Pain Fetish

Fu Ge’s sleep had become very shallow after all those events, especially when Qi Han was not around. It might be sequelae left by multiple estrus periods, but he never could sleep well without the Alpha’s pheromones to soothe him.

Not long after Qi Han left, he was about to wake up when he felt someone touching his face lightly.

The familiar warmth of the palm made him guess that this was his Alpha, so the little Beta smiled and hugged the hand with his eyes closed, only to find that Qi Han was trembling.

“Ah Han?…”

He opened his eyes suddenly, but before he could get up, he was hugged.

Qi Han gently pressed Fu Ge’s face to his chest, his chin resting on the top of Fu Ge’s head as he tried not to show him his crying face.

Fu Ge was a little anxious, “What’s the matter?”

Qi Han sniffled and squeezed out a nasal sound, “Xiao Ge…” But then there was no more; just holding him tighter and tighter.

Knowing that he didn’t want to say anything, Fu Ge obediently let him hold him. His warm body snuggled up to Qi Han under the quilt, soft like a kitten, and the gentle palm covered Qi Han’s eyes, “But what should I do with such a crybaby? Ah Jue is going to laugh at you when he sees it.”

Qi Han couldn’t laugh; he stretched out his hand and touched Fu Ge’s chest, his voice muffled: “Your lung disease… is it all right?”

The man in his arms raised his head abruptly, figuring out everything just from one sentence.

Fu Ge was stunned for a few seconds, then withdrew from Qi Han’s arms, lowered his head and whispered, “Did Lao Fang tell you that…”

Lao Fang was the chef just now, the only person who had helped Fu Ge that month.

Qi Han said “Yeah”, raised his hand and cupped his cheek, asking, “The first meal we had when we arrived in Litang, gege was unhappy. It was because my words reminded you of those days, right?”

Fu Ge was silent for a long time, closing his eyes and rubbing against Qi Han’s hand, “Yes, I was mad with you.”

“This is not being mad! This is what I did.” Qi Han’s eyes were red, and his chest was tight with pain. “Because of me, you wouldn’t even have the money to buy medicine. If your lung disease lasted for a long time, it would drag you to death. If something happened to you at the time, I would really just—”

His voice stopped abruptly, swallowed by the lips that suddenly kissed him. Fu Ge kissed his lips, and the soft tip of his tongue slowly licked them. The young Beta’s cheeks were flushed, and his face pressed to Qi Han’s was warm, almost hot.

“Ah Han, I was actually very afraid to talk to you about this. I was afraid that when I thought of the past, I would be angry with you again, feel resentful towards you, and even hate you with nowhere to vent my hatred…”

The Alpha looked at him in a panic and unconsciously clenched Fu Ge’s wrist, afraid that the next sentence he would say would be: So let’s separate for a while, okay?

But the young Beta suddenly smiled, his clear almond eyes glittering with sparkling light, “But I find I don’t.”

“When you mentioned the words ‘lung disease’, my first reaction was: What should I do now that you know about it? This crybaby is going to bawl his eyes out again.”

With this sentence, Qi Han’s eyes became red, his eyelashes trembled, and his voice was shaky: “You have suffered so much, and you are still… worried that I will be distressed when I know it?”

His pupils shrank and dilated again; his heart was sore, and his whole being was almost annihilated by guilt and remorse.

Even Qi Han himself wondered how in the world he could have Fu Ge.

“And what about you?”

With tears in the corners of his eyes, Fu Ge asked him: “Did you resent me when I tortured you with injections? When that person stabbed me with a needle, did you hesitate for a second before rushing over? Did you ever feel fear because you were outnumbered when I was kidnapped?”

Qi Han shook his head without even thinking about it, “No. I can’t possibly let you suffer anymore. I will have you live well even if I die.”

Fu Ge broke into tears and smiled at the same time, “That’s it.”

He wiped away Qi Han’s tears, kissed the corners of his eyes, put his arms around his neck and said, “I know you didn’t want to live at that time. You treated your life as worthless, you wouldn’t even feel sorry for yourself, but you would still feel sorry for me, and even… even for the child who had nothing to do with you. You had to lose your life just to give me a family…”

“How much more hate is there that can’t be healed? I don’t hate you anymore.”

“The day I forgave you was the first time I didn’t have nightmares for so many years. I always thought the only way I could get a moment of peace was to make you die. But after the wedding my nightmares got worse instead. It was you who taught me that revenge isn’t relief, letting go is.”

Qi Han choked back a sob and pressed their foreheads together: “Has gege let go?”

“Yes. Can you let go too? We both will have a good life.”

Qi Han closed his eyes, buried his face in the nook of Fu Ge’s neck, and said in a low voice: “I’m not as good as gege, I’ll need a few more years…”

That evening, the two hugged quietly for a long time; neither of them spoke, and time flowed silently until Qi Han was ready. Then he said hoarsely: “Can you tell me about what happened in the past few years?”

The young Beta clenched his hands and said, “Okay.”

