“H-ah—”

The young prince snapped awake at the jostling of his bed, dark eyes wide when they met the boy he managed to trick out of his shadows. Yuhui didn’t move, but he did settle into a quiet delight when he saw Laike was the cause of his disturbance, memory quickly falling into place from the abstracts of slumber from his trap so carefully laid, his plan perfectly executed.

Yuhui’s gaze was a product of joy and moonlight. He shifted gently in recline, gathering up his extended, silver-scroll arm.

“Are you okay?” he asked his friend from the mountain, voice low in the silence of his room and the palace beyond his door. “I hope you didn’t fall far.”

“I-I’m sorry.” Laike, mortified by his own incompetence, scrambled to his knees at the very foot of the bed, head bowed penitent like Xueyu was about to cane him for his foolish behaviour, his indecent curiosity. Where had his balance gone? Where was his aptitude for remaining undetected? His better sense had been eclipsed by greed; he knew he should have left this letter unread. “Please forgive me, my Prince,” the shadowstalker sputtered in whispers, ears warm for the shame of being caught red-handed. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“Don’t apologize. I wanted to be disturbed.” Yuhui shook the notion off in a modest back and forth ricochet of his chin, reassuring even in his dampened volume. He pushed himself up to sitting and watched Laike at the end of his bed with his posture hairpin triggered like an animal betrayed.

The prince bit his bottom lip, passingly pensive. “But… maybe my trap was more unkind than I imagined it would be. You can relax. I just wanted to see you again. You don’t have to stay if you have other obligations, I understand.”

Laike’s posture relaxed by a miniscule degree; he at least raised his head, even if his eyes were still cast askance. “I don’t have anywhere to be,” that dutiful boy replied. He was so tuned to immediate repercussions for foolhardy behaviour and impropriety that he found it incredibly difficult to overcome his gut response to the expectations class laid out for him, for them—even after their pact of friendship, their alleyway trist, their calligraphic escalations built on pretty words, on undercurrents and overtones. “I’m sorry, I just…” Laike’s shoulders slumped and he glanced up at Yuhui from his chin tucked view; he was happy to see his friend despite his frantic disengage. “…hi.”

“Hi.” The royal boy smiled, hands resting gently atop his folded legs covered by a thick coating of blankets. “I should tell you that you’re not really missing out on any other words. I said that I wrote on my back, but the truth is I couldn’t quite manage and my siblings are neither empathetic or helpful enough to lend me a hand—oh! Since I have you here, I wanted to ask you about that cutting of jasmine you left around your first letter. Will it keep? Can I press it? I wanted to hang onto it because it’s so beautiful, but I was a little afraid to over manipulate it. I didn’t want to cause it damage or… I dunno, make it dissipate. Do you think I could have it set in glass?” When given the opportunity, Yuhui found his way into conversations easily. His status was high enough to typically allow him to speak without having to worry about etiquette; he was a curious boy with few people to engage, an oftentimes lonely thing happy to have a friend.

“You can treat it like any other flower.” Laike’s words came with the incremental rise of his chin, hazel gaze nervous but willing to risk lingering on that face he’d traveled across his shadowscape to see. He was grateful Yuhui was so willing to speak: he found it difficult to simply fall into conversation, into comfort; he found it difficult to depend on familiarity and the trust built by words after a lifetime fearing abandonment. “The camellias too. They’re still flowers—just in reverse.”

“Oh, okay.” Yu nodded, clearly pleased by the assertion. “So… When the dark version is made or taken from its counterpart, does a relationship between each side remain? I mean, are they connected at all? Does the dark iteration of the light still maintain its life but in opposites? Or does it take on a life of its own in the separation, like a cutting? Does it live at all?”

“It’s not made or taken—they’re still together,” Laike explained with his hands on his knees, picking nervously at the hem of his robe. “If you hold it up to light it still casts a shadow; the shadow is just the object. I just switched them around. The flower still lives and the flower still dies: I just made it so you can hold its silhouette.”

“I see. Sorry if those are dumb questions, I’ve just never seen anything like it before. I tend to think about things until my thoughts stretch beyond me and nothing makes sense anymore.” The middle child of the Tian line watched that boy of shadows before him, observation astute and careful. “Are you always going to be so nervous when we meet? It’s going to be difficult to get to know you if you’re afraid to show yourself to me.”

