SH 2015: in these stone walls (for babygunsho)
For: babygunsho
From: ANONYMOUS until May 22, 2015
Title: in these stone walls
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: Suho/Kris
Length: 10,667 words
Summary: "Would you call it love?"
Warning/s: passing mentions of minor character death, descriptions of war, slight gore.
Notes: well, this was an Experience. also, yifan is one year younger than joonmyun here. (thanks k.) cheers! long live suho.
It's a quiet day, in terms of the weather and the woods, when Joonmyun creeps up behind a pillar to spy on the royal guests. His father sits at the head, of course, as the king. The others are seated on the silk cushions, legs crossed and robes gathered neatly around them. There is the head of the army, at one end of the room, here a navy officer-Joonmyun's brother wears a sash just like this man’s-and between them many soldiers and admirals. Joonmyun ticks off the different kinds of sashes, the cloth in their braids, the empty hilts by their sides. Joonmyun's father has told him how to differentiate them all.
But in the middle sits someone different. He's lean and muscular like the rest of them, but his sash isn't from around here. He's a stranger. Unconsciously, Joonmyun steps closer. The others are all talking with hushed voices to this man, and Joonmyun wants to listen. (Eight-year-olds get the worst luck. What's the point of being a prince when you can't even attend an audience?) Joonmyun takes another step forward, forgetting his hiding place. As if sensing him, his father looks up and catches his eye. Immediately, he frowns. The guests notice and turn to see. Joonmyun's sweaty hand slips from the pillar, sending him tumbling down the short set of stairs.
-
"Majesty," someone whispers, awed.
“Mffguh,” Joonmyun replies, lost and uncomfortable. His head feels wrapped up and squeezed enough to make his brain turn into paste. And then the paste will leak out his ears and drip around and he’ll look in the mirror and see it everywhere and scream and it will be terrible and-Joonmyun catches himself thinking along this line of thought with particular relish. He likes thinking about terrible grievances with himself as the hero. Or the victim. The heroic victim.
“Majesty?” someone whispers again, and Joonmyun looks around for the person with wide eyes. Nobody calls him majesty. He’s the small prince, or princeling, or your highness. His parents are called majesty.
There’s a skinny boy standing at the foot of his bed. He’s around as tall as Joonmyun, with bony wrists and shaggy hair long ‘til his shoulders, looking at him with eyes just as wide. “I saw you fall,” the boy says, and Joonmyun feels disappointed. The first time he meets someone his age in the castle, and he has to have embarrassed himself. Speaking of falling, Joonmyun lifts his hand to his head. It’s wrapped up, all right. That means the brain paste feeling he’d been having is probably really happening right now.
“Is my brain leaking from my ears?” Joonmyun asks, excitedly. “I think it is. Come, see.”
The boy starts at that, mouth hanging open, before he runs off.
-
It takes some time for Joonmyun to meet the boy again. He keeps asking around if any of the servants had seen him, if his mother has, if maybe the palace guards caught sight of him-but nobody remembers seeing a small boy around Joonmyun's age. It's easy to forget, his father explains to him kindly, about small boys, when grown men from all over keep visiting this month. There are important negotiations going on.
Joonmyun resents this, of course. Isn't he small too? But he bows to his father as usual, and leaves the room.
-
In front of him is the long bench, where all the prepared dishes are being set. In his hand, Joonmyun holds a vial of wine. It's a very small vial, and his fingers are curled around it, so nobody really notices.
"I wouldn't do it if I were you," someone whispers in his ear. Joonmyun jumps a foot in the air and whirls around.
It's the boy from before.
"You!"
"Majesty," the boy bows a little. "It'll... make the soup taste bad if you do. We might all die. From wine poisoning."
Joonmyun's mouth opens, staring at him. "Wine poisoning."
"Aye." He's very solemn and serious about it. Joonmyun spares the bench one more glance, before regretfully tucking the vial into his robes.
"That's a good move," the boy comments, and Joonmyun looks at him with interest.
"What's your name?"
The boy looks taken aback. "Li Jiaheng."
"I'm Joonmyun," Joonmyun says, proudly. "Kim Joonmyun."
"Yes," Jiaheng says, smiling slightly. "I know."
-
That is how it begins, then. The son of a merchant and the son of a king. Jiaheng tells Joonmyun whatever he knows about trade and city life and sea ports, Joonmyun asking ridiculous questions and Jiaheng stumbling, giving in, making up even more ridiculous answers.
Joonmyun tells him about his lessons, the audiences, the strange complaints the citizens come to his father with, about the navy and his brother's fleet.
They play hide and seek in the gardens and Joonmyun tries to pull more jokes on grownups and Jiaheng tries to talk him out of it.
Eventually, Joonmyun asks his father if Jiaheng can sit with him in a lesson. The king glances from his scrolls. "Is that the boy you were asking for, before?"
"Yes," Joonmyun says. He pauses, before rushing to say, "He's a good friend."
His father smiles. "That is good to hear. He may sit at History, if you like."
Joonmyun lets him sit in at History, Math and Geography. Jiaheng listens to him play the flute before bedtime. The maid sweeps the room while they perch on the cupboard, legs swinging and kicking the doors. She smiles at their antics, pauses when Joonmyun begins to play.
"Almost better than the high prince," she praises him, as she leaves. Joonmyun beams.
"What's it like," Jiaheng asks, when they scramble down to sit on the floor.
"What's what?"
"I don't know. Having..." Jiaheng hesitates. "Having a brother?"
Joonmyun frowns and thinks hard for a minute. "Well," he says, at last. "It's like you and me."
Jiaheng has never smiled brighter.
-
"Lend me your clothes," Joonmyun says, once.
Jiaheng's father had visited the kingdom again after a few months. The second he had crossed the palace gates, Joonmyun dragged his son away as hostage.
The heat is sticky on their backs as they lie in one of the gardens, sun over their heads and breeze warm as it whispers towards them. Jiaheng had been eying the ant crawling over his finger with some interest, but now he hurriedly wipes it on the grass and sits up.
"You're up to no good," Jiaheng proclaims, and Joonmyun doesn't even bother to try and correct that.
"Maybe."
"Joonmyun."
Joonmyun rests his head in Jiaheng's lap, hands folded over his chest. "I'm serious! We'll go into the city and get in trouble. Like everyone else our age. It'll be fun."
Jiaheng's look of dawning distress is hilarious-Joonmyun rolls back into the grass, face full of dandelions, laughing at it.
"Joonmyun," Jiaheng says again, then pauses. They're both ten years old, but they're already used to each other enough that Jiaheng realizes he has to convince, really persuade Joonmyun to not be an idiot. And Joonmyun knows that this is what Jiaheng will do. He likes when Jiaheng puts in an effort to stop him from doing things. It makes him feel... at the center. Although he's not sure how to put that into better words.
Anyway, Jiaheng's still there, mouth open and brow furrowed, so Joonmyun cocks his head and waits for the oncoming speech. A tulip brushes his nose. He sneezes.
He doesn't know how he manages to persuade Jiaheng, but he does it. They're walking hand in hand (Jiaheng's clammy from nervousness) through the market, and while Joonmyun has been through here before, he has always been lifted on men's shoulders, or in a rickshaw. Now, Joonmyun closes his eyes and breathes deeply, letting everything hit him at once. He wrinkles his nose and retches.
"That," Jiaheng says apologetically, steering him away, "Was a dung cart that just passed."
"I guessed," Joonmyun chokes.
Alarmed, Jiaheng buys a small posy of flowers from a woman and stuffs them up Joonmyun's nose. Joonmyun starts sneezing up a hurricane.
"Hey!" A man yells, and Joonmyun turns around, eyes watering. "Stop scaring away my customers, you puny brats! Sneeze somewhere else!" The shop sign proclaims, Local Butcher, Best Buys, Pig and Goat Available.
Joonmyun takes a step backwards, then sneezes again, even louder. The man's face darkens. "Why, you impudent little-”
"Sir!" Jiaheng shouts, pointing. "There's a cat in your shop!"
The man starts backwards into his shop in dismay. Jiaheng yanks Joonmyun's hand and makes a run for it.
They weave in and out of stalls and performers, people and children and wheelbarrows, darting behind shops, until Joonmyun stops sneezing and starts laughing out of exhilaration, until Jiaheng stops short and doubles over and they're both gasping for breath.
"Hey," Joonmyun pants, sweat heavy on his brow.
Jiaheng looks up.
"Let's do that again."
"And get you," Jiaheng wheezes, leaning against the alley wall, "Beat up? I think that was close enough."
"I could have taken it," Joonmyun argues, hands curled into loose fists with slight disappointment. "I could have taken the beating." Yifan reaches out carelessly to hold one and links their fingers together. Even though they're almost the same height, Jiaheng's hands are much bigger than his. Jiaheng’s touch always feels calm. A little protective of Joonmyun.
"You could have," Jiaheng agrees. "But it's better if you didn't. Come on, let’s go home."
Joonmyun will remember this feeling for a long time, this day, these moments: Jiaheng walking next to him, sometimes a little ahead. Leading him home, to the palace that is his as much as it is Joonmyun’s, to the room that is his as much as it is Joonmyun’s, to the large kitchens and the comfortable cushions on their mats.
Home. Everything about right now makes him feel at peace.
-
The months when Jiaheng isn’t there can never be enough quick in passing. Joonmyun has made his own calendar, rolled it up in the drawer of his cupboard. Each night before sleeping he takes it out, scratches another day out, then puts it back in again.
-
At thirteen, Joonmyun learns to ride a horse, and Jiaheng hefts his foot up so Joonmyun can swing himself over to sit. Already a little taller, Jiaheng jumps up by himself, seated behind Joonmyun.
“What’re you doing,” Joonmyun mumbles, uneasy and fiddling with his sash as he waits for the riding master to arrive.
“I know how to do this,” Jiaheng says, cheerfully. “I can teach you.”
Joonmyun turns his head around as best as he can. “You’re joking,” he tells Jiaheng off. “Don’t play with me when I’m nervous.”
“Hey, easy,” Jiaheng taps his nose, making Joonmyun squawk. “Just because I’m younger than you doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.”
Joonmyun sniffs. “Alright, let’s see you ride this-Jiaheng!” He ends with a frightened squeal when Jiaheng squeezes the horse with his legs, and they start off on a trot.
“Hold tight!” Jiaheng advises, through Joonmyun’s screams.
“To what?” Joonmyun yells back, terrified. This isn’t a trot, this is a canter from hell-Joonmyun’s bones are all knocking together and his brain is going to smash itself to bits inside his skull. But then, apparently, the horse is just as scared of Joonmyun as Joonmyun is of it-Joonmyun’s loud noises egg it on to even faster speeds. Around him, the ground and trees flash past and blur together. Jiaheng laughs delightedly into the wind, arms tight around Joonmyun’s waist, and Joonmyun clings onto his sleeve with one hand and the horse’s mane with the other.
They’ve ridden for at least half an hour, Joonmyun figures later, once he’s a little calmer and leaning into the horse with more ease. Jiaheng is pressed up against him, chin nestled between Joonmyun’s shoulders.
“Here,” Jiaheng tries, again. His hands cup over Joonmyun’s, and lead him around the horse’s neck. “See? Just breathe with the horse. You can feel the pulse here, close your eyes for a few seconds and focus on it.”
Joonmyun closes his eyes, feels the blood pumping under his hands. But he presses against Jiaheng, feels that heart beating steadily into Joonmyun’s back. So he focuses on Jiaheng’s steady breathing instead, hands relaxing just a bit in the horse’s mane.
“Feel better?” Jiaheng whispers into his ear. The horse has slowed down to a trot again, although going smoother than before.
Joonmyun smiles, eyes still closed. “Yes, much.”
They get in trouble with the riding master when they return, two hours later, but when Joonmyun slides off and Jiaheng catches him safely, he thinks to himself, this is worth it.
That night, Joonmyun stays up long after Jiaheng falls asleep. Stealthily, he grabs his flute and slips out the door, making his way to a turret. He stops only at his father's study, to grab a piece of leftover parchment and some ink. Once he's there, he thinks again, already for the hundredth time, about the feeling of Jiaheng's heart against him, the freedom Joonmyun felt after he got used to the speed, the way the wind whipped in his face and he felt like he was flying.
Hesitant, he raises the flute to his lips and tries a note, then writes it down.
-
From that year onwards, it's mostly only over the summers that Jiaheng is able to come. In the meantime, Joonmyun writes him letters, and Jiaheng writes back.
Dear Jiaheng,
It's been only a day since you left but everything has slowed down again. Time has become a murky, stand-still puddle once more. I hope you'll be safe when you read this. Today, I was allowed to skip Ethics and Riding because the masters said I was too distracted and wasn't fit to learn anything. How will you be doing? Write to me as soon as you get home, ah!
Appa said next time you come, we may explore the woods better. Finally, at fourteen! You will come next year, won't you? Why must your father be a traveling merchant... he should be an honorary knight in the kingdom here. You can live with me! Ah, really. What's the use of being a prince when I can't do anything big.
Anyway, it's important we learn to hunt. We will be grown men soon! And if you come in the spring we can swim in the lake again.
Tell me about your days, I miss you already, already, already. You, my best friend.
Yours,
Joonmyun.
Dear Jiaheng,
I got your letter! Will you be sailing off very soon? Will you be able to write me letters from there? Ah, but there is no use. Appa won't let me use any but the newest messengers, and they never know the pathways and how to get to a person very well. Most likely they will get lost if I send them over the sea.