Fu Ge’s past was the sharpest knife inserted in Qi Han’s heart. Every time he uncovered an old incident, that knife went an inch deeper. The guilt that continued to go deeper was going to kill him. Instead of letting him know bits and pieces when he was unprepared, it was better to reveal it all at once.

They chose the gentlest but also the cruellest way to dig out those old ills, and Fu Ge personally recounting every ounce of pain he had endured was undoubtedly the same as cutting Qi Han’s flesh with a knife.

He was choking with pain, trembling with pain, his chest was so stuffy that he couldn’t breathe, and his stomach turned upside down again and again, but every time the little Beta would squeeze his fingers hard and wake him up. Two pairs of eyes full of tears looked at each other over years of suffering. Fu Ge said: “It’s all over, I’m fine now.”

Qi Han cried until he couldn’t anymore, hugging him, choking and panting: “Gege, I hurt… I hurt too much… I really want to kill myself…”

“Don’t.” The corners of Fu Ge’s smiling mouth were wet with tears, and his voice was hoarse: “If you die, I’ll really, really have nothing left…”

This was the longest hour Qi Han had spent in his life, hundreds of times more painful than any torture Fu Ge had ever given him.

By the time the little Beta finished talking, his body was numb with pain and he was sitting on the bed with his soul out of his body.

When the doctor came in with the medical records, Qi Han was still in a daze. He didn’t listen to what the doctor said until Fu Ge cried out and looked at him with eyes full of panic and confusion.

Only then did Qi Han regain some consciousness: “What’s wrong?”

Fu Ge, very pale, raised his hand and pressed on his gauze-wrapped glands, asking in a hoarse voice, “Does it hurt?”

“It doesn’t hurt.” Qi Han caught his hand and smiled, “I’m fine.”

But when the doctor removed the gauze, his scarred glands were already festering and suppurating, and the pink flesh was oozing yellow liquid, like a piece of rotten meat, shocking to look at.

Fu Ge’s tears burst out in an instant as he looked dumbly: “How could it be… how could it be like this… how could it not hurt…”

Seeing that Qi Han didn’t look like he was enduring, the doctor took a small plastic hammer and hit his shoulder, but the Alpha didn’t react at all.

Fu Ge moved his lips in disbelief: “He doesn’t seem to feel anything… has his sense of pain become dull…”

“So far it looks like it.” The doctor pushed up his glasses, “President Qi has suffered too many traumas in a short period of time, and there are continuous injuries on top of each other. The accumulation of pain to the critical value will reduce the sensitivity of the human body, which is what you call dullness. It can be regarded as a kind of the body’s self-protection mechanism.”

“Can that still be cured?” Fu Ge asked anxiously.

“It should be possible.” The doctor didn’t dare to guarantee, “It can take a few years or a few months. This is a psychological problem, you can consult a professional psychiatrist.”

Fu Ge glanced at Qi Han, and the Alpha smiled very slowly, “Don’t worry, it’s okay, I feel pretty good these days.”

The young Beta closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, his eyes were moist and red. He felt as if a shower of thin and dense needles was falling on his heart, piercing it.

He wants to ask: are you really okay?

Dulled pain, hallucinations, even festering glands…

What kind of okay was this?

But the question didn’t come out, because he knew that all this was his own doing. 

“Then why are his glands like this? Obviously the first two days they were fine.”

The doctor checked again with his gloves on, and he was even able to squeeze out pus from the edge of the glands. Fu Ge had difficulty breathing when he looked at it.

“It shouldn’t be like this, it was just a few cuts next to the glands and the wounds aren’t deep. How could it suddenly become inflamed, and the glands’ self-healing ability is almost lost.”

The doctor raised his eyes as he said that, and asked, “Have President Qi’s glands been injured before?”

As the words were said, Fu Ge’s pupils suddenly widened, and his heart trembled.

Qi Han got up almost immediately and pushed the doctor out, “Go, go, I will go to the clinic to see you tomorrow.”

“Ah Han!” The man behind him stopped him; his voice was hoarse and tears slid down from the corners of his eyes when he spoke, “He, he extracted pheromones…”

The doctor smiled, “Ah, there is no problem with pheromone extraction. Not a big deal for a 3S Alpha. How many millilitres have you extracted in total?”

Qi Han: “Eighty!”

Fu Ge: “One hundred and fifty…”

The doctor opened his eyes wide in shock and stammered, looking at Fu Ge, “How much?”

Fu Ge’s heart seemed to be stabbed by a knife, and the pain made him clench his teeth and squeeze out word after word: “It’s not in total, it’s per week… one hundred and fifty…”

Just to cure his fake illness, Qi Han had to lie on the restraint bed every day, allowing the needle that scared him the most to penetrate his most fragile place, draining the Alpha’s most precious pheromones bit by bit until his glands became shrivelled and festered and his energy and vitality disappeared.

After that sentence, the ward fell into a long silence.

Fu Ge lowered his head, his pale fingers clenched on the corner of the table in pain and fear.

Qi Han didn’t care about his own condition at all, he just looked at Fu Ge worriedly.