If he were honest, Laike would admit that he was terrified of the power Yuhui held over him—not by rank or by family, not for something so trite or manmade. No: what made Laike nervous was the uncontrollable thrum of his heartbeat, how his anxious fingers kept picking at the threads of his clothes, the hot and cold shiver of his spine like some malady was about to befall him. How could Yuhui bend him till he couldn’t stop aching for the Prince’s proximity? How could Yuhui occupy his mind so fully and so well that even Xueyu’s paternal warnings didn’t seem to matter?

“For a little,” Laike admitted quietly, still watching Yuhui with contentment writ upon his face. “I’m not afraid; I just need time.”

“Alright. I can give you time.” Briefly, Yuhui looked beyond his friend, watching the open air of his courtyard painted in every shade of blue—background dark, cobalt and cerulean highlights dancing upon the barely disturbed surface of his pond, the leaves of bushes, waxy and holding onto droplets of starry moonlight.

“But I’m going to keep talking to you, unless you want me to stop. If you want me to be quiet just tell me, okay?” He returned to Laike, atramentous sight placid in its vacuum. “How long does it take you to travel from here to there?”

“Not long, now,” Laike replied, looking down at his hands. “The first time I came down here, it took a while—in the under space, anyways. It was probably less up here. I don’t know how it works. Sometimes I’m gone for no time at all; sometimes I’ve disappeared for days. It’s strange.” Looking up sharply, that lost boy with his harvest moon eyes grew a little bolder in his urgent need to have Xueyu’s assumptions redressed. He tied his fingers in knots to keep his nerves from overtaking his voice, to keep any trepidation out of his mouth. “You’re really not with anyone else?”

Yuhui’s bottom lip twisted, slanted because he couldn’t quite determine exactly what he was being asked. “What do you mean by ‘with anyone else’? I feel like I could tell you that I’m with you right now, and we’re technically with my family, but I don’t think that’s exactly what you’re asking me. I told you that I’m not in any romantic relationships in the market a few days ago… is that what you’re confirming? And if it is, did you think I was lying to you when I said that?”

“I… just because you’re not in one doesn’t mean you’re not meant to be. And I know you said you probably weren’t going to be because of your haunting, but what if I fix it? Does that mean you’ll be promised then? I didn’t think you were lying, I don’t think you’d lie to me, but…” Sighing, that innocent thing made in the shape of an assassin relaxed shifted his body till he could lay back on his elbows, profile turned to Yuhui with his feet off the edge of the bed. “Master Xueyu just said some stuff to me and it really fucked with my head. I guess I got stuck on it. I’m sorry.”

“Okay. Well.” The prince’s head tilted to the side. “I can’t really tell you what’s going to happen. Those are questions I don’t have answers to. I don’t know if my family’s going to marry me off somewhere down the line, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or the day after that or the day after that, so… I’m sorry, Laike. I would love to tell you that I know the extent of my free will, where it begins and where it ends, that I have a choice in everything that I do, but I just don’t.” He looked down at his lap, turning over his silver ink fingers.

“Even if everything was up to me, it’s hard for me to think about the rest of my life, what I want, who I would ideally like to spend it with. I feel so daft about a lot of things still, despite all the training and education I get put through.” Yuhui glanced up. “I like you a lot but I need to know: do you need me to be completely free of any possibility of commitment to get to know me better?”

“No,” Laike replied softly, a nonchalance in his voice making the syllable seem casual, offhand. He withered a little before he looked over, catching his friend’s abyssal eyes. “…I guess I’m terrified of being thrown away.” He bounced his foot nervously, a dead giveaway to the state of his fight or flight mein.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Laike. I don’t want to throw you away. I think you’re really great and would be really upset if I did anything to make you unhappy.” Yuhui adjusted himself, arranging his pillows so that he could lean back on them and stretch his legs long beneath his covers. He pulled a tasseled pillow from his stack and offered it to the boy from the mountain. “Look—I know we’ve said a lot to each other, done a lot with each other. Can you maybe tell me what you want from me? I’m getting a little confused on where we stand.”

