Young One (2/2)
The marriage has been arranged by the two Queens. Jongin finds out a day later, when he brings the prince his midday meal in his room.
Jongin's feet are dressed and bandaged, with only minimal sting from his cuts. They make no sound as he shuffles up to the door.
He hears the voices before he can knock.
"Don't be ridiculous." The Queen's unmistakable alto leaks through the partition. "We have conducted more marriage meetings than I can count. You were going to find a match before the end of the year."
The prince's reply is strained. "You were to consult with me, not select my bride at whim."
Jongin hears the Queen huff, imagines the stately lift of her eyebrows. "I did nothing of the sort," she responds, dryly. "I made my decision based on a careful analysis of the facts."
"Which are?" Joonmyun tosses back, not without hostility.
"Watanabe Keiko is wealthy, beautiful, well-connected, blue-blooded-"
"Flighty, frivolous, a shameless flirt," Joonmyun rattles off on his own. "Passable as a dinner partner, but unable to hold a decent conversation unless it has to do with the kind of luxury only a fraction of the world can enjoy."
"That's rich of you," the Queen says, "when your closest friend amassed his entire fortune by selling silk, spirits, and precious stones. He speaks of little else. And might I remind you, Joonmyun, that you are a prince." The word is uttered with derision and dignity at once. "The lap of luxury has been your home even before you left my womb."
Jongin interprets the silence that ensues as the prince's inward fuming.
"That does not explain why you made the engagement official," he says, finally, in an even tighter voice. "Why did you bypass me and speak to Lady Watanabe? You say I'm a prince, but you've stripped me of my power with a single decision."
"I am the Queen of this kingdom," the alto resounds through the door, "and your mother. You have been playing games with me for far too long, Joonmyun."
Something in the way she says it knots a web of anxiety in Jongin's stomach.
He can sense tension, confusion, frustration in the prince's voice. "Your meaning?"
"Did you think," the Queen hisses, as though she is afraid of being heard, "that I was unaware of the situation with your servant?"
A cold, charged sweat prickles over Jongin's skin.
"I know of it all," the Queen continues. "The way you favor him beyond propriety. The way he looks at you. The way you let him look to his heart's content, as though he were a suitor-not a slave child you plucked from a market one summer."
Jongin's throat goes completely dry. He slides away from the door, itching to run-but he can't. Not just yet. He needs to hear what the prince will say.
Still, Joonmyun does not speak.
"It's a cliché, you know, for someone of his rank to desire someone of yours. An even bigger cliché the other way around." The Queen is so blasé about this. "What astounds me, Joonmyun, is how you've allowed it to go on this far-encouraged it, really."
Jongin can feel pieces of him cutting away, falling off his bones, leaving him raw and exposed.
"You haven't even bothered hiding it from the other servants. Much less Keiko, your betrothed." She lingers over the last word, meaningfully, meanly. "I had to hear it from her mother after Keiko's first visit. That the Crown Prince seemed awfully protective over a manservant."
"Madame," the prince says, so dark and sudden, that Jongin stops breathing. "That's enough."
The Queen doesn't skip a beat. "I could say the same to you."
Jongin has little more than seconds to round the corner and flatten himself against a wall. The door swings open, letting the Queen through. The train of her opulent dress drags across the floor with a whisper.
She halts, briefly, beyond the doorway. "Do not make the mistake of assuming I'm outdated," she declares over her shoulder. "You are not the first man to long for another."
Jongin can see the corner of her expression from where he remains hidden. Cold as ice.
"Keep the handsome boy, if you like. See how long it takes Keiko to understand where her husband's true affections lie-and what measures she will take to transfer them to herself." The Queen smiles, and it's a threat. "I will certainly not meddle in her plans."
Joonmyun isn't mincing his words anymore. "Do not try me."
"Me?" The Queen's laugh is guttural. She starts walking again. "You will be married in a fortnight. After that, Keiko can do anything she likes-test Jongin out for herself, throw him into the streets. Do not try her."
Until the Queen is out of sight, her train sweeping majestically behind her, the sound of it practically a daydream, Jongin holds his breath.
When he finally slides out of his hiding place, the door is still ajar. He knocks, and the movement makes the door creak on its hinges. Behind it, the prince's face is long and drawn. He's sweating a little over his eyebrows, and his mouth looks raw and red, like he's been gnawing on it.
"Hello, Jongin," Joonmyun murmurs, his expression giving at the seams. "Come in."
Jongin does.
Joonmyun sits, and stews.
The silence stifles them both like the summer heat.
On an afternoon as cool as a fall morning, Prince Sehun crosses the line.
Jongin is en route to Joonymun's quarters for another (completely silent, completely unnerving) mealtime with the prince. That's when he catches sight of Nana in the corridor. The armful of wildflowers she carries is so abundant, it sticks out on either side of her when viewed from the back, like a pair of wings. Jongin is about to call out to his friend, offer her his assistance, when he sees the youngest prince directly in her path.
Wisps of Nana's hair waft about her in the breeze coming in from an open window. The light outlines her in a diffused glow, so she looks almost otherworldly.
"Nana," Sehun whispers, his expression hopelessly mellow.
And then it's like déjà vu.
Jongin sees the prince press Nana into a wall, his face descending upon hers. When their lips meet-a heavy exhale leaving the prince's nostrils-Nana's eyes grow frantic. Then furious. Her protest is muffled by Sehun's mouth, stamping deep, urgent kisses against hers. But the way he has wedged her arms between them, still hooked around the flowers, locks her in place.
