiang Cheng,” the man says. “I suggest you drink this. As for my dear wife and my dear son: I suggest you make yourselves scarce.”

Jiang Cheng can feel Jin Zixuan’s anguish in his own bones. He doesn’t know who Mo Xuanyu is, but it doesn’t matter, because this Mo Xuanyu matters to Jin Zixuan.

He looks at his boyfriend.

“Go,” he says. “I understand now, and I’ll be fine. I love you.”

“Jiang Cheng—” Jin Zixuan says, and stops.

Jiang Cheng smiles at him.

“Where’s that ice prince I fell in love with?” he says, purposely lightly. “Go, Zixuan. I’ll be fine.”

Jin Zixuan holds his gaze—love passes between them—so much love Jiang Cheng knows they’ll survive this—and then drops a fervent kiss onto the hand he still has clasped in his own.

“I love you,” he says. Then he turns toward his mother. “Mother,” he says. “Let’s go.”

And mother and son do, they go, they leave the room. They leave the room, they leave the patriarch triumphant at his holiday table, and Jiang Cheng looks levelly at his would-be rapist.

“You don’t have to drug me,” he says. “I won’t fight you. I’ll do everything you want me to.”

Mr. Jin laughs, his delight an evident and prodigious thing.

“Very well,” he says, and stands, and comes to Jiang Cheng’s chair, and draws him up out of it. “Shall we to my boudoir?”

Then in a mockery of new marriage he sweeps Jiang Cheng up in his powerful arms, into a bridal carry.

“Oh, you feel exquisite,” he says, voice rough, “so light and slight. You feel like you’ll break when I fuck you. God, I can’t wait to get my cock inside you, you pretty, pretty boy. My first boy.”

He keeps crooning as he carries Jiang Cheng into what must be his and Mrs. Jin’s bedroom.

“Zixuan hasn’t had you yet, has he? No man has, I’m sure. Every line of you screams untouchedness. Every line of you screams sweet virginity. I’m going to ruin you tonight. I’m going to relish and raven and fucking ruin you.”

Jiang Cheng feels himself responding to the man’s words, to his tone. He tries to hang on to grimness and determination but when Mr. Jin lays him down onto his bed, which smells like a woman’s expensive perfume, and starts to strip him, and reacts to each new square inch of bared skin as if it’s the loveliest thing he’s ever seen, Jiang Cheng catches fire.

He feels beautiful, he feels wanted, he feels hot. His breathing has quickened, his heartbeat has quickened, and his cock—

“Mmm,” Mr. Jin says, and wraps his hand around it. Jiang Cheng gasps at the pleasure, and writhes when Mr. Jin starts to stroke it.

The man laughs.

“So my son’s pretty little boyfriend is a pretty little slut,” he says.

“No,” Jiang Cheng says, “No, I’m not—”

“No?” Mr. Jin says, and withdraws his hand.

“No,” Jiang Cheng says again, meaning please, and Mr. Jin hears it, because he says, “Only pretty little sluts get to be touched,” and withholds all touch until Jiang Cheng, driven to desperation, says, “Yes—I’m a slut—I’m a pretty little slut—please, please touch me—”

Mr. Jin laughs, again. “Yes,” he says, “I think that earns you a touch, or more,” and takes up where he left off.

Jiang Cheng moans, to feel the big hand on his cock again, stroking and fondling. It strokes and fondles him till he’s a leaking, aching mess—till he’s writhing and begging—

“More,” he says. “Please— More—”

“More?” Mr. Jin sounds both amused and smug. “Tell me, Jiang Cheng. Does my pretty little slut want to come?”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng gasps, so far past the point of truth that truth is all he can voice. His body is all he can voice. His body is all he is. “Please— Please make me come— I need to come—”

“Good boy,” Mr. Jin says, and starts stroking him in earnest. “Good, pretty boy. You could turn Christ himself onto boys, my pretty boy, my pretty Jiang Cheng. My pretty slut. Tell me, if you want to come: whose pretty little slut are you? Are you mine?”

“Yours—” Jiang Cheng says—

And he comes.

He comes stars.

It’s the event of his life, and as he comes down from it he knows his life is changed.

He looks into Mr. Jin’s sly, hot, knowing eyes and knows his life is changed.

“Are you going to fuck me now?” he says when the crisis is past.

“Do you want me to?” Mr. Jin says, slyly, hotly, knowingly.