I'm worried about you. Will you be alright? I know you've weathered so many trips and I none, but still. I am worried. Don't get too seasick! Master Lee says it is not too possible for a boy to vomit so much from seasickness that he dies, but it is still possible! I am worried!!!
Ah. What else do I have to share today. Remember when you taught me how to ride a horse? After that when we came home (come quickly so I can go home with you again. These days it only feels truly like home when you are there), I tried to write my own song.
I know, it's silly. But I felt so... full. From that day. It was so emotionally fulfilling that my emotional stomach decided to make an emotional burp. Now, don't tell me this is nonsense. You understand me perfectly. So yes, this burp would be the song. I worked on it now and then and last week I have completed it! I practice it in the turrets with closed doors, so nobody can hear! You must be the first one to hear it! Me and my flute await!
When will you come back to your home after your trip?
(My home is your home too. Remember that.)
Yours,
Joonmyun.
Dear Jia,
I am so tired.
I will call you Jia from now on. (This is my nickname for you, nobody else may use it.)
Jia, why are there so many stars? Sometimes I want to lie on the grass and count them all, even the ones I cannot see. Do you ever feel like wanting to do things you know you can't?
Today umma fell terribly ill. She is in a fever, we are full of visiting healers and wizards today. I don't know how to feel. I wish I could go to the gods and tell them to change this hardship into something I can handle. Gods, put her in a house on fire so I can walk in and carry her out to safety. Gods, make it be so I can help somehow.
But that is all useless, I know. They will have as they will. Jia, I wish you were here. I know you hate being weak and appa hates to see me being weak, but I really wish you were here. What am I without my friend? You are my strength.
Ah, it's late at night right now. Perhaps I have embarrassed you? I apologize, and will send this letter off in the morning. I hope you are sleeping well.
Yours always,
Joonmyun.
Dearest Jia,
I told you, didn't I? You are my strength. Thank you for writing back and sending a messenger so fast. I apologize for replying to you so late, but hopefully my messenger will be this good at travel as well. It has been busy, and the gods answered my plea. I have been able to help, so I had no time to do anything but.
Umma is better now. But she is to have strict bedrest and never exert herself again. We still don't know how it happened, but the healers said they cannot risk the queen falling sick again. The wizards have tried but they cannot say anything for sure, either. But the worst, they say, is over. I feel strange. I want to do more. But there is nothing I can do. Perhaps this is the feeling when you count all the stars you can and there are none more you can see?
Jia, how are you? I want to hear about your days. I miss you.
Yours always,
Joonmyun.
Jia,
I know you will probably not read this in time, because you are already on the way here. Here, to our home! I laughed aloud while writing this, this is how excited I am. I hope when you arrive back and read this, you are well-slept and fed and good in mind and heart and body and soul, as umma keeps telling me to wish everyone these days. But I do not wish you perfectly sated! You must feel a little restless and think, 'Ah, Joonmyun, until we meet again’, do you understand? I am sure you do. Do not dismiss this! I am serious! I would feel foolish to like you more. But I suppose I would also feel proud that I do. Now I am confused. Do I want to be more, or equally loyal?
Jia, I sat back for a few minutes to think and I realize that it does not matter. You are a part of me, I care about you more than myself. What is life without you? There is none. Even appa says that friends are the most important. Do you hear that sentiment!
I am so glad I fell that day, and I am even gladder that you lied and made up a story about wine poisoning.
Yours, yours, yours as ever,
Joonmyun.
They are fourteen when Jiaheng comes back the first summer, paintings of birds and skies carefully rolled up amongst his bags. "I made these for you," he says, shyly, and Joonmyun hangs every one up in his room. He has a study of his own, now, and keeps the box of Jiaheng's letters on the desk he has there.
The days on deck and by the foreign ports have tanned him. He comes back talking about all the people he’d met, about the different kinds of ships and weapons, the parchments that were thinner and the food that was rather plain.
“No food tastes better than the one at home,” the king comments. They are eating together at the royal table, Jiaheng and Joonmyun next to each other, with Joonmyun’s father at the head. Jiaheng dips his head in assent. “Definitely, your majesty.”
“And tell me,” the man continues, waving his chopsticks in slight amusement. “Did you meet any pretty girls? Anyone special?”
Jiaheng chokes a little, then blushes as he swallows. Joonmyun feels something twitch and twist inside him, stamps it down and passes Jiaheng some more water. “Ah,” Jiaheng says. “People are like food, I suppose, your majesty. The ones at home are always the prettiest.”
Joonmyun feels like asking him, suddenly, if he likes anyone here. Who would he like? Did he have a type-long hair, big eyes? Maybe apple cheeks and curvy lips? Maybe Jiaheng was like Joonmyun’s brother, maybe he just liked pretty knees. Maybe-Jiaheng takes another bite in silence as Joonmyun’s father roars with laughter. Jiaheng swallows and holds Joonmyun’s hand fiercely under the table. Joonmyun’s train of thought fragments, heart warming over with something so strange, so familiar, so dangerous and delightful.
Joonmyun thinks, again, maybe. He doesn’t dare let himself finish the thought.
"Hey," Jiaheng whispers, after they're finished with their meal, and the king has retired once more to his study. His breath fans over Joonmyun's cheek. "Weren't you going to play for me?"
Joonmyun feels giddy, fit to burst. "Of course," he says, "Follow me." The hand he places on Jiaheng's wrist trembles slightly, but he's got a strong hold.
Silently, he vows to always keep Jiaheng this close.
-
At ten, a prince starts his weapon training for when he will join the army. Joonmyun has learned sparring and swordplay, planning and hand-to-hand combat. This year, his master says he must start shooting. So this summer, they learn archery. Arrows for Jiaheng, because Joonmyun insists, and arrows and daggers for Joonmyun.
Joonmyun is a fast student; he catches on quick. Draw the bow, calculate, inhale. Feel the blood in your ears and at your fingertips, aim and let go.
The problem with Jiaheng is that he shoots skewed, off to his left most of the time.
“Here,” Joonmyun offers, “Let me help.”
Jiaheng looks at him with a little skepticism. “I will have to bend a lot.”
That really throws Joonmyun for a moment. “Why?”
“Because,” Jiaheng grins, “I’m taller.”
Joonmyun scoffs this off at first. He knows Jiaheng is taller, but surely-he walks towards him-he can’t be that much taller. Except, Joonmyun realizes with embarrassment when he stands next to him, he is. Joonmyun’s head barely comes up to Jiaheng’s shoulder.
“Alright,” Joonmyun says, trying to ignore Jiaheng's suppressed laughter, "I suppose we'll have to get on our knees and do this."
"I'll still be taller," Jiaheng mutters, and Joonmyun elbows him in the side.
"No disrespect!" But he doesn't mean it, and they're both grinning. They manage it in the end, and although Jiaheng does get better at aiming, he still maintains a slight left-sided bias. The master gives up on him. "He is not the prince," he scolds Joonmyun. "It does not matter."
Joonmyun hates it when the elders dismiss Jiaheng like this.
"Ignore them," he tells Jiaheng later that night, even though Jiaheng tells him that he doesn't even mind.
"They're right, after all," Jiaheng says. "And, anyway, I don't mind."
"I don't care," Joonmyun says, angry. He picks up his blanket and stalks over to Jiaheng's mat. Jiaheng scoots over to the side to let him plop down. "They shouldn't talk about me being a prince and you not. Especially when you're right there! What's the difference between us, anyway? What if I'm a prince? You're as good as one. You'd probably be better than me."
"Joon-"
"Don't say it. You'd probably be better than me. You're as good as one." Joonmyun rolls over and presses his forehead to the back of Jiaheng's neck, breathes deeply. His scent calms Joonmyun a little. He lifts an arm and curls it around Jiaheng's shoulder protectively. "You're as good as one." The last thing he remembers is mumbling it over and over, before he finally falls asleep.
-
They're going hunting. The master says they need to practice on moving targets, and Joonmyun is a little excited, a lot nervous.
Joonmyun and Jiaheng go together, quivers full and hands shaking just the tiniest bit. Jiaheng's aim is so bad that he misses every time. Joonmyun thinks he's doing it on purpose. He doesn't blame him. He decides he'll do the same, but when he sees a rabbit and aims farther ahead, he'd forgotten about it being a moving target. The arrow zings past him. For a second all his senses are heightened, and he hears the feather whispering in the wind, sees it wavering in the air, feels his own heartbeat ringing in every vessel, hears Jiaheng's intake of breath and the rabbit looking up, running-
It's a mess. Joonmyun is frozen to the spot and it's so, so red. Jiaheng walks over, shakily, picks it up from where there isn't spattered red. Joonmyun lifts his hands and Jiaheng hands it over. Drip, drip. Joonmyun can feel the warmth oozing onto his shoes, hears the dead leaves crackle under the weight of heavy blood. It's the final, drawn out twitch of the thing in his arms that makes him drop it and give a small scream.
There's blood on his hands and on his clothes, something dead at his feet. His own arrow winks at him, feather waving slightly in the breeze. Blood everywhere, and Joonmyun can't process this. Blood everywhere, and he's on his knees and his eyes are burning and he wants to cry but his lungs are scraping harshly against his ribs and bringing out nothing. Nothing. Blood everywhere. Joonmyun turns his head into Jiaheng's chest. "Make it stop," he whispers. "Please make it stop."
-
They tell him he has to learn to overcome this. He is a prince, one day he will be king, how can he not shoot? How can he not hunt? He is receiving army training, he needs to know how to kill-Joonmyun stops listening. He blocks them out, blocks himself out.
Raise the arrow, feel your pulse, know that you are alive, kill something.
Raise the dagger, feel your pulse, know that you are alive, kill something.
Raise the sword, feel your pulse, know that you are alive, kill something.
Kill something.
Kill.
He does not overcome this. He does not, as his father predicts, come to enjoy it. Instead he lives with it, drenched in sweat, the smell of copper haunting his dreams.
Jiaheng had left the week after the rabbit, and Joonmyun never writes about this in his letters.
-
When Jiaheng comes back, he teaches him about birds, their lives and how they migrate, how they feed, where they lay their eggs-every bird Jiaheng knows about, Jiaheng tells him-and Joonmyun plunges himself into this, back into this life where there is only life and only pleasure and only Jiaheng, with a fervor, with an unfounded fear that all this will soon fade.
There are kites, too. The first one, they make in the dead of night-Joonmyun insists, to increase the secrecy and excitement-and climb the tallest tree they find in the woods at dawn, sitting on branches facing each other, letting it fly. Joonmyun is scared, says it might catch on a branch and all their hard work would go to waste, but Jiaheng tells him to have more trust in the wind. The first one ascends to the clouds like a bird, blue and yellow and red, pretty and bright against the stark white sky.
"I can tell you about flowers," Joonmyun offers. Jiaheng gives him so much, Joonmyun wants to give back. "And how to make boats out of parchment."
Jiaheng pats the grass beside him. "Then sit. Tell me."
-
Joonmyun is seventeen to Jiaheng's sixteen-and-a-half, and where Joonmyun had always loved swimming before, now he tries to avoid it. Just a little. Just a bit. He always gives in and races him to the lake when Jiaheng asks, because what could he deny Jiaheng? But he's a little slow on the uptake, and whenever they finish, he lingers behind for a while, by himself.
He can't get it out of his head: the curve of Jiaheng's spine, the back of his neck. The breadth of his shoulders and the veins on his forearms. And his hands, gods, the way his fingers curl so readily around Joonmyun's waist.
-
Jiaheng leaves in the middle of July. As a Li, his father orders that he travel back to his hometown and get his tattoo. Three blue circles, on his wrist. “For health,” Jiaheng explains. “It’s the way of our tribe. And I’ll be back before you can write out the alphabet.”
“It’ll look pretty,” Joonmyun says, wistfully, thumbing over Jiaheng’s hand. They stare out the window, at the woods in the far distance and the sparse clouds overhead, in comfortable silence. It's then that Joonmyun realizes Jiaheng's hand is trembling slightly under Joonmyun's. "Jia?" he asks. "Are you nervous?"
Jiaheng lets out a short, startled laugh. "About what?"
"I don't know. Your hand's shaking."
"Ah," Jiaheng says, again laughing a little. "That." But he doesn't elaborate, so Joonmyun doesn't push it. He knows Jia will tell him eventually, when he feels it's right. So they lapse into quiet again.
Then Jiaheng asks him, "What's your favorite bird?"
Joonmyun frowns, a little surprised at the question.
"My favorite bird?"
He thinks about it. There are the birds Jiaheng had taught him about last year, then the ones he has studied with his mother on days when she felt better, and the ones he sees on his private little treks around the grounds. Eventually, he remembers something from years ago: a soft gray crane, long neck bent magnificently as it drank at the edge of the water. The sunset sending fractals of gold and dirty purple and smudged red onto the water, and the call of a dove from over the trees, just once, before perfect silence settles everywhere.
"A crane," Joonmyun says, slowly. "A hooded crane."
-
Jiaheng comes back in August. Monsoon season is almost over, but Joonmyun's brother says in his letter to their parents that the skies will muster some more storms yet. There are the three promised circles, light blue. "Like the sky," Jiaheng says, proudly.
"And the sea," Joonmyun murmurs, lifting Jiaheng's hand to see it better. "It looks pretty," he smiles. "Just like I said it would."
"I never said it wouldn't," Jiaheng jokes, but he looks a little breathless, for some reason, blinking rapidly at Joonmyun. Joonmyun drops his head over his hand, kisses each circle. Jiaheng's fingers curl a little over his palm, and Joonmyun clasps it to his neck. Respect and affection, it means, to hold someone's hands to your neck. It says, loud and clear, what Joonmyun can't. I love you.