Jongin rounds the corner, heat flaring in his temples. This girl might as well be his sister. He steels himself to shove the prince off of her, onto the cold floor, hard enough for bones to crack.
But Nana catches his gaze before he can do anything. By mere millimeters, she shakes her head. When Jongin tries to ignore her and take another step, her eyes sharpen into points. Don't, they say. You're smarter than that. Go back.
Jongin retreats into the shadows, gritting his teeth until his jaw aches.
He watches Nana's entire body go lax, unresponsive. She stares blankly into the opposite wall. She does not close her eyes, the way Jongin had not closed his.
Sehun must feel the shift, because he pulls back from the kiss. He takes one look at Nana-and he must be expecting some sort of positive reaction, judging by the brightness in his gaze-because whatever he sees there makes him recoil. His face floods with anguish, the light in his eyes extinguishing.
"Am I that repulsive to you?" Jongin hears the prince ask. He has pressed his forehead against Nana's. His voice is hoarse. "Is your stable boy so superior to me?"
Jongin's hands spasm at his sides.
"I could get rid of him so easily," the prince mutters. "I could make you mine in a day."
"I will never be yours," Nana says. Her words are calm and crisp. "No matter what you do."
Sehun hovers over her, breathing in, out, in, out. He stares into her face, his own tangled up in dissatisfaction. Jongin thinks he's going to kiss her again from the way the prince bows his neck, parts his lips.
But he only slams a hand into the wall and pushes off it, frustrated and miserable, leaving Nana on her own in the empty corridor.
Jongin stalks out immediately, wracked with concern.
The Nana that shrugs off his careful touch and are you all right is the one he recognizes most. She blinks back at him, clear-eyed and strong-willed.
"I've had enough," she says, her voice steeped in resignation. "We need to leave, Chanyeol and I, before he does something else to either one of us."
"Leave?" Jongin's heart drops in his chest. The floor seems to be slipping beneath his feet.
"Yes." Nana straightens herself, hoisting the wildflowers piled high in her arms. The blooms in the front are crushed. "Come with us?"
Yixing announces his departure on the same day the Queen announces the wedding date.
"The Crown Prince and Princess Keiko request your presence," she tells the sprawl of the palace court. "So I expect to see each and every one of you at the ceremony."
The smile she bestows upon well-wishing members of the gentry and nobility is cloaked in graciousness. But in Jongin's eyes-knowing what he knows-it's nothing but a façade.
From just outside the great doors, where all the servants have gathered to hear the news, Jongin cranes his neck. He spots Joonmyun soon enough behind the feeble King's throne. With his knightly posture and expression like stillwater, the prince-Crown Prince, Jongin reminds himself-is virtually unreadable.
The King is liberal-minded, like his middle child, and beloved for it by his people. But a chronic and debilitating illness has weakened him greatly, to the point of passivity. In his time away from court and politics, spent in the company of healers, the Queen has wielded absolute control over the lives of their children.
Jongin wonders what the kind old King would think if the Queen told him of a scandal involving his eldest son and a manservant.
Then he chides himself for being presumptuous. After all, the prince will not speak to him of anything now but the temperature of a bath and the garments for the next day's activities. It's as if the Queen's accusation-the one Joonmyun had neither confirmed nor refuted; the one Jongin is almost, almost certain the prince knows he was privy to-had never been uttered at all.
Yixing's announcement is less of a broadcast, more of an aside.
"I'm sorry," he says, when he and Joonmyun are reading in the garden with Jongin close by, as always. "I'm afraid I won't make it to your wedding."
Joonmyun places his book in his lap. "Why not?" His voice is soft and surprised. Jongin thinks he sees the prince glance in his direction, but he doesn't catch it fast enough.
"I sail in a week," Yixing explains casually. He rolls a blade of yellow grass between his thumb and forefinger. "I've just been waiting for the right wind. My crew tells me it's coming by the movement in the sails lately."
"Oh." The prince presses his lips together, weighing out the rest of his response. It's so like him, Jongin thinks, to conceal his unhappiness even when he is entitled to it. "Can't you stay until the next good wind? I just thought…"
Yixing's smile is instant, but strangely practiced. "You just thought what?"
"It's silly," Joonmyun confesses, "but I was going to ask you to be my best man."
On most days, Yixing is unflappable. He is mischievous and charming; endowed with the ability to take any sort of news, good or bad, with a quip and a smirk. But just then, his countenance ripples-and he almost looks pained.
It's the blueprint of an emotion Jongin himself has studied closely, in the mirror, for years. And now, it bubbles to the surface of Yixing's cultivated shell.
Disappointment.
He loves him, Jongin realizes at that very moment, throat going dry. And he won't stay to watch the prince get married, because it hurts.
("It's not fair," Yixing had whispered against his lips, as Jongin reeled from the force of his first kiss. "But I get it now.")
He loves him. He's loved him all along. The words roll over Jongin like the surf. He loves the prince, and he came to win him over. But he couldn't.
There is a brief, thrilling flutter in the pit of Jongin's stomach-the gossamer wings of the tiniest incarnation of hope-when he allows himself to speculate why.
"Then I'm even sorrier," Yixing murmurs in the present. Jongin hears it all now, loud and clear: love, longing, sorrow, mingled in with the pretty accent. "But I'll never forget the honor, prince."
That softens Joonmyun considerably. He sighs, drapes his arm around his friend's shoulders. "I thought you might talk me out of it."
Yixing nestles into his neck. Joonmyun chuckles, winding his arm even closer to accommodate him. Yixing closes his eyes.
"You haven't even told me what you think," Joonmyun continues. "It's unlike you to be so reticent."
