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“You’re supposed to be networking.You’re supposed to be making connections. Do you know how many puppetmasters of industry have been members of this club?” Dejun was going off on one again and Yangyang let him. He was barely listening anyway. He hummed. Dejun started listing Fortune 500s.
Around about the point where he’d moved on to the rogues gallery of bestselling authors who couldn’t possibly have made it to where they were on talent, the group around the bar dispersed. Yangyang decided that his window was wide open.
“I’m going for it.”
“I told you, this isn’t the place to look for a hook up.”
“And I told you that I never see him around anymore so if you don’t mind-” he walked off.
He was shooting his shot now, whether Dejun liked it or not.
Dr Qian was leaning on the bar, both elbows propping him up. He’d been there most of the night, hood thrown back to show off his fine features. He’d not been wearing it earlier even, one of the few amongst the pledged whose identity was fairly well known by all of the membership and clearly not in any hurry to change that. A small coterie of graduate students had been fluttering about him for the past half-hour. He didn’t look visibly relieved that they’d moved off to talk to the Ambassador to Wherever, but the small smile he normally wore seemed less forced now. He handed his almost-empty glass of scotch to the first year who was tending bar.
“Let me get this one,” Yangyang said, jumping straight in.
“It’s an open bar,” the first year said in the kind of tone that implied that he thought his membership of this club was secure. Yangyang narrowed his eyes and marked the name on his nametag. Yushi. Well, he’d deal with Yushi later.
“I appreciate the gesture all the same,” Dr Qian said, his smile tightening.
Oh no, Yangyang thought. I’ve already messed up.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Dejun had settled into an alcove near the offering stone. No help there then. He turned back to Dr Qian.
“I don’t know if you remember me, professor-”
“Thanks for the promotion,” Dr Qian said, “but it’s just doctor.”
“Oh…”
“I have a very comfortable wingback in my office but that’s not the kind of chair that comes with a fancy title, sadly.”
It took Yangyang a second to process that Dr Qian was making a joke.
“Ha,” he said too late. It fell flat.
Dr Kun Qian was fairly stunning up close. The eyes did it for Yangyang, the intensity in the way that he looked at everything, even things that weren’t particularly interesting. Like Yushi and his inability to pour a decent measure of whisky into a tumbler. Yangyang didn’t want Dr Qian’s nice eyes on Yushi. He wanted them on him.
“You gave a guest lecture on my modern literature paper, a few years ago.”
“I remember,” Dr Qian said. “You asked a question.”
Yangyang had asked a question. Yangyang had asked four questions to be precise, but he wasn’t about to point that out.
“I was inspired.”
Kun’s smile quirked up in what looked like genuine amusement.
“You got the tap that year, didn’t you?” He gestured around the room. Cavern, really. Bedecked as it was in Turkish rugs and mid-century furniture, one might mistake it for one of the senior common rooms above. But there was a chill in the air, and a certain heaviness that only came from being enclosed underground.
The Library in the Dark.
The name was so fucking dramatic.
“I did,” Yangyang nodded, trying to express an enthusiasm for all of this bullshit that he didn’t feel. It was fun to be part of a social club, but he didn’t see the point the way that Dejun did. He didn’t hold a position of authority like Kun did either. Maybe he liked all of this bullshit. He ventured to ask, “When did you get the tap, Dr Qian?”
That smile tugged at perfect lips again.
“I think we’re past that kind of formality at this stage, aren’t we, Yangyang?”
Shivering in a way that had nothing to do with the chill in the air and everything to do with the fact that Dr Qian - Kun - knew his name, Yangyang sidled closer to the bar.
“I suppose we are, um….”
“Kun,” he said his name with a finality. Like Yangyang didn’t know it already. But more than that. Kun said his name like it was the last thing he wanted Yangyang to think about before he went to sleep.
“Kun,” Yangyang repeated, his voice coming out all breathy and not at all manly and confident. He sounded like a kid again, like the eighteen-year-old who had hung on a grad student’s every word when they gave a guest lecture. That lecture was the only one Yangyang had bothered to do the supplemental reading for. Being smiled at by Kun for asking a question had lit up his whole Spring semester. The way he continued to smile with his eyes even when his words turned serious again. The way he was smiling at Yangyang now while sipping whiskey.
Yangyang spared a glare for Yushi who was still standing nearby. First years shouldn’t eavesdrop. Yushi got the message and walked off to the other end of the bar.
“Are you enjoying the festivities?” Kun asked, gesturing around the Library, at the nominal attempts at Yuletide cheer.
“Not really,” Yangyang said, honesty warring with politeness and winning because politeness felt too much like smalltalk and Kun had said his first name. He wanted to be past smalltalk.
The lights around them dimmed. There was an ominous creak from the high chandelier that had probably been set into the ceiling of the cavern in the ‘20s. Absolutely nothing about this place was up to any kind of building code, but then who cared about building code when the people who wrote it were in the room?
Yangyang glanced up at the chandelier. “Do you ever get the feeling that this place is just about to come crashing down?” He looked back at Kun and found that he was being studied. It was thrilling.
“I don’t come down here all that often anymore,” Kun said.
Yangyang knew that. Yangyang had been watching for Dr Kun Qian at every blood-letting and convocation since he’d been inducted at the end of his first year.
“You were here at my initiation,” Yangyang pointed out.
“I was.” He looked Yangyang up and down. And Yangyang felt once again what he’d felt in that lecture theatre four years ago. He felt like he was being stripped with a look. He shivered, as he had that day. He shivered as he had the night of his initiation, when he’d caught Kun staring at him as he was pledged. The Library in the Dark was chilly tonight. It was downright frigid when he’d been standing in nothing but the long robes that were thrown back now over his shoulder. Kun still looked at him like he was wearing nothing but the robes, like he had seen beneath them that night Yangyang had stood with the other initiates awaiting their submersion.