Jiaheng's mouth curves up in the smallest, happiest smile.
-
It rains the day after he arrives, and Joonmyun drags him out to the lake while the water drums down hardest. "You're being nonsensical," Jiaheng calls over the loud splashing in the lake, stern, but already he's loosening his sash.
"Your actions betray you," Joonmyun yells back. "Let's swim, let's swim."
But then Jiaheng lets his robes fall past his shoulders, and Joonmyun's heart catches in his throat. The skin is a little pink and raised, so he knows for sure this isn't a painting on Jiaheng's back. Across his shoulder blades and down his vertebrae is a tattoo. A hooded crane, standing tall and proud, each feather realistic in its imprinting, the eyes sharp and alive over his skin.
What's your favorite bird? Joonmyun remembers Jiaheng asking. Wordlessly, Joonmyun walks towards him, reaches out and touches his back. Jiaheng's reaction is immediate: he tenses up and turns his head slightly over his shoulders.
"Jia," Joonmyun says, quietly, and Jiaheng turns around.
"This way I have you all the time, now," Jiaheng laughs, but it’s a little unsteady, and he bites his lip and looks away. The rain begins slowing down, and the splashing in the lake quiets.
“You already had me, though,” Joonmyun says, taking a step closer to him on instinct. Water drips down Jiaheng in rivulets, tangling in his hair and landing on his nose, carving itself in little pathways over his temples and his cheeks. “Always,” Joonmyun steps closer and closer, until he’s nosing at Jiaheng’s shoulders, and a flush rises up Jiaheng’s neck, gaze still cast sideways, barely daring to breathe.
“Look at me,” Joonmyun tells him, a hand against his chest. He can feel Jiaheng’s heartbeat under his palm, thrumming fast and dizzying. Jiaheng turns his head, faces him like it’s a challenge, and Joonmyun leans up and kisses him. He keeps his eyes open, to see Jiaheng’s face, to try to read what he’s thinking, to see if maybe he should stop, maybe this is wrong and this isn’t what he wants.
But Jiaheng just goes cross-eyed and confused, before blinking rapidly and pushing up against him, arms around Joonmyun’s waist, back dipping down to tilt his head better into the kiss. And this, Joonmyun’s hands sliding out from over Jiaheng’s chest, over Jiaheng’s back, his shoulders, up his neck-this is where everything falls in place, blazing moments into a kaleidoscope of the entire spectrum. The sun beats a tattoo against his eyelids and Jiaheng’s exhales slip sweetly down his throat, the lake lapping at their feet.
-
The box of letters in Joonmyun's study had grown to two, then three, then four. They nestle side by side on the top ledge of his first shelf in the study (the shelves, too, have multiplied), but now the letters in them don't increase in number. Because Jiaheng stays after summer. His father had set up a big house close by-as a loyal diplomat to both kings for almost ten years now, he'd been allowed this much.
The autumn and winter that follow are the best, Joonmyun will always swear, of his life.
Delirious happiness and stolen kisses, everywhere, at the arch of the entrance, in the turrets, on the roof, under the trees, at the lake, under the lake. Joonmyun's fingers and Joonmyun's mouth cartograph Jiaheng entirely: the back of his hands, the creases in his neck when he looks over his shoulder, between his shoulders (the crane, the crane, the crane), the tips of his eyelashes and the roots of his hair, behind his knees and around his ankles, until Jiaheng is panting and moaning and flushed so prettily, eyes so bright and mouth so eager. On their mats, in the cupboards, hands playing underneath the dinner table, while they make kites and fold boats and pretend to revise lessons. More and more, Joonmyun's heart bursting, Jiaheng's eyes fluttering shut, names and promises whispered and kept close, moments and glances stolen and kept closer.
-
They're just leaving the stables-setting off with a horse for an early morning ride, when a servant boy stops them. "Master Jiaheng," the boy bows, “Your father calls you."
For a second, Joonmyun’s heart stops.
-
Joonmyun had been slightly curious at the sudden influx of letters that his brother had been sending them. They were too long and frequent to be just the few moments’ summaries that his father would tell him over meals.
There was war at the brink, then, and now Jiaheng’s father has to choose a side.
His mother tells him this, because Joonmyun seeks her out and holds her hand and shakes with worry. Jiaheng had not returned since, but he hadn’t left the palace either. He and his father had been locked in a room, talking for hours.
“I don’t think,” she says, tiredly, “That he will choose us. He is only a friend, Joonmyun. He will not choose his friend over his blood.”
“Jiaheng,” is all Joonmyun chokes out, and she holds his hand, strokes his hair.
-
He wakes up in the middle of the night, sure he had felt a pair of lips at his brow. The wind howls outside. He turns over, but Jiaheng is not there. The mat, the blanket, the pillow-it’s all gone. Joonmyun sits up at once, goes to the door. He hears quiet murmurings and the sound of bag hitting the stairs, several flights below, with every step.
No, he thinks, breaking into a run, no.
He makes for his father’s room, because he knows they’re too far ahead, and he wouldn’t be able to make them stay if he tried. But if he tells his father, he could stop them at the gates... at the city entrance, maybe.
He bursts through his father’s study, where light had been shining from under the door. The king sits on his chair, a lone candle shedding light to his face. “Appa,” Joonmyun gasps, “Appa, please.”
The king blinks at him, as if seeing through him, then turns his head resolutely away. The glass panes creak under the pressure of the wind. Joonmyun feels hollow.
“Appa,” Joonmyun says again, on his knees with his hands clasped. “Let him stay. Let him stay, appa, I beg of you.”
“Go to bed, Joonmyun,” his father says, wearily. “There is nothing I can do.”
As if to punctuate this, the windows finally burst inwards from the storm outside, and the candle blows out at once. Joonmyun sits in the darkness, unable to bring himself to move. His father stands up and brushes past him, leaving him staring dumbly into the small patch of sky and stars he can see through the open window.
It’s a cold December, his mother had been saying since the month began. But Joonmyun had never really felt its iciness until now.
-
He is seventeen and a half to Jiaheng’s seventeen, and nothing, nothing is anything anymore.
-
Joonmyun tries to rebel when his father forces him through his training as if nothing had happened, as if Joonmyun hadn’t just lost Jiaheng from his life. As if Jiaheng had never existed.
Joonmyun stares into space as his master walks him through lessons, as his words increase in volume and rise to shrill yells, as words turn to blows, as he is ordered to defend himself in a sparring match, as he disobeys and let himself be beat.
His master calls the king.
“Joonmyun,” the king says. There is blood dripping down the sides of Joonmyun’s face, and for once the scent of copper and the taste of zinc in his throat makes him feel triumphant instead of hunted. This is his own blood that is being shed. This is repentance and redemption.
“Joonmyun,” the king says again, and Joonmyun smiles, blood in his teeth and bruises on his cheek.
-
“You will go to war,” his father tells him, calmly.
Joonmyun looks up in disbelief, face bandaged and left wrist sprained.
“This is what you have been training for, your entire life. If you have refused to receive it, these past few months,” the king pauses. It has been three months since Jiaheng left and the candle blew out. “Then that was your choice. I will have you dressed in armor and girded by tomorrow morning. I will give you my blessing, and you will lead your battalion into the mountains.”
-
So they win. They force him into it, and he lets himself be forced. What had he told Jiaheng in his letters, so many years before? He was weak. He always had been, and if before he’d had an inkling of hope that maybe there was a spark of strength in him that would fight back to this-to this servant girl putting on his helmet, his mother slowly, fumblingly girding him and kissing his hand, to his father laying his sword on each shoulder and giving him his blessing, to setting out on horse with nobody behind him but the heavy ghost of memory-if before he’d thought it, he’s proved himself wrong beyond belief.
The journey to the mountains isn’t as hard as some of his others have been. He thinks, constantly, if Jiaheng had experienced anything like it. If Jiaheng is in the war himself. Then he tries to forget the thought, the clenching of his stomach.
They stop halfway, set up a travel point for other units who may arrive as backup or due to a change of plans. They stay for a week, setting up barracks and hammering in nails and boards together. At the end of each day, Joonmyun flings himself onto his mat, arms over his head as he remembers Jiaheng, and remembers, and remembers.
-
He gives them his orders, rides at the front along with the rest of the foot soldiers, but his hands are damp and clammy on the reins, sword heavy as lead knocking against his thigh, quiver full of arrows against his back where someone else should be. Belt around his waist a pair of arms should be. Jiaheng, Jiaheng, Jiaheng.
And then, the first soldier against him, also on a horse. A shout, a raised sword, and Joonmyun flashes out his own without proper thought. The horses dance forwards, backwards, side by side, and metal clangs and sweat drips down Joonmyun’s brow. Neighs and shouts and brawling calls, the sounds of grunts and battle. He blocks them out. He blocks himself out.
Know that you are alive.
Muscle memory has trained him for this, his father and his masters and his own hard work, and his sword goes right through the rings in his enemy’s suit, pressure on his hilt in just the right direction to thrust and twist, and the man topples from his seat, is trampled by the rest.
Joonmyun stares down at where he lies, jostled over and stampeded by feet and hooves, probably dead already or wishing he was. This is because of Joonmyun. Joonmyun has taken his life.
And then, the second soldier against him. A shout, a raised sword, and Joonmyun turns and retaliates without proper thought.
Know that you are alive.
-
He loses count of the days.
He had known about war, had studied it, had understood what he had been taught about battlefield tactics and last-minute retreats, water shortage and death. He had known about it and prepared himself for it, but he hadn’t known it would be like this.
The months surge forward into a year. Every day there is a new shift in location, there are new faces, pouring in like so many pigs for slaughter, like so many ants that his battalion has to crush, a new flag to burn. Every night he throws up anything his stomach has to offer-food, water, bile, blood.
Raise the arrow, feel your pulse, know that you are alive, kill someone.
Raise the dagger, feel your pulse, know that you are alive, kill someone.
Raise the sword, feel your pulse, know that you are alive, kill someone.
Kill someone.
Kill.
In his tent, he tosses and turns. What if behind one of those countless suits of armor was Jiaheng? What if behind a breastplate beats Jiaheng’s heart, what if inside the helmet were Jiaheng’s eyes, what if Joonmyun had killed-
Food, water, bile, blood. Kill someone.
One year bleeds into the next, two years, three years. His brother dies. He hears it from his lieutenant, the Crowned Prince is no more, and that’s when colors really start to seep out. Everything blurs into gray, ash. Slash, kill, slaughter.
This is worse than the rabbit, this is worse than the blood on his hands and trying to seek comfort in Jiaheng, because this is not the rabbit, this is not the blood, and there is no Jiaheng. This is more than it all, more than everything. This is an engulfing and tearing, this is Joonmyun losing a fight he had never meant to fight, this is him drowning everything that he can on his way down to the emptiness.
Three years, four years. Joonmyun has stopped counting how many men he had ended long ago. Four years, and his father draws up his horse to their camp, in the midst of all this.
“She is dead,” he says, “By gods, Joonmyun, she is dead.” There are tears coursing down his face, the great head bowed, and Joonmyun stands with his hands balled into fists, the wind whistling in his ears.
Mother. A flashing set of images; all the memories he has with her in them. She is dead. She is dead. She is dead. She is dead.
“We will win the war,” he promises his father. Joonmyun, at twenty one, says what he never thought he would at seventeen. “We will win.”
The man gets to his feet clumsily, this very one who had forced Joonmyun into all this, into this misery for the sake of pride, for the sake of blood, and Joonmyun’s heart wrenches that they are like this, that this has happened, that everything has happened to lead up to this.
“We will win,” his father vows, eyes still wet but harder now.
-
But at what cost? Joonmyun questions, every waking moment of the day.
His horse has been replaced three times, his armor bigger and larger as he had outgrown it, his sword longer and his quiver new.
Four years, five years.
His original battalion shrunken and wavering and tentatively expanding over the months, death bringing them down, back up raising their numbers. The barracks the original unit had set up have long been burnt to the ground.
Slash, slaughter, kill.
He has a wound in his shoulder that never really healed, a wound from a poisoned arrow that he had carelessly let sit in for days, hoping to die, before a healer had reached their base and taken it out.
Pain is redemption, repentance. Death is the ultimate forgiveness.
They have traveled to cities and to Jiaheng’s city and to the port. Joonmyun has flinched inside each time, has hardened himself to it, has learnt to live, drenched in sweat with the scent of copper hanging everywhere.
This is not how he wanted to visit, he considers, bitterly, and slashes another man down. Jiaheng, he thinks, and wants to vomit.
Six years, seven years.
Joonmyun will never remember the last day of battle. It will be a blank haze of killing, just like the rest of them, it will be nothing but misery and a calm sense of oncoming, ever-ready death.
Prove you are alive while you can. Kill someone.
It is the seventh year that they win, that Joonmyun sets his battalion back with his horse’s nose pointed homewards, their tired, weary, hole-ridden flag raised up high.
-
The palace is emptier, much emptier than it used to be.
And it's only logical: servants having resigned, enlisted or fallen sick.
Then there was family-Joonmyun can't think about it. He can't bring himself to face the closed doors of the rooms that led to-Joonmyun can't. His father may order those door hinges oiled and those rooms cleaned daily, but Joonmyun wants to leave it all behind, and even then, he can't. His dreams won't let him, and when he's awake, his memories won't, either.
