The night was a tarry spread of naught across Yuhui’s floor, a deep midnight draped like an echo of the infinite gaping eternal in its soft-spectrum spread with similar shades sliced in measure, varying degrees barely differentiable from each other by the sight of naked eye. The moon was out but the cloudcover was hungry, devouring the thin slope of its charlatan grin behind tufts of condensation illuminated like backlit windows to nowhere, halo-sharp. The sky always turned like a kaleidoscope, guided by the hands of a great being with the whims of a child—that moon was to be seen again in quick passing, a flicker of opportunity blinking into the abyss of the prince’s room.

The prince himself was curled into a ball atop his fortress of bed linens, a careless arrangement of limbs that tried their best to stay awake and failed. A cold pot of tea was left out on his table. The box he’d been gifted from his older brother sat still nearby. Yuhui slept peacefully in the quiescence the day’s retreat brought, silent breaths soft upon the valley of his pillows.

Laike, relatively well rested despite the hour thanks to his early slumber, sat cross-legged next to Yuhui’s bed for what seemed a long time. In reality, indecision stretched the boy’s perception. What felt like an hour was merely a five minute span of vigilance, a brief blip of wishful watching, wistful wanting before he dared allow his touch to trespass the prince’s hand.

“Yu,” the boy whispered, chin resting on the soft silk spilling over the edge of the bed frame. “Xia, wake up.”

“Laike!” Yuhui blinked awake at the sound of his visitor, hissing his name into the stillness surrounding them. His bright eyes settled into a smile more relaxed but the thrill remained like a haunting. He was so happy to see that face from the mountain again. The shape of a smile creased his cheeks with delight.

“I’m so happy to see you,” the older boy confessed, catching the fingers that dared touch his own, holding the hand of night at the zenith of its darkness.

Laike was quickly on his knees, leaning onto his elbow as he trespassed the prince’s bed, made brazen by his fondness for that boy that distracted him from his every thought. Regardless of Yuhui’s immediate response to his presence, the shadowstalker posed his question in coy posture, shy even under cover of night: “Did you miss me?”

“Can’t you tell?” Yuhui asked with wide eyes, a playful protest, mock offense. “Yes, of course I missed you. I’ve been thinking about you all day.” He moved over to welcome another body even though there was plenty of room. “Sorry, I got plenty of sleep today but I still wasn’t able to stay up. I think I will just have to get used to being awake at this hour. If you keep coming, then surely it’ll be easy to fix my schedule.”

“I just woke up,” the displaced disciple confided as he slid up into the spot he was offered, still unsure of how, exactly, one closed the distance between two bodies. He continued, soft spoken even compared to their whispering cadence. “I didn’t get to sleep when I got back. I…” Sighing, Laike managed to free himself from his boots, leaving them on the floor before he turned more fully toward Yuhui, calmer now that he was trapped by the void of his eyes. “It’s strange. I can’t seem to get you out of my mind.”

“Guess that means you missed me too, huh?” The prince grinned as he took a grip of Laike’s clothes in his hands and pulled him near. He urged him next to him or atop of him or anywhere in direct conjunction to his own laid out form as long as they were close enough to touch, to be in the immediate sphere of each other’s warmth as though this moment carried over from the prior morning, a blip of time unpaused. “I’m sorry you didn’t get a lot of sleep. Maybe you can rest here for a little while before you go back.”

“I don’t think you want to rest,” Laike teased, emboldened by Yuhui’s demanding gravity, his inescapable arrest. He settled halfway across the older boy’s chest, chin tucked modestly when he made his second reckless admission: “I don’t think I want to rest, either.”

“You’re right, I don’t. Seeing you is more important than sleep to me right now.” Yuhui smiled, docile in his sincerity now that their distances were negligible. “I missed you, Laike. Also, there are some things I want to ask you about before you go, so don’t let me forget.”