Yixing's laugh is pitched high, but rings hollow. "About your marriage to that girl?"
"Engagement," Joonmyun corrects him. "I'm not married yet."
Oh-and he is looking at Jongin. Their eyes latch, blinking slow and molten. The prince allows himself a rueful sliver of a smile. Jongin gazes back, torn and taut and swollen with feeling. Always waiting for something, anything, to follow-through; never certain of its advent.
"Joon," Yixing whispers. "No one can talk you out of this but you." Then he cranes up, and of course he catches the prince and Jongin with their gazes interlocked. Jongin falters first, lowering his eyelids at the scrutiny.
"Well," goes the somnolent hum of Yixing's voice, "perhaps the one you love might."
Joonmyun looks down at him then, and Yixing takes the opportunity to tilt the rest of the way up. The kiss is sweet and simple; a comfort one would bestow upon a child. But it still makes Jongin prickle around the ribs.
It only takes a second, and Yixing pulls away. There is a single, gauzy thread of saliva connecting his mouth to Joonmyun's. Yixing brushes his fingers over the prince's lips to sweep it away, and that's what jolts the prince (who has only been staring at him, dumbfounded) back to his senses.
"Yixing-"
"That isn't me though," the man says, rising to leave. He tucks the blade of grass behind Joonmyun's ear. When he runs a hand through the prince's short, dark waves, lingering with a tender tug, Jongin's heart goes out to him. "Wish it was."
That same night, Chanyeol corners Jongin in their quarters to detail the plan.
"We leave in a week," the elder informs him discreetly. "I've spoken to Lord Yixing about passage on his ship, and he says there is space for the three of us."
Jongin's insides flip over. "Three?"
"Yes, of course, three. You, me, and Nana," Chanyeol replies, like it's the most ridiculous answer on the planet. "You're coming with us. And before you start worrying about the money, Lord Yixing says there's no charge as long as we earn our keep on deck."
"Hyung." Jongin tries to speak lovingly, even as his body rails against the mere suggestion of departure. "I can't."
Chanyeol claps large, warm hands over his shoulders. "Do you really think I would leave you here? After all we've been through together?"
"We survived," Jongin mumbles, "because the prince took pity on us. We owe him. I owe him."
He counts his inhales and exhales. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. That's how long Chanyeol studies him, a peculiar intensity pulsing behind his pupils.
"Jonginnie," he says, with the hesitance of someone about to overstep a boundary. "I know how you feel about him."
Jongin freezes. But, oddly enough, he doesn't even consider denial. "You do?"
"I've known for years, I think." Chanyeol licks over his chapped lips, tries on an understanding smile. "It's not exactly blatant, but you're my little brother, and I know you too well. At least, I know you don't look at anybody else the way you look at him, when you think no one can see you."
Jongin seals his eyes shut. He feels so exposed-and it must read so on his face, because Chanyeol envelops him in a tight, protective hug.
"But…" Chanyeol falters, and Jongin braces his heart for the blow. He knows exactly what his brother is going to say. "You know, Jongin, that nothing can ever happen between you and the prince, don't you?"
Jongin turns his face away, so Chanyeol can't read it. "He has never told me," he says into the older man's shoulder. "But hyung, I think he-"
"Even if he loves you," Chanyeol tells him quietly, "he's not a free man."
Jongin feels his entire face crumple, forehead to chin.
"To be with you," Chanyeol says, his hand rubbing up and down Jongin's back in a plea for forgiveness, "he'd have to leave the princess. And after her, his home and position. His entire life as he knows it." The hand squeezes Jongin's shoulder, more in consolation than encouragement. "Do you think he will do that?"
Jongin makes no reply, because he doesn't have an answer.
"I wish he would, with all my heart. So you could be happy." Chanyeol's baritone rumbles against the crown of his head. "But Jongin…the odds are against you."
"I know," Jongin mutters.
"So come with us," his brother urges him. "There will be nothing left for you here once the prince marries. Not unless you're willing to keep your true feelings hidden for the rest of your life in his service."
Jongin thinks of Chanyeol and Nana then, having their midday meals together in the pasture behind the stables. How they are so in love, so fiercely devoted, they would leave behind a happy, comfortable life just to protect one another.
He thinks of Zhang Yixing, wonders how many years the man has pined for the prince-only to watch his longtime love fall into an engagement to a newcomer. How his only recourse was to make a swift and graceful escape. Move on.
And then Jongin thinks of his own situation. He tries to envision himself years down the road, getting older and losing the novelty of youth, as Joonmyun grows more and more distant. He imagines the day Keiko gives the prince his first child, and Jongin wonders how he will cope with that on his own, with an ocean between him and Chanyeol and Nana. He dreads, even now, the moment Joonmyun begins to love his wife, because their daily proximity and the temptation of her beauty make it so easy. Jongin thinks of himself fading into the background like a piece of furniture, his situation unchanged; his whole life based and wasted on a season of attraction in his youth; a great-almost-nothing love never expressed, confirmed, or reciprocated by a prince too careful to let his guard down.
His earlier words to his brother ricochet back.
He has never told me.
This time, Jongin thinks, Will he ever?
Chanyeol loosens his hold, and in a brotherly voice says, "Don't overthink it." He rests a hand on top of Jongin's head."Just come with us, and start over."
In the end, Jongin succumbs.
Because he is terrified to be left without family, because everything around him is changing faster than the color of the leaves in the trees, and because of the constant, worsening ache in his chest that Jongin knows will never calm without distance, he decides to go-and tells his brother so, to the relief of the latter.