It takes more and more strength to move his left arm as the days pass, the pain in his shoulder making him flinch awake in the middle of the night.
-
The maid who used to clean their-his, Joonmyun reminds himself, his-room is long gone.
"Good morning," the new servant boy says, shyly, the first morning after Joonmyun arrives. He can't be more than twenty. From his spot by the window, Joonmyun nods in return and smiles.
-
Sehun talks a lot. Which is strange, because around anyone else, Joonmyun has seen, Sehun is almost completely silent, joining in now and then for a laugh or a sarcastic remark. But around Joonmyun, Sehun shares almost everything he comes across during his day. The temperature, how many daisies he plucked, the pretty new kitchen maid who recently joined, how uncomfortable his clothes are, his family at home-everything.
"Ah, your majesty," Sehun says, once, and Joonmyun's heart doesn't twinge, doesn't remember. "I talk so much. Surely you have something to say, too?"
Joonmyun smiles bemusedly up at him, scrolls on astronomy in his lap. "Ah," he says. "I am... I don't know, Sehun. What should I say?"
Sehun smiles and sits down, polish rag in his hands forgotten. "Tell me about the hardest day at war. About training, sire! Talk about... hmmm... life before the battles. The most exciting day you've ever had. I talk so much, your highness, surely you're tired of it by now."
These questions. Joonmyun had been dreading them, but somehow, coming from the clumsy, friendly youth who has barely crossed boyhood... it doesn't seem so bad. He doesn't remember the full details of the war, had been trying to push them away, but once Sehun asks, things start falling into place. Start calling him back and claiming him. So he rolls up the astronomy lessons and sets them aside. He starts to talk.
-
Things get a little better when Sehun comes by. The days are still the same, still dull and devoid of purpose, still full of gaping holes where living, breathing people should have been, but Sehun is a little bit of brightness. He spreads a little shine to Joonmyun's room with his polish and broom and the water jug that he keeps putting new flowers in.
"They're weeds, you know," Joonmyun tells him, dryly.
Sehun frowns, pausing in the middle of adjusting the dandelions and daisies. "Your majesty, with all due respect, that is plain farmer's talk. Flowers are flowers, and supposed to be very pretty to the commoner and the royalty alike. Weeds are only for an agriculturalist to worry about."
"Weeds," Joonmyun maintains, and Sehun huffs, stubbornly leaves the flowers in.
Joonmyun doesn't take them out.
-
Sehun comes in one day, wide eyed and staring, hands clenching and unclenching.
"What is it?" Joonmyun says, looking up from a painting. He'd had it taken down from the study, and kept it close by his bed instead. Jiaheng's favorite bird, an eagle. Joonmyun can't remember the specific name for it now, regrets it so much.
Sehun just opens his mouth and closes it. Then, finally, "Father taught me how to hunt, today. I feel-" he stops short, staring at his hands.
"Come here," Joonmyun says at once. "Here, sit by me."
It's the first time he's let someone be this close. It feels warm, a little reassuring. "Deep breaths," Joonmyun says, and Sehun nods, lips pressed in a thin line.
-
Sehun creeps into his room at night from then on, when his duties are over. He uses 'extra cleaning' as an excuse, but Joonmyun knows better.
They talk until the mornings, sharing thoughts and comparing memories. Sehun tells him about his dream, to learn to read and write, to sail a ship. Joonmyun tells him about Jiaheng. Joonmyun is twenty four now, and Jiaheng would be twenty three. If he survived-Joonmyun stops thinking.
"Would you call it love?" Sehun glances up from where he's sweeping the floor. He's by the cupboard they used to sit on, Joonmyun and Jiaheng.
Joonmyun looks down at his hands. Hands that have wielded swords and thrown daggers and ended lives, strangled men without weapons. Hands that, long ago, dug holes to plant flowers and folded parchments into boats.
"I'd call it whatever he'd want to call it."
Sehun straightens up, the bones in his back cracking loudly. The brush hangs limp in his hand, and his face is sympathetic. "Then it was love, surely."
-
It's been coming on for a while. Joonmyun's shoulder wound slowing down his arm, paralysing it completely. Joonmyun should have guessed.
Walking through the gardens, through the stiff August heat, bending down to sniff at the flowers and reaching up with one hand to pat the branches of trees by the path, he gets dizzy. Impossibly dizzy, the world spinning around him at impossible speeds, his gut revolting until he wants to throw up. Then blackness, and the last thing he feels is the ground against his face.
-
It gets worse after that. All he knows is fever and sweating and nightmares.
A blur, people wavering in and out of his vision. Everything is icy cold, and he has no idea where he is. Sometimes he's back at the battlefield, sometimes the first man to strike him take off his helmet, sometimes the face behind it is Jiaheng, sometimes it's his brother-both times Joonmyun kills him, both times Joonmyun is dragged under with him and trampled as well.
There are lakes that jump at him and wild eagles that claw at his face, his mother crying out from the darkness and telling him how cold it is, how this December will bode nothing but ill, and-a rare moment of clarity.
He's in his bedroom, poultices on his shoulder and steam wafting everywhere. A stranger sits by his side, whispering incantations. Sehun is on his other side, lips taut and face gaunt with worry. Joonmyun tries to reach out to him, but his arm won't move. With a groan, he slides back into the chaos.
-
Between all these horrors, these nightmares that he cannot differentiate from waking at times, there are moments when everything is normal. They are few and far between, but Joonmyun clings to them inside, holding on through the terror.
Sehun, bending over him, fraught with anxiety and dripping cold water over his forehead. "Ah, Sehun," Joonmyun rasps, throat dry and lips cracked. "I'm being a burden, aren't I? I swear... I've never fallen this ill. I am sorry."
Sehun frowns and remains silent, just presses a wet cloth against his mouth, squeezes it so the water drips slowly down his throat. "Your highness is ill," Sehun says, stern, "That does not mean your highness has to go crazy and apologize for being a human."
Joonmyun tries to smile, but it hurts. "Tell me," he asks. "What's going on?"
Sehun tells him. He fell ill the same way the queen did. There is a reward for anyone who can cure him. The kingdom is recovering from the war, the king is not. Sehun found a crane by the lake last week. His father is getting along well, the pretty maid has left, sometimes Joonmyun tries to walk in his sleep.
Sehun says something about developments, about how perhaps there is a cure now when there wasn't before, but Joonmyun isn't listening anymore. He's slipping away again, shivering as he starts to fade.
-
So many faces. Strangers, flickering in and out. His father, voice loud and booming, echoing through Joonmyun's skull. He can't understand the words. Steam and fire and spells, Joonmyun trembles and spasms under them all, abject fear the only thing he truly knows.
And then. Quiet. He is left alone, he doesn't know for how long, before the door opens again. Wearily, through a haze, Joonmyun looks up.
The face. Joonmyun knows... he knows that face.
"Jia," he whispers, even as everything starts to swim together before him. "Jiaheng."
Just before he's surrounded by black, a hand covers his own.
Calm. He feels protected.
Then Joonmyun knows nothing. Nothing but serenity that envelops him like a warm blanket. He succumbs himself to that comfortable void.
-
"Jiaheng!"
It's the first word out of Joonmyun's mouth, when his eyes open.
What had he been dreaming of? Something pleasant, for once. Jiaheng, and the three circles on his wrist. It looks pretty, just like I said it would. A memory. A good one. Joonmyun closes his eyes again, trying to get all the details back in his mind. The shade of blue, the feeling of Jiaheng's hand in his, the wind in their hair.
"You're awake," someone murmurs, sleepily.
Joonmyun freezes. It can't be.
"Your majesty?" the voice says, again, and Joonmyun slowly, slowly, turns his head to look.
Jiaheng, curled up on a mat beside his. Jiaheng, older and more tired looking, hair longer and tied back, taller than ever. But Jiaheng nonetheless. His eyes, that sharp nose, the curve of those lips and the slight puff in his cheeks. Joonmyun wants to reach out and trace it all with his fingers again.
"Jia," Joonmyun whispers. "Please. Don't let this be a dream."
Jiaheng laughs quietly, all teeth. "It's not."
-
He hadn't killed him.
All those years, and Joonmyun hadn't touched him.
Jiaheng. Joonmyun craves for him, from the moment he wakes.
-
They don't talk for a while after those first words to each other, in years. Days pass in silence and soft touches, Joonmyun trying to lock away every moment in clear, untouchable, untarnished memory, Jiaheng frowning in concentration, trying his best to heal him.
These are beautiful days, even if they are slower and more pained than the ones they used to have. Jiaheng has always given him a purpose, and he gives it now, when Joonmyun needs it most.
Joonmyun looks, feels his heart fill and his pulse beat, and never looks away, never grows tired of looking. The sunlight falling through the window and through Jiaheng's hair, the way his brows furrow and his mouth purses, deep in thought. The pulse in his temple, the sweeping line of his jaw.
But Joonmyun’s patience can only last so long. It takes a few weeks, after Sehun leaves after checking in on them, serving them their meals, asking them about their day and telling them of his, every day, when Joonmyun finally speaks.
“Jia,” he pleads, “Say something.”
Jiaheng breaks into a smile. “I have missed listening to you speak, majesty.”
It makes Joonmyun’s heart break.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry. For what-for everything that happened. Jia, Jiaheng, I’m so-”
Jiaheng’s arms are close around his shoulders, and Joonmyun is seven years back again, for one second, in the woods and searching for comfort, the color red everywhere he sees.
-
Through Jiaheng’s treatment-he does not promise much, but at least the arm, he says, he can cure-Joonmyun is carried out through the gardens, made to rest in the open air and breathe with the plants.
Jiaheng brings him flowers, ones that Joonmyun had told him about when they were both sixteen, and they brush knuckles contentedly. Sometimes, Jiaheng links their fingers.
-
The day Joonmyun feels with his arm again, he reaches out and tugs Jiaheng’s sleeve as he turns to leave. Jiaheng turns around, mouth open slightly in surprise.
“Joonmyun!”
Joonmyun smiles up at him, fierce and weary and desperate. Another tug, as hard as Joonmyun can manage, and Jiaheng almost topples right on him. Their faces are inches away from each other, Jiaheng’s arms on either side of Joonmyun. Joonmyun takes his time to relearn the beloved face that is so close.
“Tell me,” Joonmyun breathes, throat raw and chest threatening to implode. “Tell me it isn’t just me. Jia-”
Jiaheng tilts his head, kisses him. Joonmyun’s eyes close in relief for a long, long moment, his good arm coming up to hold Jiaheng, keeping him there.
It’s been so long.
When they part, noses bumping a little, Joonmyun’s smile is small and secure.
“You have always had me,” Jiaheng reminds him.
-
Sehun’s holiday approaches, so he spends as much time as possible with them, yelping in surprise when he finds Joonmyun practicing with his bad arm. “Majesty! You managed? The prince has done it!”
Sehun is delighted with their amusement at his surprise, proposes games to play and plants to pluck-“Weeds,” he drawls, with emphasis, and Joonmyun swats his head-and a hundred other things, but backs down sadly when Jiaheng says not to overwork him.
Joonmyun had been a little worried in the beginning, but he’s glad that they all get along well. He smiles at their antics and quiet bickering while he pretends to read his scrolls. It brings old memories back-running carefree by the lake, the first breath of fresh air on opening the window after a stuffy summer night.
Sehun waves goodbye to them as he leaves, a kite packed in his bag and a number of folded boats ready in the pockets of his robe to amuse his family at home.
“Look at that,” Jiaheng chuckles, at the window. “He’s like a little sparrow going off on an adventure.”
“Small wings, but going places,” Joonmyun agrees, smiling as he waves at the small figure near the gates. “I’m glad he’s coming back in a few weeks.”
-
They share their stories through the nights and days that follow.
Jiaheng had changed his name, after his father died. He goes by Yifan, now.
“You’re still Jia to me,” Joonmyun murmurs, fingers tracing over the blue circles again and again. “My Jia.”
Jiaheng smiles. “Yours.”
He’d joined an apothecary, learned to be a healer and a wizard, tried especially hard to study illnesses that resembled the queen’s. He’d so desperately wanted to find a way to help somehow, even if it were to be just by letter, given the war. He was on the brink of a breakthrough when the news of her death spread to where he lived.
“I was-” Jiaheng stops. “I’m so sorry.”
“There’s nothing for you to apologize for,” Joonmyun says, swallowing hard. For months, now, he’s been trying not to think about it.
Jiaheng becomes quiet, and Joonmyun looks up at the sky.
“So,” he says, beginning again, "You became a wizard."
"And you became a soldier." Jiaheng smiles at him, gentle, hands working on his shoulders.
Joonmyun feels tension that he didn’t know was there lifting quietly and leaving him limp in relief.
“Feel better?” Jiaheng asks.
“So much, Jia. Thank you.”
There is a pause of their conversation again, relaxed this time. Joonmyun glances around him, at the trees, the lake, the spots so familiar and so old. Everywhere, he can see ghosts of himself and Jiaheng-laughing, running and holding hands, whispering secrets, lying on their backs with their legs tangled, leaning against trees and kissing.
"Time does pass fleetingly, once you look back."
1. these are a few hooded cranes.
2. regretfully, i know nothing about horse riding or archery. apologies for any ridiculous errors.
3. thanks to rz for letting me do this! rn&a for being nice and listening patiently to me stutter vaguely about it. k! i sought you out and ranted a little and your support really kickstarted me into finally doing this and kickass betaing helped me immensely throughout. literally couldn’t have done it without you! last but definitely not least, thanks to the recipient for giving such interesting prompts!