“Ask me now.” The shadowstalker was a responsible thing, even in these moments where the only thing he wanted was so close yet still impossible to fathom taking. “I feel like I’m going to be distracted, soon.”

“Alright. Would you do another warding on me before you go? My brother gifted me the sister sword to his own and he’s taking me to get it inlaid during the day. I don’t want anything to go haywire during the process since the last warding is wearing off.” Yuhui slid his arms around Laike, idly holding him. “He also said that it’s sometimes difficult to procure your sword if you’re not used to it, so I was wondering if you’d be willing to help me with that too. Another time. He asked me to challenge for the millipede with him and I told him that I would.”

“Come to the mountain after it’s installed.” Laike smiled before he grew impatient with his own callow chastity, leaning down to press a kiss to Yuhui’s lips. “I’ll spend all day teaching you how to draw your sword.”

“Okay.” Yu’s smile deviated back into a grin. All his sound faded into the silence of his earlier claims proven in the fervor of his kiss returned, his too much and all at once, emptiness of long ago struck from the record in a flash of yearning electricity—chin tilted, teeth apart.

“I’ll ward you,” that boy tried to promise as his words were decimated in the crossfire. Dissatisfied with the poor leverage of his position, Laike was a smooth movement from stomach to knees, astride Yuhui’s hips without delay. He, with his spine a sphere’s perfect edge, worshipped that plagued boy like he was molten gold, like Yu could seep into every space Lai dared to let him touch.

“Before I go, I’ll do it,” Laike finally managed, his hands smoothing up Yuhui’s chest till he held him by the jaw, so happy to be reunited with the floral trace of the Prince’s skin. “I will.”

“Thank you, Laike,” the prince breathed, sweetness a direct contrast to the message his mouth was more prepared to give.

Hospitable surface damned to always float above the fury of his chaotic core, to try and hold it back behind its thin veneer, Yuhui briefly pulled his head away. He watched that boy distilled from darkness with a subtle sharpening of his eyes, acumination of his void wordlessly daring him to even try and make it out of there alive from the purity of his pitch pining. Chin angled, he asked: “When I’m in your mind, what sort of things am I doing?”

“Hmm—” Laike was thoughtful as he rose from his untoward beggar’s prayer position, perched defiant across the prince’s lap. Taking his admirer’s hands, he drug Yuhui’s touch slowly up his thighs, up his hips, till he stopped at his belt, wrapping royal fingers around the leather knot and black-iron buckle. “In my mind, I saw you struggle with my belt then petulantly demand I help you because proper clothes don’t belong in your bed.”

“Gods—” With a shifted perspective giving way to a full view, Yuhui sighed in the melody of a lovesong unwritten, his hymn so recognizable for the amount of swooning ardor it managed to hold. “You’re so fucking beautiful. Do you know that? Laike, you’re stunning. How are you even real?” The young prince’s fingers blindly worked at the cording wrapped ‘round the shape of that shadow given depth, his jet perfection sublime in the twisting of the older boy’s fingers.

Yuhui was easy to read and Yunji’s disciple was not wrong: petulance was a mood he wore very frequently, with great expertise. However, looking up upon the thin edge of moonlight wrapping Laike’s shape like an eclipse had him

struck

stumbling

falling.

Laike shied from the adulation. He was a coltish shake of the head, not denying the observation but gently stunned to disbelief, never hearing words like Yuhui’s spoken in his own direction. Physical beauty wasn’t valuable in his ascetic upbringing; humility and denial went hand in hand in the halls of his empty mountain. His value and his pride laid in his skill with his blade, his self worth determined by his quick-study mind—

but even Laike occasionally lingered on his reflection in the river and wondered what others might think of him.

Yuhui would make a monster of that shadowstalker in his bed; Yuhui would corrupt him with his reverence. Laike’s hands were an echo over the Prince’s blind untying, guiding him slowly toward success till they could drop his belt to the floor, follow it quickly with robe, with undershirt. Every article’s languid removal saw Laike’s gaze affixed to his chaos-stream companion, rapt, afraid of missing a single moonlit sliver of Yu’s argent affection, addicted by a single taste of the royal boy’s exaltant flattery.