"I knew you would," Chanyeol responds, his eyes grateful, but also cautious. Nana kisses Jongin on the cheek and whispers, "I'm sorry it has to be this way," and that's how Jongin realizes he wasn't being quite so discreet, after all.
There are only a handful of days between the time he makes his choice and Yixing's date of departure. At unpredictable moments, when he watches the prince partake of a quiet meal or hunch over in the bathing tub as Jongin dutifully soaps his back, Jongin toys with the childish idea of slinking off without a word. No closure, no last goodbye. No explanation. Because it's going to be difficult, to say the least-coming clean. He's not sure he can get through it in one piece.
But the notion is always ephemeral. Jongin's conviction ultimately gets the better of him, and he sweeps the idea away as easily as he would a cobweb. No, he decides, he will let the prince know from his own mouth that he is going away. And more than that-he will confess. To everything.
Only then can he leave in peace.
The night before Yixing's ship sets sail, Jongin slips out of his quarters against Chanyeol's counsel to bring the prince a flagon of drinking water.
Jongin raps on the door. One, two.
"Yes?"
"It's Jongin, Your Highness."
"Come in."
The prince has put out most of his candles, but his rooms are decadent even in the dark. Jongin finds him in a great old chair by one of the windows, a book on the table next to him, unread.
When Joonmyun turns to face him, his eyes are dull and lifeless.
"What is it, Jongin?"
The way he drones it out-none of the usual lilting reassurance in his voice-makes the younger man apprehensive. "I've brought you water, Your Highness." Jongin dips his head. "Forgive me for the intrusion."
The prince gestures at the table, saying nothing else. Like clockwork, Jongin places two small woven mats on the table, so the condensation of the water does not ruin the expensive wood underneath. Then he puts down a decanter filled with ice water, and a cylindrical glass with slices of lemon and cucumber wedged into it.
There. He's carried out the charade. And now, Jongin has to carry out the real business of saying goodbye. Abandoning his first and last love. After tonight, he may never see the prince again. The inescapable truth of that feels like glass goring skin.
"Your Highness-"
"So there is something else." Joonmyun's voice is flat, his manner curt. "I figured as much, since you went through the trouble of serving me something I made no request for."
Jongin hangs his head, biting his lips and feeling stupid. "Forgive me for the pretense, Your Highness. It was not to deceive you; nothing like that. But I need to tell you-"
"That you are leaving," Joonmyun cuts in, timbre completely deadened now. "Tomorrow, on Yixing's ship, with your brother and his lover, because my brother won't stop making advances on her." His eyes blaze with a resentment Jongin has never found directed at him before.
The servant stiffens, his breath snagging in his throat.
The prince is taking no prisoners tonight. "That is what you've been keeping from me, isn't it?" His mouth is straight line, the pink tip of a pale tongue hovering in the corner.
Jongin's throat works, sticky, like he's swallowed a pull of taffy along with his nerves. "Did Lord Yixing-"
"Of course he told me. Yixing's my oldest friend, and he…loves me." Joonmyun looks elsewhere. "He told me everything the same day Chanyeol booked your passage. Yixing assumed you'd already taken your leave of me." His expression hardens again, and he gets up from his chair. "So explain to me, Jongin. What was your plan? To write me a note? Send a messenger once the boat had set sail?"
Hurt makes the biggest dent in the royal's voice, pitching into a medley of other emotions Jongin has no time to distinguish from one another.
So he just shakes his head, eyes round. He holds his hands out in front of him in a conciliatory way. "No, Your Highness, I couldn't, that's why I'm here…"
"You leave tomorrow!" And Joonmyun loses his temper. "You've laid your plans, and now you bring them to me as fact! Goddammit, Jongin, you didn't even give me a chance to-"
And suddenly, the prince stops. His face is ashen. His mouth hangs agape, brimming with things he can't seem to say. He recollects himself; rubs a hand over his neck, through his hair. His next few words follow the saddest exhale.
"Have you forgotten what you said?"
Jongin's face suffuses with color. His pulse quickens, and his fists ball up at his sides.
"You said," Joonmyun mutters, "you would never leave me."
"You must know," Jongin forces out, dizzy-drunk-desperate courage grabbing hold of his heart. "You must know why I have no other choice."
The air around them charges with a strange new energy. "Tell me," Joonmyun says, and he steps closer, and closer still, to where Jongin is trembling like a leaf. "Tell me."
Jongin's voice is broken. "Don't you know?"
Color and light steal back into the prince's countenance. Suddenly, Jongin's face is cradled in his hands. He doesn't know how it happened, but the prince is brushing their lips together; barely-there, fraught with desire.
"Tell me," Joonmyun says, a final time. His lips are chapped, and he smells of the fragrant oils Jongin poured into his bath earlier this evening, "Tell me how you feel."
A missing piece slots into place.
"I love you, my lord," Jongin whispers. "When you marry her, it will break me."
And then Jongin finds himself in the prince's arms, and everything is soft and dark and safe.
The first taste he gets of Joonmyun's mouth is sweet. Honey, and cherries, and rosewater, the prince's distinct flavor swirling through it all like an enchantment. Then Joonmyun dips in a second time, rougher now, his tongue stroking against and around Jongin's own, small lips sucking bruises into Jongin's plush ones. There is no more sweetness. Just heat. Everywhere.
"Oh," Jongin breathes into the kiss, stunned and spinning in all directions. He can barely keep track of what is happening, but he feels Joonmyun fist a hand in his hair, while his other hand clamps onto Jongin's hipbone. He's steering them back, back, back, into his chair.
