2 YEARS AGO.
The moon crested over Yunji at midnight. Chen’s window was cracked to the cool mountain air, a kaleidoscopic array of colored glass muted in the dim light of the boy’s half empty room. A lantern burned on his empty desk. The Luanshi sect was fitted with electricity, however the boy born of light preferred to watch the way fire danced; he liked the free movement, the energy, the company.
Hours ago, he laid Laike out in his bed, gave him pillows and convinced the Wei sisters to bring the boy’s favorite blankets from his loft. Chen made a pile of his red-stained robes. He made a pile of Laike’s too, stripping the youth to his underwear so he wouldn’t be uncomfortable in fabric made stiff from dried blood.
Now, he sat by, idly combing his fingers through Laike’s bangs, pushing his long hair aside.
After a dreamless struggle through his own unconscious undertow, Laike stirred. He groaned as he turned his head side to side, reaching up to touch the unmarred skin where his wound once was.
He saw the evening in sharp flashes, spotty playback of momentary details. The horror on Chen’s face from across the training yard; the stream of desperate apologies that fell from Chen’s lips when he carried Laike up hundreds of Yunji’s steps; Chen’s demand to suffer Laike’s healing despite Xueyu’s attempt to take it instead.
“Chen…?” Laike tried to sit up but only managed to make it up onto his elbows.
“It’s okay. Don’t get up.” Chen folded his arms at Laike’s side, attention falling still. “Just rest for now.”
Determined to milk his condition for all he was worth, a lesson delivered via his experience with the Weis, Laike gently laid back onto Chen’s pillows looking waifish and faint. “Chen—” he whined, looking up at his elder through pained slits, a pout on his lips. “—Chen, why’d you have to hurt me so bad? I wasn’t really gonna run away…”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you that severely.” The older boy frowned, looking down on the laid up assassin-to-be. “I thought you would dodge most of them. I’m so sorry, Laike.”
Looking suddenly demure, Laike’s hazel eyes fell away from Chen’s face. “Though… couldn’t you have waited till I was awake to take my belt?”
“Eh—your clothes were soaked with blood. The belt is over there.” Chen nodded behind him, to the corner. “You can keep it. I feel like I don’t deserve it.”
“You won.” Laike’s gaze returned to Chen’s face. He watched him in the flickering candle light, how his eyes always seemed to be masking a flame he left lit on his insides. “I won’t go back on a bet just ’cause I got hurt.”
“I went too far. It wasn’t fair.” Chen shook his head then straightened his back. He collected his arms and angled his chest partially away from the boy in his bed. “Are you thirsty? Hungry?”
“I’m thirsty,” Laike confirmed quietly. He was hungry as well—the boy was always hungry—but he didn’t feel much like eating at the moment. “It doesn’t matter if it was fair. Master Xueyu says that all is fair on the arena floor and every injury is an opportunity to become a better fighter than the one who existed before the hurt.” Laike forced himself to his knees, head bowed, and linked his hands before him in reverence. “Thank you for this opportunity to become better.”
Chen turned back and a cup of tea sat cradled in his palm, touched by the placement of delicate fingers belonging to his other hand. He offered it to Laike. The smell of jasmine perfumed the air, floral and intoxicating, sweet like springtime.
“I nearly killed you and that’s not okay. It doesn’t matter how many of Master Xueyu’s dumb excuses you use to try to comfort me.” Chen frowned. As a former student of the mountain’s priestess, he heard the chime of her voice in his head, soothing and euphonious, when he said: “Mercy is also a valuable lesson.”
Laike didn’t take the tea, didn’t move. His words were a quiet needle, whispered heresy in that room full of shadows dodging Chen’s dancing light. “If you’re so opposed to Master Xueyu’s lessons, then why are you leaving me here with them?” The boy continued to stare straight forward but his bottom lip trembled for the effort.
“Laike, please. Don’t do this.” The older disciple’s posture wilted as he rested his hands, teacup and all, in his lap.
“You told me if I ran away like Jian of the Heavy Sky that you would not look for me,” Laike said, shoulders affecting the shake of his lip. “I will stay—I’ll stay for the chance that you will come back; I’ll stay because you promise me you won’t forget me.” Finally, Laike looked up, still bearing wounds that Jiling couldn’t heal. “But I warn you: do not be surprised by the person who inhabits your brother’s body when years pass and he remains precisely where you left him.”
“You say that like I wouldn’t welcome your growth.” Chen met Laike’s gaze, radiant in the room’s muted glow. “You say that like it’s a threat.”
“Isn’t it?” Laike queried, eyes like gold reflecting the flame when he tilted his head. The boy was well aware of his propensity toward cruelty, knew well how Xueyu rewarded the monster and tolerated the boy. He lowered his hands but remained on his knees. “If you think you did me wrong when you cut my throat, you owe me a debt that I will allow you to repay here and now, if you are willing.”
Chen’s eyebrows dipped even when he exhaled a laugh. He turned his chin down to the cup in his idle hands, watching the fading steam swirl unto dissipation. Yunji was full of child-swindlers—the boy due to leave never really knew if the demands his peers made of him were going to be reasonable or plainly preposterous. “Give me the price and I’ll tell you if I can afford it.”
“If I am to wait, I want to know who I’m waiting for. If I’m in your heart, I want you to kiss me.” Laike dropped his eyes, swallowing the automatic apology he felt leap to the back of his throat. “If I’m not, tell me plainly. I’ll understand either way.”
Searching the brocade pattern of Laike’s blanket for the source of his hesitation, Chen was silent for a few moments. Wouldn’t this make that boy miss him more? Wouldn’t this just increase the woe that was to come hours from now, when he was waving his goodbyes on the road down the mountain? Laike was a few years younger than him. When Chen looked at him he saw a boy whose naïvety made him susceptible to a heartbreak he didn’t want to be the source of.