Stripped to trousers alone, the nightblood boy returned to where he preferred to be: pressed to his first-time’s body where he could hide his callow responses in a crown throat.

“You’re the first to tell me,” he confessed before he resumed their mouth to mouth communication, his whispers so serene. “You’re a lot of firsts, for me.”

“That’s a shame,” was Yuhui’s response, muttered in the spaces typically reserved for breath. “The world has been very cruel to you.”

His hands traced those shapes so touched by moonlight, smoothed up the bareness of Laike’s arms, his every hillock of muscle and shallow hollow of tendon. He rounded the arc of his shoulder, slid bed-warm fingers up the incline of that boy’s neck to pass over the soft spot between ear and jaw and greedily dip into the silken soot of his hair.

Yuhui was fine with the inherent sightlessness of his surveying. This flesh was a map best traveled and learned by touch, memorized in the grain of his terrain by leaving a specter of fingerprints to be remembered in moments without. His lips were content to render every possible word between them impossible. For being born of royal blood and fed with spoons of gold, that lesser prince of Fanxing’s land sure knew how to posture himself in an act of veneration.

Thieving hands drifted from silk surface to knotted waist, teasing the tie loose until the sash came apart. Laike was a pretty thing when he had his good-boy eyes downcast like he could still be Xueyu’s pride if he learned new secret skills in the dark. He could still be the mountain’s greatest disciple if he just hid his face in Yuhui’s pulse when he ran his hands up that unmarred chest, when he delicately parted his prince’s deepwater robe.

What Laike didn’t expect to find was Yuhui fully nude against him when the silk fell away.

“—oh—” The inexperienced boy, all shifting shadow and blushing nape, froze mid-kiss with his eyes wide, pushing himself up and a little away, shifting carefully to avoid seeing or feeling too much of Yuhui before either of them were ready. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t realize…”

“Yeah, this is how I sleep.” Yuhui clearly didn’t mind his exposure—the act of taking off clothes was to get naked, right? But seeing Laike shy away made him gather his clothing and put it back straight, folding robe end over end, making another knot in his sash. “Sorry, maybe I should have told you that.”

Before the knot was tied, Laike grabbed at Yuhui’s hands with both of his own, sitting a bit more upright. He brought those pale knuckles to his lips and watched the refolded robe slip once more astray, curious eyes taking long strolls along that forbidden waistline. “If it’s okay with you, I think it’s okay with me.”

“If you’re not sure, then I would rather not.” On a rush of gentle whispers, the prince reclaimed his hand, brushing the cheek of that boy he looked upon with adoration before returning to his midriff. “I don’t want to force your hand. You don’t have to fit yourself into the imprudent stride of my step.”

“I don’t know what I’m sure of recently,” Laike sighed as he sat back, still astride Yuhui’s thighs. “You’re not forcing my hand. I guess I’m just… I don’t know. Learning. You’ll help me figure it out, won’t you?”

“What were you hoping for, what did you want? You wanted to touch me, right?” Yuhui tilted his head. “That’s why you were undressing me. You can still touch me.”

“Where do you like to be touched?” Lai replied in turn, tilting his head as he surveyed the reclothed shape of that boy, so much more confident then he. His hands fell till his palms rested flat upon the sharp protrusion of hip bones on either side of that ghostly taunt of a body. “Tell me what you like.”

Yuhui’s eyes held some mischief, betrayed by an unspoken response that lit his expression with a passing shade of humor before he settled back into his docility.

“Well, right there is good. I like to be touched in a lot of places, truthfully.” He took Laike’s hands and pulled them toward him, grazing over the silk of his waistband, pushing them into the dark fold of the silks previously parted—pulled apart again, though not to an entirely indecent degree. “I guess right now it all depends on what sort of response you’re trying to get out of me. Different touches have different connotations to them. What are you trying to tell me with this?”