Joonmyun falls into it first, pulling Jongin on top of him. They break away for just a moment-during which they stare at each other, flushed. Then the prince is reaching up, pushing Jongin's hair out of his face, and dragging him down to mesh their mouths together once more.
I must be under a spell, Jongin thinks, gasping as the prince withdraws his tongue from his mouth and attaches his lips to the side of Jongin's neck. I must be in a dream.
When Joonmyun sucks the sensitive patch of skin right under his jawbone, Jongin bucks in his lap. They both moan softly at the contact. The prince laves his tongue over the same patch of skin, only to suck at it again, more thoroughly this time.
Jongin feels a dangerous warmth pooling in the pit of his belly. Slowly, unconsciously, he begins to rock in place-and then, seized by an immediate spike of pleasure in his body, he fights to still his hips. But Joonmyun hums in disagreement against his neck. The prince snakes his hands behind Jongin, cupping his ass and pressing their bodies even closer against each together.
"Is this what you want?" Joonmyun asks quietly, rocking back. There is a light sheen of sweat coating his regal features.
"Yes," Jongin whispers, giving in. He leans in to ladle a kiss into the prince's mouth-the first one he's initiated. "This, too."
Joonmyun deepens the kiss, and their hips move back and forth between them. Jongin's soft, plain trousers are falling off from the lean forward, the steady rhythm. When the prince slips his hands down back of them, hot and damp, to knead the skin there, Jongin's eyes roll to the back of his head.
"I want you so much," the prince mutters.
"Take me," Jongin whispers, inhibitions falling completely away. "You can have me."
"You've always had me," Joonmyun confesses, and it rips a hole right through Jongin's chest.
With a strength that belies his height-because Jongin has outgrown him, years ago, when he was still a teenager-the prince hoists Jongin's legs around his waist and stands upright. Jongin wraps his arms around his neck, and they don't stop kissing, recycling the air in the small space between their lips, until they both land on the bed.
Jongin has never been touched before, but Joonmyun leads him patiently. He divests them both of their clothing in a careful, tremulous way, like he's trying to give Jongin a chance to put a stop to things. But Jongin only watches his every move like a besotted pup; steals kisses when Joonmyun draws close to ask if he's ready; caresses down Joonmyun's back when the older man gets on top of him and mouths at his chest; traces Joonmyun's swollen lips like the strings of a harp when the prince finally gets Jongin's knees hooked over his shoulders; keens and pants and tries when Joonmyun murmurs, "That's it, my love;" cries out Joonmyun's name when their bodies pluck the exact same chord in one heated, maddening moment, and everything goes white around the edges.
In the aftermath, when the sweat has cooled and dried on their skin, and their breathing has faded into the quiet of the early morning, Joonmyun makes his case.
"Stay," he says, slipping his hand into Jongin's. The tips of their noses are touching. "My marriage is only a formality. Nothing will change."
Jongin keeps silent. He can feel the prince's pulse through the point where their palms kiss.
"I'll protect you." Joonmyun's breath is sweet, his voice husky. "I won't let anyone touch you-not the Queen, not Keiko. No one."
A single bird trills, clear and lonely. The sky through the window is a deep, boundless blue, still shimmering with the last stars-the way Jongin imagines the sea will look from Yixing's ship in the evenings.
"Nothing will change," Joonmyun says again. This time, he inches forth, nosing a line across Jongin's cheek. "We will always be together."
Jongin folds in his lips. "Not like this." The pain the past few hours have managed to keep at bay returns with a vengeance, knocking the breath out of him. "This you will do with the princess. And I will only be your servant, waiting for you in the shadows."
A wound, reopened.
The prince answers with a sigh, fathoms and fathoms deep, as if the breath has traveled throughout his entire body. Jongin anticipates his rebuttal, but Joonmyun only lowers his eyes, shaping his mouth over words that won't come.
He knows Jongin is right, and that there is nothing he can do about it. Not while he is the Crown Prince, with duties and obligations. Expectations of him. Jongin knows it all, too.
So he kisses the prince's throat. "Come with me."
Joonmyun's eyes snap open. "Don't do this," he stammers. "I can-we can still meet-"
"In secret?" Jongin asks, chest caving in on itself like a bed of quicksand. He draws his hand from Joonmyun's grasp so he can press it to the side of his face. "We won't have to hide if you come with me."
He doesn't know what he's expecting. This wasn't part of his plan. But he hopes against hope, the way he did as a child on an auctioneer's platform, that the prince will give him the answer he wants.
The bird outside the window trills again, the sound of its song a little further away.
"I can't, Jongin."
Endless, rolling, frozen silence. That's the sound and sensation of defeat.
Jongin takes his hand away. Lets it drop to his own chest. Cold.
"I understand," he whispers. He tries to smile, show the prince there are no hard feelings-only love-but his mouth can barely move. It is resolve, not free will, that propels him to shift in place, moving away, out of bed.
"Stop!" The prince panics, grabbing his wrist. "Talk to me."
"I'm sorry." Jongin strives, valiantly, to keep his voice steady. "I didn't mean to push. I only wanted to try." And the way he says it gets him crushed back into Joonmyun's chest.
"Don't say it like you've already made up your mind," Joonmyun tells him adamantly. "You haven't, Jongin….not really."
Jongin shakes his head, and the prince clutches him even tighter.
"Do I have to lock you in my room?" Joonmyun says in desperation, his tone frantic and escalating. "Don't give up-don't give in." And then, with a little more power in his voice: "You promised me, young one."
To hear the endearment now, under these circumstances, in that kind of voice, makes it seem like no more than a bargaining chip. Jongin clenches his jaw, his eyes already wet, and his emotions in a tornado.