What if he died out there?
What if this was the last chance he got to spend with Laike?
The older boy looked up and placed the cup he’d been holding aside. He re-situated himself, knees on the bed, a collection of smooth angles and shimmering lines slowly leaning forward.
What if he died out there?
This could be his last chance—
Chen kissed Laike, goaded by the very same reasons he was using to talk himself down. The edge between light and shadow was stark, crisp and defined. His lips were warm, not from tea, but from the eternal incandescence of that boy’s making.
Laike was quick to consume Chen’s mouth to mouth confession, collecting his favorite light source in a circle of shadows. His breath was a shift, a shudder—relief and joy and a deep aching sorrow all marbled and warped like folded steel. He pulled his elder closer; his bloodless chill was so stark in comparison to the solar flare boy he courted. His body begged for things his mouth hadn’t asked for as Laike persuaded Chen to trespass his own bed.
Chen was three inches closer to Laike before he pulled away. He was just beginning to unfold that boy’s straightboard spine into an obtuse angle—90, 110, 130 degrees. The older boy broke their contact and sat back, sucked on his own lips for the fleeting seconds of a pensive moment.
“Did that give you your answer?”
Laike looked up at the elder student as he supported his weight on one elbow.
“It gave me one answer but now that you’ve stopped there are more.” Chin tucked, Laike laid himself out, an inadvertently enticing arrangement of limbs and callow questions. “Did you kiss me because you wanted to or because you thought you had to?”
“If I didn’t want to, then I would’ve told you plainly like you asked.” Chen dipped his chin, brow shadowed with confusion. Or was that dismay? “Do you think I would be dishonest with you?”
“No,” Laike replied demurely, averting his gaze. “…did you stop because it was bad?”
The older boy shook his head. “I stopped because I wanted to keep going.”
“Then maybe you should keep going.” Laike lifted his eyes to his friend’s chin but didn’t dare traipse higher.
“I can’t. Not yet, not right now.” Chen outlined the boy’s shape with his eyes, let reality fill in all his beautiful details. “Not with you spread out like this before me.”
“If not now, then when?” Laike sat up, pursued the other boy in his backward lean. He was in his lap, against his chest, hands to his jaw to hold him in place should he dare to continue where Chen pulled away. “Tell me when.”
“When I come back.” Chen sighed but he didn’t stray from Laike’s gaze nor the chill of his touch. He was firm in his response, nearly stern, even if his undertones were made of soft swoons.
That dark and stormy boy was persistent, fervent. Given a taste, he wanted more: Laike was always hungry, never satisfied till he was overindulged. He kissed the corner of Chen’s mouth, then kissed the center of his bottom lip gently once, twice firm, then the third time with his predator teeth begging a response, any reciprocation he could muster.
“Okay,” he breathed, a soft surrender to abide by the rules of Chen’s game. “But you can still kiss me, can’t you?”
“Is that only going to make you miss me more when I’m gone?” Chen’s words were stutters, broken by breath, shattered by shadow. He was a fire pulse in the chilly night, negative space to his friend’s dark provocations.
“It’ll make me miss you, yes. It’ll make me long for your return more desperately; I’ll call your name in the dark more fervently. It’ll tempt me to walk the shadows to look for your shape even though I know I won’t find you: your light doesn’t exist in the world I wander alone.” Laike delivered his words in gentle affections peppered along every edge of Chen’s lips, his chin, his jaw. The boy looked at him square when he finished winding through his thoughts. “But if you kiss me how you want, kiss me how you wish you could tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, then it’s a promise, isn’t it? I’ll know you’ll do everything you can to come back because your lips told me so. Your mouth wouldn’t lie to me. Your hands are your witness.”
“It will make me miss you too much.” Dampened by the freely given affection, Chen looked down to his lap, to Laike’s lap covering his lap. “How will I ever be able to leave you? How will I find the courage to turn my back on you for the boundless horizon? This is really hard for me, Laike. I’ve made you promises, answered your questions.” The boy of light took the shadowborn’s hand and placed it over his heart. Beneath the skin, the bones, the muscle was thumping wildly, a conflagration of emotion. “You need to rest, okay? You lost a lot of blood and you need to lay back down.”
“Will you leave me without regret if you don’t kiss me again?” Laike asked, affectionate and playful and sullen all at once. He did, however, comply with Chen’s request: he slid off the older boy’s lap and sat on the edge of his bed. “Will you lay with me until morning comes? Or will that hurt you too?”
Chen crawled up the bed and settled down next to his friend. He wrapped the boy up in his arms to pull him near, fitting their bodies together flush, letting Laike fill all the spaces his light couldn’t reach.
“I will not have regrets, no. Kissing you even once is something that I will not take for granted.” He sighed against Laike’s skin, summer breath, sunny breeze. “Maybe you will be able to coax a goodbye kiss out of me when the daylight rises and calls me away.”
“Just tell me about all the things you’ll do when you go,” Laike sighed, caving to the other boy’s warmth, autumn eyes basking in the last warmth before a winter without end. “Tell me where you’ll travel, who you’ll find, the injustice you’ll right. Tell me till I threaten to fall asleep, then wake me to tell me again. I didn’t plan on sleeping away this last night with you. So tell me everything you’ve never told me, then tell me again and again.”
Tell me what you’re leaving me for—
aah, Chen, show me what I’m worth
then tell me what’s out there in
the world so vast and wide
that’s worth so much
fucking more.
Laike curled against Chen’s side with sorrow hidden in his eyes.