From: ANONYMOUS until May 22, 2015
Title: in these stone walls
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: Suho/Kris
Length: 10,667 words
Summary: "Would you call it love?"
Warning/s: passing mentions of minor character death, descriptions of war, slight gore.
Notes: well, this was an Experience. also, yifan is one year younger than joonmyun here. (thanks k.) cheers! long live suho.
It's a quiet day, in terms of the weather and the woods, when Joonmyun creeps up behind a pillar to spy on the royal guests. His father sits at the head, of course, as the king. The others are seated on the silk cushions, legs crossed and robes gathered neatly around them. There is the head of the army, at one end of the room, here a navy officer-Joonmyun's brother wears a sash just like this man’s-and between them many soldiers and admirals. Joonmyun ticks off the different kinds of sashes, the cloth in their braids, the empty hilts by their sides. Joonmyun's father has told him how to differentiate them all.
But in the middle sits someone different. He's lean and muscular like the rest of them, but his sash isn't from around here. He's a stranger. Unconsciously, Joonmyun steps closer. The others are all talking with hushed voices to this man, and Joonmyun wants to listen. (Eight-year-olds get the worst luck. What's the point of being a prince when you can't even attend an audience?) Joonmyun takes another step forward, forgetting his hiding place. As if sensing him, his father looks up and catches his eye. Immediately, he frowns. The guests notice and turn to see. Joonmyun's sweaty hand slips from the pillar, sending him tumbling down the short set of stairs.
-
"Majesty," someone whispers, awed.
“Mffguh,” Joonmyun replies, lost and uncomfortable. His head feels wrapped up and squeezed enough to make his brain turn into paste. And then the paste will leak out his ears and drip around and he’ll look in the mirror and see it everywhere and scream and it will be terrible and-Joonmyun catches himself thinking along this line of thought with particular relish. He likes thinking about terrible grievances with himself as the hero. Or the victim. The heroic victim.
“Majesty?” someone whispers again, and Joonmyun looks around for the person with wide eyes. Nobody calls him majesty. He’s the small prince, or princeling, or your highness. His parents are called majesty.
There’s a skinny boy standing at the foot of his bed. He’s around as tall as Joonmyun, with bony wrists and shaggy hair long ‘til his shoulders, looking at him with eyes just as wide. “I saw you fall,” the boy says, and Joonmyun feels disappointed. The first time he meets someone his age in the castle, and he has to have embarrassed himself. Speaking of falling, Joonmyun lifts his hand to his head. It’s wrapped up, all right. That means the brain paste feeling he’d been having is probably really happening right now.
“Is my brain leaking from my ears?” Joonmyun asks, excitedly. “I think it is. Come, see.”
The boy starts at that, mouth hanging open, before he runs off.
-
It takes some time for Joonmyun to meet the boy again. He keeps asking around if any of the servants had seen him, if his mother has, if maybe the palace guards caught sight of him-but nobody remembers seeing a small boy around Joonmyun's age. It's easy to forget, his father explains to him kindly, about small boys, when grown men from all over keep visiting this month. There are important negotiations going on.
Joonmyun resents this, of course. Isn't he small too? But he bows to his father as usual, and leaves the room.
-
In front of him is the long bench, where all the prepared dishes are being set. In his hand, Joonmyun holds a vial of wine. It's a very small vial, and his fingers are curled around it, so nobody really notices.
"I wouldn't do it if I were you," someone whispers in his ear. Joonmyun jumps a foot in the air and whirls around.
It's the boy from before.
"You!"
"Majesty," the boy bows a little. "It'll... make the soup taste bad if you do. We might all die. From wine poisoning."
Joonmyun's mouth opens, staring at him. "Wine poisoning."
"Aye." He's very solemn and serious about it. Joonmyun spares the bench one more glance, before regretfully tucking the vial into his robes.
"That's a good move," the boy comments, and Joonmyun looks at him with interest.
"What's your name?"
The boy looks taken aback. "Li Jiaheng."
"I'm Joonmyun," Joonmyun says, proudly. "Kim Joonmyun."
"Yes," Jiaheng says, smiling slightly. "I know."
-
That is how it begins, then. The son of a merchant and the son of a king. Jiaheng tells Joonmyun whatever he knows about trade and city life and sea ports, Joonmyun asking ridiculous questions and Jiaheng stumbling, giving in, making up even more ridiculous answers.
Joonmyun tells him about his lessons, the audiences, the strange complaints the citizens come to his father with, about the navy and his brother's fleet.
They play hide and seek in the gardens and Joonmyun tries to pull more jokes on grownups and Jiaheng tries to talk him out of it.
Eventually, Joonmyun asks his father if Jiaheng can sit with him in a lesson. The king glances from his scrolls. "Is that the boy you were asking for, before?"
"Yes," Joonmyun says. He pauses, before rushing to say, "He's a good friend."
His father smiles. "That is good to hear. He may sit at History, if you like."
Joonmyun lets him sit in at History, Math and Geography. Jiaheng listens to him play the flute before bedtime. The maid sweeps the room while they perch on the cupboard, legs swinging and kicking the doors. She smiles at their antics, pauses when Joonmyun begins to play.
"Almost better than the high prince," she praises him, as she leaves. Joonmyun beams.
"What's it like," Jiaheng asks, when they scramble down to sit on the floor.
"What's what?"
"I don't know. Having..." Jiaheng hesitates. "Having a brother?"
Joonmyun frowns and thinks hard for a minute. "Well," he says, at last. "It's like you and me."
Jiaheng has never smiled brighter.
-
"Lend me your clothes," Joonmyun says, once.
Jiaheng's father had visited the kingdom again after a few months. The second he had crossed the palace gates, Joonmyun dragged his son away as hostage.
The heat is sticky on their backs as they lie in one of the gardens, sun over their heads and breeze warm as it whispers towards them. Jiaheng had been eying the ant crawling over his finger with some interest, but now he hurriedly wipes it on the grass and sits up.
"You're up to no good," Jiaheng proclaims, and Joonmyun doesn't even bother to try and correct that.
"Maybe."
"Joonmyun."
Joonmyun rests his head in Jiaheng's lap, hands folded over his chest. "I'm serious! We'll go into the city and get in trouble. Like everyone else our age. It'll be fun."
Jiaheng's look of dawning distress is hilarious-Joonmyun rolls back into the grass, face full of dandelions, laughing at it.
"Joonmyun," Jiaheng says again, then pauses. They're both ten years old, but they're already used to each other enough that Jiaheng realizes he has to convince, really persuade Joonmyun to not be an idiot. And Joonmyun knows that this is what Jiaheng will do. He likes when Jiaheng puts in an effort to stop him from doing things. It makes him feel... at the center. Although he's not sure how to put that into better words.
Anyway, Jiaheng's still there, mouth open and brow furrowed, so Joonmyun cocks his head and waits for the oncoming speech. A tulip brushes his nose. He sneezes.
He doesn't know how he manages to persuade Jiaheng, but he does it. They're walking hand in hand (Jiaheng's clammy from nervousness) through the market, and while Joonmyun has been through here before, he has always been lifted on men's shoulders, or in a rickshaw. Now, Joonmyun closes his eyes and breathes deeply, letting everything hit him at once. He wrinkles his nose and retches.
"That," Jiaheng says apologetically, steering him away, "Was a dung cart that just passed."
"I guessed," Joonmyun chokes.
Alarmed, Jiaheng buys a small posy of flowers from a woman and stuffs them up Joonmyun's nose. Joonmyun starts sneezing up a hurricane.
"Hey!" A man yells, and Joonmyun turns around, eyes watering. "Stop scaring away my customers, you puny brats! Sneeze somewhere else!" The shop sign proclaims, Local Butcher, Best Buys, Pig and Goat Available.
Joonmyun takes a step backwards, then sneezes again, even louder. The man's face darkens. "Why, you impudent little-”
"Sir!" Jiaheng shouts, pointing. "There's a cat in your shop!"
The man starts backwards into his shop in dismay. Jiaheng yanks Joonmyun's hand and makes a run for it.
They weave in and out of stalls and performers, people and children and wheelbarrows, darting behind shops, until Joonmyun stops sneezing and starts laughing out of exhilaration, until Jiaheng stops short and doubles over and they're both gasping for breath.
"Hey," Joonmyun pants, sweat heavy on his brow.
Jiaheng looks up.
"Let's do that again."
"And get you," Jiaheng wheezes, leaning against the alley wall, "Beat up? I think that was close enough."
"I could have taken it," Joonmyun argues, hands curled into loose fists with slight disappointment. "I could have taken the beating." Yifan reaches out carelessly to hold one and links their fingers together. Even though they're almost the same height, Jiaheng's hands are much bigger than his. Jiaheng’s touch always feels calm. A little protective of Joonmyun.
"You could have," Jiaheng agrees. "But it's better if you didn't. Come on, let’s go home."
Joonmyun will remember this feeling for a long time, this day, these moments: Jiaheng walking next to him, sometimes a little ahead. Leading him home, to the palace that is his as much as it is Joonmyun’s, to the room that is his as much as it is Joonmyun’s, to the large kitchens and the comfortable cushions on their mats.
Home. Everything about right now makes him feel at peace.
-
The months when Jiaheng isn’t there can never be enough quick in passing. Joonmyun has made his own calendar, rolled it up in the drawer of his cupboard. Each night before sleeping he takes it out, scratches another day out, then puts it back in again.
-
At thirteen, Joonmyun learns to ride a horse, and Jiaheng hefts his foot up so Joonmyun can swing himself over to sit. Already a little taller, Jiaheng jumps up by himself, seated behind Joonmyun.
“What’re you doing,” Joonmyun mumbles, uneasy and fiddling with his sash as he waits for the riding master to arrive.
“I know how to do this,” Jiaheng says, cheerfully. “I can teach you.”
Joonmyun turns his head around as best as he can. “You’re joking,” he tells Jiaheng off. “Don’t play with me when I’m nervous.”
“Hey, easy,” Jiaheng taps his nose, making Joonmyun squawk. “Just because I’m younger than you doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.”
Joonmyun sniffs. “Alright, let’s see you ride this-Jiaheng!” He ends with a frightened squeal when Jiaheng squeezes the horse with his legs, and they start off on a trot.
“Hold tight!” Jiaheng advises, through Joonmyun’s screams.
“To what?” Joonmyun yells back, terrified. This isn’t a trot, this is a canter from hell-Joonmyun’s bones are all knocking together and his brain is going to smash itself to bits inside his skull. But then, apparently, the horse is just as scared of Joonmyun as Joonmyun is of it-Joonmyun’s loud noises egg it on to even faster speeds. Around him, the ground and trees flash past and blur together. Jiaheng laughs delightedly into the wind, arms tight around Joonmyun’s waist, and Joonmyun clings onto his sleeve with one hand and the horse’s mane with the other.
They’ve ridden for at least half an hour, Joonmyun figures later, once he’s a little calmer and leaning into the horse with more ease. Jiaheng is pressed up against him, chin nestled between Joonmyun’s shoulders.
“Here,” Jiaheng tries, again. His hands cup over Joonmyun’s, and lead him around the horse’s neck. “See? Just breathe with the horse. You can feel the pulse here, close your eyes for a few seconds and focus on it.”
Joonmyun closes his eyes, feels the blood pumping under his hands. But he presses against Jiaheng, feels that heart beating steadily into Joonmyun’s back. So he focuses on Jiaheng’s steady breathing instead, hands relaxing just a bit in the horse’s mane.
“Feel better?” Jiaheng whispers into his ear. The horse has slowed down to a trot again, although going smoother than before.
Joonmyun smiles, eyes still closed. “Yes, much.”
They get in trouble with the riding master when they return, two hours later, but when Joonmyun slides off and Jiaheng catches him safely, he thinks to himself, this is worth it.
That night, Joonmyun stays up long after Jiaheng falls asleep. Stealthily, he grabs his flute and slips out the door, making his way to a turret. He stops only at his father's study, to grab a piece of leftover parchment and some ink. Once he's there, he thinks again, already for the hundredth time, about the feeling of Jiaheng's heart against him, the freedom Joonmyun felt after he got used to the speed, the way the wind whipped in his face and he felt like he was flying.
Hesitant, he raises the flute to his lips and tries a note, then writes it down.
-
From that year onwards, it's mostly only over the summers that Jiaheng is able to come. In the meantime, Joonmyun writes him letters, and Jiaheng writes back.
Dear Jiaheng,
It's been only a day since you left but everything has slowed down again. Time has become a murky, stand-still puddle once more. I hope you'll be safe when you read this. Today, I was allowed to skip Ethics and Riding because the masters said I was too distracted and wasn't fit to learn anything. How will you be doing? Write to me as soon as you get home, ah!
Appa said next time you come, we may explore the woods better. Finally, at fourteen! You will come next year, won't you? Why must your father be a traveling merchant... he should be an honorary knight in the kingdom here. You can live with me! Ah, really. What's the use of being a prince when I can't do anything big.
Anyway, it's important we learn to hunt. We will be grown men soon! And if you come in the spring we can swim in the lake again.
Tell me about your days, I miss you already, already, already. You, my best friend.
Yours,
Joonmyun.
Dear Jiaheng,
I got your letter! Will you be sailing off very soon? Will you be able to write me letters from there? Ah, but there is no use. Appa won't let me use any but the newest messengers, and they never know the pathways and how to get to a person very well. Most likely they will get lost if I send them over the sea.