He struggles in Joonmyun's hold until the arms around him slacken. The moment they do, Jongin sits up, rubbing at his face.
"Have I hurt you, Jongin?" the prince ventures in a timorous voice.
"Sometimes," Jongin mumbles, and he gets off the bed. "But I won't remember those parts, anyway, my lord."
He turns his back to the prince and starts putting on his clothes. He's already got his trousers on when the bed creaks, and is halfway into his shirt when the prince's feet are adjacent to his on the ground.
Joonmyun's face is twisted. He hasn't bothered to dress. Jongin can see just how rigid the prince is holding himself by the way the muscles in his neck-chest-forearms-forehead quiver in the soft light.
"You are not to leave," the prince commands, distraught. "You are to stay with me, here, in the palace, and live by my side, where I can see you every day, or I won't forgive you."
Jongin knows the threat is empty. The prince is hurting. At this very moment, their insides are mirror images of one another: heavy internal bleeding.
So he drinks in Joonmyun's beautiful face, and he doesn't utter a word of reproach.
"Jongin," the prince begs, adrift in his own rooms. "Please."
Jongin kisses him. It feels like a last-urgent, steadfast, and pure.
"I love you," he tells Joonmyun, brows sloping as they meet each other eye to eye. "That will never change."
The prince's eyelashes are wet. "You are breaking my heart."
Jongin presses their foreheads together. "Mine, too."
And even though he knows in his bones that he will regret this for the rest of his life, and a voice whispers, better with him as a lowly servant than without him as a free man-and physically, it feels like an organ has been torn out from between his ribs-Jongin peels himself away and walks straight out of the room.
The door shuts behind him with a click.
In only a few hours, Jongin's feet are firmly planted on the deck of Yixing's ship. He looks out at the city from the bow. He's had no sleep. In the distance, he can make out the palace, cresting over a hill. There is no sun today; only wind and clouds. Jongin is glad of it. Before everything mellows into the romance of autumn, summer's end brings with it a kind of brilliance that would only mock his misery.
Chanyeol and Nana are below deck. His brother is settling in Yixing's thoroughbred, and Nana is settling into their cabin. There are three beds in it, and one of them belongs to Jongin.
The waves lap at the sides of the ship in a toneless lullaby. Jongin wonders if the prince is still asleep, or if he's stayed awake-and if he did, who brought him his breakfast when he rang for it, or if he rang for a meal, at all.
He looks over at the port, bustling with people on this gray morning. He doubts the prince will come to see him off; Joonmyun doesn't even know the hour they left the palace. Still, Jongin waits.
"You already miss him."
Yixing is smiling at his right, resting on his elbows against the edge of the bow. That's sympathy Jongin makes out in his face and in his voice, not flirtation.
"Yes, my lord."
"Even Chanyeol calls me hyung now," Yixing says mildly. "You can, too. It doesn't mean anything special."
"Yes…hyung." Jongin dips his head; a force of habit. "Thank you for letting us on your ship."
Yixing shrugs, smile waning. "I'm sorry for telling Joonmyun before you could."
They watch the sea fan out into shallow waves, sweeping up the shore, and dragging back like a net. The wind blows Jongin's hair into his eyes. He doesn't bother raking it away.
"You'll get over it, you know."
Yixing's voice sounds just like the water. Calm and hushed, with an undertone of nostalgia.
Jongin's response is lifeless. "Did you?"
That gets him a mournful little chuckle in return. "Touché," Yixing murmurs, lightly squeezing Jongin's shoulder before leaving the younger man to his thoughts.
There aren't many. Just the two that keep playing over and over in Jongin's mind, like a sad old song.
I wish we'd had more time, he thinks, and also, I've made a terrible mistake.
In the background, he hears the members of Yixing's crew calling out orders to one another. "Raise the sails!" the voices chorus, bright and cheery. "Weigh the anchor!"
This is it. Jongin scans the port against his better judgement, eyes cataloguing men and horses, women and children. He stands there, searching for a face, until his legs sway beneath him, and he realizes the ship has started to sail.
But the prince does not come.
⤫
When he is very young, and his father is still alive, Jongin receives a piece of advice he never forgets.
It's one of the most brutal winters of his childhood in the emerald mountains. The family in the next cottage has just lost their daughter to the chill. Jongin can hear the lament of her parents-a frightening, ragged wail that cuts through the whirling dervish of the snowfall.
Jongin's mother hugs his brother against her chest. The girl had been Chanyeol's age. She'd seen her mother weekly at the village market; the woman's face growing wan and thin as her daughter worsened by the day.
Jongin's father stands with him at the window, watching the snow come down in sheets. The wind blusters against the walls, howling like a ghost. But they can still hear the family next door, weeping, and that is infinitely more chilling.
"Are you afraid, Jongin?" his father asks, when the boy curls his fingers into the hem of his sleeve.
"A little," Jongin admits.
His father has such a kind, sage voice. "It's always scary to lose someone you love," he explains. Jongin imagines this is how the oldest, wisest trees in the forest would sound if they could speak. "I don't think there's anything more frightening in this world."
"Will they be all right?" The boy's voice is tiny, just like him.
"I hope so."
His father takes a knee, so he can look into Jongin's face. "I want you to hear this from me," he says, cottony-soft."Someday, far from now, you may lose someone you love. Someone special to you. Someone who cannot be replaced." His bearing is contrite, as though he wishes he could keep this to himself for a while longer. "That's just the way of life, son."
Because Jongin is so young, and so scared, his eyes fill immediately.