“I don’t really know what I want.” He was all honest sighs as he took the pillow from his friend and laid back on it. “I barely know how I feel. This is all really new, these feelings. I guess I know you make me feel… happy. Warm, maybe a little like the very edge of being drunk. I want to be your friend, I know that. I meant it—I want to be best friends. I want to protect you; I want to paint your wards. I want to take you to the obverse side of the world. You know, my whole life I’ve never taken anyone else there. Having you there with me felt like I was doing something right.” He paused then, demurely averting his gaze. “I want the things we wrote about. And I get if you don’t want that anymore cause I feel like I’m fucking everything up cause I don’t know how to act around you or keep from just spouting a bunch of anxious inane bullshit, but I’d… um…”

Yuhui was patient, quietly listening with his eyes focused on his friend in that night-dressed bedroom. When no other words came, he prodded, desiring completion before he allowed himself to delve into his own thoughts. “…You’d what?”

Laike groaned, looking over at Yuhui with a quick glance, brows knit till that embarrassed boy’s playful face begged not to be forced to say the words. His deflection was a tease, a strange mockery of the shyness Laike wore true to his core. “Xia, you know…”

“I don’t.” The prince was unmoving from his need for absolute clarity, but even he knew that it didn’t all have to be words. After a quick glance around the room to contemplate what the other boy wanted—whites glistening a sky-soft hue in his iris’ erstwhile occupation—Yu returned to him with a pursed lip. “I don’t want to assume, so please just tell me. Or, if you can’t tell me, then show me.”

“I liked the way you memorized my heartbeat with your hand pressed to my skin,” the shadowstalker murmured low with his chin tucked—surprisingly articulate for how hard he’d tried to avoid speaking the words. “I’d like it if you kissed me again.”

“Oh—okay.” Yuhui’s mouth was slowly taken by a smile, huffing a laugh that helped him shed his anticipation for what he’d refused to imagine. He pushed himself up again, moved forward to the foot of the bed in slow advancement, pale hands pressing forward atop overlong silks and sheets, shimmering brocade and blankets built from vibrant threads beneath the splayed fingers of his roving hands.

He met Laike with a kiss to the cheek. He gave him another before moving to his mouth, lips chilled by the timeless night.

When they met, mouth to mouth in electric disarray, Laike pushed back against him—pushed him back and back until they were both upright: Yuhui on his knees and Laike with both hands already tangled in the Prince’s hair, thumbs framing the royal’s stark jaw. His avoidance and his want were parallels; the more Laike wanted, the more he denied. But here with Yuhui against his lips for

fifteen like salvation

sixteen like an apology

seventeen like welcome back

it was difficult to decline his want turned need.

“I missed you.” Laike was barely able to impart his words in the breathmark spaces between heavy kisses drowning in their real hello. “Fuck, I missed you.”

How could Yuhui push into him but also pull? How could he lure with the intent to suffocate, to smother—not the other boy, not the prey ensnared by a wicked game he wasn’t meant to win, but himself, a weak sybarite always on the precipice of his desire, always ready to choke himself on life. He clutched Laike by the biceps, wrapped ‘round that boy and led him astray again as he moved back—

back like down,

down flat,

down pat.

Eighteen said come here.

Nineteen threatened together while

twenty promised apart.

Yuhui was coaxing Laike nearer, laying himself down like a taunt, watching that boy from the shadows through eyes that smoldered with waves of nonsense, his waxing chaos always rising like a sick new sun until it was beaten back into apogee. The prince may have been a broken magnet in the prettiest jewel case but, fuck, he was a l i v e in this strange attraction.

“I missed you too, Laike.”

Even without experience, even without ever witnessing a look like that outside the training yard, Laike knew what it said; he recognized the beck even when he didn’t understand the call.

He followed—of course he followed. Even with bountiful choice, Laike had none. He was on a straight path choke-chain down, caught and reeled with nary a struggle in sight—but instead of indulging Yuhui’s cliff-face recline, despite his desire to keep on counting

twenty-one

forty-four

one-oh-nine

that callow mongrel, fearless boy suddenly so nervous when his hand clutched the firestarter, laid next to his every-night query. He watched Yuhui’s face in the dark, arm draped light across his chest, shadowless hand gently toying in the Prince’s messy ebon hair.

If this was a substitution for the affection he was requesting, Yuhui made no fuss. Instead, he made himself comfortable under Laike’s limb. He curled up next to the other boy, watched him close in the lapis dark.

“How long do you get to stay with me?” The night was quiet and so was he. Yuhui was happy with close; contented by near.

