“I brought you back some things that I found in my travels.” Chen looked aside to Laike as they strolled back toward the group of buildings the Luanshi sect called home. The morning mist long ago dissipated under the intense gaze of the sun and now the forest was clear—sepia and viridian, grey and gritty wherever a swirled marble stone had been spat from the clogged throat of a higher elevation. “I would have sent them over time, but couriers are very particular about their weight capacity. Although—I suppose I’m glad I didn’t, now.”
Laike was intermittently distressed by all the letters he was missing but it seemed petty to focus on something like that when Chen was next to him. The shame of Yuhui’s betrayal still stung with salted edge and concern about his teacher’s state, despite Xue’s own treachery, clouded his mind but Laike still managed to wear a shy grin for the wanderer at his side.
“I’m glad you waited,” Laike agreed. He could have been talking about any number of things but he bowed his head with a blush like he meant the most far off thing, the thing Chen left on the table when he took off so long ago. Lai cleared his throat. “You can show me—and you can tell me about all the things you’ve seen, the things you’ve done.”
“I’ve seen a lot of interesting things, I have a lot of stories. I’ll bore you with them all—at least until I leave again.” The boy of light stopped walking, reaching out to grab Laike’s hand and halt him too. “What I most want to give you is with me now. Will you have it?”
Curiosity piqued, skipping two meals had Laike glossing over the obvious entendre for a more platonic scenario: Chen was going to give him food. With his hand in Chen’s, eyes catching the light between the mottled shadow of trees, Laike looked expectant, if slightly confused, in that wide open world above the mountain stronghold. “What is it?” He pressed his lips together, chin tilted down.
“I’ll show you. Come here.” Chen pulled Laike closer, dropped his hand for the narrow line of his waist, and leaned in. His lips planted a kiss on the fighter’s cheek, met the red of his fading fury with the warmth of his heart, sweet and brief, an unforgotten reminder of how the older boy left him. “Do you want more?”
The shadowstalker was startled but didn’t show it, eyes lidded as he turned toward the affection. He placed his hand atop Chen’s at his waist.
“Of course I do,” Laike said softly. He didn’t look at the other boy, that wandering fighter Laike imagined was so much more worldly now that he’d experienced freedom. He hadn’t made assumptions of where he would stand with Chen after a year, two years, three, five. What interest would Chen have in him, violent and callow and naïve, who only existed within Yunji’s mist? Lai focused on Chen’s proximity, his incandescence, radiant heat like a fever dream on his skin despite the layers of clothes between them. “Did you… did you really keep me in your heart all this time?”
“Yes.” Chen’s kisses were gentle, numerous, specks of sunshine peeking in between clots of shadow. He moved cheek to jaw. “Do you really think I would leave you how I did and come back cold? Like nothing ever happened?” He pulled away briefly.
“Maybe it’s hard for you. Maybe it’s hard to believe me when there is nothing between then and now to prove my honesty.” Chen frowned, silent for a moment before leaning in and taking Laike by the lips. “Maybe this will help.”
“You’re a liar,” Laike teased in the breath marks between parting and reunion. Leaves snapped out glass sounds beneath his boots as he leaned back into a tree. He was a welcome home; he was blushing in the escalation he baited freely, the escalation he was denied when Chen said his goodbyes two years back. With his hands drifting up Chen’s waist, his ribs, his chest, Laike rested on Chen’s pulse, outlined the silhouette of his shoulders and neck.”These don’t weigh much—what could a courier possibly complain about?”
“I have some other items back with my belongings. These were always going to be an in person delivery, from me directly to you. I don’t think you’d appreciate a middle man receiving them anyway, would you?” Chen’s touch trespassed into darkness, creeping to the small of the shadowboy’s back as a means of pressing their bodies closer together. He would wear out that welcoming; he would dim his light for the comforts of dark.
“Master Xueyu intercepting them would’ve been way more entertaining though.” His laugh was airy, his voice was a frayed confidence that pretended it knew the path. He’d seen the map but declined to walk the road when given the opportunity—or was he thinking too far ahead? They were years beyond a friendship that had grown into a first kiss. Did separation grow that yearning into the tension tightening his spine, lumbar to sacrum to coccyx? Was he rebounding from Yuhui’s duplicity into the arms of the one he should have been waiting for all along?
Closer, closer, Laike pulled Chen to him, hip to hip by the belt. He was easy, smooth. Two years hadn’t happened at all; time placed no distance between Laike, Chen, their reunion in the woods, and that long ago kiss. “In all your travels, you must have done so much, met so many people. Was there anyone to distract you from the things you left here?”
“Yes, of course. There are plenty of distractions out in the open world. I met so many different people, Laike.” Nestled flush against the younger boy, Chen’s affections turned leisurely, brushing lips back on skin. “It’s very lonely out there. I felt very alone for a while, weeks, months. So, the distraction was more away from that loneliness, the emptiness of freedom, rather than what I left behind. Sometimes I just needed someone to be with for a little while. Have someone to talk to, someone to be near, to give me fleeting comfort.”
“I’m glad you came back,” Laike confessed quietly, head tilting back to expose his throat to Chen’s teeth. “I think loneliness almost caused me to make a grave mistake.”
“I am too. I’m sorry you were lonely—” Tilting his head back slightly, Chen looked at Laike, his hazel eyes like the perfect marriage of emerald and earth. “But maybe you won’t be so alone now. Let me stay in your room while I’m here, okay? The Weis took mine and the palace guests have the spare.”
“Like I’d let you stay in the spare.” Lai’s haughty laugh evaporated from his lips as he pressed off the tree, playfully shoving Chen off. He began to head down the path toward Luanshi’s compound, flickering up and down the path intermittently like a trick of the light.