Jiang Cheng looks at him. At this very handsome man with the presence of an emperor and the ego to match.

“Yes,” he says, “because you want me.”

Mr. Jin laughs.

“Does Zixuan not want you?”

“I don’t know,” Jiang Cheng says. “But I know he loves me. He treats me like I’m precious. I don’t think he would break me like you will. You will, won’t you? You want to, don’t you? You want to break me into pieces.”

“I want to break you apart,” Mr. Jin says, “and put you back together all wrong, all mine.”

Jiang Cheng reaches into himself, then, far down into that store of courage he didn’t know he had until he approached his boyfriend and declared his love. He draws on intuition—an intuition newly born—arisen of the certain knowledge, forced on him tonight, that one is—that he is—a very great beauty.

Intuition guides him. He parts his lips, then, and wets them, and smiles a come-hither smile at this man panting for him. He sees Mr. Jin’s eyes darken, and his will too, when his hands jerk forward and encircle Jiang Cheng’s naked waist.

“Fucking God,” he says, and squeezes. Jiang Cheng gasps; if those hands with the pressure they were exerting were around his neck he’d be choking his life out. “I’ve never seen anything so perfect as you.”

Jiang Cheng reaches for breath; he reaches for strength.

“Am I perfect?” he murmurs. “Am I so perfect you’ll tell me a secret?”

“Anything,” Mr. Jin says, voice thick with lust. The man is gone on him. “I’ll tell you anything, I’ll give you anything, if you stay perfect and pliant just as you are now.”

“I’ll be perfect for you,” Jiang Cheng says, “I’ll be pliant for you,” and wills himself, his body, his being, to exude come-hither, come-now, come-for-me. “Mr. Jin: who is Mo Xuanyu?”

Mr. Jin pauses. Then he laughs.

“Is that how we’re going to play this?” he says, low and throaty and amused.

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng says, and puts his hands over Mr. Jin’s on his waist. “If you’ll let me.”

“Oh, I’ll let you,” Mr. Jin says. “I’ll let you have anything, even this. Mo Xuanyu is my bastard son, and he’s somewhere beyond the reach of God, and thus beyond the reach even of the dirty little angel you are. Now,” he says. “I’m going get up off you, and get undressed, and then climb back on top of you, and then I’m going to fuck you till the dirty little angel you are swears he sees the face of God in my features. And you’re going to want it. You’re going to want all of it. Aren’t you, my pretty little slut?”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng breathes, and it’s nothing but the truth. “I want it. I want you.” Nothing, nothing but the truth.

And Mr. Jin gets up off him then, and takes off his clothes, and he’s so impressive naked that the truth only persists, only heightens.

Jiang Cheng looks at the man’s hard, jutting cock. The first man’s cock he’s ever seen in the carnal flesh. It’s a tool. It’s a weapon. It’s leaking, it’s weeping desire.

“Touch it,” Mr. Jin says, and Jiang Cheng does.

They both moan at the touch, Mr. Jin low and throaty, Jiang Cheng breathy and breathless at the feel of the silk of it, the smoothness enwrapping steel. Mr. Jin lets him put his hands all over it, lets him explore it to his pleasure, murmuring his own pleasure in praises.

“Good boy,” he says. “My good boy. Does my good boy want to use his pretty little mouth on it?”

Jiang Cheng moans again, at the thought, and feels his mouth, his pretty little mouth, water at the promise. He shifts to the edge of the bed, and brings his mouth to where they both want it. He licks at the tip, experimentally. He tongues the slit and laps at desire, leaking, that inflames his own. He sips at it, desire, and chases it. Mr. Jin groans, and desire pulses. Jiang Cheng can’t get enough. He widens his jaw and takes the head into his mouth, then more, as much of it as he can fit, and when it hits his throat he moans, he moans around it, knowing his place, knowing his pleasure.

But before he’s had nearly enough, Mr. Jin draws him off his pleasure, away from his place, and says, “My pretty little slut will have to wait for more. My pretty little slut is about to get fucked. Do you want it, Jiang Cheng? Do you want my cock inside you?”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng says. “Yes.” Truth is truth. Desire is desire.

“Lie back,” Mr. Jin says, “on your back. I’ll want to see your angel’s face.”