"No, no," his father comforts him, wiping away Jongin's tears with the pad of his thumb. "It gets better. Hear me out."
The boy nods, sucking his lip into his mouth.
"When that happens," his father whispers, "I want you to remember something."
He cranes forward, and Jongin does the same, doe eyes rounding in their sockets. It feels like he's about to be told a secret.
"Be strong," his father tells him. "Keep going. Stay kind. And have faith." His palms press an oath into Jongin's shoulders. "Because someday, in this life or the next, you will see them again."
⤫
It's remarkable how quickly time flies. Days bleed into nights, nights diffuse into days, heat freezes into cold, cold melts into heat. In the blink of an eye, Jongin is twenty-three, and a year has passed since he left the prince on that ungodly morning.
Jongin manages not to think about him most days. He and Chanyeol and Nana have made a life for themselves here, in Yixing's land, where there is no royalty. Democracy is what they call it. Jongin still has trouble understanding how it all works. But he likes it. Because here, people are masters of their own lives.
Yixing has gotten them work at a very large, very fine inn, located by the water-a hotel, owned by his friend Minseok. Upon Yixing's recommendation, Chanyeol is hired as the new stable master and charged with the management of every horse in the hotel's keeping. Nana is given a position in the women's vanity room-a beauty parlor, Minseok tells her, so she can repeat the unfamiliar words after him. It's an establishment neither she nor the two brothers have ever heard of before, stocked with every manner of rouge and hairpin and perfume. But her work is exactly what it was for Princess Boa-except for more women, and a monthly wage.
As for Jongin, Yixing initially offers him a spot on the galleon as its quartermaster. The compensation he proposes is handsome, but Jongin declines. After the month-long journey-ordeal-they went through last year, it became clear Jongin wasn't built for life at sea. So Yixing speaks to Minseok, and Jongin gets a job as a hotel butler.
It's strange, how similar their lives are here to the ones they left behind. Only, work stops at sundown every day-and one day out of every week, they are expected not to work at all.
Minseok is a good man. He respects them, recognizes their talent, and pays them fairly. Privately, Jongin thinks he nurses something sweet for Lord Yixing, and that's partly why they all got their jobs. Not that it matters.
The work, to him, is just as much a distraction as it is a livelihood. And he needs both, equally.
Jongin really does manage not to think of the prince. This schedule is more forgiving, but an avalanche of duties await fulfillment every day, regardless.
Still, when he's standing on the balcony of his room at the hotel, and the light hits the surface of the ocean in a certain way, so it looks gold and blue and smooth as a jewel, he can't help but remember the lake in the palace-the prince wading into it, looking over his shoulder, smiling at a younger version of Jongin, telling him to be happy.
Then his heart throbs until it's sore, and he retreats into his room to find more work to do.
On one such day, when the sun has gone down an hour later than it should have, and Jongin has stared into the water much longer than it was prudent to, Nana pops her head into his room.
"Are you doing anything tomorrow?" she asks, smiling at him like a mother. She knows it's his day off. "If not, I thought you might want to come with me and Chanyeol."
Jongin is crossing tasks off a list. "Where are you going?"
"Lord Yixing's back from his latest voyage," Nana informs him. "He says we get first pick of what's on the ship before they unload it." Under her breath she mutters, "I hope he doesn't charge me an arm and a leg for the dye I asked him to get. He promised me a discount two weeks ago, but he might have been drunk."
Jongin laughs quietly. "I've got errands to do, so I'll pass." He smiles up at her. "But I'll greet hyung now. Where is he?"
"Oh, I haven't actually seen him yet." Nana slips her arms out of her work apron, draping the dark, sturdy material of it over the crook of her elbow. "But your brother has-told me so in a rush. Want me to ask?"
"I'll do it," Jongin replies, standing up. "Go get some rest, noona."
Nana pinches his chin. "He's in the stables by now, with Lord Yixing's horses." As she makes her way down the hall to the room she shares with Chanyeol, Jongin hears her mumble, "Why a sailor needs more than one horse, I'll never know."
Jongin makes his way down to the lobby, exchanging hellos and good evenings with fellow staff he meets in the corridors and along the staircases.
"Your merchant friend is in the tavern!" calls a passing bellboy. He ferries Yixing's trunks in a sleek wagon. Pulling his load, he waves Jongin on. "I was to send you there if I ran into you."
The tavern is empty by the time Jongin gets there. It's early in the evening; most of the guests are probably still at dinner. But before he can turn away and carry on to the stables to consult with his brother, the barkeep points Jongin in the direction of a private booth.
"Lord Yixing?" Jongin confirms.
The woman nods and winks, picking up another amber glass to polish.
Each private booth is separated from the rest of the tavern by a pair of velvet curtains. There's a gap in the one Jongin has been directed to. A few steps closer, and he sees Yixing behind the gap, sitting quietly in the booth. Jongin smiles; he's grown immensely fond of this lord. He peels back his lips to call out Yixing's name.
And then he sees it. The movement in Yixing's mouth. The attentiveness in his eyes, directed across the table. He's talking to someone.
Jongin stops in place. It might be Minseok, for all he knows. He doesn't want to interrupt. In any case, he's bound to see Yixing in an hour or so, when his older friend takes his supper in the dining hall. They can catch up then.
I hope it's Minseok with him, Jongin thinks to himself with a wry grin. Yixing deserves someone nice. He turns to leave, just as the curtain rustles aside.
"Jongin!"
And there's Yixing, holding a swathe of red velvet back with one hand. He has the strangest, brightest look on his face.
Jongin can't decipher it. "Hyung," he greets him, anyway, with a little wave and his usual warmth.