I'm worried about you. Will you be alright? I know you've weathered so many trips and I none, but still. I am worried. Don't get too seasick! Master Lee says it is not too possible for a boy to vomit so much from seasickness that he dies, but it is still possible! I am worried!!!
Ah. What else do I have to share today. Remember when you taught me how to ride a horse? After that when we came home (come quickly so I can go home with you again. These days it only feels truly like home when you are there), I tried to write my own song.
I know, it's silly. But I felt so... full. From that day. It was so emotionally fulfilling that my emotional stomach decided to make an emotional burp. Now, don't tell me this is nonsense. You understand me perfectly. So yes, this burp would be the song. I worked on it now and then and last week I have completed it! I practice it in the turrets with closed doors, so nobody can hear! You must be the first one to hear it! Me and my flute await!
When will you come back to your home after your trip?
(My home is your home too. Remember that.)
Yours,
Joonmyun.
Dear Jia,
I am so tired.
I will call you Jia from now on. (This is my nickname for you, nobody else may use it.)
Jia, why are there so many stars? Sometimes I want to lie on the grass and count them all, even the ones I cannot see. Do you ever feel like wanting to do things you know you can't?
Today umma fell terribly ill. She is in a fever, we are full of visiting healers and wizards today. I don't know how to feel. I wish I could go to the gods and tell them to change this hardship into something I can handle. Gods, put her in a house on fire so I can walk in and carry her out to safety. Gods, make it be so I can help somehow.
But that is all useless, I know. They will have as they will. Jia, I wish you were here. I know you hate being weak and appa hates to see me being weak, but I really wish you were here. What am I without my friend? You are my strength.
Ah, it's late at night right now. Perhaps I have embarrassed you? I apologize, and will send this letter off in the morning. I hope you are sleeping well.
Yours always,
Joonmyun.
Dearest Jia,
I told you, didn't I? You are my strength. Thank you for writing back and sending a messenger so fast. I apologize for replying to you so late, but hopefully my messenger will be this good at travel as well. It has been busy, and the gods answered my plea. I have been able to help, so I had no time to do anything but.
Umma is better now. But she is to have strict bedrest and never exert herself again. We still don't know how it happened, but the healers said they cannot risk the queen falling sick again. The wizards have tried but they cannot say anything for sure, either. But the worst, they say, is over. I feel strange. I want to do more. But there is nothing I can do. Perhaps this is the feeling when you count all the stars you can and there are none more you can see?
Jia, how are you? I want to hear about your days. I miss you.
Yours always,
Joonmyun.
Jia,
I know you will probably not read this in time, because you are already on the way here. Here, to our home! I laughed aloud while writing this, this is how excited I am. I hope when you arrive back and read this, you are well-slept and fed and good in mind and heart and body and soul, as umma keeps telling me to wish everyone these days. But I do not wish you perfectly sated! You must feel a little restless and think, 'Ah, Joonmyun, until we meet again’, do you understand? I am sure you do. Do not dismiss this! I am serious! I would feel foolish to like you more. But I suppose I would also feel proud that I do. Now I am confused. Do I want to be more, or equally loyal?
Jia, I sat back for a few minutes to think and I realize that it does not matter. You are a part of me, I care about you more than myself. What is life without you? There is none. Even appa says that friends are the most important. Do you hear that sentiment!
I am so glad I fell that day, and I am even gladder that you lied and made up a story about wine poisoning.
Yours, yours, yours as ever,
Joonmyun.
They are fourteen when Jiaheng comes back the first summer, paintings of birds and skies carefully rolled up amongst his bags. "I made these for you," he says, shyly, and Joonmyun hangs every one up in his room. He has a study of his own, now, and keeps the box of Jiaheng's letters on the desk he has there.
The days on deck and by the foreign ports have tanned him. He comes back talking about all the people he’d met, about the different kinds of ships and weapons, the parchments that were thinner and the food that was rather plain.
“No food tastes better than the one at home,” the king comments. They are eating together at the royal table, Jiaheng and Joonmyun next to each other, with Joonmyun’s father at the head. Jiaheng dips his head in assent. “Definitely, your majesty.”
“And tell me,” the man continues, waving his chopsticks in slight amusement. “Did you meet any pretty girls? Anyone special?”
Jiaheng chokes a little, then blushes as he swallows. Joonmyun feels something twitch and twist inside him, stamps it down and passes Jiaheng some more water. “Ah,” Jiaheng says. “People are like food, I suppose, your majesty. The ones at home are always the prettiest.”
Joonmyun feels like asking him, suddenly, if he likes anyone here. Who would he like? Did he have a type-long hair, big eyes? Maybe apple cheeks and curvy lips? Maybe Jiaheng was like Joonmyun’s brother, maybe he just liked pretty knees. Maybe-Jiaheng takes another bite in silence as Joonmyun’s father roars with laughter. Jiaheng swallows and holds Joonmyun’s hand fiercely under the table. Joonmyun’s train of thought fragments, heart warming over with something so strange, so familiar, so dangerous and delightful.
Joonmyun thinks, again, maybe. He doesn’t dare let himself finish the thought.
"Hey," Jiaheng whispers, after they're finished with their meal, and the king has retired once more to his study. His breath fans over Joonmyun's cheek. "Weren't you going to play for me?"
Joonmyun feels giddy, fit to burst. "Of course," he says, "Follow me." The hand he places on Jiaheng's wrist trembles slightly, but he's got a strong hold.
Silently, he vows to always keep Jiaheng this close.
-
At ten, a prince starts his weapon training for when he will join the army. Joonmyun has learned sparring and swordplay, planning and hand-to-hand combat. This year, his master says he must start shooting. So this summer, they learn archery. Arrows for Jiaheng, because Joonmyun insists, and arrows and daggers for Joonmyun.
Joonmyun is a fast student; he catches on quick. Draw the bow, calculate, inhale. Feel the blood in your ears and at your fingertips, aim and let go.
The problem with Jiaheng is that he shoots skewed, off to his left most of the time.
“Here,” Joonmyun offers, “Let me help.”
Jiaheng looks at him with a little skepticism. “I will have to bend a lot.”
That really throws Joonmyun for a moment. “Why?”
“Because,” Jiaheng grins, “I’m taller.”
Joonmyun scoffs this off at first. He knows Jiaheng is taller, but surely-he walks towards him-he can’t be that much taller. Except, Joonmyun realizes with embarrassment when he stands next to him, he is. Joonmyun’s head barely comes up to Jiaheng’s shoulder.
“Alright,” Joonmyun says, trying to ignore Jiaheng's suppressed laughter, "I suppose we'll have to get on our knees and do this."
"I'll still be taller," Jiaheng mutters, and Joonmyun elbows him in the side.
"No disrespect!" But he doesn't mean it, and they're both grinning. They manage it in the end, and although Jiaheng does get better at aiming, he still maintains a slight left-sided bias. The master gives up on him. "He is not the prince," he scolds Joonmyun. "It does not matter."
Joonmyun hates it when the elders dismiss Jiaheng like this.
"Ignore them," he tells Jiaheng later that night, even though Jiaheng tells him that he doesn't even mind.
"They're right, after all," Jiaheng says. "And, anyway, I don't mind."
"I don't care," Joonmyun says, angry. He picks up his blanket and stalks over to Jiaheng's mat. Jiaheng scoots over to the side to let him plop down. "They shouldn't talk about me being a prince and you not. Especially when you're right there! What's the difference between us, anyway? What if I'm a prince? You're as good as one. You'd probably be better than me."
"Joon-"
"Don't say it. You'd probably be better than me. You're as good as one." Joonmyun rolls over and presses his forehead to the back of Jiaheng's neck, breathes deeply. His scent calms Joonmyun a little. He lifts an arm and curls it around Jiaheng's shoulder protectively. "You're as good as one." The last thing he remembers is mumbling it over and over, before he finally falls asleep.
-
They're going hunting. The master says they need to practice on moving targets, and Joonmyun is a little excited, a lot nervous.
Joonmyun and Jiaheng go together, quivers full and hands shaking just the tiniest bit. Jiaheng's aim is so bad that he misses every time. Joonmyun thinks he's doing it on purpose. He doesn't blame him. He decides he'll do the same, but when he sees a rabbit and aims farther ahead, he'd forgotten about it being a moving target. The arrow zings past him. For a second all his senses are heightened, and he hears the feather whispering in the wind, sees it wavering in the air, feels his own heartbeat ringing in every vessel, hears Jiaheng's intake of breath and the rabbit looking up, running-
It's a mess. Joonmyun is frozen to the spot and it's so, so red. Jiaheng walks over, shakily, picks it up from where there isn't spattered red. Joonmyun lifts his hands and Jiaheng hands it over. Drip, drip. Joonmyun can feel the warmth oozing onto his shoes, hears the dead leaves crackle under the weight of heavy blood. It's the final, drawn out twitch of the thing in his arms that makes him drop it and give a small scream.
There's blood on his hands and on his clothes, something dead at his feet. His own arrow winks at him, feather waving slightly in the breeze. Blood everywhere, and Joonmyun can't process this. Blood everywhere, and he's on his knees and his eyes are burning and he wants to cry but his lungs are scraping harshly against his ribs and bringing out nothing. Nothing. Blood everywhere. Joonmyun turns his head into Jiaheng's chest. "Make it stop," he whispers. "Please make it stop."
-
They tell him he has to learn to overcome this. He is a prince, one day he will be king, how can he not shoot? How can he not hunt? He is receiving army training, he needs to know how to kill-Joonmyun stops listening. He blocks them out, blocks himself out.
Raise the arrow, feel your pulse, know that you are alive, kill something.
Raise the dagger, feel your pulse, know that you are alive, kill something.
Raise the sword, feel your pulse, know that you are alive, kill something.
Kill something.
Kill.
He does not overcome this. He does not, as his father predicts, come to enjoy it. Instead he lives with it, drenched in sweat, the smell of copper haunting his dreams.
Jiaheng had left the week after the rabbit, and Joonmyun never writes about this in his letters.
-
When Jiaheng comes back, he teaches him about birds, their lives and how they migrate, how they feed, where they lay their eggs-every bird Jiaheng knows about, Jiaheng tells him-and Joonmyun plunges himself into this, back into this life where there is only life and only pleasure and only Jiaheng, with a fervor, with an unfounded fear that all this will soon fade.
There are kites, too. The first one, they make in the dead of night-Joonmyun insists, to increase the secrecy and excitement-and climb the tallest tree they find in the woods at dawn, sitting on branches facing each other, letting it fly. Joonmyun is scared, says it might catch on a branch and all their hard work would go to waste, but Jiaheng tells him to have more trust in the wind. The first one ascends to the clouds like a bird, blue and yellow and red, pretty and bright against the stark white sky.
"I can tell you about flowers," Joonmyun offers. Jiaheng gives him so much, Joonmyun wants to give back. "And how to make boats out of parchment."
Jiaheng pats the grass beside him. "Then sit. Tell me."
-
Joonmyun is seventeen to Jiaheng's sixteen-and-a-half, and where Joonmyun had always loved swimming before, now he tries to avoid it. Just a little. Just a bit. He always gives in and races him to the lake when Jiaheng asks, because what could he deny Jiaheng? But he's a little slow on the uptake, and whenever they finish, he lingers behind for a while, by himself.
He can't get it out of his head: the curve of Jiaheng's spine, the back of his neck. The breadth of his shoulders and the veins on his forearms. And his hands, gods, the way his fingers curl so readily around Joonmyun's waist.
-
Jiaheng leaves in the middle of July. As a Li, his father orders that he travel back to his hometown and get his tattoo. Three blue circles, on his wrist. “For health,” Jiaheng explains. “It’s the way of our tribe. And I’ll be back before you can write out the alphabet.”
“It’ll look pretty,” Joonmyun says, wistfully, thumbing over Jiaheng’s hand. They stare out the window, at the woods in the far distance and the sparse clouds overhead, in comfortable silence. It's then that Joonmyun realizes Jiaheng's hand is trembling slightly under Joonmyun's. "Jia?" he asks. "Are you nervous?"
Jiaheng lets out a short, startled laugh. "About what?"
"I don't know. Your hand's shaking."
"Ah," Jiaheng says, again laughing a little. "That." But he doesn't elaborate, so Joonmyun doesn't push it. He knows Jia will tell him eventually, when he feels it's right. So they lapse into quiet again.
Then Jiaheng asks him, "What's your favorite bird?"
Joonmyun frowns, a little surprised at the question.
"My favorite bird?"
He thinks about it. There are the birds Jiaheng had taught him about last year, then the ones he has studied with his mother on days when she felt better, and the ones he sees on his private little treks around the grounds. Eventually, he remembers something from years ago: a soft gray crane, long neck bent magnificently as it drank at the edge of the water. The sunset sending fractals of gold and dirty purple and smudged red onto the water, and the call of a dove from over the trees, just once, before perfect silence settles everywhere.
"A crane," Joonmyun says, slowly. "A hooded crane."
-
Jiaheng comes back in August. Monsoon season is almost over, but Joonmyun's brother says in his letter to their parents that the skies will muster some more storms yet. There are the three promised circles, light blue. "Like the sky," Jiaheng says, proudly.
"And the sea," Joonmyun murmurs, lifting Jiaheng's hand to see it better. "It looks pretty," he smiles. "Just like I said it would."
"I never said it wouldn't," Jiaheng jokes, but he looks a little breathless, for some reason, blinking rapidly at Joonmyun. Joonmyun drops his head over his hand, kisses each circle. Jiaheng's fingers curl a little over his palm, and Joonmyun clasps it to his neck. Respect and affection, it means, to hold someone's hands to your neck. It says, loud and clear, what Joonmyun can't. I love you.