Jiang Cheng feels his angel’s face tighten with pain, over the next while, as Mr. Jin works his wetted fingers into him. They’re assured, the man knows what he’s doing, but he seems as surprised as Jiang Cheng is when a sudden, sweet spot inside him bursts him into pleasure. He cries out.

“Oh,” Mr. Jin says then. “My first boy,” and proceeds to work at it, at that sweet spot, relentlessly without mercy.

Jiang Cheng wants none, he wants no mercy, he’s sobbing his pleasure, he wants only—

“I’m going—”

To come—

He comes—

The pleasure annihilates him.

It pulses without end.

When it does end, when Jiang Cheng comes back to himself, he opens his eyes and meets Mr. Jin’s own.

They’re sheer black. They want him. They eat him.

“Fucking God in heaven,” Mr. Jin murmurs. “I’ve died and gone to heaven. I could spend eternity watching you come.”

“You sent me to heaven,” Jiang Cheng says.

He’s relaxed, now, feeling no pain, pliant as he promised, and perfect too. He sees it in Mr. Jin’s black eyes. Perfect.

He spreads his legs further—intuition continues to guide him—and smiles take-me, I’m-yours, and says, “Will you fuck me now? I want to feel you inside me. I want to send you to heaven too. I want you to find heaven inside me.”

Mr. Jin strokes a possessive hand down Jiang Cheng’s chest, rests it at the indent of his waist.

“Pretty boy,” he says. “It’s heaven just to look at you, just to touch you. But we’ll enter heaven together, we’ll make heaven together, when my cock possesses your hole.”

He shifts, he coaxes Jiang Cheng’s knees toward his shoulders, he poses and poises himself.

At the ready, at the entrance, he pauses. He says, as if to himself, “I’ll never be the same. I’ll be a changed man.”

Then—gently, slowly—he pushes the tip of his slicked cock into Jiang Cheng’s hole.

Jiang Cheng cries his heart out, his very life out, at the intrusion, at the pleasure, at the knowledge that he’s being taken. He’s being claimed.

“More,” he says. “Please, more,” and Mr. Jin groans his assent, and with relentlessness commingled with tenderness he pushes in, and in, and in, until his cock is fully sheathed in Jiang Cheng’s clutching hole.

He says, “I am. I’m a changed man,” and he lowers his head, folding Jiang Cheng all but in half, and kisses Jiang Cheng’s lips parted in pleasure and consuming desire for more, more, ever and only more pleasure.

He feels so full. The cock in him is a bar of steel, stretching him, rearranging him, making him accommodate it, making him yield. And yield he does.

Mr. Jin is kissing him deep and filthy. Jiang Cheng kisses him back, helplessly and passionately, as if his life depends on proving to Mr. Jin that he’s his, that he wants him, that he wants to be fucked halfway to madness, halfway to the stars, past the stars into God’s very heaven.

Mr. Jin breaks the kiss. “Are you ready, my pretty boy? Are you ready to be fucked into heaven?”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng says. “Yes. Take me. Make me yours. Take your pleasure in me while you pleasure me.”

“Sweet boy,” Mr. Jin croons, and slowly pulls out until the tip of his cock is just kissing Jiang Cheng’s entrance. Then, with a grunt, he strokes all the way in.

Jiang Cheng screams his pleasure, and only keeps screaming as Mr. Jin proceeds to—

“Fuck me—yes—oh God, yes— Fuck me like the slut I am—”

The words feel both like they’re welling up from within him and like they’re being punched out of him. They voice his heart, his body, his being—they voice all, but all, he wants in all the wide world, on God’s green earth, under God’s star-studded sky. All he wants under the sun moon and stars is Mr. Jin’s cock.

And Mr. Jin does what he wants, he gives it to him. He fucks Jiang Cheng like the slut he is.

“Precious boy,” he groans. “Pretty boy, my pretty slut. You feel so good, so tight and hot and good. You’re eating my cock like your hole was made for it. It was, wasn’t it? You’re mine, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng says. “Yours—”

Mr. Jin rewards him for his truth with truth of his own when he strokes in, stays in, and says, “Never. I’ve never felt this. I’ve fucked hundreds of women and girls, and yet I’ve never felt what I’m feeling now, buried deep in your body, buried deep in your hole loving and eating my cock as if it will never take another. I will never take another. I will never take another woman or girl or boy. You’re my first boy, my pretty boy, and you’ll be my last. I’m going to chain you to this bed by the wrist and fuck you every day of the span of life left to me. I, heinous among all of God’s sinners, lived for pleasure and power until I saw you, and wanted you, and took you. But from now on, my beautiful boy, my precious boy, I’ll live for—”

“Love,” Jiang Cheng says, looking up into Mr. Jin’s black eyes, his eyes that prove, that radiate, the truth of his words. “Love me. Do you love me?”