When the other curtain pulls back, revealing the identity of Yixing's companion, Jongin's sharp inhale rips through the room like a whip.
It's not Minseok.
Not those almond eyes. Not that rosebud mouth. Not that stricken, elegant face.
It's Joonmyun.
"Jongin?" the prince shakes out, hand clenched into the thick, soft fabric that separates them.
The younger man cannot speak. He only feels the bones and tendons knotted at his knees, threatening to buckle. He has to clamp a hand on the back of a chair to steady himself.
Yixing is quick to act. He takes Jongin by the arm, solid as ever, and gives him his spot on the bench. The curtains meet again at their center seam, and the candles inside the booth glow yellow in Jongin's pupils.
"Leave them," Yixing instructs someone outside-the barkeep?-and then there is the sound of retreating footsteps. And then there is no sound at all, save for Jongin's heavy breathing.
The prince is sitting across from him in the booth. He has both palms planted on the table. In Jongin's eyes, he looks terrified, and completely at a loss, and not a day older, and so fucking beautiful.
Jongin is buzzing from head to toe. "My lord?"
Those two simple words are like a trigger. "I've abdicated the throne," Joonmyun confesses, all breathy.
Jongin's hand creeps over his mouth.
"It's true," Joonmyun goes on. "I spoke to the King myself. It's done."
"And your successor?" Jongin asks from behind his fingers. "Prince Sehun?"
Joonmyun shakes his head. "My sister," he declares, leaving Jongin shell-shocked. "Boa deserved it from the beginning, anyway. She's the eldest."
Jongin's hand slides away. "And your wife?"
The look the prince sends him is so tender, it renders Jongin spineless. "I was never married."
Air suspends. Time stops. Jongin only hears the beat of a pulse. He's not sure if it's his or Joonmyun's. Perhaps both, in sync.
"What do you-"
"I couldn't do it, Jongin." The prince's expression is so pure, so soft. "Not when you exist."
("Be strong," Jongin's father had told him, once upon a time. "Keep going. Stay kind. And have faith. Because someday, in this life or the next, you will see them again.")
"Where have you been?" Jongin chokes out, barely believing the odds.
"You'll laugh at me." The prince wets his lips, anxious, and suddenly bashful. "I had to learn a trade, a vocation. Something. Yixing-he's taken me under his wing. Says I could be a good merchant with a few years in the field." He squares his shoulders then, but drops his gaze. "I'm not a prince anymore, Jongin. I couldn't come to you empty-handed."
Jongin tamps down the peal of joyous laughter that blossoms between his lungs. If he sets it free, he's afraid a sob will escape at the exact same instant. "You're a fool, my lord."
The prince's throat bobs. He seeks out Jongin's eyes, looking too small and fearful for Jongin's liking. "Am I too late?"
Already on his feet, Jongin exhales his response: "Never."
And he leans right across the table, curls his hand behind the prince's neck, and fuses their lips together.
It is difficult to describe how he feels at this moment, with Joonmyun's mouth moving beneath his. It's a trance, a fantasy, a hallucination. But the wetness on his cheek, imprinting onto Joonmyun's, is too warm; the salt on his tongue, transferring from Joonmyun's, is too visceral; the swell and pound of his heart, mirroring that of Joonmyun's, is too bittersweet. It's all too detailed, too much, all of it, for what's happening right now to be a dream.
He is still so in love.
"You're here," Jongin whispers against the prince's lips, fingers digging into the skin at his nape. "You're really, really here."
"I am," Joonmyun whispers back. Jongin pecks his lips. "And I'm staying with you-here, or wherever you go. As long as you don't leave me behind again, it doesn't matter."
Jongin nods, too full for words. Then he's climbing over the table in a fluid movement, and burying his face into the crook of Joonmyun's neck once they are side by side.
"I'm sorry," Joonmyun says, hooking an arm around Jongin's waist to lock him there. "I should have come to see you off that day." He kisses Jongin's eyelids, the spot between his brows, the temple that isn't pressed to his shoulder.
"It doesn't matter." Jongin cannot stem the flow of his emotions. He feels so cherished, so warm, so impossibly happy. So he drapes his legs over the prince's lap and expresses the most important thing. "You came back to me."
"Because I love you," Joonmyun says simply, his words like iron. An unbreakable promise. "Because I love you."
The night is long and deep. It pulls Jongin in like the undertow in the treacherous sea he's always imagined. He is rendered powerless, a willing captor, as Joonmyun takes him again and again in his own bed.
Later, when their skin glistens with the traces of a frantic, poignant reunion, Joonmyun turns them over. He seems so vulnerable underneath Jongin's body-just a man, not a prince-and he asks Jongin to take him, too.
"Are you certain?" Jongin asks, stroking a hand up his thigh. He's discovered, in the last few hours, that it calms them both.
"I am," Joonmyun tells him, like he trusts Jongin with his entire life. He noses at the dip in Jongin's throat. "I want to do everything with you."
There are no secrets between them in the morning.
The light filters in through Jongin's white sheets, pulled over his and Joonmyun's heads. Underneath, he and the prince-former prince-are curled towards each other. Still nude. Freshly roused.
There are birds chirping in the trees, and the sun is warm on the side of Jongin's body that it touches.
It's summer again.
"Hello," he whispers to the man in his bed. Bliss is a creeping vine, winding ticklish and evergreen over Jongin's heart.
Joonmyun blinks back at him, feather-lashed, his skin like champagne. "Hello, my love."
That is exactly how, and exactly when, Jongin starts afresh.
Back to Part 1