“That I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.” Laike ceded control of his hands, simply rebalanced himself as he followed Yu’s guidance. He left his hazel gaze to dwell on that highbrow face he longed for, unabashed in his adoration, bedroom eyes a natural fit for that face when the shyness ran dry. “I want to tell you I’ve never witnessed anything like you. I’ve never seen anything or anyone so sublime, never wanted to inhabit someone’s space like I want to inhabit yours. I want to tell you that I’m afraid of making a wrong move or being bad at the right ones.” Hands clasping hands, palm to palm, Laike leaned forward over his quarry pinning their symbiote hold to either side of Yuhui’s head. “Xia, how do I touch you to tell you all that?”

“You just told me with your mouth, so you don’t have to be worried about placing a wrong touch.” Yuhui smiled, turning his chin up to plant a brief kiss on the other boy’s lips. “I think I probably don’t give you enough credit for how difficult it is to be around me. I know we were raised very differently. I know your master has tried to dissuade you from getting involved with me. Social statuses are hard for me too: I could be in a room full of upper echelon politicians and out-rank all of them, all these men who have seen so much more in their lives than me, a nineteen year old twerp. I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I’m so fond of you, Laike. You can touch me anywhere and I will be happy. I’m happy that you touch me at all.” He curled his fingers in Laike’s own and claimed another kiss as his own.

Laike was a wax figure tucked against Yuhui’s body. He suffered softly as something so simple as body heat warped his shape entirely. Yuhui made a mockery of Laike’s oaths, his mantras, his prayers; he stole them from the disciple’s mouth with every kiss, strung them on a thread of spidersilk, and wore them around his throat like a war crime.

“I’m happy. I know it’s hard to tell but I’m so happy, Xia,” the shy boy smiled before he drifted, testing the taste of Yu’s jaw, his bobbing throat, his picturesque lines smooth from neck to shoulder. “The way you touch me—I think I understand it. You touch me like you want to remember me when I’m not here. Ah, I’m fucking greedy: I want you to remember me; I want to occupy your thoughts when I’m not around. I want to be your daydream, your nightmare. I want you to know every scar, every sharp edge, every tracer, so when you think of me at sunset, when the shadows grow long, your image is good enough to summon me from Yunji so I can taste your mouth again.”

“And will you come, then? If I cry out into the shadows of my room, my pillow. If I suffocate myself in all these silks that keep the scent of you, clutching strings of pearls in my lonely hand. Will the sounds of my yearning reach you?” The prince lifted his chin, moved his head to the side to give Laike all the space to wander over the landscape of his neck, his pulse dancing beneath his skin like snake-venom blood, hot and perilous. “Should I tell it to the floor? The vase is an hourglass that I constantly watch and yet never see its sands move. Should I wait there, at your doorway’s doorstep, until the obsidian touch of your limbs slathered in antithesis reach out and grab me?”

Yuhui arched his back, exhale a salacious rasp that begged for more, a heathen with a heartache that only satisfaction of his solicitations could soothe. He was driftwood willing to break under the slightest provocation, ready to sink in pieces to the untold depths of Laike’s sunless sea.

“Every shadow is a door; no matter where you are, I’ll come for you,” Laike teased, lascivious with his bolstered confidence. He was running his hands beneath that robe becoming more and more displaced with his agitations, modesty’s blush replaced by a hunter’s dirt streaked red, bruising in the afterglow. “I’ll come for you if you’re begging on the floor, in your bed, at the edges of your father’s receiving hall when you’re bored of listening to Fanxing’s petitions. I’ll come for you when you’re sent to wander the world, when you’re cold and alone in the winter mountains, in abandoned buildings and run-down inns. Wherever there’s a shadow you can cry yourself a gateway and I promise: I’ll come for you.”