“Xueyu expects me before dawn.” Laike was consumed watching Yuhui’s mouth wrap around his words from such a coveted vantage point. “He thinks I’m sick if I’m not up and around before him.”

Dipping in, that enchanted fighter pressed his lips to his dreamscape companion’s. He lingered there overlong; he didn’t deepen his inquiry; he remained unseeking. He closed his eyes so he could feel the single line of resistance that separated form from form. He focused on the places where they met: breath to breath, fingers to temple, wrist to neck.

“Yu?” That orphan boy trespassing on royal grounds was barely a murmur when he spoke. “What are you trying to find here? With me?”

“I’m not trying to find anything. I’m not sure finding is the right word.” Yuhui’s lidded eyes watched nothing, tracing abstract shapes from the peaks and troughs of their forms in recline. “Have you ever met someone and just instantly knew that you wanted to share everything you had with them? When I first saw you, I thought you were so beautiful. My brother made fun of me—he said that I was unholy and that you were probably going to become a priest. I think—heh, I mean… I guess the more we talked, the more I got to see how you approach the world and others and even me, the more I found to like about you. I read your letters over and over again. They make my heart pound in my chest. I can feel it spread all throughout my body to my fingers and toes.”

The prince looked up again, meeting the shadowed boy’s eyes. “I just want to spend time with you, Laike. I want to share the things I have with you. I want to see you smile, I want to know what makes you cry. I want to learn everything about you—I’ll take it at whatever pace you want me to have it. I just want to be near you, with you, together or apart.”

“Have you felt this way about someone before?” Laike spoke with a wide eyed genuine curiosity, like the answer would better shape the story forming in the golden cracks of Yuhui’s porcelain skin. He was without judgement, without agenda as he drifted from temple to jaw to throat.

“I feel very deeply for those I’m allowed to get close to,” Yuhui responded. “My past intimacies were all short-lived, though.”

“Better than my none… right?” The shy boy laughed quietly. He looked up brightly, impish in the moonlight. “You should convince your parents you need a bodyguard.”

“Hmm,” the prince hummed thoughtfully, scheming mind set in motion. “Do you think Master Xueyu would let you take on something like that? He seems very protective over you. I wonder if I could get around Gao Erxun… he’s the captain of our guard.” Whenever Yuhui imagined the man so named, he was larger than life; strong like a steel reinforced wall, steady and sturdy. The boy’s face was bright in his contemplations but a moment of silence saw him crumble with something like worry as he circled back around to what his companion said.

“Oh, Laike—I’m so sorry I made your first kiss happen in an alleyway. I’m so selfish sometimes.”

“It was with you,” Laike smiled as he started shifting onto his back, coaxing the other boy to roll with his position. “It was perfect.”

With Yuhui settled against his side, Laike pressed his nose into that night breeze hair, all osmanthus flowers and rainwater. “And… I think if Fanxing’s king makes a request of the mountain, Master Xueyu would be unable to deny him.”

Yuhui made himself comfortable, legs pressed alongside legs, shoulders fit together like a puzzle whose simple solution was touch, cheek resting close to the other boy’s collar bone. He wrapped his arms around Laike’s waist as though he was prepared to fight the still distant morning for control, as though he could change the will of time and inevitability with the force of his longing.

“Yeah.” Yuhui’s words were velvet on his friend’s chest. “Well, if you really want to, then I will do everything I can to make it happen. There’s nothing I want more than to spend time with you.”

“Then you can have as many moments as you can hold in your mind; decide if the man you observe is the man you thought I was, the man you wanted,” Laike mused softly before a yawn overtook his words. “I’m afraid of falling asleep here, these letters we’ve been trading have left me sleepless. Will you make sure I go in an hour? Will you keep me awake?”

“Mmhm.” The prince nodded, swishing silk between him and Laike louder than the sound of his hum. He laughed gently after a moment, another breath caressing clavicle and chestbone. “Thanks for being curious enough to fall for my trap. And for staying, even though you looked really scared.”

“I knew it was a trap,” Laike stated, matter-of-fact in Xueyu’s no-nonsense tone as he turned his nose up at the very idea of being scared. “I was just surprised. Your chaos stream pushed me when I fell on you.”

“Yeah. Sure,” the older boy smiled, “Whatever makes you feel better, Lai.”