Jiaheng's mouth curves up in the smallest, happiest smile.
-
It rains the day after he arrives, and Joonmyun drags him out to the lake while the water drums down hardest. "You're being nonsensical," Jiaheng calls over the loud splashing in the lake, stern, but already he's loosening his sash.
"Your actions betray you," Joonmyun yells back. "Let's swim, let's swim."
But then Jiaheng lets his robes fall past his shoulders, and Joonmyun's heart catches in his throat. The skin is a little pink and raised, so he knows for sure this isn't a painting on Jiaheng's back. Across his shoulder blades and down his vertebrae is a tattoo. A hooded crane, standing tall and proud, each feather realistic in its imprinting, the eyes sharp and alive over his skin.
What's your favorite bird? Joonmyun remembers Jiaheng asking. Wordlessly, Joonmyun walks towards him, reaches out and touches his back. Jiaheng's reaction is immediate: he tenses up and turns his head slightly over his shoulders.
"Jia," Joonmyun says, quietly, and Jiaheng turns around.
"This way I have you all the time, now," Jiaheng laughs, but it’s a little unsteady, and he bites his lip and looks away. The rain begins slowing down, and the splashing in the lake quiets.
“You already had me, though,” Joonmyun says, taking a step closer to him on instinct. Water drips down Jiaheng in rivulets, tangling in his hair and landing on his nose, carving itself in little pathways over his temples and his cheeks. “Always,” Joonmyun steps closer and closer, until he’s nosing at Jiaheng’s shoulders, and a flush rises up Jiaheng’s neck, gaze still cast sideways, barely daring to breathe.
“Look at me,” Joonmyun tells him, a hand against his chest. He can feel Jiaheng’s heartbeat under his palm, thrumming fast and dizzying. Jiaheng turns his head, faces him like it’s a challenge, and Joonmyun leans up and kisses him. He keeps his eyes open, to see Jiaheng’s face, to try to read what he’s thinking, to see if maybe he should stop, maybe this is wrong and this isn’t what he wants.
But Jiaheng just goes cross-eyed and confused, before blinking rapidly and pushing up against him, arms around Joonmyun’s waist, back dipping down to tilt his head better into the kiss. And this, Joonmyun’s hands sliding out from over Jiaheng’s chest, over Jiaheng’s back, his shoulders, up his neck-this is where everything falls in place, blazing moments into a kaleidoscope of the entire spectrum. The sun beats a tattoo against his eyelids and Jiaheng’s exhales slip sweetly down his throat, the lake lapping at their feet.
-
The box of letters in Joonmyun's study had grown to two, then three, then four. They nestle side by side on the top ledge of his first shelf in the study (the shelves, too, have multiplied), but now the letters in them don't increase in number. Because Jiaheng stays after summer. His father had set up a big house close by-as a loyal diplomat to both kings for almost ten years now, he'd been allowed this much.
The autumn and winter that follow are the best, Joonmyun will always swear, of his life.
Delirious happiness and stolen kisses, everywhere, at the arch of the entrance, in the turrets, on the roof, under the trees, at the lake, under the lake. Joonmyun's fingers and Joonmyun's mouth cartograph Jiaheng entirely: the back of his hands, the creases in his neck when he looks over his shoulder, between his shoulders (the crane, the crane, the crane), the tips of his eyelashes and the roots of his hair, behind his knees and around his ankles, until Jiaheng is panting and moaning and flushed so prettily, eyes so bright and mouth so eager. On their mats, in the cupboards, hands playing underneath the dinner table, while they make kites and fold boats and pretend to revise lessons. More and more, Joonmyun's heart bursting, Jiaheng's eyes fluttering shut, names and promises whispered and kept close, moments and glances stolen and kept closer.
-
They're just leaving the stables-setting off with a horse for an early morning ride, when a servant boy stops them. "Master Jiaheng," the boy bows, “Your father calls you."
For a second, Joonmyun’s heart stops.
-
Joonmyun had been slightly curious at the sudden influx of letters that his brother had been sending them. They were too long and frequent to be just the few moments’ summaries that his father would tell him over meals.
There was war at the brink, then, and now Jiaheng’s father has to choose a side.
His mother tells him this, because Joonmyun seeks her out and holds her hand and shakes with worry. Jiaheng had not returned since, but he hadn’t left the palace either. He and his father had been locked in a room, talking for hours.
“I don’t think,” she says, tiredly, “That he will choose us. He is only a friend, Joonmyun. He will not choose his friend over his blood.”
“Jiaheng,” is all Joonmyun chokes out, and she holds his hand, strokes his hair.
-
He wakes up in the middle of the night, sure he had felt a pair of lips at his brow. The wind howls outside. He turns over, but Jiaheng is not there. The mat, the blanket, the pillow-it’s all gone. Joonmyun sits up at once, goes to the door. He hears quiet murmurings and the sound of bag hitting the stairs, several flights below, with every step.
No, he thinks, breaking into a run, no.
He makes for his father’s room, because he knows they’re too far ahead, and he wouldn’t be able to make them stay if he tried. But if he tells his father, he could stop them at the gates... at the city entrance, maybe.
He bursts through his father’s study, where light had been shining from under the door. The king sits on his chair, a lone candle shedding light to his face. “Appa,” Joonmyun gasps, “Appa, please.”
The king blinks at him, as if seeing through him, then turns his head resolutely away. The glass panes creak under the pressure of the wind. Joonmyun feels hollow.
“Appa,” Joonmyun says again, on his knees with his hands clasped. “Let him stay. Let him stay, appa, I beg of you.”
“Go to bed, Joonmyun,” his father says, wearily. “There is nothing I can do.”
As if to punctuate this, the windows finally burst inwards from the storm outside, and the candle blows out at once. Joonmyun sits in the darkness, unable to bring himself to move. His father stands up and brushes past him, leaving him staring dumbly into the small patch of sky and stars he can see through the open window.
It’s a cold December, his mother had been saying since the month began. But Joonmyun had never really felt its iciness until now.
-
He is seventeen and a half to Jiaheng’s seventeen, and nothing, nothing is anything anymore.
-
Joonmyun tries to rebel when his father forces him through his training as if nothing had happened, as if Joonmyun hadn’t just lost Jiaheng from his life. As if Jiaheng had never existed.
Joonmyun stares into space as his master walks him through lessons, as his words increase in volume and rise to shrill yells, as words turn to blows, as he is ordered to defend himself in a sparring match, as he disobeys and let himself be beat.
His master calls the king.
“Joonmyun,” the king says. There is blood dripping down the sides of Joonmyun’s face, and for once the scent of copper and the taste of zinc in his throat makes him feel triumphant instead of hunted. This is his own blood that is being shed. This is repentance and redemption.
“Joonmyun,” the king says again, and Joonmyun smiles, blood in his teeth and bruises on his cheek.
-
“You will go to war,” his father tells him, calmly.
Joonmyun looks up in disbelief, face bandaged and left wrist sprained.
“This is what you have been training for, your entire life. If you have refused to receive it, these past few months,” the king pauses. It has been three months since Jiaheng left and the candle blew out. “Then that was your choice. I will have you dressed in armor and girded by tomorrow morning. I will give you my blessing, and you will lead your battalion into the mountains.”
-
So they win. They force him into it, and he lets himself be forced. What had he told Jiaheng in his letters, so many years before? He was weak. He always had been, and if before he’d had an inkling of hope that maybe there was a spark of strength in him that would fight back to this-to this servant girl putting on his helmet, his mother slowly, fumblingly girding him and kissing his hand, to his father laying his sword on each shoulder and giving him his blessing, to setting out on horse with nobody behind him but the heavy ghost of memory-if before he’d thought it, he’s proved himself wrong beyond belief.
The journey to the mountains isn’t as hard as some of his others have been. He thinks, constantly, if Jiaheng had experienced anything like it. If Jiaheng is in the war himself. Then he tries to forget the thought, the clenching of his stomach.
They stop halfway, set up a travel point for other units who may arrive as backup or due to a change of plans. They stay for a week, setting up barracks and hammering in nails and boards together. At the end of each day, Joonmyun flings himself onto his mat, arms over his head as he remembers Jiaheng, and remembers, and remembers.
-
He gives them his orders, rides at the front along with the rest of the foot soldiers, but his hands are damp and clammy on the reins, sword heavy as lead knocking against his thigh, quiver full of arrows against his back where someone else should be. Belt around his waist a pair of arms should be. Jiaheng, Jiaheng, Jiaheng.
And then, the first soldier against him, also on a horse. A shout, a raised sword, and Joonmyun flashes out his own without proper thought. The horses dance forwards, backwards, side by side, and metal clangs and sweat drips down Joonmyun’s brow. Neighs and shouts and brawling calls, the sounds of grunts and battle. He blocks them out. He blocks himself out.
Know that you are alive.
Muscle memory has trained him for this, his father and his masters and his own hard work, and his sword goes right through the rings in his enemy’s suit, pressure on his hilt in just the right direction to thrust and twist, and the man topples from his seat, is trampled by the rest.
Joonmyun stares down at where he lies, jostled over and stampeded by feet and hooves, probably dead already or wishing he was. This is because of Joonmyun. Joonmyun has taken his life.
And then, the second soldier against him. A shout, a raised sword, and Joonmyun turns and retaliates without proper thought.
Know that you are alive.
-
He loses count of the days.
He had known about war, had studied it, had understood what he had been taught about battlefield tactics and last-minute retreats, water shortage and death. He had known about it and prepared himself for it, but he hadn’t known it would be like this.
The months surge forward into a year. Every day there is a new shift in location, there are new faces, pouring in like so many pigs for slaughter, like so many ants that his battalion has to crush, a new flag to burn. Every night he throws up anything his stomach has to offer-food, water, bile, blood.
Raise the arrow, feel your pulse, know that you are alive, kill someone.
Raise the dagger, feel your pulse, know that you are alive, kill someone.
Raise the sword, feel your pulse, know that you are alive, kill someone.
Kill someone.
Kill.
In his tent, he tosses and turns. What if behind one of those countless suits of armor was Jiaheng? What if behind a breastplate beats Jiaheng’s heart, what if inside the helmet were Jiaheng’s eyes, what if Joonmyun had killed-
Food, water, bile, blood. Kill someone.
One year bleeds into the next, two years, three years. His brother dies. He hears it from his lieutenant, the Crowned Prince is no more, and that’s when colors really start to seep out. Everything blurs into gray, ash. Slash, kill, slaughter.
This is worse than the rabbit, this is worse than the blood on his hands and trying to seek comfort in Jiaheng, because this is not the rabbit, this is not the blood, and there is no Jiaheng. This is more than it all, more than everything. This is an engulfing and tearing, this is Joonmyun losing a fight he had never meant to fight, this is him drowning everything that he can on his way down to the emptiness.
Three years, four years. Joonmyun has stopped counting how many men he had ended long ago. Four years, and his father draws up his horse to their camp, in the midst of all this.
“She is dead,” he says, “By gods, Joonmyun, she is dead.” There are tears coursing down his face, the great head bowed, and Joonmyun stands with his hands balled into fists, the wind whistling in his ears.
Mother. A flashing set of images; all the memories he has with her in them. She is dead. She is dead. She is dead. She is dead.
“We will win the war,” he promises his father. Joonmyun, at twenty one, says what he never thought he would at seventeen. “We will win.”
The man gets to his feet clumsily, this very one who had forced Joonmyun into all this, into this misery for the sake of pride, for the sake of blood, and Joonmyun’s heart wrenches that they are like this, that this has happened, that everything has happened to lead up to this.
“We will win,” his father vows, eyes still wet but harder now.
-
But at what cost? Joonmyun questions, every waking moment of the day.
His horse has been replaced three times, his armor bigger and larger as he had outgrown it, his sword longer and his quiver new.
Four years, five years.
His original battalion shrunken and wavering and tentatively expanding over the months, death bringing them down, back up raising their numbers. The barracks the original unit had set up have long been burnt to the ground.
Slash, slaughter, kill.
He has a wound in his shoulder that never really healed, a wound from a poisoned arrow that he had carelessly let sit in for days, hoping to die, before a healer had reached their base and taken it out.
Pain is redemption, repentance. Death is the ultimate forgiveness.
They have traveled to cities and to Jiaheng’s city and to the port. Joonmyun has flinched inside each time, has hardened himself to it, has learnt to live, drenched in sweat with the scent of copper hanging everywhere.
This is not how he wanted to visit, he considers, bitterly, and slashes another man down. Jiaheng, he thinks, and wants to vomit.
Six years, seven years.
Joonmyun will never remember the last day of battle. It will be a blank haze of killing, just like the rest of them, it will be nothing but misery and a calm sense of oncoming, ever-ready death.
Prove you are alive while you can. Kill someone.
It is the seventh year that they win, that Joonmyun sets his battalion back with his horse’s nose pointed homewards, their tired, weary, hole-ridden flag raised up high.
-
The palace is emptier, much emptier than it used to be.
And it's only logical: servants having resigned, enlisted or fallen sick.
Then there was family-Joonmyun can't think about it. He can't bring himself to face the closed doors of the rooms that led to-Joonmyun can't. His father may order those door hinges oiled and those rooms cleaned daily, but Joonmyun wants to leave it all behind, and even then, he can't. His dreams won't let him, and when he's awake, his memories won't, either.