“I love you,” Mr. Jin says. “God in heaven, I’ll love you till the day I die.”

“Fuck me,” Jiang Cheng says. “Love me with your cock. Send me to heaven.”

“Yes,” Mr. Jin says. “I’ll send you straight to heaven.”

And he pulls out—then fucks in—then pulls out— There’s a change and charge in the air as he seems to reach deep within himself for whatever it is he means to do next. What he does next—the glorious thing he does next—is to start to pound Jiang Cheng’s ass as if he’s reaching for death already, death now, death in Jiang Cheng’s body, death by love. He pounds Jiang Cheng’s ass so good, he angles his cock so it hits on each stroke that sweet spot, that starry spot. He renders Jiang Cheng a sobbing, wailing, screaming mess of a boy, a boy ruined, ruined by love.

Jiang Cheng screams his ruin.

“Love me,” he cries. “Love me harder— Love me to heaven— Love me to climax, yours and mine— Make me come— Come with me—”

“Oh, I’ll make you come, my love,” Mr. Jin says, “my precious boy,” and fucks him harder, faster, deeper, better.

Pleasure builds, impossibly, inexorably. Jiang Cheng feels himself rise toward the peak, fucked toward the peak, loved ever closer to the very peak of pleasure—

He comes.

It’s an explosion, deep in his body.

No, he realizes, even as he’s coming so hard, so good, so heavenly—it’s Mr. Jin’s seed, as the man comes too— Coming with him—coming for him—he fills Jiang Cheng’s body with pulses of hot come and hotter pleasure. They’re coming, together—they’re in heaven, together—and Jiang Cheng wills it never to end. His will has the power—Mr. Jin is still groaning his hot, hotter, hottest pleasure—Jiang Cheng is still screaming his own pleasure—unbearable—inexorable—impossible—

“Love me,” he cries again, conjoined in impossible pleasure with the man who loves him. “Oh, please, please, love me. Do you love me?”

The man who loves him crushes their bodies together.

“I love you,” he growls, “I’ll love you till the day we both die. We’ll die making love, we’ll die making heaven. We’ll die in each other’s arms, making the beast with two backs.”

But the beast now is calming.

The pleasure, spent, is retreating.

They come down from it together, boy and man, beloved and lover, looking deep into each other’s eyes.

Jiang Cheng can tell, now, the pupil from the iris in the eyes of the man who loves him.

The sheer black has lightened, the lust is spent.

They spend an eternity looking into each other’s eyes, until Mr. Jin kisses him. Kissing him, he withdraws from him. Then he shifts off, shifts away, onto his side, and turns Jiang Cheng so that he’s on his side too, so that they’re facing each other, bare inches apart, and wraps an arm around him.

“Precious boy,” he says, and kisses him. “Precious, perfect boy.”

“Am I still?” Jiang Cheng says. “Am I still your precious boy, now that lust is spent? Do you still love me?”

Mr. Jin smiles, at that. He smiles, and Jiang Cheng sees Jin Zixuan in that smile.

“Are you seeking validation, my love? Do you want to hear that fucking your ass changed a man? Changed his life? For the better, for ever and a day?”

“Do you still want me for ever and a day?”

“Yes,” Mr. Jin says. “Precious boy, I do.”

“Will you tell me something, then? Will you do something for me?”

“Yes,” Mr. Jin says again. “Anything you want. And—Jiang Cheng—I know what you want. You want me to tell you where Mo Xuanyu is. You want me not to use him anymore as an ax held over Zixuan’s neck. Zixuan, your boyfriend. The boyfriend you love.”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng says, simply. “That’s what I want. That’s who I love.”

“You love him,” Mr. Jin says, “but you want me. My son can’t fuck you like I can. Like I did, my pretty little slut. My sweet, cockhungry whore. He can’t fuck you like I’m going to again, and again, and again. Make no mistake, Jiang Cheng: your ass is mine. Whatever concessions I’ll make to you, whatever allowances I’ll afford you because I love you, I will fuck your ass whenever I want it. And you’ll let me, because you want my cock too.”