The doctor sighed helplessly after digesting the news for a long time: “No matter how strong people are, they can’t stand being trampled on like this. One hundred and fifty a week, at least five times a week. Don’t mention the dose, just talk about the process. How tough one needs to be not to die of pain…”

“Tsk.” Qi Han took Fu Ge in his arms and said to the doctor: “Don’t say anything superfluous, just say whether it can be cured or not.”

The doctor nodded regretfully, “It can be cured, but you two must be prepared to be left with sequelae.”

Fu Ge couldn’t help pinching his palm hard, “What sequelae?”

“The most basic thing is that the release of pheromones is blocked. Blockage can be temporary or lifelong. It will hurt when it rains, on cloudy days and when the weather is humid. It is also recommended that President Qi go to test his gland level tomorrow.”

“Gland level?” Fu Ge looked over mechanically: “You mean he…”

“He’s probably not a 3S level Alpha anymore.”

Something in his head collapsed suddenly. Fu Ge’s vision went black, and he fell on the bed like a puppet with cut strings.

Even Qi Han was stunned for several seconds, subconsciously touching his glands, but only felt a handful of blood.

Once upon a time, their genes and their level were the things Qi Ji and Qi Han were most proud of. Not to mention the capital, even in the world there were less than 5% of 3S level Alphas. They were jokingly called God’s favourites. They were born with an aura of excellence in terms of intelligence and physical strength.

If the glands were damaged and the level dropped, it would be just like the knight having his sword chopped, like the sniper being blinded, like the martial artist having his arms cut off.

No one can be willing to be reduced from the best to mediocrity.

Qi Han was stunned with regret for a moment, but only for a moment before he quickly adjusted his emotions.

He leaned over and rested his forehead against Fu Ge’s, “It doesn’t matter, baby, whether it’s 3S or not, I don’t care about those things anymore.”

He gave the doctor a wink and asked him to go out. He sat on the bed and took Fu Ge, who was stiff all over, into his arms. The little Beta’s tears gushed out in streams, his wet eyes full of self-blame and regret: “I wasn’t sick at all, I just wanted an excuse… to torture you, to make your body deteriorate, to make you lower your guard…”

Qi Han naturally knew it a long time ago, and now he pretended to be surprised and said, “So you thought of extracting pheromones? Smart baby.”

“What are you talking about!” Fu Ge frowned and slapped him, unable to see him joking about his health.

Qi Han chuckled lightly: “Did you forget so quickly what you advised me just now? Those things are over, and we will live well in the future.”

Fu Ge shook his head and buried his face in Qi Han’s neck, his voice choking: “Once the level goes down, it will never be possible to recover. This is what you are most proud of.”

Qi Han was startled for a moment, “Do you think so?”

“Isn’t it?…” The little Beta muttered.

“Of course not. Whether I’m eighteen or twenty-three years old, identity and status have never been my pride.”

He nudged the tip of the little Beta’s nose and murmured, “You are.”

How can other things match Fu Ge?

He had such a good lover; the flame that the stars had unintentionally started when they fell into the mortal world that illuminated him for many, many years.

Even though the separation was long, the flame was still warming him.

Fu Ge’s eyelashes trembled. He touched Qi Han’s glands, and then touched the wound next to his Adam’s apple. The tip of his nose twitched, and tears rolled down his face again, “But if I didn’t make you extract so much—”

“Stop.” Qi Han interrupted him: “Stop it, Xiao Ge, don’t think like this, never think like this.”

He held Fu Ge’s face, raised his chin, and said eagerly and solemnly: “I stabbed my throat by myself, and I decided to extract the pheromone by myself. I deserve everything. Don’t blame yourself or even regret it, not even a bit, understand?”

From beginning to end, he didn’t want to force Fu Ge to forgive him out of guilt, he just wanted him to really let go. Even in the last words he left for Chen Xing he said that he hoped he could be buried far away from his little Beta after he died.

Don’t let him see him, don’t let him regret, let alone blame himself.

Qi Han hugged Fu Ge, stroked his back with a warm hand and whispered: “Xiao Ge, I am not a coward who avoids responsibility. I recognise everything I have done.”

“No matter what the reason I hurt you back then was, those things actually happened. Everyone is responsible for their actions. I am an adult. I have the courage and consciousness to take responsibility. I deserve everything you did.”

“Besides, if you didn’t retaliate against me—”

He paused, lowered his head and touched Fu Ge’s forehead, “I wouldn’t have the face to be with you at all.”

“I am very grateful that you are willing to forgive me, but I will never forgive myself. These seven months have not been a punishment for me, they have been a relief.”

“Baby, you’re the one who gave me the chance to have you again.”

The long night had come to an end; the incomplete embrace was consummated; the darkness without end was finally over, and the two people who had been through suffering were together.

Their wounds were engraved with each other’s names, as if they were the most harmonious couple in the world, loving each other every moment when the clouds and the rain were gone.

“Then let’s go to test the gland level together tomorrow, okay?”

Qi Han kissed him, “Will do as you say.”

Translator’s note: Ah Jue: “The thing I learned to do best when I was five years old was to pretend to be asleep when my dads were having another one of their emotional moments…”