It takes more and more strength to move his left arm as the days pass, the pain in his shoulder making him flinch awake in the middle of the night.
-
The maid who used to clean their-his, Joonmyun reminds himself, his-room is long gone.
"Good morning," the new servant boy says, shyly, the first morning after Joonmyun arrives. He can't be more than twenty. From his spot by the window, Joonmyun nods in return and smiles.
-
Sehun talks a lot. Which is strange, because around anyone else, Joonmyun has seen, Sehun is almost completely silent, joining in now and then for a laugh or a sarcastic remark. But around Joonmyun, Sehun shares almost everything he comes across during his day. The temperature, how many daisies he plucked, the pretty new kitchen maid who recently joined, how uncomfortable his clothes are, his family at home-everything.
"Ah, your majesty," Sehun says, once, and Joonmyun's heart doesn't twinge, doesn't remember. "I talk so much. Surely you have something to say, too?"
Joonmyun smiles bemusedly up at him, scrolls on astronomy in his lap. "Ah," he says. "I am... I don't know, Sehun. What should I say?"
Sehun smiles and sits down, polish rag in his hands forgotten. "Tell me about the hardest day at war. About training, sire! Talk about... hmmm... life before the battles. The most exciting day you've ever had. I talk so much, your highness, surely you're tired of it by now."
These questions. Joonmyun had been dreading them, but somehow, coming from the clumsy, friendly youth who has barely crossed boyhood... it doesn't seem so bad. He doesn't remember the full details of the war, had been trying to push them away, but once Sehun asks, things start falling into place. Start calling him back and claiming him. So he rolls up the astronomy lessons and sets them aside. He starts to talk.
-
Things get a little better when Sehun comes by. The days are still the same, still dull and devoid of purpose, still full of gaping holes where living, breathing people should have been, but Sehun is a little bit of brightness. He spreads a little shine to Joonmyun's room with his polish and broom and the water jug that he keeps putting new flowers in.
"They're weeds, you know," Joonmyun tells him, dryly.
Sehun frowns, pausing in the middle of adjusting the dandelions and daisies. "Your majesty, with all due respect, that is plain farmer's talk. Flowers are flowers, and supposed to be very pretty to the commoner and the royalty alike. Weeds are only for an agriculturalist to worry about."
"Weeds," Joonmyun maintains, and Sehun huffs, stubbornly leaves the flowers in.
Joonmyun doesn't take them out.
-
Sehun comes in one day, wide eyed and staring, hands clenching and unclenching.
"What is it?" Joonmyun says, looking up from a painting. He'd had it taken down from the study, and kept it close by his bed instead. Jiaheng's favorite bird, an eagle. Joonmyun can't remember the specific name for it now, regrets it so much.
Sehun just opens his mouth and closes it. Then, finally, "Father taught me how to hunt, today. I feel-" he stops short, staring at his hands.
"Come here," Joonmyun says at once. "Here, sit by me."
It's the first time he's let someone be this close. It feels warm, a little reassuring. "Deep breaths," Joonmyun says, and Sehun nods, lips pressed in a thin line.
-
Sehun creeps into his room at night from then on, when his duties are over. He uses 'extra cleaning' as an excuse, but Joonmyun knows better.
They talk until the mornings, sharing thoughts and comparing memories. Sehun tells him about his dream, to learn to read and write, to sail a ship. Joonmyun tells him about Jiaheng. Joonmyun is twenty four now, and Jiaheng would be twenty three. If he survived-Joonmyun stops thinking.
"Would you call it love?" Sehun glances up from where he's sweeping the floor. He's by the cupboard they used to sit on, Joonmyun and Jiaheng.
Joonmyun looks down at his hands. Hands that have wielded swords and thrown daggers and ended lives, strangled men without weapons. Hands that, long ago, dug holes to plant flowers and folded parchments into boats.
"I'd call it whatever he'd want to call it."
Sehun straightens up, the bones in his back cracking loudly. The brush hangs limp in his hand, and his face is sympathetic. "Then it was love, surely."
-
It's been coming on for a while. Joonmyun's shoulder wound slowing down his arm, paralysing it completely. Joonmyun should have guessed.
Walking through the gardens, through the stiff August heat, bending down to sniff at the flowers and reaching up with one hand to pat the branches of trees by the path, he gets dizzy. Impossibly dizzy, the world spinning around him at impossible speeds, his gut revolting until he wants to throw up. Then blackness, and the last thing he feels is the ground against his face.
-
It gets worse after that. All he knows is fever and sweating and nightmares.
A blur, people wavering in and out of his vision. Everything is icy cold, and he has no idea where he is. Sometimes he's back at the battlefield, sometimes the first man to strike him take off his helmet, sometimes the face behind it is Jiaheng, sometimes it's his brother-both times Joonmyun kills him, both times Joonmyun is dragged under with him and trampled as well.
There are lakes that jump at him and wild eagles that claw at his face, his mother crying out from the darkness and telling him how cold it is, how this December will bode nothing but ill, and-a rare moment of clarity.
He's in his bedroom, poultices on his shoulder and steam wafting everywhere. A stranger sits by his side, whispering incantations. Sehun is on his other side, lips taut and face gaunt with worry. Joonmyun tries to reach out to him, but his arm won't move. With a groan, he slides back into the chaos.
-
Between all these horrors, these nightmares that he cannot differentiate from waking at times, there are moments when everything is normal. They are few and far between, but Joonmyun clings to them inside, holding on through the terror.
Sehun, bending over him, fraught with anxiety and dripping cold water over his forehead. "Ah, Sehun," Joonmyun rasps, throat dry and lips cracked. "I'm being a burden, aren't I? I swear... I've never fallen this ill. I am sorry."
Sehun frowns and remains silent, just presses a wet cloth against his mouth, squeezes it so the water drips slowly down his throat. "Your highness is ill," Sehun says, stern, "That does not mean your highness has to go crazy and apologize for being a human."
Joonmyun tries to smile, but it hurts. "Tell me," he asks. "What's going on?"
Sehun tells him. He fell ill the same way the queen did. There is a reward for anyone who can cure him. The kingdom is recovering from the war, the king is not. Sehun found a crane by the lake last week. His father is getting along well, the pretty maid has left, sometimes Joonmyun tries to walk in his sleep.
Sehun says something about developments, about how perhaps there is a cure now when there wasn't before, but Joonmyun isn't listening anymore. He's slipping away again, shivering as he starts to fade.
-
So many faces. Strangers, flickering in and out. His father, voice loud and booming, echoing through Joonmyun's skull. He can't understand the words. Steam and fire and spells, Joonmyun trembles and spasms under them all, abject fear the only thing he truly knows.
And then. Quiet. He is left alone, he doesn't know for how long, before the door opens again. Wearily, through a haze, Joonmyun looks up.
The face. Joonmyun knows... he knows that face.
"Jia," he whispers, even as everything starts to swim together before him. "Jiaheng."
Just before he's surrounded by black, a hand covers his own.
Calm. He feels protected.
Then Joonmyun knows nothing. Nothing but serenity that envelops him like a warm blanket. He succumbs himself to that comfortable void.
-
"Jiaheng!"
It's the first word out of Joonmyun's mouth, when his eyes open.
What had he been dreaming of? Something pleasant, for once. Jiaheng, and the three circles on his wrist. It looks pretty, just like I said it would. A memory. A good one. Joonmyun closes his eyes again, trying to get all the details back in his mind. The shade of blue, the feeling of Jiaheng's hand in his, the wind in their hair.
"You're awake," someone murmurs, sleepily.
Joonmyun freezes. It can't be.
"Your majesty?" the voice says, again, and Joonmyun slowly, slowly, turns his head to look.
Jiaheng, curled up on a mat beside his. Jiaheng, older and more tired looking, hair longer and tied back, taller than ever. But Jiaheng nonetheless. His eyes, that sharp nose, the curve of those lips and the slight puff in his cheeks. Joonmyun wants to reach out and trace it all with his fingers again.
"Jia," Joonmyun whispers. "Please. Don't let this be a dream."
Jiaheng laughs quietly, all teeth. "It's not."
-
He hadn't killed him.
All those years, and Joonmyun hadn't touched him.
Jiaheng. Joonmyun craves for him, from the moment he wakes.
-
They don't talk for a while after those first words to each other, in years. Days pass in silence and soft touches, Joonmyun trying to lock away every moment in clear, untouchable, untarnished memory, Jiaheng frowning in concentration, trying his best to heal him.
These are beautiful days, even if they are slower and more pained than the ones they used to have. Jiaheng has always given him a purpose, and he gives it now, when Joonmyun needs it most.
Joonmyun looks, feels his heart fill and his pulse beat, and never looks away, never grows tired of looking. The sunlight falling through the window and through Jiaheng's hair, the way his brows furrow and his mouth purses, deep in thought. The pulse in his temple, the sweeping line of his jaw.
But Joonmyun’s patience can only last so long. It takes a few weeks, after Sehun leaves after checking in on them, serving them their meals, asking them about their day and telling them of his, every day, when Joonmyun finally speaks.
“Jia,” he pleads, “Say something.”
Jiaheng breaks into a smile. “I have missed listening to you speak, majesty.”
It makes Joonmyun’s heart break.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry. For what-for everything that happened. Jia, Jiaheng, I’m so-”
Jiaheng’s arms are close around his shoulders, and Joonmyun is seven years back again, for one second, in the woods and searching for comfort, the color red everywhere he sees.
-
Through Jiaheng’s treatment-he does not promise much, but at least the arm, he says, he can cure-Joonmyun is carried out through the gardens, made to rest in the open air and breathe with the plants.
Jiaheng brings him flowers, ones that Joonmyun had told him about when they were both sixteen, and they brush knuckles contentedly. Sometimes, Jiaheng links their fingers.
-
The day Joonmyun feels with his arm again, he reaches out and tugs Jiaheng’s sleeve as he turns to leave. Jiaheng turns around, mouth open slightly in surprise.
“Joonmyun!”
Joonmyun smiles up at him, fierce and weary and desperate. Another tug, as hard as Joonmyun can manage, and Jiaheng almost topples right on him. Their faces are inches away from each other, Jiaheng’s arms on either side of Joonmyun. Joonmyun takes his time to relearn the beloved face that is so close.
“Tell me,” Joonmyun breathes, throat raw and chest threatening to implode. “Tell me it isn’t just me. Jia-”
Jiaheng tilts his head, kisses him. Joonmyun’s eyes close in relief for a long, long moment, his good arm coming up to hold Jiaheng, keeping him there.
It’s been so long.
When they part, noses bumping a little, Joonmyun’s smile is small and secure.
“You have always had me,” Jiaheng reminds him.
-
Sehun’s holiday approaches, so he spends as much time as possible with them, yelping in surprise when he finds Joonmyun practicing with his bad arm. “Majesty! You managed? The prince has done it!”
Sehun is delighted with their amusement at his surprise, proposes games to play and plants to pluck-“Weeds,” he drawls, with emphasis, and Joonmyun swats his head-and a hundred other things, but backs down sadly when Jiaheng says not to overwork him.
Joonmyun had been a little worried in the beginning, but he’s glad that they all get along well. He smiles at their antics and quiet bickering while he pretends to read his scrolls. It brings old memories back-running carefree by the lake, the first breath of fresh air on opening the window after a stuffy summer night.
Sehun waves goodbye to them as he leaves, a kite packed in his bag and a number of folded boats ready in the pockets of his robe to amuse his family at home.
“Look at that,” Jiaheng chuckles, at the window. “He’s like a little sparrow going off on an adventure.”
“Small wings, but going places,” Joonmyun agrees, smiling as he waves at the small figure near the gates. “I’m glad he’s coming back in a few weeks.”
-
They share their stories through the nights and days that follow.
Jiaheng had changed his name, after his father died. He goes by Yifan, now.
“You’re still Jia to me,” Joonmyun murmurs, fingers tracing over the blue circles again and again. “My Jia.”
Jiaheng smiles. “Yours.”
He’d joined an apothecary, learned to be a healer and a wizard, tried especially hard to study illnesses that resembled the queen’s. He’d so desperately wanted to find a way to help somehow, even if it were to be just by letter, given the war. He was on the brink of a breakthrough when the news of her death spread to where he lived.
“I was-” Jiaheng stops. “I’m so sorry.”
“There’s nothing for you to apologize for,” Joonmyun says, swallowing hard. For months, now, he’s been trying not to think about it.
Jiaheng becomes quiet, and Joonmyun looks up at the sky.
“So,” he says, beginning again, "You became a wizard."
"And you became a soldier." Jiaheng smiles at him, gentle, hands working on his shoulders.
Joonmyun feels tension that he didn’t know was there lifting quietly and leaving him limp in relief.
“Feel better?” Jiaheng asks.
“So much, Jia. Thank you.”
There is a pause of their conversation again, relaxed this time. Joonmyun glances around him, at the trees, the lake, the spots so familiar and so old. Everywhere, he can see ghosts of himself and Jiaheng-laughing, running and holding hands, whispering secrets, lying on their backs with their legs tangled, leaning against trees and kissing.
"Time does pass fleetingly, once you look back."
1. these are a few hooded cranes.
2. regretfully, i know nothing about horse riding or archery. apologies for any ridiculous errors.
3. thanks to rz for letting me do this! rn&a for being nice and listening patiently to me stutter vaguely about it. k! i sought you out and ranted a little and your support really kickstarted me into finally doing this and kickass betaing helped me immensely throughout. literally couldn’t have done it without you! last but definitely not least, thanks to the recipient for giving such interesting prompts!