“I do,” Jiang Cheng says. “And I’ll let you. Where is Mo Xuanyu?”

“He’s in an orphanage,” Mr. Jin says. “A Catholic orphanage deep in the city. It’s a hellhole. He’s twelve.”

Jiang Cheng takes that in, and thinks it over. “What are you punishing him for?” he asks. “He’s your son.”

Mr. Jin sighs. “Yes, I suppose he is. I suppose I am punishing him, for his vicious shrew of a mother, who cost me half my fortune and almost got me locked up so deep in a federal prison that I’d never again have seen the light of day.”

“Would you have deserved it?”

Mr. Jin smiles at that, a smile that has none of Jin Zixuan in it, because it’s vicious and cruel. “Yes,” he says. “I would have deserved worse. But—Jiang Cheng. For you I’ll atone. Do you believe me? Do you believe I’m a changed man?”

It’s Jiang Cheng’s turn to smile. “Is my ass so fine, that it reformed a criminal?”

It’s Mr. Jin’s turn to speak with utter simplicity.

“Yes,” he says. “Your ass, your waist, your hips. Your cheekbones. Your sweet tender lips. Your eyes, my precious boy. Your limpid, innocent eyes. In them I see all the goodness in the world. I’ll do anything, even change, to preserve it: all the goodness in the world, in your eyes. Truly, my love. Truly I love you.”

Of a sudden then, all of a sudden out of nowhere, Jiang Cheng finds himself perilously close to tears. “Oh,” he says. “Oh,” and they come, the tears come, and they spill.

Mr. Jin moves, he moves in to brush them away with his thumbs.

“Sweet boy,” he says. “Precious boy. Are your parents so terrible? Is your father so terrible?”

Jiang Cheng can’t speak, until he can.

“My parents have never loved me,” he says. “They make me think that no one loves me, because no one can. Not me. But Zixuan loves me. You love me. I’m loved. I’m so loved. What have I done to deserve it? Do I deserve it?”

Mr. Jin looks at him, levelly.

“What do you think, Jiang Cheng? What do you really think?”

And Jiang Cheng thinks about it.

Through slow but persistent tears he thinks about it.

Then he reaches up, decisively, and brushes them away himself.

“I do,” he says. “I do deserve it. I deserve it because I’m beautiful, and I’m good. I deserve it because in a world that can hold music and poetry—Beethoven and Shakespeare—beauty—sheer and perfect beauty—everyone deserves to be loved.”

Mr. Jin smiles, a third smile, a new smile. It seems new to him too. “Even me?” he teases. “Do I deserve love?”

“If you’ll change for me,” Jiang Cheng says, unteasing, passionate rather, “if you’ll change because you see goodness in my eyes, then yes. You deserve love.” He pauses. “Will I grow to love you like I love Zixuan?” he wonders aloud.

“No,” Mr. Jin says, thoughtful. “Not like you love Zixuan. If you grow to love me, it will be in my own way. Our own way.”

His kisses Jiang Cheng, then. He kisses him sweet and deep.

“My love. My sweet love. I’m a new man. I’ll rise tomorrow a new man, a good man, and I’ll do the things a good man should. I’ll even do right by my bastard son. But for tonight—for the rest of tonight—I’m going to love you, who changed me. I’m going to fuck you, who transformed me, who showed me all the world’s goodness in your limpid eyes. Will you let me? Will you let me fuck you all the night till the dawn?”

Jiang Cheng hesitates.

“Zixuan,” he says. “Mrs. Jin. They must be worried about me.”

“They can worry for a few more hours,” Mr. Jin says, and brings Jiang Cheng’s hand to his cock. It’s hard. Jiang Cheng moans to feel it, hard and proud. It’s glorious. It’s what he wants, it’s all he wants. He closes his hand around it.

“Tomorrow,” Mr. Jin says. “Tomorrow will come, but for now tomorrow can wait. Tomorrow I’ll share you, with my son who you love. But you’re mine and only mine for tonight.”

Jiang Cheng should protest, he should think of Jin Zixuan, worrying for him, but the cock in his hand is hard and proud and glorious. It fills his hand, it fills his eyes, it will fill his throat before the night is through.

“Yes,” he breathes. “All of tonight, until tomorrow,” and lets Mr. Jin pull him close, and make him his and only his.

For tonight, Jiang Cheng thinks. Until tomorrow.