“I don’t go to any of the initiations,” Yangyang admitted.
Kun nodded. “Me neither.”
Something had been bothering Yangyang since that night. Something had been bothering him from the moment he had stepped out of the mercurial pool and found Kun watching him avidly as he donned his robe again.
“Why did you come to mine?”
The group of graduate students were back. They pressed into the bar behind Yangyang, forcing him closer to Kun. The lights were still dim, and there was very little space between them. This close he could smell the whiskey. This close he could see the way Kun’s eyes darted between his eyes and his lips. This close, his arm was resting on the bar too, and Kun traced the top of his wrist with the tip of his index finger and made him sigh.
“I had a vested interest.”
“In my initiation?”
“I had never nominated an initiate before. I haven’t nominated one since,” Kun said, his smile broadening around the lip of his tumbler as he raised it to his lips. His other hand was closing around Yangyang’s wrist.
What was happening here?
“Did you nominate me?”
“Why don’t we go somewhere warmer?” Kun said, pushing off the bar and downing the last of his whiskey. He let go of Yangyang and pulled an unnecessarily large bill denomination out of his robes and dropped it on the bar, winking at Yushi. Yangyang jumped as Kun’s warm hand bypassed his wrist and slipped into his, dragging him towards the elevator.
He was helpless. He couldn’t have resisted even if he wanted to.
He didn’t want to.
He had no idea what was happening. He’d completely lost control over the situation. He was painfully, uncontrollably turned on.
He looked around for Dejun, though, and caught his eye. He was over by the fireplace, not talking to anybody else despite his big words. He shook his head at Yangyang when he saw what was happening. When Yangyang raised his free hand to give him the thumbs up, Dejun didn’t return it. Then he was lost to view and Yangyang was in the elevator at the end of the cavern, the golden gate of the thing creaking as Kun pulled it into place.
It was ancient, like everything else here.
The elevator started to rise.
“I used to think this place was haunted,” Yangyang said breathlessly. Kun turned to face him in the narrow space. They were the same height but Yangyang felt like he was being loomed-over. He gestured around at the elevator, and up at the noisy pulley. “When I was a first year,” he clarified. “Because this thing was so loud- oh.”
Kun backed him into the corner.
“What were you looking for tonight? When you joined me at the bar?”
Yangyang was looking for words because they’d all abandoned him completely. He felt Kun’s fingertips slip beneath his shirt, under his robe. When had Kun opened his robe? He was looking at Yangyang’s lips, waiting for an answer.
“I didn’t know that you nominated me, back then,” was what he said, completely to his own surprise, and Kun’s. The elevator lurched, and Kun drew his hand back, out from beneath Yangyang’s robes. The elevator ground to a halt behind the bookcase in the Fellows Library.
Kun put his finger to his lips in a shh gesture, as they heard movement in the outer room. He shoved aside the metal gate, not caring about the noise because, like Yangyang, most anybody who wasn’t a pledged supplicant to the Phoenix thought there were phantoms in the walls of the college. Kun peered through the oculus and into the room beyond. The voices died, probably scared off by the scraping in the walls.
“Clear,” Kun breathed, and he opened the bookcase. Yangyang followed him out and across the Fellow’s Library, to another door, a smaller one that led onto Staircase V. Kun ushered Yangyang through, and then dragged him back by the wrist, pinning him in place.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that day,” Kun whispered. He was close, so close that Yangyang could almost taste him, could feel the press of his hips into his.
“What day?”
“The day you asked me about my theoretical framework,” Kun said. “The audacity of a first year to question me.”
“What-?” Yangyang was immediately silenced - by a kiss.
Kun’s lips were soft and tasted like good whiskey. He parted them and slipped his tongue into Yangyang’s mouth, pressing him back against the door jamb. He licked into his mouth, coaxing Yangyang’s tongue to meet him, spilling a moan into the back of Yangyang’s throat. One of Kun’s hands pinned Yangyang’s wrist, but the other slipped into his robes again, back to his waist. Up the skin of his stomach, his ribs, thumb flicking against his nipple and causing him to buck into Kuns’s touch. Causing his hips to flex, his already tight pants pressing his erection into Kun’s.
It was hot and disorientating. It was too fast and not fast enough. They were wearing far too many clothes for this. And Yangyang forgot where he was for a moment until somebody cleared their throat. He pulled back but he was trapped by the door and Kun took his sweet time finishing the kiss, affording him a single warm smile before he looked over Yangyang’s shoulder to where somebody had clearly just walked through the main door.
“Mistletoe,” he said to them, and nodded up, where Yangyang noticed, belatedly, there was indeed a sprig of the stuff hanging innocuously over their heads. He couldn’t breathe. Whoever it was mumbled something and left, and Kun turned his attention back to Yangyang.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s bad luck to walk through without acknowledging it.”
Was that what he could owe that sanity-shattering kiss to? Luck?
Kun was a Prelictor Major. He knew for a fact that bad luck was bullshit. Luck was what you made it out of the situation you were in, the people that you knew. It was the entire philosophy of the Culture. And he seemed to know it. He almost looked a little bit… bashful.
Like maybe kissing Yangyang, touching Yangyang, was as heartstopping an event for him as it was for Yangyang. Like maybe that bravado was all an act, like it was on Yangyang. Like maybe he might want to kiss again, slower and more deliberate, and put his thumb back on Yangyang’s nipple to test his limits.
It was enough to reinvest Yangyang with some of his confidence, with some of the self assurance he’d worn when he walked over to Kun earlier to shoot his shot. He stepped into the staircase, and Kun followed.
Yangyang asked, “Do you have any mistletoe upstairs?”